I am a novice beekeeper. This is my third year of responsibility for bees. I keep hives at our son’s farm, 2.7 miles from our house. However, I often ride my bike to and from the farm, and the main road is too narrow and too busy for bicycles, so the route I take when I ride my bike is just over 7 miles each way. The exercise of the round trip is about right for a daily jaunt for me. I have colonies of bees that have survived two winters now, and I harvest enough honey for our family’s use and a bit extra to give as gifts. The process has allowed me to learn more about honey bees. Bees lead extraordinary lives, and there is still much more to learn. I have completed the novice level of beekeeper training offered by the Washington State Beekeepers Association, and my hives are registered with the Washington Department of Agriculture. Over the next two or three years, I hope to become a master beekeeper, which includes training and experience. I needed a few years of keeping bees before being eligible to take the next level of training, which I intend to start over the winter of 2025-26.

My bees have an easy life compared to the lives of many other bees. They remain in the same hive for many cycles of life. A colony can survive beyond the lifespan of its queen by raising new queens as needed. The bees we keep have access to various pollinating and nectar-producing plants on the farm. There is an orchard with apple, pear, and plum trees. There are rows of blueberry plants. There are strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries nearby. The pastures have clover, dandelion, and other flowering plants. Many bulbs bloom in the spring, including daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths. After those flowers have run their course, poppies emerge. Soon, the lavender will begin blooming, followed by the dahlias. The bees in my hives rarely travel more than a half mile to keep the hives thriving. I feed them in winter and warm the hives on the coldest days. I keep their boxes painted and in good repair. I harvest some of their honey, but also leave some for them.

Production bees, however, have very different lives. Commercial honey producers have a lot of ways to encourage their bees to produce more honey. And those raising bees for income charge for pollination services that create more income than honey production. To maximize production, commercial operations move the bees over long distances. Hives may be located in California during the winter, earning money by pollinating almond trees, then come to western Washington for the berry season in spring, and off to the alfalfa fields when the berry season is over. A typical load of bees might be 450 to 500 hives on a single semi trailer. Depending on how much honey is in the hives, the load can exceed 70,000 pounds. With roughly 50.000 bees in each hive, millions of bees travel down the road. The standard way to transport bees is to wait until most bees are in the hive at night, load the hives onto a flatbed trailer using large forklifts, and drive through the night. If the trip is too long to be completed in a single night, the truck travels to a rural area where it can be parked during the day before moving on the next night.

Sometimes, as was the case yesterday, something goes wrong. A few miles northeast of our place, near the Canadian border, a semi load of bees was traveling down a narrow rural road when it veered off to the ditch on the left. The driver over-controlled and the truck started toward the opposite ditch when it tipped onto its side, spilling the hives. The bees began venturing in huge swarms a few hours after the accident. Master beekeepers estimate that there could have been as many as 25 million bees spread out along about a mile of roadway. The sheriff’s office closed the road, and the master beekeepers went to work. About 25 local volunteer beekeepers began righting and repairing hives. They worked through the day, hoping the bees would return to the hives.

Because of the disruption, the bees will take a while to find the correct hives. Each bee belongs to a specific colony with its queen. Some queens were likely forced to leave their boxes in the crash. Those swarms will take longer to find a suitable hive. It is estimated that the road must remain closed for another 24 to 48 hours to allow most bees to return to their hives. They will then be loaded onto a different trailer and head off to alfalfa fields for the rest of the summer and honey harvest in the early fall before being trucked to California for the winter.

I don’t know the exact destination for those bees. They might have been headed to alfalfa fields as close as a few hundred miles away or farms as distant as eastern Montana or the Dakotas. Honey bees get around. Even though the accident occurred within a short distance of the border, they were not headed to Canada. There are restrictions on honey and bee imports to Canada. Canadian bees travel around Canada, and many are heading east from the berry fields about now, but they rarely cross the border.

I’ll go to the farm today and set up an empty hive with some frames sprayed with sugar water to attract bees, just in case a queen with a swarm has gotten away from the main cluster and finds her way to the farm. It is unlikely, but one way small hobby beekeepers like me get bees is by attracting swarms that have left other hives.

Keeping bees is a quiet and slow task most of the time. It is best when there is no excitement. I am careful not to agitate my bees when working with them and try to minimize disruption of their hives. But for our rural county, yesterday was a big day for beekeepers. Even those of us who did not respond to the accident will have stories to tell for years to come about the morning the bee truck tipped over.

I think of myself as a word nerd. I enjoy words and writing. I love dictionaries. I am entertained by learning new words. I sometimes drive my family up the wall with puns. I’m more comfortable discussing the winners and runners-up of the Scripps National Spelling Bee than the hockey playoffs. This year is the 100th anniversary of Scripps as the national spelling bee of the English language. If you haven’t caught up with it yet. Faizan Zaki, age 13, won the Bee last night. He outlasted eight other finalists to win with the word “éclaircissement”. The word means enlightenment. The rules of the spelling contest do not require spellers to name the accent over the e. However, I believe that Zaki could have done it. He lists learning French as one of his hobbies in the official bio for the contest, so I bet he knows it is called accent aigu. It is one of five accent marks in French. Aigu changes the pronunciation of the letter “e” to “ay” if you try to pronounce éclaircissement correctly. I learned that bit of trivia when I studied French in college. Zaki’s hobby of learning other languages paid off in his victory.

The victory was especially sweet for Zaki because he came in second last year. He came so close to winning when he was 12 years old. He spelled every word in the conventional rounds correctly in that contest, but lost in a lightning-round tiebreaker. Last year’s winner, Sarvadnya Kadam, also made it to the final round of three spellers this year. Zaki came close to losing it again this year when he became overconfident near the end of the competition. He was two words away from winning when he received “commelina.” Instead of asking questions about the definition or language of origin, he began with “K-A-M” and then stopped himself. That meant the other two finalists returned to the stage and the contest progressed until Zaki finally won.

As a language nerd, I can’t help but notice that last night's three finalists, Faizan Zaki, Sarv Shailesh Dharavane, and Sarvadnya Jitendra Kadam, are all Indian-Americans. Children of parents who immigrated to the United States from India have dominated the contest for the last 25 years. Keep your eyes on Dharavane. He is only 11 years old, and he has a few more national competitions in him.

In light of the contest and its history of strong Indian-American spellers, it is alarming to me to read that more than 1,000 Indian nationals have been deported from the United States since January. In February, more than 100 Indians were transported to India on a US military flight. News stories of that flight reported that some of them were shackled during the flight. Because the current administration is deporting people without due process, it is impossible to determine if some or all of those deported were in the United States illegally.

There are many systems in our country that are dependent upon attracting immigrants from other countries. One example is our health care system. U.S. colleges and Universities do not graduate enough doctors, nurses, and technicians to meet the needs of our health care system. The high costs of medical education combined with strict restrictions on the number of students admitted to medical colleges have resulted in shortages of qualified professionals. To meet this demand, hospitals and other medical practices depend on immigrants. India has high standards for medical education, and doctors trained in that country can meet the strict requirements to practice in the United States. Of course, not all Indian-Americans are medical professionals. Families immigrate together. They invite their friends to come and live near them. Immigrants from India fill other vital jobs in our country. First- and second-generation Indians are engineers, professors, firefighters, law enforcement officers, and pilots, and serve in many different occupations. Mass deportations threaten a significant brain drain for our country, one that could have lasting impacts well beyond the term of the current administration.

What happens if we deport the families of future Scripps National Spelling Bee winners? How much do we lose if we deport those who know best how to spell our language? Have those harping on English as the official language considered the implications?

More important than my silly questions is the reality that we not only import people from other countries. We live in a connected world. As last night’s spelling bee illustrated, we also import words from different languages. Our books are richer and more entertaining because we adopt words. Unlike last night’s winner, I am not good at learning other languages. However, my formal education required learning different languages. I studied French in college partly because of a foreign language requirement for advanced degrees. I studied Hebrew and Greek in seminary because those are the languages of the Bible. I frequently refer to original languages and translation challenges when preaching and teaching the Bible.

Attempts to deport people whose origins are different than our own do not make us more secure. Removing books from libraries because they contain words from other languages does not make us better educated. Isolationist policies weaken national economies. The current “America First” declarations inevitably lead to America falling behind.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is not a political event. It celebrates the English language and those who continue to master its intricacies and nuances. It has been a delightful element of our national culture for a century. It doesn’t attract the big crowds of major sporting events, but it contributes to our culture. We are who we are partly because people are dedicated to teaching and learning the intricacies of language and culture. One of the things that we are learning and teaching is how interconnected we all are. English does not stand alone, but is in constant interplay with the world's other languages.

A hundred years from now, the national spelling bee will include words whose language of origin is Indian. That’s how language works.

I have a reasonable level of competence when using technology. I use my computer, smartphone, and smart watch daily and can generally make them do what I want. I do a fair amount of internet research and have some skill at making judgements about trusted sources, and have skill at identifying scammers. I use a variety of software programs with more ease than some of my compatriots. I am occasionally asked to help people connect to Zoom and do other computer chores.

There are, however, times when computers and software confound me. I generally do not do online reviews. I know how they can be easily manipulated and skewed. I rarely find them helpful in making decisions. I joke that I’m a professional writer without interest in writing for free. However, there are times when I experience exceptional service and want to acknowledge it by making a positive review. Last week, we had a new dishwasher installed in our home. The dealer that sold us the appliance is one with which we have done business before, and each time we have been pleased with their installers. They are efficient, courteous, and careful. So when I got an email asking me to evaluate their service, I was eager to give them a good review. I clicked on the link to enter my review and was redirected to a site for the appliance manufacturer. I set about to make my review, but on the page where I was to select my dealer, other dealers were listed, but the dealer who installed our appliance was not. I tried to enter the name of the dealer manually, and the site hung up. It wouldn’t let me enter the name of our dealer, and it wouldn’t let me go back to the previous page. I gave up and went on with other tasks.

How accurate is the data from that site? With glitches preventing customers from making positive reviews, does the system record more negative reviews than positive ones, not because there are more such reviews, but because the software makes it difficult to provide a review? Do customers get frustrated with the software and leave reviews for the wrong dealer because they can’t figure out how to enter their dealer's information? I wish they had a way to give them feedback on their reporting program.

Last evening, as I waited for our grandson to finish with activities at his programming and robotics club, I used my phone to search a popular website for recreational vehicles. We aren’t quite shopping for a new-to-us RV, but we have talked about downsizing from our current camper to a smaller unit, and I enjoy looking at websites to get a sense of the market. The price increase in the past few years means I won’t be considering new units, but I might be interested if I could find the right used one. Since I had extra time, I set up a search on the website. However, each time I set the parameters for the search, the website would show dozens of vehicles outside of my price range, most of which were not even the type of unit I was searching for. After setting up three or four failed searches with the tool on the site, a pop-up appeared asking me to evaluate the site's search feature. I usually click those away, but I decided to give them some feedback since I was frustrated. I answered a few questions by clicking boxes and wrote a few sentences to explain my frustration when given the opportunity. When I clicked on the “submit” button, nothing happened. I tried again. I checked to make sure I had responded to all of the questions. There was no way that I could find to submit my feedback. The experience was mildly frustrating, but I had other things to do and abandoned that search.

Software failures occur to others at least as often as they happen to me. That means that most computer users waste time each day trying to accomplish what should be easy tasks with software that doesn’t work correctly. The machines designed to increase efficiency seem to have had the opposite effect.

Not long ago, I went to my doctor’s office for a routine visit. I’ve been going to this doctor for several years and have gone through the process of linking my online records from my previous doctor to the patient records system of this doctor. I communicate with this doctor using the practice’s online patient portal. The system works pretty well. Nonetheless, I was asked to fill out paper forms to “update our records.” I filled out the forms with information I know the practice already has. There was no new information on the papers. On top of at least three forms was a statement about paperwork reduction and electronic records. After I filled out the forms, I was ushered into an exam room where a nurse asked me the same questions while entering the information into the computer. I commented that I was sure that the information was already in the system, and she agreed that it probably was, but that it was routine for them to check the data in the computer for accuracy. Electronic records don’t seem to reduce the amount of paper waste in medical practice. The system doesn’t appear to be saving staff time. Making entries based on a patient interview could make the records less accurate. I don’t always remember the names of the medications I am taking. I’m sure my memory will become less accurate as I get older. The last time I was asked about my medications, I took out my phone, logged onto the patient portal, and read the list off my phone. I was using the same list that the nurse had. We didn’t find any mistakes.

It takes a good sense of humor to keep using the tools of our time. Without humor, frustration would drive me up the wall.

My father’s sense of humor included a bit of teasing. One of our family stories is that after our parents married, our mother asked our father what he wanted her to cook. He answered that he would like chicken and dumplings. Dumplings weren’t a part of mother’s family traditions, and she didn’t have a recipe or know how to make them. She inquired of friends, came up with a few recipes, and tried them. She waited for our father’s reaction. He tasted the dumplings cooked in the chicken broth, smiled, and said, “These are good, but not like my mother’s dumplings”. Wanting to please him, she tried recipe after recipe to get it just right. Each time the response was he same. “These are good, but not like my mother’s dumplings”.

Our parents were married during the war, and our father was stationed in California, so our mother didn’t have a chance to talk to our grandmother and get her recipe. She wrote a letter asking for the recipe for chicken and dumplings, but no recipe appeared. That didn’t surprise her because Grandma didn’t use a lot of recipes. She measured ingredients by taste and texture and cooked from experience rather than cookbooks. When they finally made a trip to visit our father’s parents, she approached grandma in the kitchen and asked her to teach her how to make dumplings. Grandma responded that she had never made dumplings in her life.

Our mother continued to make chicken and dumplings as one of her staple meals. I know her recipe: Two cups of Bisquick Baking Mix and 2/3 cup of milk. Spoon the dough into the boiling soup and simmer until it is done. I use the recipe on the Bisquick box for biscuits as well. My biscuits generally end up being big and crumbly. They work fine for biscuits and gravy, but don’t hold up to the bacon when making a breakfast sandwich.

I’ve read the recipes of accomplished biscuit makers. It seems that one of the tricks to good biscuits from scratch is to freeze both the butter and the flour. Grate the butter using a regular kitchen grater and stir it lightly into the frozen flour. Pour a bit of buttermilk into the biscuits and stir with your hands, turning out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Pat it down. There is no need to roll it out. If you have the texture just right, you can cut out the biscuits with a glass and they won’t stick to the glass. The trick to crispy biscuits on the outside and soft in the middle is to preheat the cookie sheet in a hot oven. Place the biscuits on parchment paper to lift them onto the hot pan and put them into the oven.

I’ve never prepared biscuits this way. I’ve just read the recipes. When I want biscuit sandwiches, I generally use the prepared biscuits that come in the paper cylinder that opens with a pop when a spoon is placed next to the seam. I know that healthy cooking means avoiding processed foods, but I haven’t produced biscuits from scratch that match those from the prepared dough. I don’t think my grandchildren know that I do this. I can’t wait for one of them (or one of their spouses someday) to ask me for my recipe.

We have dear friends from our seminary days in Chicago. They are from Australia, and Tony completed his doctorate at Chicago Theological Seminary a year ahead of me. When we were students and later whenever we get together in person, we have a tradition of tea and biscuits at bedtime. Those Australians don’t mean Bisquick biscuits. They mean cookies. I guess it is a British reference. Tea and cookies are not a bad way to end a long night of studying. It isn’t a bad nightcap any day. My problem is that I don’t need more cookies. I’ve eaten enough over the years to have spare fat around my middle. Eating at bedtime isn’t a good practice for me, and I try to avoid it, though I make occasional exceptions. I am, after all, married to a grandmother who likes to have cookies for her grandchildren when they stop by our house.

During the time of colonization, ships biscuits were common fare on sailing vessels. They were made from flour, water, and sometimes salt and were non-perishable. They could be made before the voyage and doled out to the sailors as part of their daily rations. These biscuits are also known as hardtack. Hardtack was combined with salted meats and cheeses to make up the majority of the diets of sailors. While the hardtack didn’t spoil and was suitable for travel, it wasn't easy to eat. It was dense and hard and dry. Sailors got into the habit of soaking their hardtack in soup to make it more edible. Hardtack in soup became a precursor to dumplings in soups and stews.

I don’t know how the tradition of calling sand dollars sea biscuits began. Some varieties look a little bit like biscuits from a distance, but if you pick one up, you won’t be tempted to taste it. Sand dollars wash up on the beach in our bay at certain times of the year. I haven’t quite figured out the rhythm of when they appear, but I know that some days they are easy to find, and other days, there are none to be seen.

Writing an entire essay about dumplings and biscuits is silly. With all of the disruption in the world and the people facing suffering, an entire essay on biscuits seems escapist. It is, however, a test for me. I’m trying to teach myself to spell. If you didn’t notice, I misspelled “Memorial” in the title when I published my journal two days ago. Then yesterday, I misspelled “Recipe” in my journal title. I’ve since corrected both mistakes, so I’m challenging myself with the word biscuit. There’s no q in biscuit.

My mother was a good cook and an excellent baker. I bake bread and rolls using the recipes and techniques she taught me. She made a lot of cakes from scratch, but I never picked up her flair for cakes and don’t have any of her cake recipes. She raised seven children and was actively involved in our family business, so she had little spare time. She had a few cooking shortcuts that produced less than gourmet results. I like macaroni and cheese, but I don’t think of it as a comfort food and don’t make it the way she did. Her macaroni and cheese was cooked elbow macaroni and melted Velveeta Cheese. It was quick and easy when life got hectic. When I make macaroni and cheese, I make a baked version from a recipe I downloaded online. We often feed the children mac and cheese from a box. When shopping, I never buy the Velveeta brand of mac and cheese. I don’t buy Velveeta cheese either.

My father didn’t cook very much. He could make breakfast, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and sandwiches for supper. When it fell to him to prepare dinner, we usually had fried chicken from the cafe next to his shop. If we were lucky, we’d also get fried potatoes. And on a special occasion, he might even bring home ice cream and root beer for floats. That was pretty much his repertoire of recipes.

Before we married, I learned my future mother-in-law’s cooking. She was a good cook and prepared the meals when I visited their home. I don’t remember my father-in-law cooking anything except frying bacon and eggs. My mother-in-law collected recipes from newspapers and magazines, had a box of recipe cards with family recipes, and had a significant collection of church and service club cookbooks.

When we got married, we were intentional about sharing household chores. I worked hard to learn to cook and to be an equal partner in grocery shopping, food preparation, and clean up. We didn’t always divide the chores 50/50. There were phases in our marriage when one of us took more responsibility for meals than the other.

As I learned to cook, one of my guides was Irma Rombauer’s “Joy of Cooking.” We received a copy of the book as a wedding gift, and there are many recipes to which the 52-year-old book opens automatically. The pages are stiffened and discolored by spills. I use it as a reference for ingredient substitutions and adjusting the size of recipes. We also have a collection of church and service club recipe books to which we refer, especially when making dishes that we’ve been making for years.

Early in our marriage, we served as managers and cooks at our church camp for two summers. We learned to prepare big meals for large groups. While most of the camps we hosted were under 60 people, there were a few that topped 100. We learned through experience that if we prepared a delicious dinner for the first meal we served, we got fewer complaints about the food later in the week. We often prepared a turkey dinner with all the fixings for the first night of camp.

After our summers at camp, we would return to our student apartment where we had just two for meals. We knew how to cook for two or how to cook for 50, but found cooking for six or eight to be a challenge. We seem to have mastered that over the years, however. We are usually two for meals these days, but almost every week, we share a meal with our son and his family. They have four children, so we get to put the leaves in the table and prepare larger quantities. Sometimes we have leftovers for several days. Sometimes we have leftovers that go into the freezer for later.

Recently, I have been thinking about cooking and recipes. I couldn’t think of any family recipes that have made it from our parents’ generation to our grandchildren. I’m sure there are a few. Maybe one of our grandchildren will treasure the recipe Susan uses for chocolate chip cookies. Our daughter has a Pizzelle iron and recipes from Susan’s Uncle Bill, but her iron is at our house, and I don’t think it has been used since she was in high school. I’m pretty sure her son has never had homemade Pizzelle cookies. Uncle Bill was picky about his choice of vanilla, but I couldn’t choose the same kind of vanilla from what I know.

When the time comes for us to close up housekeeping, I wonder if any of our children or grandchildren will want our cookbooks and recipes. The topic didn’t come up when we recently prepared new wills and advance directives. We did talk about the fact that we have antiques that we love that the next generation doesn’t seem to want. Our old wind-up clocks and cane-bottomed chairs are beloved by us partly for the stories of how grandparents obtained them and layers of memories, but so far, none of our children or grandchildren have indicated that they would like to carry on those traditions. I think the same may be true of our recipes.

I have a grab bag of essentials I could quickly pack if we had to leave home in a disaster. We’d probably get most of our photo albums. We’d take our computers, though the contents of their drives are backed up on the Internet, and we could retrieve that data even if the machines were lost. There are a few sentimental items that we’d quickly grab. I doubt that we would gather up cookbooks and recipes.

There are a few recipes that I have in my head for which I don’t need a cookbook. I can bake bread and rolls without referring to a recipe. There are several meals I can prepare without a cookbook. Still, I think I would miss our “Joy of Cooking.” There are a couple of other recipes that I would miss as well.

For now, we eat well at our house and enjoy cooking at home. And I have the security and comfort of a shelf of cookbooks to consult whenever I need them.

Before it was called Memorial Day, it was known as Decoration Day. Like many traditions, no one knows who was the first to set aside time on a spring day to decorate the graves for their loved ones. Historians note that on May 30, 1868, Memorial Day was widely observed across the United States to commemorate the deaths of Civil War soldiers. Ohio Congressman James A. Garfield gave a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, where about 5,000 people gathered to decorate the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there. The words of that speech have been kept and quoted at observances.

After World War I, the day became an occasion for honoring those who died in all of America’s wars. Arlington National Cemetery continues to have ceremonies on this day. Small American flags are placed on each grave, and a wreath is ceremonially laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

There is a powerful connection between grief and memory. The experience of loss is accompanied by the urge to remember. Remembering becomes a sacred duty at the core of many religious traditions. Scriptures admonish believers to remember the experiences of Israel in the time of enslavement under Pharaoh and how Moses led the people to freedom. They implore the faithful to remember the times when our people were strangers in a strange land and allow those memories to inform how we treat immigrants in our land.

We are bound together by our history and by our ability to remember. We are who we are because of the actions of those who have gone before us.

On this Memorial Day, as we look at the flags decorating cemeteries all across our land, it seems especially important that we remember that those markers represent individuals who have died, who had families who loved them, whose passing caused grief and whose memory can bring sorrow and sadness to mind for those who loved them. Just as our grief as individuals shapes us, our nation is shaped by the communal grief we have borne. 2025 marks 250 years since the founding of the United States. It is the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. As we remember, we are reminded that we belong to a people who have been shaped by 250 years of loss and grief. Ours is not the first generation to have known the sacrifice of brave families.

Memorial Day is a stark reminder that the differences that divide us are not as substantial as the grief that unites us. When we remember the ideological differences that caused states to secede from the nation and brought us to war with ourselves, we must also not forget that when that war ended, grieving families on both sides of the divide gathered to share their grief. Union and Confederate graves were both decorated. The memories of the deep losses of the war, the anger and killing of its intensity, were fresh and raw as the congressman who later would be inaugurated as the 20th President of the United States rose to speak. I do not doubt that his words were remembered when his presidency was cut short by assassination.

Our memories reveal layer upon layer of grief.

When I was a teenager, before I had much personal experience with loss and grief, I served as bugler for our town’s Memorial Day observance. I played taps in front of the Legion Club, again at the cemetery, and a third time at a bridge over the river as a wreath was tossed into the water. I recognized the power of that simple bugle call that caused tears to come to the eyes of seasoned and hardened veterans. Even though I could not know their grief, I tried to imagine what it might be like to have a friend and companion killed at my side.

Over the years, a lot of veterans have told me a lot of stories of grief. I have been honored to hear the words that follow, “Pastor, I’ve never told anyone this before, but...” There was something about their experiences that made them hold their grief closely. Perhaps the pain of remembering made them believe that speaking of that pain would make it worse. Maybe they did not want to impose their grief on others. Perhaps they had been taught to remain silent. “Loose lips sink ships.” Whatever the reasons, they kept their grief to themselves until one day they decided to share it.

I begin this Memorial Day with a few tears shed for those people who are now no longer living. I hope that the day gives permission to others to express their grief. Perhaps it will be the sight of the flags on graves or the sound of taps. Maybe it will be the report of a politician’s speech or a video of laying the wreath on the tomb of the unknown. We bear grief that has been building up, layer upon layer, for longer than we have been alive. Our nation has been bearing the cost of war for 250 years. That is a lot of loss. It is a lot of grief. A national holiday that permits us to shed a few tears is a blessing. We are united by our grief, stronger than the ideologies dividing us.

Those whose lives were cut short by bullets on a battlefield are not the only victims of war. Their families and friends, their fellow soldiers who survived, and their communities that had to go on without their participation and leadership all suffered loss. Whether or not we served in the military, we are all inheritors not only of the blessings of our history, but also of the loss and grief of our history. Memorial Day is a day to remember and to grieve. It is also an opportunity to recommit to the values and ideals of those we have lost.

Only when we learn to cry together can we begin to laugh together.

Some days, we walk along Drayton Harbor on the bay north of ours. On one side of the harbor, a narrow spit goes about a mile with Boundary Bay on one side and the harbor on the other. At the end of the spit are some costly condominiums, a resort hotel, and a marina. I’m not exactly sure how the marina works, but some slips are rented on long-term leases and others are available for rent by transient boats. On the other side of the harbor, there is another marina. That one is home to fishing boats that go out from the harbor, but it is also home to some high-end recreational yachts. I can identify a few boats that have been featured on YouTube videos that I have watched, so I know that they have multiple staterooms and other amenities. As we were walking the other day, I noticed a brand-new yacht sitting on wooden cribbing in front of a broker’s office. I’m not sure how the ship got to its present location. It looks as if it is too wide to have arrived on a semi-truck over the highways. It could have been sailed into the marina, where a large travel lift could support it on slings and carry it to its present location. But it wouldn’t make sense to take the boat out of the water to display it, so I suppose it was trucked in and put on display, and will be launched when it is sold. I’m sure the yacht has more bedrooms and bathrooms than our home. I’m sure the price is much more than our home’s value. I wonder who might be customers for such a vessel. I know I wouldn’t want to have to turn over my credit card the first time it pulls up to the fuel dock and begins to transfer $4 diesel into its 800-gallon expedition tanks.

There are lots of expensive things in this world that don’t attract me. I have no need for a luxury automobile or more than one home to maintain. I enjoy going out for dinner on occasion, but have no desire to do so every day. I love airplanes and grew up thinking I would always own one, but learned when our children were little that not having the stress and expense of annual maintenance is a form of liberation.

I do, however, enjoy a fair amount of luxury in my life. I am retired and am supported by an annuity and social security that provide a monthly income. Not having to work at a regular job is a luxury that some can never afford. I have two reliable vehicles. When one needs repairs, we can drive the other. When one of us goes one direction and the other goes another, we can each drive our vehicle. I watch people at the bus stop who have to spend much time waiting to travel for basic needs.

Another luxury of my life is that I go to the grocery store when I want and buy what I want. In a world where millions of children face food insufficiency, where starvation is a weapon of war, and where people have to choose between medicine and food, having enough money in the bank to fill my grocery list on each trip to the store is a luxury.

Yesterday, I bought mandarin oranges and a yellow watermelon just because I wanted to. Our grandchildren all love fruit, and our stores have a vast selection. I had never before tried a yellow watermelon and had a lot of fun watching the grandchildren’s surprise at the color of the fruit when they expected to see red. I know the watermelon was more expensive than usual. I could have fed our grandchildren fruit at a lower cost, but I wanted to have something fancy.

I cooked on the grill and we ate on our patio last night. We put a basket of the tiny oranges in the middle of the table and watched with amusement as our youngest grandson ate two in a row. He’d take one, hand it to his father, and ask his father to “open it, please.” When it was peeled, he devoured it and took another. When his father said, “Two is enough, eat some of your meat and sweet potatoes,” he took half of his sister’s orange off her plate and popped it into his mouth. When the basket was moved down to the other end of the table, he got down from his seat, walked to the end, crawled up next to me, and grabbed another orange from the basket. Then he returned to his seat, handed the orange to his father, and asked him to “open it, please.”

He had some other food, but his dinner mainly consisted of fruit. After dinner, when the watermelon was sliced, I saw him eat his, grab his sister's, and take several bites out of it.

I’m the grandpa and don’t have to enforce the rules. I know his father and mother keep track of what he eats and make sure that he gets proper nutrition. I don’t need to worry when he eats a lot of fruit at our house. I can simply be amused. I laughed at his behavior, which probably encouraged him. I would act quickly if he were in danger, but I can indulge him when he wants another piece of fruit. His parents provide the discipline he needs.

At the end of the evening, I crawled into bed with a smile and the memory of a three-year-old sticky with fruit juice all over his face. I could complain about the high cost of groceries, but I got a lot of pleasure out of my spending. It brought me much more joy than owning that yacht will bring the person who buys it. I’ll leave the luxury purchases to others and splurge at the grocery store. A big boat is nowhere near as much fun as happy grandchildren.

I didn’t have too many plans the summer I turned eight. I had my own library card, and I wanted to check out books from the library. We could take up to five books at once if they were from the children’s section. I had my eyes on books in the other part of the library, but I was doubtful that the librarian would allow me to check them out. She wouldn’t even let me look at the books in the basement. When I entered the library, I had to climb the steps up to the main floor and stay in the reading room with the librarian's eyes focused on me. If I tried to check out a book she didn’t think I could or should read, she’d stick it behind the desk and not let me take it home. I planned to memorize the books I wanted and see if I could get my oldest sister to check them out for me, but I was doubtful that would work. She didn’t like to go to the library unless she had to do so for school, and she was more interested in her boyfriend than in school.

I also had my eyes on an authentic army canteen that I had seen advertised in Boy’s Life Magazine. It was made of sturdy metal and covered with a canvas case and shoulder strap. The advertisement said it held enough water for three days in an emergency. I didn’t have any emergencies in hand, but some of my friends had canteens and I wanted one. My friend Davie’s mother was our Den Leader, and she said she was going to go to Billings to the official Scout store to get some uniforms and badges sometime that summer, and maybe she would take Davy and me with her. I was hoping to get two more dollars before we went, and I had a good shot at it because I got paid 50 cents for sweeping the feed warehouse, and I was counting on a birthday card from my grandma and grandpa to have a dollar in it.

My other plan was to take a bike ride. I wanted to ride my bike to McLeod to swim in the hot springs pool, but that was 16 miles from town, and my dad had said, “Wait until you are 12.”

Davie’s birthday was on the day before the last day of school. He said he would have a big party the next day because school got out early and his dad would cook burgers outside. My birthday was over two weeks later and came when my dad was busy with two jobs. I was sure I’d get to choose my favorite food for dinner, and we’d have cake and ice cream at supper. I was also counting on my dad bringing home root beer for floats.

Summer didn’t start the way we wanted. It rained on the last day of school, and we ate inside for Davie’s birthday. My father had supplied a pocket knife for me to give to him. I already had a pocket knife, and my Uncle Ted was the best knife sharpener in the town. I promised Davie that Uncle Ted would make his knife as sharp as mine. Davie’s dad said he would teach him to use it the next day and put it up for safekeeping.

It was still raining on Monday. After supper, I walked down the alley to the Library and climbed up one of the big Blue Spruce trees by the front door. The branches were close together, so the tree was fairly easy to climb, but it was sticky with sap, and I knew my mom wouldn’t be happy with sap all over my T-shirt. My school jeans had been officially declared play pants, but I was supposed to keep them looking nice.

The spruce trees weren’t very good for spying on the people passing by because they were too thick with branches, and you couldn’t see out of them very well. There was one place where I could sit on a branch and see across the street, but there wasn’t much going on. My mother couldn’t yell after throat surgery, so I listened for her whistle. My signal was three blasts. I wanted her to change it to long, short, long, short, short. That’s Morse Code for my name. I learned it from the chart in the office at the airport. She said it was too confusing. Her code was one long blast for Nancy, two for Lois, three for me, and four for Vernon.

We started the summer with four kids in our family. Our oldest sister was married and had kids of her own. My brother and I shared the bedroom at the top of the stairs. Our sisters each got their own rooms, though Lois’ was just the end of the playroom with a folding door to separate it. Our house had a bathroom upstairs, but I usually went downstairs because it was too much effort to wait for my sisters, who seemed to spend a lot of time in the bathroom. The best part of the upstairs bathroom was that it had a laundry chute, a quick way to get downstairs, and a good place to hide for hide and seek.

I have been trying to remember the summer I turned eight this week because our youngest granddaughter turned eight yesterday. We went for Mexican food for her birthday and returned to their house for presents and cupcakes. It was a fun celebration. She asked for books and gift cards to book stores for her birthday, which delighted me. She already owns and has read three of the seven books in the Harry Potter series and got two more for her birthday. She also got gift certificates for Barnes & Noble and Village Books. She’s well set for summer reading.

The summer I turned eight, the rain stopped, and it was sunny on my birthday. I was surprised to get the canteen as a birthday present. Those weren’t the big news of the year, however. Our second sister was married by Christmas, and we had two new brothers. Five kids in the house meant that everyone switched to a new bedroom. I got the playroom. I still had a brother for a roommate, but there was a folding door to separate our spaces. And there was only one sister left to hog the bathroom.

Since childhood, I have noticed that many of my peers are more afraid of the dark than I am. I learned early, when our family went camping, that if I allowed my eyes to adjust to the dark, I could see fairly well. I was taught that using a flashlight could make things seem worse. When using a flashlight, our eyes adjust to the amount of light the device casts, and we tend to see only what is illuminated by it. Everything else is shadow and mysterious. If one allows the eyes to adjust and walks through the forest without a flashlight, one can see much more, and the space around doesn’t seem as threatening. As a child, I loved to get up before the sun with my father. We would catch an early breakfast and get to the airport just as the horizon began to get light, taking off at dawn when the air was cool and smooth to fly in the mountains. Before I retired, I was often on call and had to rise in the middle of the night to respond to emergencies. I learned to enjoy driving and helping others when most of the community slept. These days, I rise in the night and do a bit of writing before returning to bed for a second sleep. I’ve been following that pattern for many years.

I haven’t completely erased my natural fear of the dark. I wouldn’t be comfortable walking alone in the dark in bear or mountain lion country, and I can be startled by unexpected sounds or unidentified objects.

Many human fears are the products of evolution, a slow process. In human history, those who ventured out at night were at higher risk of dying from big cats like lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, which hunt at night. The Tasmanian devil and the Nile crocodile also hunt during the dark hours. Humans who fell victim to nighttime predators didn’t pass on their genetic material, while those who stayed hidden at night were more likely to reproduce. Over many generations, evolution favored those who were afraid of the dark.

Scientists identify three types of behavior concerning dark and light. Nocturnal animals are those whose main activities are conducted at night. Nocturnal animals tend to sleep during the day. Owls, bats, badgers, mink, mountain lions, and timber rattlesnakes are all considered to be nocturnal animals. Other animals are labeled diurnal, meaning they are most active during the day and sleep at night. A third term, crepuscular, is reserved for those whose activities extend into dawn and dusk hours, is applied to some large predators, and is often used to describe human activities. However, most scientists believe that the fundamental biology of humans is driven by daylight.

The use of artificial light has altered human activity, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon in the evolutionary timetable. While humans have used fire and torches for hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of years, portable lighting sources powered by electricity are relatively recent inventions. Human activities at night are primarily limited to indoor spaces. We tend to stay close to hearth and home when it is dark outside.

Of course, there are exceptions. A couple of miles from our home, there is an oil refinery that operates 24 hours a day. At night, the entire facility is bathed in artificial light. The square mile of primary activity is a place where it never gets dark. Crews of humans work there all night long, and those who are on the night shift sleep during the day. Most shift workers use blackout window shades to make their bedrooms dark during the day.

Other fears that humans have are rooted in our evolutionary history. Fear of snakes and spiders has come from generations of humans who have avoided or survived venomous bites.

Not all human fears are in proportion to actual threats. The odds of encountering a venomous snake in everyday activities are low. Even those bitten by snakes have a good chance of surviving with proper treatment. Very few humans in contemporary society fall prey to attacks by bears and lions. Our fears, however, remain with us. They have been passed down through our genetics.

Evolution is a slow process. It takes many generations for the majority of any population to adapt to new circumstances. Adaptation can occur more rapidly in species with relatively short life spans, but with humans, it takes many decades for evolutionary changes to become evident. During the time it takes, our fears can become out of sync with the threats to our lives. In terms of human survival, several objects in our environment pose a greater threat than the dark, snakes, and spiders. Handguns, automobiles, computer screens, and diseases pose much greater immediate threats to humans. Still, we tend not to be as afraid of those objects as we are of animals we are unlikely to encounter in our daily lives. Many people do not demonstrate fear of very real environmental threats. It remains to be seen how much human fears will evolve because evolution is a slow process.

No matter how much we try to apply logic to our fears, they are not entirely under our control. I startle easily when walking in the dark. I am nervous when walking through a dense forest at night. Now that I no longer have a job that takes me out at night, I limit my nighttime activities to my house and usually use lamps and other light sources when I am awake. Even when I wander about my house without turning on lights, there is light from the street lamp outside and various light sources within my house. Clocks on appliances provide light. Our house has light switches that emit light when turned off to make it easier to find them in the dark. I rarely bump into objects in my house, even when I don’t turn on the lights. Still, I am a bit more cautious. I walk more slowly and carefully, and listen to the sounds of my house and those that come from outside.

I hope that some of my confidence at night, a trait I learned from my father, has been passed down to our children and will be inherited by our grandchildren. I also hope they develop a reasonable fear of the dangers of modern living. Slow as it is, our evolution continues.

I frequently use searches on the Internet to gather information, on which I base parts of my journal entries. I will have a topic in mind, be unsure of some detail, and use a search engine to obtain more information. Those searches often turn up Wikipedia entries. Because Wikipedia is compiled from various sources and can be edited by users, it is prone to errors. The system is designed to identify and refer errors to human editors who try to correct them and evaluate the content for other issues, such as the overuse of technical language or speculation. The result is that I have occasionally passed on misinformation through my journal entries.

I do, however, actually enter each word into my journal. Except for quotes indicated by quotation marks, I do not use my computer's copy and paste function to prepare my entries. In that regard, I intend to own the mistakes that appear here. Specifically, I do not use a digital writing assistant or artificial language assistant to produce content. However, the tools I use for writing do employ large language models. Large language models are computer programs that compare text from various sources, including much of the Internet, to examine word order and content for patterns and then apply those patterns to generate text. These models are often called artificial intelligence or AI.

I use a program from Apple called Pages to write my journal entries. I have Microsoft Word installed on my computer and use it for many writing tasks. I have been using Microsoft Word for thirty years since version 1.0, but it now has some features that I do not like. One of those features is a language generator called Copilot. If this feature is selected, the user enters text into a pop-up window, and the program suggests expanding the text. I don’t want my computer to do my writing for me, and I have only used Copilot a couple of times to try to figure out how it works. I have deleted the content from those experiments and don’t want it saved.

The auto-correct functions of the program are sometimes helpful and sometimes annoying. I’ve had experiences when the spelling or grammar corrections suggested by the computer are incorrect or change the meaning of what I intend to write. These functions, however, can be turned off. I frequently turn off both the spelling and grammar checking functions when writing poetry.

I have learned to use a grammar checking program called Grammarly. This program works because you can select its function after you have written an article or block of text, and it will make suggestions to correct grammar and spelling errors. It is helpful to me in correcting punctuation errors. Human editors frequently add or delete commas from my work, and the program does help decrease the need for them to do so. I use the program because it has a feature that searches for plagiarism. I do not intentionally copy the work of other writers, but the style and sometimes the words used by writers that influence me show up in my writing. So far, the program has not detected plagiarism in any of my writing, but I run it on text I intend to submit for publication as an added layer of scrutiny.

I am concerned about the possibility of machine-generated errors finding their way into my writing. The Google search engine now frequently gives me AI-generated content as its first response to a search. For example, when I did a search for “large language models” this morning, the first article at the top of my search window is labeled “AI Overview.” After a summary paragraph, there is a pull-down menu titled “show more.” If I scroll past the AI overview, the following suggestion is the Wikipedia entry. Scrolling down yields more articles, many of which I trust from familiar sources. I have pulled down the “show more” function of the AI just to see what the system generates.

Friends who are college professors say that they have encountered entire papers assigned to students generated by AI generators such as Chat GPT, GPT-3, and others. Some university professors have embraced the tools and taught students how they work, even giving tips for using them to generate a starting point when faced with writer’s block. They see such programs as tools to enhance human learning when correctly employed.

Even though there are days when I struggle to start writing a journal entry or other writing task, I am not ready to use any of those programs. NPR, CBC, Axios, and The Guardian all have run stories this week about a summer reading list that was printed in the Chicago Sun-Times. The article contained fifteen titles along with their authors. The majority of the books listed do not exist. The authors were familiar authors who have written books, but the titles were not of any published books. The tenth book on the list, “Salt and Honey,” has a title that has been used for books, but the story's description does not match any of them. Another book credited to Maggie O’Farrell describes a book by Charlotte McConaghy. The author of the article and the Sun-Times have confessed that an AI generator was used to create the article. That is concerning enough since many of us have trusted newspapers to provide accurate information. All writers and editors bear responsibility for fact-checking. My teacher friends clearly state that students who use Chat GPT or other programs must fact-check their papers before submitting them. In the case of the article about books, fact-checking is very easy, and if the author or an editor had done so, the mistakes could have been identified before publication. The Sun-Times and many other newspapers have recently reduced their staff. An editor would have caught the writer misusing the tool in previous years. However, human editors are becoming scarce in journalism these days.

There is plenty of misinformation and disinformation on the internet. I’m trying not to add to the problem. The result may include spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. Accept them as a sign that an actual human is creating my content.

Some writers have referred to the present time as the Information Age. Our technological devices give us nearly instant access to enormous quantities of data. I heard on the CBC radio program “Quirks and Quarks” that the global amount of data is expected to reach 181 zettabytes. That’s 181 trillion gigabytes. Some studies say that there is no more data out there than there are stars in the observable universe. This enormous amount of accessible data is not, however, making the human species more intelligent. We don’t know more than our forebears. In many ways, we are more confused because we are more misled. The data on the Internet is not all true. Worse yet, much of the Internet is intended to deceive. Misinformation is used to sell products and services. People tend to search the internet not for the truth, but for data to back up their biases and opinions. We may be living in the information age, but all that information produces a knowledge crisis.

Ours is not the first generation to encounter misinformation. When the first European settlers came to North America, most had a completely misinformed understanding of where they were going. The European name for the indigenous peoples of North America, Indians, comes from a vast geographical mistake. Early explorers did not find a quicker route to India. They had miscalculated the globe's size and gave the name to the people they discovered out of ignorance. It was not simply an innocent mistake. The search for wealth and profit drove it. The governments and companies that financed the journeys of discovery were in search of resources that they could extract and bring back to Europe. And their quest for wealth was aided by the spreading of intentional misinformation. Wealthy Europeans declared that the inhabitants of the Americas were savages, that they lived primitive lives, lacked religion, and were sub-human. Influential governmental and religious leaders embraced these notions.

Among the destructive disinformation was a series of papal bulls and religious documents that collectively became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. The bulls granted Christian nations the authority to claim and exploit territories occupied by non-Christians, justifying those actions as a divine mission to spread Christianity. That 15th-century disinformation persisted in official circles into the 21st century. While some Christian denominations, including our United Church of Christ, denounced the Doctrine of Discovery in the second half of the 20th century, it remained part of official Roman Catholic teaching until it was officially renounced by Pope Francis only two years ago.

Because the colonizers came to the Americas in search of riches, they were misinformed and failed to understand that a highly organized trade system was in place. Many early colonists had no idea how to participate in a financial and trade system that was different from their own. The Europeans thought all trade was conducted with money. They saw gifts as distinct and separate from business. The indigenous people of the continents, however, had a complex and highly organized system of trade that enabled goods to be exchanged across and between the two continents. The indigenous trade system was a barter system in which the exchange of gifts was part of the trade practice. A gift was expected to be reciprocated with something of equal value. When no return gift was offered, it was assumed that no deal had been made.

The colonizers misunderstood the native practice of gift giving and gave it the name “Indian giving.” The term appears in Thomas Hutchinson's 1765 History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. However, it was commonly used for decades before it appeared in print. Indian giver is still a derogatory term used as an insult by those who don’t understand the economic systems that were in place before colonization.

It wasn’t the first or only misunderstanding of an economic system encountered by Europeans. The crusades were a series of religious wars initiated by church leaders aimed at reclaiming parts of the Middle East from Muslim control. Two hundred years of sporadic battles took Europeans into the region, where they encountered a different trade system based on barter. These medieval armies didn’t understand the well-developed political, religious, and educational systems they encountered. Like the colonizers that followed them, they used religious justification for their actions; the crusades were about extracting wealth and bringing it back to Europe. They encountered a robust trade system that facilitated the exchange of goods between the east and the west with land and sea routes for delivery of goods, the use of credit and partnerships, and established markets and fairs. This trade system was not primarily based on cash but on a well-organized barter system.

The disinformation and misunderstanding continue to this day. The current administration of the United States has been touting the “deals” struck in the recent visit of the president to various countries in the Middle East. While there is some evidence that the president understands the hybrid cash exchange and barter system that is in play in many of the countries he visited, the media in the United States do not. The press declares that deals have been finalized when, from the perspective of those visited by the president, they have not yet been consummated. In a barter system, a gift demands a reciprocal gift of equal value for the deal to be completed. We give you an expensive luxury airplane, you give us a gift of equal value. Although deals were announced, they are far from completion. The president offered gifts that he could not deliver. Removal sanctions imposed by Congress cannot be accomplished by executive order. Vast military equipment must be funded before it can be delivered.

The president, who has based his business career on so-called deals in which he did not fulfill his commitments, is comfortable accepting gifts without intending to keep up his end of the bargain. His business plan might be summed up with the concept, “You loan me money, I don’t pay it back.” The string of bankruptcies he has left behind are clearer illustration of his art of the deal than the book he had ghost written.

It remains to be seen if any of the trade deals announced will come to fruition. It all depends on reciprocal gifts that might have been promised but haven’t been delivered. The nature of those gifts seems to be buried in an avalanche of disinformation.

Memorial Day weekend is a busy time in Bellingham, Washington. The big event is a team relay race. Teams of three to eight teammates who compete in various sports over a 90-mile course vary in size. The individual legs of the race are: cross country ski, downhill ski/snowboard, running, road bike, canoe, cyclocross bike, and sea kayak. Racers are issued race timing chips on wristbands, which are passed from teammate to teammate when changing from one sport to another. The chips are read at stations that mark the beginning of each leg and at the finish line. Mandatory safety meetings for each sport explain the course's specifics and any known hazards, and equipment inspections are included.

When I first learned about the race, I thought I might compete if I could find a set of teammates who weren’t too bent on winning. A group of seniors would probably be best. I enjoy canoeing and thought that might be where I would participate. I looked at the river, and it is pretty much flat water. I would judge the entire canoe course to be class 1, the easiest to paddle.

Further investigation, however, revealed that I am not up to the race. The canoe portion is run exclusively in tandem canoes, and most teams use high-tech and very expensive, lightweight Kevlar canoes. Expensive equipment is standard for all the legs of the race. The two bicycle portions, for example, require two specialized racing bikes. There are a lot of $5,000 bikes in the race. Multiply that by two, and you have a substantial investment.

Of course, the equipment used for the race can be used for many races, and many competitors enter multiple races each year over a long time to maximize their investment.

Ski to Sea has been held for more than 50 years. Event organizers have lined up a long list of sponsors and recruited a large team of volunteers.

A couple of years ago, we forgot about the race and headed to the neighborhood where the finish line is located, planning to go out to lunch and take a walk. There was no parking to be found. I’m sure that had we remained in that neighborhood, there would have been no seating in restaurants. On the other hand, most of the food trucks in town were congregated near the shore, so obtaining food wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d been willing to wait in line.

I’ve never been much at competitive sports, but I enjoy many of the activities of the race. I don’t ski much these days, but I was an avid cross-country and downhill skier when I was younger. I own two bicycles and enjoy riding on streets and trails. I have made canoes and kayaks and enjoy paddling. But I’m not a racer. I enjoy those activities at my own pace, and my pace is slowing as I grow older.

These days, I enjoy doing things at a slow pace. When I am in the shop, I often work slowly, carefully selecting my tools, taking time to ensure I have the right tools and that cutting tools are properly sharpened. If I don’t have the right part, I stop and get what I need. I know that others can accomplish the same job more quickly. I used to do jobs at a more rapid pace. I’m less driven to complete tasks as I grow older. I enjoy working and don’t have as many tasks lined up.

On the other hand, I am often frustrated by how little I accomplish in a day. I usually think that I will get more done than I do. That has always been part of my life. I have frequently commented that part of being a pastor is learning to go home without completing tasks. I always had more things I wanted to do. There were always more calls and visits I could have made, more books I could have read, more meetings I could have attended. Now that I am retired, I have finally learned to slow down. I commit to fewer obligations. I choose my projects more carefully. Still, I have stacks of books I intend to read. I have lists of tasks I hope to accomplish. I have chores that don’t get completed nearly every day.

Yesterday, I failed to notice that there was an object on a shelf that the garage door would hit when raised. When the door hit the object, the opener reversed as it should, but in the process, a cable disconnected from a pulley. I don’t have the tools or expertise to repair the garage door, so I called a repair company that assured me they could have a technician at my home within about four hours. Since the big door was temporarily unusable, I decided to take my bike through the house to get it outside. It was a challenge, but I managed to maneuver it. I finally got on my bike about an hour later than I intended. Within a block, my glasses were spotted with rain, and I decided to head back home and ride when the weather was better. Without access to the garage, I had to put my bike in the backyard and remove a small toolkit I keep on the bike so it wouldn’t get wet. I brought my helmet, gloves, tools, and other things into the house. Then I decided to make myself a cup of tea. By the time I sat down at my desk, it was an hour later than usual, and I hadn’t even gotten in my daily bike ride. I had managed to consume over two hours and accomplished nothing.

I watched as the technician repaired the garage door, thinking that I know many people who would have simply repaired the door themselves. I could have figured out how to do it.

By dinner time, I had managed to get the garage door repaired and attend a one-hour meeting. Before I retired, I would have been frustrated with how little I had accomplished. But I am retired now, so I added some things to my “to-do” list and called it a day. I won’t be winning any races at this pace. I’d probably procrastinate and miss the entry deadline.

I have no training in archaeology. I didn’t even take a single course in the field when I was a college student. However, I spent my career in a field heavily influenced by archaeologists' discoveries. Students of the bible learn about the language, culture, and context of our sacred stories from the discoveries of archaeologists and historians. Across the Middle East, archaeological excavations have revealed the precise locations of biblical sites and deepened our understanding of the words that have been so carefully preserved over the millennia.

A recent archaeological discovery has no direct connection to biblical theology. Still, it adds a great deal of understanding about the place where we live, and by that, I mean not just the Pacific Northwest, which is our current home, but the North American continent. In the desert in New Mexico, there is an ancient lakebed where humans walked alongside giant sloths more than 20,000 years ago. Alongside larger footprints are small ones that scientists believe were made by children and teenagers, showing a community of different ages living, playing, and surviving on this continent earlier than some previous scientific theories about how humans first came to this continent.

There is general agreement among scientists that the first peoples to arrive on this continent migrated from Eurasia. The dominant theory is that during the last Glacial Maximum, when massive sheets of ice spread southward from the poles and a larger percentage of the earth’s water was in ice, sea levels were lower, and a land bridge formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska. Hunter-gatherers, sometimes referred to as Paleo-Indians, following game came to North America and eventually spread south and east to inhabit the entire continent and South America as well. It is believed that the earliest migration was down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile.

The land bridge existed for thousands of years, but during much of this time, it would have been covered in ice and snow, making migration extremely challenging. The time when humans could have migrated on foot, instead of by boat, would have been fairly narrow. Archaeologists do not have precise information about the exact timing of the migration because any evidence of such migration has been covered by the sea level rise that accompanied the end of the ice age.

Some archaeologists have based the dating of human occupation of North America on fossil records of humans that date back to around 13,000 years ago. The discoveries of those fossils and some accompanying cultural evidence led to the “Clovis first” theory, which has been common among archaeologists for much of my life. The only known formal burial site of a Clovis human was discovered in the Crazy Mountains near my hometown. The body of an infant boy is associated with over 100 stone and bone artifacts, stained with red ochre and dated between 12,990 and 12,840 years ago. Perhaps influenced by such a significant discovery in the place where I was an infant boy, I have generally based my understanding of people in that place as having stemmed from the Clovis culture. This is consistent with the teachings of the Apsáalooke (Crow) people who inhabited the region before European settlement.

However, new archaeological evidence, including footprints in the New Mexico desert, is pushing back the date of the first humans on this continent. While we may never discover enough to know for certain, evidence is mounting that humans have occupied the continent for a longer period than once believed. Many indigenous cultures teach that their people have always been in certain locations.

Where we now live, indigenous Coast Salish people trace some of their stories to the Haida people who occupied the islands off of British Columbia stretching north to southern Alaska since before the giant trees covered the area. As the ice sheet retreated, the land was tundra, without any large trees. As the climate changed, cedar, hemlock, Douglas fir, and other trees began to thrive. Haida oral histories report that there were no trees when the people first came from the ocean. They could barely survive in the harsh climate and knew only how to gather food from the sea. When cedar trees began to grow, they learned to make clothing, houses, totem poles, and canoes out of the trees. Haida people treat cedar trees with great reverence and respect. Those traditions and the culture of gathering food from the ocean are also part of the culture of other Coast Salish people. As we have begun to make friends and learn about local Lummi and Nooksack people, we have attended canoe landings and other ceremonies that celebrate the gifts of cedar trees.

Archaeological discoveries in our region regarding dating are consistent with the Clovis findings in the Crazy Mountains. People were on this continent 13,000 years ago. While that certainly pushes back the dates of the way history was taught when I was a child, as if it began with the settlement of Europeans on this continent, recent discoveries are now pushing back those dates by several thousand years.

This archaeological evidence clearly shows that humans have adapted to shifts in climate. Humans are resilient and able to adapt. The soil, climate, landscape, sea level, vegetation, and animals of this region have changed, and humans have lived through those changes, adapting to all of them. Human ancestors survived enormous environmental and climatic changes in the ancient past. They did so with far fewer tools than we have today.

Understanding that our species results from environmental change is essential as we discover and develop strategies for our present human-caused climate crisis. As was true of the ancients, contemporary humans can adapt, move, or die. As was true in the past, the future will likely involve all three results. We are already seeing migration of people away from the most drought-affected regions of the globe to places with more food resources. We have new neighbors from Texas and Arizona who say they moved in part due to the weather. We will likely see more people moving in the future. Sadly, we have also witnessed human deaths due to starvation caused in part by climate change.

The third option, adaptation, is worthy of exploration. We have already begun to use the tools at our disposal. Our home is equipped with a heat pump that not only provides heat during cold times but also cools during hot weather. Air conditioning was not required in decades past in this region, but is becoming more common. The energy to provide for our cooling comes from the solar panels on our roof, making it affordable. These are just some of the adaptations that are becoming more common.

As was true of the ancients, adapting to climate change is essential to our time as we pass on the stories of humans to future generations in this place.

On the last day of the school year, we were allowed to cut off the legs of our school jeans. It was a risky behavior because it wasn’t always that warm at the end of May in Montana. The weather can be quite variable. On the one hand, our jeans probably had holes in the knees. They had survived hard duty: submerged in mud puddles, scraped on the school yard, subjected to numerous falls from bicycles and play equipment. By that time of the year, we usually had two pairs so that the older one could be cut off and the newer one kept long to survive until rodeo weekend, when we would get a new pair. New jeans came twice a year—one pair for rodeo weekend and one pair for back to school. Until I was into my teens, I wore the same brand: Farrah. This was before Farrah jeans were popular. They weren’t worn by any music stars in England yet. We considered them to be a second brand, cheaper than Levi's. There were two clothing stores in our town. One sold Farrah. The other sold Levi's. We shopped at the store with the lowest prices. The other store got most of its business from tourists and dudes.

However, I got lucky as I approached my teens. While many of my peers shot up in size and entered the world of adult sizes, my growth was more in my upper body. My legs remained short. Farrah jeans came only in even inseam sizes. Levis came in both even and odd sizes. I could buy Levi's off the shelf that fit. My mother had to hem the Farrah jeans, or I would drag them on the floor. When I finally got a pair, I thought that the button fly of a pair of Levi's 501s was the height of adult fashion. It was the only kind I wore through college and graduate school.

Ah, the good old days! These days, I have given up on trying to purchase pants that don’t have to be altered before I can wear them. I no longer wear adult sizes in Levi's. I’m a boy's size 16 husky, which has a zipper and must be hemmed to fit. I haven’t seen Farrah jeans in any of the stores where I shop for years, and someone told me recently that they are a fashion brand selling for more than $100 a pair. I just googled them, and ones priced at over $250 came up on my computer screen. The jeans I own today came from Duluth Trading Co. I don’t like shopping for clothing online, but then I don’t like shopping for clothing in stores. A friend who is a working rancher somehow gave a pair of insulated jeans to my sister, who gave them to me. They are a great luxury for an old man, and I wear them quite a bit in the winter, even though I’ve moved to a place where it doesn’t get all that cold. I liked them enough that I ordered a pair that isn’t insulated for summer use. I haven’t cut off the legs of either pair. I don’t seem to tear through the knees of my jeans as much these days, and I don’t wear short pants. It only took one session of the dermatologist cutting out skin cancer from my calf to discourage me from wearing short pants.

I’m pretty sure that the fact that I don’t wear shorts means I am not on the cutting edge of fashion. At least I’ve noticed that other men my age often wear shorts. One of my friends wore shorts to church last week. Another wears shorts year-round. He also wears sandals with socks. I don’t own any sandals, and don’t seem to need any. My lack of Birkenstocks probably identifies me as an immigrant to this part of the world.

No worries. I have no plans to wear shorts to church. In fact, I have no intention of wearing jeans to church, though they would be considered quite acceptable in our church, where casual is the common style for worship. I’m no expert on fashion. I don’t think skinny jeans are a possibility with my body shape. I prefer my jeans belted and baggy. The only times I tuck my jeans into my boots are when I’m wearing muck boots in mud or manure, and then I forget half the time and get the bottoms of my jeans mucky.

Recently, I saw my granddaughter sort through a basket of clean clothes in search of a pair of jeans. She found two that were hers. One looked nearly brand new, and the other had holes torn in them. She ran up to her room and returned wearing the ones with holes. I thought about making a comment, but I’ve gotten the rolling eyes and “Oh, Grandpa!” from her enough to know that my fashion suggestions make no sense to her at all.

I have another reason for wearing jeans that others might deem don’t fit me properly. Most fashion jeans are made out of fabric that stretches. The fabrics are made with elastane, a product derived from petroleum. In addition to raising one’s carbon footprint, the elastane makes the jeans less durable. A pair of Duluth Trading 100% cotton jeans will outlast anything that has “comfortable fit” on the label. I know. I’ve torn through a pair of jeans the first time I wore them.

All of this is of no concern to me today. I’ll wear dress slacks to church, and I am confident that no one will notice what I am wearing. My fashion trick is to wear a tie, something that almost no one else will do. In our church, you’ll only see ties on Mother’s Day and Easter, and only worn by men my age or older. And I don’t wear those long ties, either. Trust me, a bright strip of cloth pointing to my least appealing feature is not a fashion accessory I need. I wear bow ties. Keep their attention up. Get them to look at your face. As a bonus, the knot is the same as in your shoes, meaning you don’t have to remember how to tie two knots to get dressed. I bet I could get by with jeans and a bow tie, and no one would notice I’m wearing baggy jeans. Then again, I won’t try that, so it doesn’t make sense to speculate.

I’ve reached an age where I’ve permitted myself to be set in my ways.

Many years ago, when we were living in Idaho, I had a tire problem while driving across Oregon. My route wasn’t on the Interstate that runs next to the Columbia River for much of its journey, but rather on a two-lane road that crosses the high desert with few towns and great distances of open country. I changed the tire, noting that my spare wasn’t in the best condition. I started looking for a tire shop. The one I found was part of a regional chain of tire shops. They quickly repaired the flat tire, returned it to my vehicle, and replaced the spare. I got my credit card to pay and was told there was no charge. That chain of tire stores earned my loyalty. Over the next several years, I purchased all of my tires from that chain and became friends with the workers in the store that was nearest my home.

When we moved to South Dakota, I had to find a new tire shop, as that chain does not have stores in that part of the country. Now that we have moved to Washington, I’ve returned to that brand and have had several tires repaired for free at the location near our home. Recently, as I waited for them to put a tube into the front tire of our son’s lawn and garden tractor, I looked around the store. There isn’t much to see. They have displays of different kinds of tires and posters touting other services such as brake repair and alignment services. Their business is limited to tires and suspension, which seems reasonable. A constant stream of customers kept three counter staff and a shop full of technicians busy.

There are other stores that sell tires. Most auto repair shops sell tires and have tire repair services. Warehouse stores like Costco and Sam’s Club sell tires. Department stores like Sears and K-Mart used to sell tires. However, just across the border into Canada, there is a phenomenon different from anything I’ve experienced in the US. Canadian Tire is a tire store. They sell tires and provide repair services. But they also sell barbecues, lawn mowers, garden supplies, patio furniture, grass seed, and pressure washers. You can buy a children’s swing set or a swimming pool at Canadian Tire. They have hardware, sports equipment, and home goods. They sell bikes and vacuum cleaners and have shopping carts at the entrance to their stores.

Canadian Tire advertises itself as Canada’s top department store, or just Canada’s Store. Since Hudson’s Bay Company declared bankruptcy and began to close stores and sell off assets, the red triangle of Canadian Tire may be Canada’s most recognizable brand. According to CBC, they have made a 30-million-dollar offer to become even more iconic. They are set to buy the logo, coat of arms, various names, and the iconic stripes of Hudson’s Bay Company.

That might be seen as a problem by all the people who rushed to the Hudson’s Bay stores to purchase blankets and other goods adorned with the iconic Hudson’s Bay Green, White, Red, and Yellow Stripes, hoping that they would become collector’s items with the demise of the company. It appears you’ll be able to buy a Hudson’s Bay blanket at any of the 1,700 Canadian Tire stores across the country.

Unlike the Hudson’s Bay Company, which was originally chartered by British investors and is currently owned by a US investment firm, Canadian Tire has been Canadian-owned since its founding. Canadian Tire president Greg Hicks said in a statement announcing the purchase of the brands, “Some things are just meant to stay Canadian.”

The rhetoric from Washington, D.C., combined with on-again-off-again tariffs and heightened border security, has recently raised Canadian patriotism and loyalty. Known for their politeness, Canadians have booed the US National Anthem at hockey games, made countless YouTube and other internet memes, and are boycotting travel to the US. Traffic from Canada is down nearly 50% at the border crossing nearest our home, the third busiest highway crossing between the two countries.

Part of the reluctance of Canadians to visit the US comes from heightened scrutiny and harassment of Canadians who travel to the US. Customs agents are inspecting far more entering cars than used to be the case, and have decreased the number of traffic lanes for customs inspection. Facilities with a dozen or more lanes to handle large numbers of cars routinely have only three lanes open. Sometimes, all traffic is reduced to a single lane, with border crossing times exceeding an hour. For a few days recently, crossing times exceeded three hours. Customs officials have not revealed what they expect to find or whether the increased inspections have netted more arrests.

Beyond inconvenience, Canadians have been harassed by ICE officials. 36-year-old Jasmine Mooney went to the San Ysidro port of entry at the border of Mexico and California to apply for a visa because she had a new job in the US, and ended up being jailed for 12 days. No charges were ever filed, and no explanation was ever given for her detainment. She wrote about her experience for The Guardian. Her story and many others have made Canadians wary of travel to the US.

We don’t have a similar reaction on our side of the border. Although we don’t like long lines to cross the border, we know that we can be treated with respect and kindness by Canadian officials when we visit. I’ve been tempted to cross the border just to take a look at the Canadian Tire store just across the line out of curiosity. I don’t need a Hudson’s Bay blanket, and I don’t need tires, but I enjoy just looking at hardware and sporting goods stores. I may have to make a stop next time we’re in Canada simply because it is such an iconic brand. Like Tim Horton’s, Canadian Tire is a part of the country's culture and climate.

However, I’ll be careful to keep my receipts and declare any purchases made in Canada. I don’t want to run afoul of US Customs, which appears ready to make trouble for anyone who tries to escape tariffs. Of course, they won’t know the current tariff rate. Those change too frequently and are too complex even for a Customs and Border Patrol officer to understand.

As far as we know, no human can consciously remember the process of being born and the first few moments of life outside the womb. There are plenty of external witnesses. Mothers have observed the process in the midst of labor since time immemorial, and have been attended by midwives and doctors who have also become experienced in the process. We can speculate about the process for the one being born, but there is much that we cannot know for certain.

The process must be overwhelming. The amount of new sensations has to be a challenge for the brain to process. Ears that have only heard through amniotic fluid and have listened to the rhythm of the mother’s heartbeat and the sounds of her body suddenly are confronted with a host of new sounds that are vastly different, traveling through air instead of water and without the filter of the mother’s body. Eyes receive light for the first time and send signals that have not previously been received to the brain. It is widely speculated that infants are born without the ability to focus on specific objects and have to learn over a period of time to distinguish what they are seeing. Sight is as much brain processing as optical acuity. Infants are delivered from a precisely controlled temperature into a world with variable temperatures. Initial experiences of being too warm or cold are new and don’t yet have meaning. A body that has received all of its nutrition and expelled all of its waste through an umbilical cord now has to learn how to suckle for nutrition and use its brand-new digestive system. It is amazing how quickly an infant learns new information and masters the process of living.

Humans, however, are much slower than other animals at acquiring skills and becoming adults. Many mammals learn to walk within hours of being born. Some creatures become sexually mature in the first year of life, while others develop that ability in just a few years. Humans require more than a decade before they are ready to live on their own as adults. It takes nearly 25 years for the human brain to be fully developed.

We have a grandson who was born with binocular vision dysfunction. Early in his life, we noticed that his eyes struggled to work together correctly. Each eye has six muscles that control eye movement; in his case, they had difficulty coordinating. His eyes were routinely misaligned. The condition can lead to headaches, double vision, and difficulty focusing. It was obvious that he was working hard to see clearly and was slow to develop some other skills because he was working so hard on his vision. Fortunately, his condition was diagnosed early. Treatment included microprism glasses and using patches to cover one of his eyes. When he was old enough, a relatively simple outpatient surgical procedure improved his condition significantly, enabling a growth in other skills. Being better able to focus freed up brain power for language development, increased physical abilities, and more, restoring him to a more typical developmental curve.

His experiences and the teachings doctors have done to help us as a family understand what is going on have fascinated me. I have worn glasses since I was six years old and have been aware of how dramatic vision can impact a person. Since he was a toddler, one of my brothers has had a fantastic ability to spot animals from a distance. He can look at a hillside and see deer that I would not have seen had he not pointed out where to look. We used to go fishing, and he would point out fish beneath the surface that I never did learn to see. I now know that part of the skill is learning where to look and what to focus on. So much visual information is available to our brains at any moment that our brains sift and sort. We don’t see everything in our field of vision. Instead, our brains make unconscious decisions about what is most important and focus our vision on a limited number of things. An example of how our brains focus on different things is that the same brother has difficulty finding a specific book in a library.
On the other hand, I can walk between the stacks in a library, scan the books, and not only find what I want but frequently spot mis-shelved books. When I volunteer at the library, I not only shelve books that have been returned but also correct mistakes in shelving generally caused by patrons removing a book and returning it to a different place than where they got it. Vision is, in part, learning what to look for.

I have lived where great blue herons are relatively rare for most of my life. In mountain lakes and streams, herons tend to live far apart from others of their species. I learned to look for a second heron because two are required to raise chicks. In the fall, I would look for fledglings. I didn’t know how social the birds are until we moved to our current home. A rookery is within walking distance of our house with dozens of breeding pairs. When we first arrived, I would identify three or four birds when we went for a walk. After a while, I learned to see more. Now we will identify a dozen or more scanning from a single location. When I expect to see more birds, I do.

We had to learn what to look for to spot the gray whales when they came into our bay. We didn’t notice them at first and might not have seen them had others not pointed them out to us. Now that we know that looking for their spouts is how to recognize them, we can identify them without a guide. Last week, we were able to point them out to others walking along the shore who had not previously been aware of their presence.

The human brain is an amazing organ capable of processing incredible information. Fortunately, it can also learn new skills and ways to sort information. Now in my seventies, I am still learning. New learning brings great joy.

A couple of days ago, I started to paint our backyard fence. The fence is a six-foot privacy fence made of cedar boards. I’m only painting the side of the fence that faces our home, leaving the appearance of the fence from my neighbors’ yards to them. I don’t know all of the technical aspects of fences and who owns them in our neighborhood. Virtually all of the backyards are fenced, with the fence lines seeming to run on the property lines. The subdivision where we lived for 25 years in South Dakota had an open yard covenant. We didn’t have fences between neighbors. The wood on our backyard fence is dry and soaks up the paint. I’ve been working slowly, doing a few sections each evening. Like other physical jobs I tackle, the chore gives me time to think. I have been focusing on my writing lately, investing hours trying to choose the right words, staying on topic, and wrestling with a manuscript. With a paintbrush, I allow my mind to wander, and many different topics go through my mind.

As I painted, I thought about my use of the word “paint.” Technically, I was applying stain to the fence. Stains are designed to penetrate the wood. They are absorbed into the surface and allow the wood grain to show. Paints remain on the surface and create a smooth, opaque finish. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call what I am doing to the fence “staining.” However, there are different kinds of stains. I am not using a transparent stain on the fence. I am not even using a semi-transparent stain. The product I am applying is sold as a “solid stain.” It seems to me that it is pretty close to paint. I’m not a chemist and have no expertise in the language of paints and stains, so I call the process “painting.” I’m pretty sure people understand what I mean, and so far, no one has objected to my use of that word when talking about my fence.

There are other uses of language, however, about which I am passionate. Suicide has once again touched the family of some of our friends. The victim of this tragedy was a young woman. Teen suicides are especially frightening because they sometimes appear in clusters, and I know the statistics about how her family and friends have just had the odds of their dying by suicide raised. When it comes to talking about suicide, I am adamant about avoiding the use of the word “commit.” Because that word has a legal definition with a lot of stigma, it is inappropriate to use when talking about death by suicide. People commit crimes. People are committed to institutions. Implying that dying as the result of mental illness is a crime places a stigma not only on the victim, but upon the survivors as well. I choose to avoid the use of “commit” when speaking of suicide, and I encourage others to do the same.

I have decided to stop using“artificial intelligence” when referring to computer programs that assist with writing. While the people who have designed such systems may demonstrate intelligence, the programs simply arrange words in patterns that match patterns used in writing previously done by humans. The systems can analyze vast amounts of text, detect repeating patterns, and put words into similar patterns when prompted by a question or topic suggestion. I don’t think human intelligence works that way at all. Human intelligence reflects creativity and generativity. The spelling assistant on my computer’s word processor doesn’t like my use of generativity, but I disagree and am using it. That is a form of intelligence that a computer system won’t employ.

I am avoiding“parental controls” when referring to the mild automatic restrictions social media sites claim to provide for young users. They are neither parental nor controlling. They are marketing tools intended to lure parents into thinking that the platforms are safe for teens. They do not protect teens. An English experiment created fake profiles for teenagers. Researchers scrolled each profile for ten minutes a day for a week. They initially searched for sports, gaming, and beauty. Within minutes the social media sites showed violence, abuse, sexually suggestive images with links to pornography. Social Media is dangerous for teens, and parents must establish guidelines for and monitor their use.

Accepting a half-billion-dollar plane from Qatar is not “a beautiful gift.” It is a bribe, pure and simple. It is a mockery of the Constitution’s emoluments clause against foreign gifts. Described as the world’s most luxurious airplane, the flying palace is of no practical use by the United States military. Before it can be used for executive transport, it must be stripped bare and inspected for security bugs. Unlike the aircraft used for Air Force One, it has no medical clinic or emergency surgical suite. It does not have the advanced secure communications equipment necessary for military use. It does not have the equipment required to provide security for its passengers. Retrofitting the plane will take longer than the remainder of the current presidential term and cost tens of millions of dollars. At the end of the term, plane ownership will be transferred to a presidential library. Unlike the decommissioned Air Force One on static display at Ronald Reagan’s presidential museum, don’t expect the world’s most luxurious plane to sit on the tarmac after four years. It is a bribe. And bribes come with demands. No country gives a half-billion-dollar gift to the head of another country out of the kindness of its heart. It wants something. The auction that netted more than $100 million for his family’s cryptocurrency, where a group of non-Americans won a private audience with him, demonstrates that he is willing to meet the terms of bribes.

While we are on the topic of language and the presidency, I have decided to avoid using the word “president” in conjunction with the current office holder. This is not a partisan action. When asked about being bound by the Constitution in a television interview, the convicted felon currently holding the office answered, “I don’t know.” Since he does not consider himself bound by the oath of office, I don’t know why I should believe him to be the legitimate office holder.

I doubt that many others will adopt my language preferences, and I don’t expect to change how others speak. However, since I write on a computer and publish my journal on the Internet, I have the satisfaction that, in a very minor and tiny way, I’m messing with the algorithms used by language processing programs.

When our daughter lived in Japan, their home was in the Aomori Prefecture, at the northern end of the main island. We had the joy of visiting her and her family there twice. We purchased Japan Rail passes for both trips, allowing us unlimited train travel on many different lines. We boarded the train at Tokyo Haneda Airport for a short ride to Ueno, where we boarded the Hayabusa Shinkansen, the fastest train in Japan, reaching speeds of 200 mph. Before reaching Hachinohe, it is a smooth and comfortable ride with brief stops at over a dozen stations, including Fukushima, Sendai, and Morioka. From Hachinohe, it is a short train ride to Misawa, where our daughter lived.

With train travel so easy in Japan and our rail passes allowing us to travel freely, we were able to visit much of the island from Aomori all the way to Hiroshima. Wherever we traveled, the trains were on time, the stations were clean and easy to navigate, even for tourists who do not speak or read Japanese. Whenever I talk with friends considering a trip to Japan, I recommend planning a 21-day trip, the longest time of a combined East-West Japan Rail Pass that can be purchased at a discount in the U.S. before departure. The pass allows freedom of exploration wherever a tourist wants to go.

Returning home after both of our trips involved driving from Seattle on the first trip and Vancouver, BC, on the second trip back to South Dakota, which generally took us three days. As we drove in our car on interstate highways, we reflected on how much simpler it was to go long distances in Japan, a much smaller country than the U.S.

The U.S. has 340 million people, 71 interstate highways, over 5,000 public airports, and no high-speed railways. Amtrak will begin operating Acela trains on its Northeast Corridor route between Boston and Washington, D.C., later this year. However, only about 50 of the 457 miles of the line can support speeds exceeding 150 mph, which is the minimum speed of a train to be called high-speed. California’s San Francisco to Los Angeles high-speed route is due to be completed by 2033, and a line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is expected to begin service in 2028.

There is much talk and planning about extending the California high-speed lines to eventually make a train run from San Diego all the way north to Vancouver, BC. That line would be very convenient for us, with stations within an hour’s drive. However, no date has been set for the beginning of construction in our area.

By contrast, China has a high-speed rail network that will exceed 31,000 miles this year and approach 40,000 miles by 2030. The Shanghai Maglev has a top speed of 268 mph and will offer regular service at speeds nearing 250 mph. When the right tracks are in place, Maglev trains are capable of speeds of over 600 mph. There are over 5,000 miles of operational high-speed rail in the European Union. Spain leads the EU with nearly 2,000 miles of high-speed rail.

Building high-speed rail lines is a complicated task. The lines have to be designed without intersections, often running on elevated bridges in urban areas. In order to run at maximum speeds, the rails must have long, straight sections. While high-speed rail can follow interstate highways in some areas, the logistics of obtaining land for the tracks and building appropriate bridges, overpasses, and underpasses are daunting.

In the United States, high-speed rail is not a priority for governmental spending. The current U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has described high-speed rail as a “waste of taxpayers’ money.” The White House has pulled the plug on federal support of the planned high-speed line between Houston and Dallas in Texas, which had been slated for a federal grant under the previous administration. Further complicating the current situation in the U.S. is that Amtrak, the government-owned passenger rail service, is currently without a director after Stephen Gardner resigned last month under pressure from the White House.

It will take a significant shift in federal priorities for high-speed rail to become common in the United States. We are addicted to private automobiles, and high-speed rail projects have not produced enormous profits for billionaires anywhere in the world.

Fortunately, Amtrak Cascades operates regular low-speed rail service with new trains entering service next year. With stations in nearby Bellingham and one even closer in Surrey, BC, it is convenient for us to board a train that goes south to Eugene, Oregon, and connects with trains going all the way to San Diego. They don’t operate at high speeds, but riding the train is much less stressful than driving. The train is quicker than driving through the Seattle area due to traffic. We may not be able to go high speed, but we can travel through beautiful scenery, with twelve trains running each way between Seattle and Portland each day. Buses connect riders from the Bellingham station to connect with trains that terminate in Seattle.

I still love driving, and a road trip is a joy for me, but there will be more times when taking the train will make sense in terms of cost and safety. But I’m not holding my breath for high-speed rail. For that U.S. travelers will have to visit other countries during my lifetime. The teaser is that we have traveled to Japan and enjoyed the convenience of high-speed rail. We know that a good way to transport large numbers of people across significant distances is with convenience and safety. It is easy to imagine how much high-speed rail would benefit the U.S. if we had the political will to prioritize it.

In our case, we have a daughter who lives in South Carolina. Our priority is visiting her and her family, which means traveling by air for the foreseeable future. I enjoy flying, but I do not like long lines at security checkpoints. However, I’m willing to go through quite a bit to visit family. While I can dream of high-speed rail, I plan to go by air.

Those who enjoy reading my essays might be interested to know that I have a manuscript of essays, poems, and prayers that will be going out to its first round of readers soon. The collection has been accepted for publication and was originally slated for early 2026, but the publisher is interested in moving up to a date in 2025. When I began the project, I intended to publish a collection of the essays I have written in this journal, but as I started to pull the manuscript together, it became clear that I needed to write new essays for the project. I’ll have more details as things progress.

Part of the process for me has been to participate in several writers’ groups. I’ve been a part of a memoir writers’ group, an environmental writers’ group, and a poets’ group. Each group has put me in touch with other writers and offered opportunities to share some of my writing. It has been a challenging and fun process. One of the things that I learned from the environmental writers’ group is that many citizen science projects are helping scientists gather data on our planet, the effects of global warming, and other changes. One of the most well-known is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers record bird observations in backyards, city streets, and remote locations. By making and recording practical observations, everyday citizens can aid scientists in assembling larger databases and gain a broader perspective than could be gathered by scientists working alone. Similar projects exist in various fields, including insect observations, weather reporting, fish and game counts, etc.

One citizen’s science project that captured my interest stems from an accident at sea. In 1992, a dozen shipping containers were washed overboard from the Evergreen ship Ever Laurel during a storm on the Pacific Ocean. One container was in transit from First Years, Inc. in Hong Kong, headed for Tacoma, WA, for import into the US. The container broke open and released 28,800 Friendly Floatees. There were yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles, and green frogs. Two oceanographers from Seattle who were working on an ocean surface current model heard about the toys floating in the ocean and decided they could yield information about ocean currents. The pair had previously tracked other spills of flotsam, including 61,000 Nike running shoes that had been lost overboard in 1990. They began tracking the floating toys’ landfall by asking citizens to report where and when each toy was found. First reports of them making landfall came from Alaska. Years later, some were found in pack ice above the Arctic Circle. A few reached the Atlantic Ocean and found their way to Greenland.

At least two children’s books have been inspired by the traveling Floatees. Their journeys even inspired a song, “Yellow Rubber Ducks” by Rich Eilbert. Of course, that song isn’t as famous as the 1970 Sesame Street song sung by Ernie, “Rubber Duckie.” If you want to learn more about the traveling Floatees and see one of the actual rubber ducks to which Ernie sang the song on television, the place to go is the Rubber Duck Museum in Point Roberts, Washington. The Museum has ducks dating back to 1911 and from across the globe. Rubber ducks were first chew toys made from hard rubber in the 1880s. Floating ducks first appeared in 1949.

If you want to visit it in Point Roberts, however, you’ll have to go there quickly. This summer, the museum is moving a short distance north and across the border to Canada. Point Roberts is a town of about 1,200 people at the end of a peninsula. The only way to drive to the town is to go through Canada. High school students from the town go into Canada and back into the US to get to school and make two more border crossings on the way home. Point Roberts residents depend on Canada for water, electricity, and other utilities. They are also dependent upon customers from Canada. Before the inauguration of the current US president, Point Roberts was bustling with Canadians who crossed the border for cheaper food and gas. But the shops, gas stations, and restaurants of Point Roberts are empty these days. Point Roberts is bracing for a loss of Canadian customers like our community, which is also dependent on Canadian tourists. Across the US, Canadian tourists spend over $20 billion each year in the U.S., even though the Canadian dollar has been falling against the U.S. dollar, making travel here more expensive for Canadians.

The reasons the Canadians are staying away are complex. The US President has questioned the validity of the border between the U.S. and Canada, referred to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor,” and persists in suggesting that Canada should become a state. He has imposed tariffs on goods entering the U.S. from Canada and threatened higher tariffs. Canadians see it as a threat to their sovereignty. From their perspective, it seems that the U.S. president wants the total collapse of their economy. They are responding by boycotting U.S. travel and goods.

To make matters worse, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement has made crossing the border at the two crossings in Blaine very difficult. They have reduced the number of entry lanes to only two or three, causing wait times to enter the U.S. to rise to 45 minutes to an hour or more. They impose exit inspections for days, backing up traffic to gridlock the town. Last week, there were waits of more than three hours to leave the U.S.

And it is even more complex. Entrance to the Rubber Duck Museum is free. Merchandise sales support the Museum, including ducks and other floating toys, T-shirts, mugs, stickers, and signs. Nearly all of the ducks sold at the Museum are made in China, like the floatees that fell off the container ship. The 145% tariffs on goods from China have forced the Museum to raise its prices. Although the tariffs are on-again-off-again, the unpredictable way tariffs are being imposed and retracted makes doing business on a small scale nearly impossible.

The ducks that fell off the container ship floated north. The ducks of the Rubber Duck Museum are also moving north, leaving the United States for a new home in Canada.

Mother’s Day is a well-deserved tribute to mothers. Yesterday was a pretty good day for a grandpa as well. The Green Team, of which I am a participant, led worship at our church in the morning. There was a lot of music, including a piece by our bell choir. I’ve enjoyed ringing bells since I retired. I had a role in planning the service and was delighted with the involvement and leadership of a team of lay people. Visiting with people after worship, I heard about the plans for the celebration of several families. I commented that we were having our family meal in the evening. Our children were used to not having big dinners at noon on Sundays with both parents being clergy.

After lunch, we had time for a walk, and I took a ride on my bike. It was a beautiful day, and I rode through the state park near our home, the busiest I have seen this year. We live in a tourist area affected by the trade war. Local businesses report drops in customers and revenue approaching 50% compared to last year. The park has been relatively quiet. Yesterday, however, it was full of people. Based on the license plates in the parking lots, there weren’t many Canadian families, but folks from Washington had turned out for picnics on the beach, clamming, kite flying, frisbee throwing, and relaxing.

I rode my bicycle past a family group walking with two members using walkers. It isn’t unusual to see individuals with walkers as the area is flat and the terrain is easy for those with mobility challenges. However, this group caught my eye because two women of different ages were using walkers. They might have been a mother and daughter, an aunt and niece, or just two friends. It brought a smile to my face to see that they were out enjoying the spring weather with family who weren’t in too much of a rush, so they could walk at a pace that was comfortable to everyone.

A small general store at the edge of the park caters to the campgrounds in the area. I stopped by on my way home and picked up some ice cream for our dinner. Our grandson is recovering from a tonsillectomy, and we wanted to ensure we had plenty of ice cream.

Dinner was simple to prepare. Susan baked a cake and gathered supplies so our granddaughters could participate in decorating. I roasted a couple of fresh fish fillets we had picked up the day before. I boiled and mashed potatoes and warmed up some baked macaroni and cheese. Susan made a green salad, and we were ready to eat. After dinner, I did the dishes while the girls decorated a chocolate cake with powdered sugar and fresh strawberries. Our strawberries have green berries developing, but aren’t ripe yet. We had bought a flat of strawberries at a fruit stand near our home.

One of the best treats of the day for me was watching our son out in the yard playing with his kids. They have a busy life with two working parents, big gardens to tend, chickens, and cows that need care. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for our son and his wife to relax. While she enjoyed a phone call with her grandmother, he was stretched out on the grass with his kids crawling all over him. It so reminded me of my father.

My father worked long hours running multiple businesses, and Sundays were his relaxing day. He often would stretch out on the floor in the living room or outside on the lawn. We had a lot of kids in our family, and there were often extras visiting. He let the little ones crawl over him and would gently wrestle with them. When I became a father, we had only two children, and while I enjoyed playing with them, our family times were quieter and more subdued. Our son has four children. After the girls finished decorating the cake, they joined the fun outdoors. After a while, the activities moved to the driveway and front yard, and the sidewalk chalk came out. We have the fanciest decorated driveway in our neighborhood today. It will all disappear in the next rain shower, but it is a reminder of a day of family relaxation and fun for a little while.

It was how I imagine God must sometimes feel about humans. One of the early traditions of our faith is Sabbath. One day each week is set aside for rest and relaxation. Work is tempered by a day off. The schedule is light, and people have time to enjoy one another. Just watching our family temporarily freed from deadlines and chores is a delight that reflects the joy of the creator. I looked at my family and said to myself, “It is good,” hearing the words from the stories in Genesis.

I was blessed with meaningful work and don’t regret the long days and short nights of my active career. I was blessed to work with good people and to serve alongside talented and dedicated colleagues. Hard work has been passed down for generations in our family. My parents were up while we were all sleeping, doing bookwork for the business and preparing for a day of busy family activities. When our children were little, I stayed up beyond their bedtimes and rose before they got up. Our children do the same with their families. There are always chores to be done and work to be accomplished. But occasionally, there is an opportunity to pause—a few moments to sit down or lie in the grass. Eyes may close for a few minutes, knowing that everyone is safe. Work remains. There will be problems to solve, meetings to attend, and concerns to address all week long. But for a little while, the chores can be set aside and we can sit and enjoy being together. Indeed, it is good.

Our grandson is recovering from surgery to remove his tonsils. The procedure went well, and his recovery is normal, but he is experiencing pain. He has been able to control the pain with Tylenol and is enjoying the opportunity for extra ice cream. He and his family came to our house for dinner last night, and I told the family I had fun thinking of soft foods I could make. I like the challenge of coming up with menus for special needs. When we have guests, I always ask about food allergies and preferences so I can cook to the joy of our guests and expand my repertoire of recipes. Our grandson asked for macaroni and cheese. I wanted to comply with his request in a special way.

We keep boxes of macaroni and cheese on hand at our house. All of our grandchildren like it. We’ve found a simple, quick-to-prepare, and relatively inexpensive brand. I can whip up a batch of mac and cheese in about 15 minutes from the box. However, I wanted to do something special for our grandson to show my love and support for him as he healed. I got up early yesterday and cooked elbow macaroni just slightly shy of al dente. While the pasta cooked, I hand-grated cheddar and gruyere cheeses. I drained the macaroni and tossed it with olive oil so it wouldn’t stick. Then I melted butter, whisked in flour, and added cream. I reduced the cream sauce, adding paprika, salt, and pepper. I added a third of the blended grated cheeses when it was the right consistency. I mixed the pasta into the cheese sauce and layered the pasta and sauce mixture in a baking dish with the remainder of the shredded cheese.

I put the prepared dish in the refrigerator, and in the afternoon, as I prepared the rest of the dinner, I allowed it to warm to room temperature before baking it. The special baked macaroni and cheese was well received. Everyone ate some of it, and our grandson with the sore throat had a reasonable helping. It was the only food he ate for that meal. He had plenty of room for ice cream for dessert.

I had fun making the dish, but my evaluation is pretty simple. It wasn’t received better than the packaged macaroni and cheese we usually have. My extra time and effort didn’t produce a special dish for the children. I went to the effort and expense and produced something of no additional value to the children. And, since I usually cook too much food when making things from scratch, we have half a baking dish of macaroni and cheese in our refrigerator that cost more to prepare than the packaged product. I’m pretty sure it has about double the calories as the boxed stuff, too.

As a parent and grandparent, I don’t like it when family members experience pain. I try to do what I can to ease their pain. I try to help the family by running to the drug store when prescriptions are needed, running errands, and doing other things to give parents additional time to spend caring for their children. I do internet research and try to educate myself to be a calm voice of reassurance to support parents. In the case of the grandchildren who live near us, they have plenty of good information. Our son specialized in medical research in library school and served as a hospital librarian and director of information systems for a major hospital corporation before becoming a community librarian. He knows how to do medical research and sort good research from all of the misinformation available on the Internet. And our daughter-in-law’s brother is a doctor who is a phone call away and is generous with his expertise. They don’t need me for medical information or support.

I know that my worrying doesn’t help. So I cook. I do what I can. I know that part of children growing into adulthood is learning to deal with illness. I know there is a balance between self-care and knowing when to seek professional help. I understand that the decision to have the tonsils removed was taken with care and only after experiencing repeated strep throat infections and other problems. I support our children as they make care decisions for their children. I just don’t like it when my beloveds are in pain.

Our family is fortunate. We have access to medical care. We have insurance to make it affordable for our family. There are a lot of grandfathers in this world who are forced to deal with grandchildren who are ill and who do not have access to care. The divide between our country's medical “haves” and “have-nots” is rapidly accelerating. It isn’t just medical care that is outpacing the ability of families to pay. Adequate nutrition is a significant problem in the United States. According to the USDA, 19% of all children in the US face food insecurity. That’s 14 million hungry children. I can only imagine the anguish of a parent or grandparent who tries to comfort a child who has to go to bed hungry.

I am not in a position to cook for hungry children, but I can donate food to local organizations that help feed those who are hungry. We have opportunities to donate non-perishable food at our church each week and I know several other places that accept donations. I can think about those children when I am shopping for groceries. Instead of spending the extra money on cream and gruyere next time, I think I’ll purchase enough boxes of packaged macaroni and cheese to donate half of it to a local food bank, assuming that other children might like the same foods as our grandchildren. There may even be someone out there who needs a bit of soft food for a child with a sore throat.

I haven’t figured out how to provide popsicles and ice cream for that child, but if I knew how, I would try it.

In the mid 1980s, the church I served purchased a television set and a video playback machine so that we could show movies at youth events and use videos in our church school. It is hard to remember just how little we knew about the entire process. We did not know about licensing and the distinction between having permission to show a movie in a home setting vs showing one in a public setting, We knew that there were stores that rented movies and that there were some movie titles that we wanted to show. At first our desire for movies was primarily entertainment. We frequently gathered groups of youth in our church for rallies and lock-ins and while the events featured worship and religious programming, having an extended time with teens meant needing to plan supervised activities to fill the time they were together. Showing a movie made supervision simple. The youth could be gathered in a room around a television set and we knew where they were and what they were doing for two hours. We could choose the movie. We used the motion picture industry rating standards, selecting movies with a G rating for general audiences. I used to tell the youth that if the movie rating required parental guidance then they needed to bring their parents to the youth rally. It was a joke in a way, but it demonstrated my nervousness about selecting movies that might offend parents.

After receiving approval from the church for the purchase of the television and the player, we were faced with a decision about what video format to choose. We had members who were proponents of Betamax, a format that offered superior audio and video quality. Looking back, I think that the quality argument was a bit silly since we had a home television set with small speakers and low resolution. I remember that another argument for Betamax was that the tapes were smaller. Space for storing tapes also was not an issue as we never collected a library of tapes. We rented tapes for occasional use.

The Betamax player that we got was quickly replaced with a VHS player because the differences in licensing meant that there were many more movies available in VHS format. Christian education videos weren’t available in Betamax format.

The debate seems silly today with movies being streamed over the internet. Youth have access to movies on their personal devices. They have home theaters with screens that are bigger than most churches and sound systems that reproduce theater quality. Movies are far less likely to entertain youth and youth events do well to plan other activities. Many churches are now offering youth retreats with digital detox, when they take a break from their devices.

I was thinking about VHS and Betamax in an entirely different context the other day. I have an electric bicycle. I purchased a used bike last year and have really enjoyed it. I’ve ridden nearly 3.000 miles on it. When the bicycle needed repairs, I ended up purchasing a second bike by the same manufacturer to use as a backup. Initially I thought I might use the second bike as a parts bike. The price I paid was less than the cost of a battery and I got two batteries with the second bike. However, I have ended up fixing up both bikes. I need to sell one, but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. The luxury of my current situation is that I have an extra battery. If I forget to plug in my bike to charge, I can swap batteries and go. I charge my bike at home. Our home has solar panels that produce more electricity than we consume so it doesn’t cost me money to charge.

The connection with the VHS/Betamax argument is that I’m pretty sure that I have purchased a bike with a non-standard battery. More and more electric bikes are adopting batteries that can be switched between brands. My bikes have batteries that are not the same size as the ones in most other e-bikes. I believe that one battery size and style will eventually emerge to power most bikes and it is probably not going to be the one my bikes use. Like those stuck with betamax players in a VHS world, my bikes will eventually become obsolete because the cost of batteries will exceed the value of the bike. That may have already happened as when I bought the second bike, I was able to purchase a whole bike for less than the cost of a battery.

I think that swappable batteries is going to become part of the future of electric bikes. In countries where the electric grid is weak, solar charging stations can be set up where bike riders can swap batteries and keep going even if they don’t have access to charging at their homes. The electric bikes can be used to charge the batteries of small devices such as cell phones overnight when the solar stations are not producing electricity. In countries such as Rwanda, where there are large numbers of motorbikes but limited access to grid electricity, electric bikes and battery swap programs offer mobility to hundreds of thousands of people without the air pollution and carbon emissions of gasoline powered bikes. The government of Rwanda has a plan to convert over 100,000 gas powered motorbikes to electric bikes.

Obviously I don’t live in Rwanda. I have the capacity to charge my bike batteries at home without cost. I have a spare battery so I can swap batteries on the rare occasion when I want to ride more than the 35 miles my bike’s battery provides. Swapping batteries also provides a solution for times when I forget to plug my bike into the charger after a ride, which is far more common than high mileage days.

New technologies often require time for standards to emerge. VHS and Betamax existed side by side for more than a decade before VHS became dominant. Video tapes existed side by side with DVD technology before DVDs became dominant. Many homes no longer have machines for video playback because digital streaming is becoming the dominant form of video distribution. Predicting the format of technologies in the future is not a skill I possess.

For now, I’m riding my bike and enjoying it. One day I’ll likely be faced with the need to buy a new battery and have to decide how long I want to sustain the old technology. I hope that is several years from now, but as was the case with video, I’m not counting on my ability to choose the right path.

The whales are back in the bay! We heard about them before we saw them this year. We were coming up from the bay the day before yesterday, when a neighbor asked us if we had seen them. We had not. You have to be looking for them to see them. They are easy to spot when you know what you are looking for, but a pair of binoculars doesn’t hurt. I feel like an ancient whaler, tempted to shout with excitement, “Thar she blows!” What we see first is the blast of water as the whale exhales. Our bay is shallow and doesn’t attract other whales, but the grays are different.. They are baleen whales that feed on the bottom of shallow waters, sucking up mouthfuls of sediment and sifting out the ghost shrimp. They dig pits in the sand large enough to be seen on satellite images. Our bay offers plentiful shrimp for the visitors.

The whales need a lot of energy on a long trip. Their migration is among the longest of any mammal. In the fall, they travel south along the coast to protected lagoons along Baja California. They give birth to their calves in those protected waters, but food sources for the whales are insufficient for the adults. During the winter, adult grays survive on blubber stored during the previous summer. They can go 3 - 5 months without significant food resources. The females give birth and nurse their calves from stored fat. When the calves are old enough to travel, they head to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, visiting the shallow bays and intertidal areas of the Salish Sea along the way.

The grays that visit our bay are part of a group known as the sounders because of their frequent return to the Puget Sound. Grays can be spotted in the Sound between March and May, and some individuals spend two or three months in the area most years. Our bay has a healthy population of ghost shrimp, but the large mammals find the best supplies for only a couple of weeks before they move on to other areas for more feeding.

There once were healthy populations of grays in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but the Atlantic population was hunted to extinction by the middle of the 18th century. Drilling for petroleum is not the first time human overconsumption of oil has caused environmental damage. In the Pacific, there are two populations of gray whales. The western North Pacific stock follow the coast of Asia while the eastern stock are the whales that migrate from Baja to the Bering Sea. Some of those eastern whales visit our bay. All gray whales were considered to be endangered, but the stock that follows the west coast of the United States was taken off the Endangered Species Act and is considered to be a healthy population with over 25,000 individuals. The western stock, in contrast, remains endangered with fewer than 200.

When it comes to seeing gray whales, we are in the right place, and their visit to our bay is a special treat.

We got our first glimpse of the whales for the year yesterday. We were walking along the berm around the bay, hoping to catch sight of them. We walked a mile or so and had turned around to walk back when we caught sight of the first blast. Once we saw it, we saw many others. Scientists have used drones to observe the whales. Mature adults dive nearly vertically in the shallow water. Sometimes their tails rise above the surface. As they go down to scoop the bottom, they exhale, making their bodies less buoyant. A ring of bubbles rises as the whale descends. After scooping the bottom, they rise to the surface, straining the shrimp as they blow out the sand while simultaneously exhaling through the two blowholes on the top of their head. The two towers of mist rising as they blow out blend into an oval that is easy to spot from a distance.

The main population of grays travels west of the San Juans, and most go up outside Vancouver Island. A dozen or so travel up the Strait of Georgia between us and the big island. Only a few individuals visit our bay. We can tell that there is more than one by the rhythm of their blows, but I don’t know how many there were in the small group we saw yesterday.

For someone who lived most of his life a thousand miles from the ocean, there is a lot to discover in our new home. We didn’t know about the grays and didn’t see them for the first years after we moved. Now we anticipate their return and look for them when spring comes. Since their lifespan is more than 50 years and individuals can live more than seventy, it is easy to imagine that we are being visited by old friends when they come to our bay to scoop shrimp.

When we lived in South Dakota, we didn’t plant our garden until after Memorial Day.. We knew spring blizzards were possible in the first half of May. We have been putting seeds in the ground and setting out bedding plants for weeks. The fruit trees are finished with blossoms, and the wisteria is showing off its best. The honeybees are out and about for nearly 12 hours a day now. It is a time of pleasant weather and lots of sunshine. I joke that the locals don’t tell visitors how pleasant the weather is here, preferring to talk about cloudy days and frequent rain showers to keep the beautiful weather all to themselves. May is a good time to visit the bay, whether you are a person searching for outdoor activities or a whale searching for shrimp after a long winter of short provisions. May is a good time for people who want to see whales to give us a visit and for us to be grateful for the visit of the whales.

After the death of their mother, my wife and her sisters helped their father with the task of moving out of the family house and preparing that house for sale. In the basement was a refrigerator that was more than 50 years old that worked like it had when it was new. The rubber door seal had been replaced, and repairs had been made when needed, but the machine ran faithfully for more than half a century.

After having owned a series of second-hand appliances in the early years of our marriage, Susan and I purchased a new refrigerator and a new stove when we moved into our home in Rapid City, South Dakota. 25 years later, the man who bought our house wanted to buy all of the appliances, so we sold them with the house. The refrigerator and stove were working well after 25 years of continual service.

When we purchased our current home, one of the selling points was that the house contained an updated kitchen with new stainless steel appliances. Since we had sold our appliances with our former home, it seemed like a good deal to move into a house with an updated kitchen. We thought that the appliances would serve us for decades as had been our experience.

This fall we will have owned this house for four years. We are not thinking of selling it, but if we did, we could list it as a home with updated appliances. The microwave oven and oven hood over the stove was the first of the “new” appliances to fail. It looked brand new when we hauled it away after installing a replacement. The broiler on the stove was the next appliance failure. I checked out the repair by watching YouTube and decided that it would be best to have an professional make the repair. Before the technician was dispatched, the company quoted us a price range in excess of half of the cost of a new appliance. Since it was a gas stove and we prefer electric, we decided to make the change and purchased a new stove. I asked the salesperson about the life expectancy of the new stove. He wouldn’t give me an estimate, but said that no modern appliances are designed to last 25 years as was the case with the ones we had purchased in Rapid City. We decided to purchase an extended warranty so that we were covered for the first five years of the new stove.

The refrigerator was the next to go. Once again, I turned to YouTube. This time I ordered parts online and made the repair according to the instructions. I had previously been successful replacing the door seals. The new parts, however, did not solve the problem with the ice maker and water dispensing function of the refrigerator. We turned off the water and decided we could live without those functions. We made ice cubes in trays in the freezer and got our water out of the tap. When the refrigerator failed to maintain temperature we called the appliance repair people who essentially said that the machine was “too old” to repair. They were uncertain whether or not they could get the parts and if they could they would not guarantee reliability after they were installed. The cost of a technician coming to assess the appliance and order the parts was high enough for us to decide it was time for a new refrigerator. Once again we went for the extended warranty.

I joked with the salesperson that for a kitchen with all updated appliances all we had left was the dishwasher that we purchased with the home. It should come as no surprise that it has now failed. I did the YouTube repair search once again, ordered parts, and made the replacements. It appears that the machine still needs another new part.

The good news is that two people don’t generate that many dishes. Even when we have our son and his family over to dinner, washing the dishes doesn’t take more than about 15 minutes. We have every intention of purchasing a new dishwasher, but we aren’t feeling any pressure. Shopping for appliances doesn’t seem fun to us any more. We know it will cost more than we anticipate and we know we’ll go for an extended warranty once again. However, with all of the other things going on in our lives, we’ll likely put off replacing the dish washer for a while.

So we’ll once again have all updated kitchen appliances. And for a short time, we’ll have warranties on all of them.

I’m pretty sure that manufacturers are capable of producing appliances that would last for 25 or even 50 years. However, they are in the business of selling new appliances and making ones that fail sooner rather than later means they can sell more appliances. As a consumer, however, I don’t find any pleasure in purchasing a kitchen appliance. We had a kitchen with updated appliances. Then we spent a lot of money for new appliances. We sill have a kitchen with updated appliances. There is nothing new and exciting in exchange for the money we have spent. Usually, I get a bit of pleasure out of a new purchase. Appliances don’t seem to give me any of that pleasure. I know that the new appliances don’t add value to our house were we to sell it. If, however, I thought I could purchase appliances that would last for the rest of the time I own the house, I might be happier about the expense.

I noticed the last time I used it that our Kitchen Aid mixer was squealing as if a bearing is going out. The mixer is over 50 years old. We got it when my mother moved from her home. I’m fairly sure that parts are still available for the machine. A new motor might cost $100 and a new gear box might be half that amount. The machine is simple to disassemble and replace parts. It has no computer in need of programming. The thing about the mixer is that the company still makes the same basic machine. We could get a new one for about $400. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that by spending $150 on the machine we have will make it last for another 25 years. That’s about how long it has been since I replaced the gear box last time.

For now, my plan is to put up with the noisy mixer until it fails completely. It gives me something to think about when I’m washing dishes.

I woke up yesterday to a picture-perfect day. The sky was cloudless and the sun was bright. I decided to begin with a bike ride. Looks can be deceiving. After riding a mile or so, I turned back and added another layer of clothing. It was colder than I had expected. With the right clothing, my bike ride was delightful. The water in the bay was calm, creating a mirror for the shoreline and the islands. The tide was in. There were a few other bicycle riders, runners, and pedestrians alongside the bay. When I reached one end of the bay, I rode up the hill and around the point for a view of the Cascades. The mountains appeared close in the clear skies, their snow-topped beauty reminding me how lucky I am to live here. Changing direction, I rode along the high bluffs with a view of the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve before circling back through Birch Bay State Park. The herons and seagulls wait until the tide is out to look for food along the shore, and the eagles have the shallow waters to themselves for fishing.

I ride a bike with an electric boost, so I am careful to be aware of pedestrians and those riding conventional bikes. I slow when approaching them, ring my bell if I need to get their attention, and give them space and the right of way when passing. I also make it a point to wave to everyone I see. As I rode yesterday morning, I was struck by how many people I met who didn’t wave back and who looked at me with gruff expressions. I try not to judge others. I have no way of knowing their stories. They may have good reasons for the expressions on their faces. Someone might be walking early in the morning, trying to process sad news. Maybe that person or someone they love has received a frightening medical diagnosis. Perhaps they have experienced recent grief and are walking to sort out their feelings. I don’t think I appear to be dangerous, but a woman walking alone might have been the victim of violence and is fearful of each adult male she meets. I can speculate, but there is no way I can know the stories of those people. I think of all of them as my neighbors and want to acknowledge their presence with a wave or a “good morning” greeting, but I don’t expect them to share my feelings.

After a good bike ride, I stopped at a local coffee shop. I’ve been stopping there a bit more frequently lately. Business is down for all of our local merchants. Canadians are staying on their side of the border. Crossings are down by nearly 50%, and local businesses are struggling. I don’t spend enough to make much of a difference, but I like supporting the shops in our village and getting to know more of the owners and clerks. After parking my bike, I entered the shop where a customer conversed with the barista. After a few minutes, she politely excused herself from the conversation and took my order. The switch allowed the other customer to talk to me, and after exchanging greetings and names, he had a lot to say.

While my coffee was being prepared, I learned that he tried retirement, but it didn't work for him. He returned to work, but I don’t know his current job. I did learn that his wife is retired after 20 years in the US Navy and 20 years as a professor at Western Washington University. I also know he has two children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, with one more on the way. I learned he grew up as the son of a US Army officer who taught at West Point before moving the family to Hawaii while on assignment. In Hawaii, the man met his wife and they go back to visit her family every year. I know that the pastor of his church keeps bees and that the man thinks that people today are unaware of what he sees as unmistakable signs of the end of time. I learned a few more details that I have forgotten. The point was that the man seemed to be lonely and wanted to tell me a lot. I hardly got a word in edgewise before he walked out the door. I took my coffee outside to sit quietly, looked out at the bay, and noticed that he had cornered another person in the parking lot and was talking animatedly.

When I returned my cup to the shop, the barista thanked me and said, “Thank you for rescuing me from him,” referring to the other customer. I didn’t see him as a threat, but I could understand how a young woman in her twenties could be looking for a way out of an extended conversation with an elder who seemed not to know that she had work to do other than talking to him. It is a big responsibility to open the coffee shop and serve the early customers before the other employees arrive an hour later.

As I rode my bicycle home, I reflected on the man in the coffee shop. As a minister, I have often avoided theological discussions with strangers. A topic like the vision of John in the Book of Revelations is complex, and I frequently choose to listen rather than launch into the history behind the book and how it fits into the broader pattern of Christian thinking. Unlike that person and others who share his viewpoint, I don’t go through life looking for signs of the Second Coming of Christ. I don’t interpret current affairs as the symbols in Revelation or as indications that the end of human history is at hand. I much prefer to look for signs of resurrection as I go through my days. I see the return of eagles after being threatened by pesticide use as a form of resurrection. I see the bright new day as a sign of rebirth. I see the season of spring as a reminder that death is not the end. I see the people I meet as witnesses to the strength and resilience of life.

I don’t always feel the need to speak to witness to the resurrection. Sometimes, I can make that witness by listening. Sometimes, I can listen to someone who needs to talk enough to give a young person the opportunity to do her job. Salvation takes many forms, and one lonely man isn’t enough to ruin a beautiful day.

When they were teens, we took our children to Washington, DC. It was part of what we considered a pilgrimage for them as they transitioned from youth to adulthood. We wanted them to see the place of the federal government of their country. We wanted them to experience the incredible wealth of information and memory of the National Mall museums. We wanted them to see the memorials first-hand. Our visit was incomplete. We only had so much time and so much energy. Our budget was limited. But we did see a lot. We rode to the top of the Washington Memorial Obelisk. We walked alongside the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial. We wandered through the Smithsonian Castle and the Air and Space Museum. We viewed the outside of the Capitol and the White House. We visited the National Zoo and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. We wanted our children to know our country's history and culture and have a sense of its place in the world.

It was a trip that reflected two visits to Washington, DC, that I had taken with my parents and siblings when I was growing up, one when I was six and the other when I was sixteen. On those trips, we had a bit of an insider’s view, as my mother’s sister lived nearby in Maryland and worked as a congressional aide for decades. She was an excellent tour guide when we came to the city.

The Holocaust Museum was a new site for me. It was founded after my childhood visits. It opened in 1993, so it was still a relatively new institution when we visited. It had already become an internationally recognized institution with over 2 million visits yearly. Our visit was slightly abbreviated due to a problem with the fire alarm system in the building, but in retrospect, we had taken in about as much as is possible in a single visit. The impact of the museum is so dramatic, and the emotions it invokes are so powerful that it may be best for people to experience it in reasonable doses, returning multiple times.

Visiting the museum was high on my list of priorities for our visit. Like many people my age, I began to realize the enormity of the Holocaust by reading The Diary of Anne Frank. That book raised some emotions because of Anne’s age and my age when I read it. It invited me to consider what it would be like to be in the circumstances of European Jews in the time of Hitler. The realities of the Holocaust are so horrible that they almost defy imagination. As I began to learn more about the murder of six million, one of my guides was the survivor novelist Elie Wiesel. Wiesel wrote more than just fiction; he became known for his novels and plays because of their emotional power and honest reporting of the impact of the Holocaust. As he said in the introduction to The Gates of the Forest, “Sometimes to tell the truth, you have to tell a story.”

My personal Holocaust education was enhanced by a visit to Dachau, one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany. It was also the longest-running camp, built initially to intern Hitler’s political opponents. Communists, social democrats, and dissidents were sentenced to the camp on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory in Bavaria. Its purpose was forced labor. The distinction of a concentration camp as opposed to a prison is that those interred there were not charged or convicted of a crime. They were denied due process. When the Nazi Party labeled all Jews, Romani, and others as criminals without evidence or trial, they became part of the population of the camp, living in squalid conditions in constant fear of brutal treatment including standing cells, floggings, pole hanging, and execution. During our visit, we peered into the crematorium and tried to understand the meaning of the death factory.

Elie Wiesel continued to write, and I continued to read. One of his novels that I have mulled over and over since I first read it is “The Forgotten,” published in 1992. It is the story of a father and son, Elhanan and Malkiel Rosenbaum. Elhanan has an incurable disease that causes him to lose his memory slowly. He struggles to tell his son his story before it is forgotten. Malkiel learns the truth about his father and is left struggling to deal with his past. The story presents the dilemma of every survivor generation. Those who have witnessed great evil resolve never to forget and never allow the world to forget the evil they have witnessed. But victims do not live forever. And as they face the reality of their mortality, they wonder if what has happened will be remembered.

We now find ourselves at a point in history where the last survivors of the Nazi concentration camps are coming to the end of their lives, and their deaths raise the question of whether or not the world will be able to remember.

While the current US president frequently declares support for the modern state of Israel, he seems to have forgotten the circumstances that led to the Holocaust. He has ordered mass deportations that have resulted in mass incarceration of people in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center without due process. He speaks of incarcerating his enemies and labels entire groups of people as enemies. For students of history, it is a frightening display of authoritarianism that has distinct parallels with the conditions that led up to the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, Israel continues a ground offensive to occupy Gaza indefinitely, without concern for the 2.1 million people who live there and who are dying in attacks. In addition, the infrastructure of the region has been destroyed, with hospitals and relief workers targeted. Survivors of the attacks die of starvation without access to food.

It is frightening when a US President seems to have forgotten what led to the Holocaust. It is alarming when the leadership of Israel appears willing to engage in perpetuating military action against a class of people distinguished in part by their religion. It feels as if the novel is coming to life as world leaders fail to wrestle with the horrors of the past.

The price of forgetting is new generations of trauma and suffering. May we renew our commitment never to forget before it is too late.

Last month, an internet service provider trenched a cable into the house at our son’s farm, and they were connected to high-speed internet. Previously, they had used a cell phone-based connection. The cellular system was slower than a fiber-optic connection. Their connection worked pretty well for their family. They were able to use video conferencing to connect with family. The children could connect to schooling and research resources with the family computer. Email exchanges worked well on their devices. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they could sometimes work from home. Our daughter-in-law is a private practice therapist, and she was able to conduct sessions from a private office at the farm over a secure network. The cellular connection was not quite as reliable for therapy as a direct connection, and most of the time, she continued to work from an office in town for remote therapy sessions.

However, as our son commented, the family has joined the early 1990s in connectivity technology. There is nothing technologically new about a fiber-optic cable that serves high-speed internet to the neighborhood and a cable connection to their home. Our home is in a subdivision, and we have multiple choices for high-speed internet connections. Such choices and high-speed internet are nothing new to us, however. We had multiple options and very high speeds in our South Dakota home before moving to the Pacific Northwest.

Our son’s home has only one choice regarding high-speed internet. Unlike many other neighborhoods, their rural location does not have enough customers to attract a second company. We have found that the ability to switch companies is essential to keeping costs in check. Each time we have high-speed internet, the company offers low prices initially, and prices go up over time. I keep track of the “new customer” prices of the competition and periodically call customer support at the company that provides our service. They will usually match the competition’s prices and lower our monthly bill. One time in South Dakota, I switched companies to reduce my costs.

It is hard to predict how we will connect to the Internet and how much speed we will need in the future. Technology changes, and our use of technology shifts as well. I often use my personal use of printed dictionaries and bible versions as an example. I always used to have a printed dictionary handy for my work. I kept a small collection of different bible versions to compare as I prepared. Once done by printed books, both jobs are now exclusively done with my devices these days. I use my phone for a dictionary, and I can quickly set up comparisons of selected bible versions on my computer. I still love printed books, and our home almost always has multiple library books and shelves of books we own. I can read books on a tablet computer and know how to access most books in electronic format through our public library, but I still prefer print.

All the fiber optic cable laid may one day be as useless as the miles of copper phone lines that once connected our homes. High-speed internet is available through satellite connections everywhere on the globe. Satellite connections are portable and can be used in recreational vehicles, boats, and aircraft. However, until recently, only one company monopolized satellite-based internet. Starlink, a system of satellites owned and controlled by SpaceX, an Elon Musk company, has been the only provider.

However, Amazon recently successfully launched 27 satellites in its Project Kuiper system. The satellites are the first of over three thousand that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit to create a global network. Amazon has a long way to go before it catches up with Starlink, but if it keeps up with production goals, customers will soon begin to stop counting satellites and begin switching companies. Increased competition should result in downward pressure on prices.

All of this comes as Elon Musk’s other companies have shown poor performance in 2025. Tesla's stock was down more than 30% in the first quarter. Sales are dwindling, primarily due to Musk and his political affiliations. It remains to be seen if Tesla can recover from its poor performance. The company has only succeeded in introducing one new model under Musk’s leadership, and that one, the Cybertruck, has been plagued with problems from body panels falling off to trailer hitches breaking in everyday use. While sales continue in the US, the trucks are not selling well in other countries. Musk’s participation in the company has always been financial. He purchased the right to take credit for the innovations of the company founders. Tesla's genuine innovations didn’t come from Musk.

There is no denying that SpaceX is currently leading in aerospace development, with hugely lucrative government contracts secured by Musk’s political connections. However, Musk’s failure to significantly decrease long-term government spending is becoming apparent. Many of the short-term savings are disappearing as the increased costs of replacing laid-off workers and the inability of government agencies to produce work in the face of irrational budget cuts are revealed. No-bid contracts, such as those enjoyed by SpaceX, will not deliver efficiency in government.

Now, SpaceX is beginning to feel pressured by Amazon's entry into the satellite internet business. Competition is so deeply ingrained in American capitalism that despite temporary setbacks and attempts at creating monopolies and destroying competition have, in the past, met with long-term failure. Recent court losses by Google exemplify the market’s limited appetite for monopolies.

I no longer need to be on the cutting edge of technology, and I have no plans to switch to a satellite connection anytime soon. However, I know I am not immune to the sweep of technology. Fortunately, competition is entering the field. Furthermore, an ever-increasing number of low-Earth orbit satellites will not solve connection issues. The region where communications satellites operate is already crowded. Discovering alternatives to simply launching more satellites will be important as technology progresses. I’m content to wait and watch, hoping that competition will deliver better service at a more reasonable price.

As we sat down to dinner last night, our grandchildren all knew the ritual at our house. We held hands and said together our grace. Our grandchildren know only one prayer for grace at our house. It is a prayer that was used in my house when I was growing up:

We thank thee, Lord, for happy hearts
for rain and sunny weather
We thank thee, Lord, for this our food
and that we are together!
Amen

When we say “Amen,” we raise our hands before letting go.

When our children were growing up, we said a variety of prayers. Sometimes we would sing our thanks with songs we learned at camp. Sometimes an individual would offer thanks, and other times we would say or sing together. After our children grew up and moved out of our home, the prayer that includes the line, “And that we are together,” became especially meaningful, and the tradition of saying it when we are all together began. Before they had fully mastered speech, our grandchildren could understand the ritual of holding hands and raising them at the end of the prayer to say “Amen!” together.

I don’t know the origins of the prayer, but I know it was used when we got together with aunts and uncles and cousins when I was growing up. I suspect that because of the use of the word “Lord,” it may go back at least one more generation.

Rituals around meals and eating have been around as long as humans have gathered to share food. Some of those rituals come and go. Others last for many generations.

Today, I get to talk with children about special meals and rituals around eating. The Church School Director at our church has moved on to another job, and volunteers from the congregation are leading the church school while searching for a new director. I was quick to sign up for a week. Susan and I shared the job for two years as the congregation emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns. I enjoy working with the children. Our church does not have a graded church school. The numbers are small enough that all ages are together in a “one-room schoolhouse” model. Older children assist younger children. Stories and lessons are planned to provide learning for multiple ages.

Our congregation celebrates Communion on the first Sunday of each month, so today is a day for that celebration. The children will start their time in worship with all ages and go to church school after a special children’s message. Most Sundays, they do not return to the worship service and are reunited with their families during the fellowship hour following worship. On Communion Sundays, they go briefly to class during the sermon and return to the sanctuary for Communion. It is our tradition to have children process with the bread and juice as the congregation sings a song about Communion:

Come, let us bring the warm and fragrant bread
given here so that all people might be fed.
Come, let us bring the sweet, abundant wine
given here so that all may taste the joy divine.

For the children’s lesson today, we will talk about special meals. They will be invited to share what foods their families share at special times. That will allow me to talk about some of the special meals in the Bible, such as the feast that was given when the prodigal son returned home, and the Passover meal that Jesus shared with the disciples. We’ll taste a few traditional Passover foods with salt water, haroseth, matzos, and grape juice. I’ll read to them from The Book of Belonging about Jesus and the institution of communion. We’ll talk about the table prayers the children use in their homes. I’ll tell the story of table grace at our house and teach them our table prayer.

I’ve gathered the necessary resources, and Susan will help me lead the children. We’ll go to church early to prepare the space. We’ll have to be well prepared because our time will be short, and we’ll have to be ready to participate in the communion procession together. Whenever I teach children, I ensure I have plenty of activities, so I’ll have more than we can do in our time.

Communion is a particularly engaging lesson because it is a sacrament that we repeat over and over throughout our lives. I remember communion in my home church as a child, communion in chapel in college, communion with classmates in seminary, communion in each of the congregations I have served. I have celebrated communion at church camp, in homes, and in hospital rooms. Each time we celebrate, my mind is flooded with memories; I can picture faces. In the institution of communion, Jesus asks his disciples to “Do this in remembrance.” Memory is an integral part of our sacramental meal.

Part of the way we establish memories for children is through repetition. The children will already know a lot about communion because we share it monthly. They will be able to talk about the bread and juice of communion from their memories. Just like our grandchildren who have learned the table grace through repetition, the church's children learn about communion by being invited to share each time we celebrate as a whole congregation.

One of the joyous surprises about being retired is how I often wake up excited about the coming day's events. When I was a college student and taught Sunday School in our church, I couldn’t understand that I would see teaching as a privilege a half century later. Part of what makes it so fun and exciting is that I’ve been doing it all my life. We learn through repetition, piling memory upon memory.

I won’t have time to tell the children all my communion stories. Instead, we’ll be content to add one more memory to their collection as we thank God we are together.

Those who study and work to prevent suicide have long known that suicide deaths come in clusters. Multiple deaths may occur within a relatively short period in a particular area. When I served as a Local Outreach to Survivors of Suicide (LOSS) team with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, there were two distinct types of suicide clusters. The first were clusters where the victims were teens. The Front Porch Coalition was formed, in part, as a response to a cluster of teen suicides. All of the victims went to the same high school, and there were multiple suicides within a short time frame. Some of those who died had known those who had previously died, but some of them had no direct contact with previous victims. We couldn't determine if they shared common causes, as the cause of a suicide death is often obscured. Critical evidence dies with the victim.

What we learned by bringing experts in to advise us and carefully observing the victims and the response of their loved ones is that education and intervention can have a significant impact on reducing teen suicides. We used an international suicide prevention training program, Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). Exposing teens to a half-day training and giving them opportunities to practice skills through role-play scenarios helped to reduce death by suicide among their peers. We learned to identify natural helpers among the students. Some students were more likely to be approached by teens in distress. Giving those students additional skills helped to reduce the rate of teen suicide.

With teens, the delay of a suicide is often the prevention of a suicide. Teens’ prefrontal cortices are not fully formed, and teens have less impulse control. Interrupting the impulse cycle can be life-saving. However, this knowledge and our efforts were insufficient to prevent additional deaths. Teen suicide rates rose by 62% between 2007 and 2021. By 2022, suicide was the second leading cause of death for individuals aged 10 - 14 years in the United States. One survey found that nearly a quarter of teens have seriously considered attempting suicide, and 10% had made at least one serious attempt in the previous year.

There are many factors in the rise of teen suicides. Some are shared with other countries. Mental health conditions, substance use, family factors, and bullying occur in countries around the world. LGBTQ+ youth are at higher risk for suicide attempts and ideation. That risk is lower in communities where there is increased visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ persons. The overwhelming distinction in youth suicide in the United States, however, is access to means. United States youth have easier access to firearms than youth in other countries. Access to lethal means increased risk.

The second type of suicide cluster that we observed was a cluster among late middle-aged and early retirement men. The likelihood of suicide increased when financial stress was part of the scenario. Men who had suffered financial setbacks later in their careers were more likely to die by suicide. The overwhelming majority of adult male suicides involved firearms. Access to and training in the use of firearms is common among US males. Around 185 active duty law enforcement officers die by suicide each year in the US. Suicide rates are also high among active duty military personnel.

Finding methods for the prevention of suicide among adult males has proven to be a considerable challenge. Although ASIST training can help, it is still not common among adult males who resist such training when offered. There is also the problem of the challenge of obtaining reliable data on death by suicide. Suicide among adults is underreported. Deaths by suicide are often recorded as accidents. Investigators frequently cannot make a judgment of whether death with a hunting weapon was suicide or an accident. A similar challenge applies to drug overdose deaths. There are many cases where it is not possible to tell if the overdose was accidental or intentional.

In South Dakota, where I served, the rate of death by suicide in all age groups is roughly twice the national rate. Death by suicide is more common in rural and isolated areas. This may be due to a lack of mental health services in rural areas.

Although I no longer serve as a suicide first responder, paying attention to deaths by suicide and looking for clusters has become second nature for me. When I become aware of a suicide death, I look for factors that might connect that death with others. The records of the time when I served were all kept by official agencies. I have not retained sensitive information, so I cannot make formal comparisons. Still, I do have a general sense of trends in our community and country based on news stories and other public information I read.

It seems to me that one distinction between clusters of teen deaths and those among older males is that teens often have little experience with death and grief. It looks as if there are cases where the teen isn’t fully aware of the finality of death. I noticed a big difference between reservation youth and upper-middle-class white youth in South Dakota. Reservation teens have attended many funerals and have had a lot of exposure to death. In contrast, some of the white youth we served had never attended a funeral at all. Few had experienced the death of a loved one. Teens are exploring and learning about many things, and death is one of the learnings that comes from experience as much as from theoretical learning.

I frequently ponder a line from the 90th Psalm: “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Psalm 90:12). Wisdom comes, at least in part, from understanding that our time on earth is limited. We all will one day die. Awareness of that reality is part of gaining the wisdom to treasure our time.

I still often wear a sweatshirt that I received for my service with the LOSS team. The back says, “Suicide Prevention Awareness: supporting the fighters, admiring the survivors, honoring the taken and. . . never giving up hope.” May I gain and share the wisdom of never giving up hope in each relationship I share.

Lapu Lapu was an indigenous chief of Mactan, an island in the Philippines. In 1521, he and his supporters defeated Spanish forces led by Ferdinand Magellan at the Battle of Mactan. Their victory delayed the Spanish occupation of the region for more than 40 years. In the contemporary Philippines, he is considered a hero. Monuments in his honor are located around the country. Several governmental organizations, including the national police service, use his image on their seals. An annual festival is held in his memory and honor.

People from the Philippines have migrated to several countries around the world. In 1982 and 1983, I became involved in that migration in a tiny way. I was the chair of the Committee on Ministry of what then was called the North Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ. Because of historical ties with churches of the Evangelical and Reformed Synod of North America, our conference had member congregations in Manitoba and Alberta in Canada. I traveled to visit those congregations as part of my committee work. One of our churches, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was made up mostly of first and second-generation German immigrants to Canada. As they aged, the congregation got smaller and smaller.

Meanwhile, an influx of Filipino people to Winnipeg created a need for a congregation to serve them. We worked with the Filipino immigrants to form the First Filipino Church of Winnipeg. Initially, they used the building of the German congregation through an arrangement that we worked out. The Filipino congregation called a pastor who spoke their language and immigrated from the Philippines. Our conference, recognized as an official church body in Canada, sponsored the pastor.

We adopted our daughter in the fall of 1983 and took our children to Winnipeg to celebrate the charter of First Filipino Church and its partnership with the German congregation. The festival included food, culture, prayer, and singing.

Now, more than 4 decades later, we live on the border of British Columbia, where Filipinos form one of the largest immigrant groups in the province. Each spring, the Filipino community in Vancouver holds a Lapu Lapu festival with a street fair, food, singing, and dancing. More than 25,000 people were participating in the festival this year. Suddenly, the festival was interrupted by a tragedy. Last Saturday at about 8:15 in the evening, a single vehicle, with one occupant, was driven into the midst of the festival on East 43rd Avenue in South Vancouver. The car went through the street, striking festival goers. At least 11 people were killed and dozens were injured. Some of the wounded have been released from the hospital. However, thirteen are still hospitalized, with five in critical condition. Two others are listed in serious condition, one of them a 22-month-old baby.

Festival goers detained the vehicle's driver until the police arrived, and he was taken into custody. The suspect, Kai-Ji Adam Lo, has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder, and further charges are anticipated. According to the Vancouver police, the evidence gathered so far does not indicate that it was an act of terrorism. Vancouver mayor Ken Sim stated that “mental health appears to be the underlying issue.” The provincial health ministry said that Lo had been under the care of a mental health team before the attack, but that he gave no indication of violence.

The response to the tragedy in Canada is quite different from the responses we have seen to attacks in the United States. The focus has been on care for the victims. Because many of the victims worked in health care, including staffing long-term care facilities, other health care workers are donating a day’s labor so that victims can take time off from work with pay.

Mark Carney rearranged his schedule on the eve of the national election to come to Vancouver and be with the Filipino community. A resource center for victims was set up near the site of the attack and is operating from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Over 150 people came to the center in its first 36 hours of operation. Donations have been poured in from across Canada in support of victims, and more than $2 million has been contributed so far.

Flags have been lowered to half staff, and today has been designated as an official day of remembrance and mourning for the victims of the tragedy. In addition to announcing the day of remembrance and mourning, BC Premier David Eby announced that an independent commission will be created to establish guidelines on best practices for public events and festivals. In addition, he has said he intends to initiate a review of communications between police and health care professionals aimed at preventing future tragedies with increased mental health services. He is urging the legislature to consider making it legal to detain a person involuntarily in inpatient care when their mental health has deteriorated.

The story of one victim's family has touched the hearts of many. Three members of the Le family died. Katie Le, age five, was the youngest person to die in the attack. She was killed along with her father, Richard Le, and her mother, Lin Huang. Her 16-year-old brother, Andy, stayed home from the festival to do homework and is the family’s sole survivor. A GoFundMe account was set up for his support. Yesterday, Andy Le issued a statement that said in part, “I truly appreciate each and every one of you, and I know that many other families are hurting too.” He announced that he is donating $266,000 from his GoFundMe account to the other victims of the attack. He concluded, “I want to continue living with my grandparents who have helped raise me, and truly love me. Thank you all so much for your support.”

Sudden and traumatic loss creates scars that do not heal. Grieving families will never fully recover from this attack. The damage done by the driver of the car is permanent and irreversible. I join with the Canadian Filipino community in shock, grief, and mourning. At the same time, I celebrate the generosity and resilience of the victims and the people of British Columbia. I am proud to be their neighbor and will continue to visit their city often, feeling privileged to witness the healing process.

If we look across Boundary Bay, it is easy to see the community of White Rock, British Columbia. Yesterday, we decided to grab our passports and drive across the border to walk along the promenade and to the end of the White Rock Pier, which locals claim is the longest pier in British Columbia. The weather was just right for a stroll with blue skies, warm temperatures, and a light breeze. White Rock got its name from a giant 486-ton granite boulder on the beach. The large white rock stands out so much that it was used as a navigational aid by 19th-century sailors. Geologists call the rock a glacial erratic, which means it was transported by a glacier and deposited in its current location. The rock was believed to be carried south during the last ice age and deposited on the shore as the glaciers retreated.

A Semiahmoo First Nation legend says the rock was thrown across the water from Vancouver Island. The Semiahmoo call the rock P’Quals. The story of P’Quals is about a son of a sea god who fell in love with a woman who lived on the island. However, marriages between gods and humans were not permitted. Empowered by love, the young man picked up the huge rock and hurled it as far as he could, pledging that wherever it landed, he and his beloved would form a new community where they could marry and live. The rock landed right on the shore where the sea meets the land, making it a desirable location for a community.

Its current location is a few yards from where it stood for centuries. The rock's original location was in the path of the railroad. City leaders proposed moving the rock to the center of the town as a tourist attraction, but moving the rock that distance proved impossible. So, it was slid just enough to allow the tracks to be built and trains to pass safely.

White is not the natural color of the rock. There are many other glacial erratics around Drayton Harbor and Boundary Bay, though none nearly as large as White Rock. Most of them are dark gray. The ones regularly covered by sea water are adorned with seaweed when the tide is out. The giant rock is covered in guano from seabirds that eat a diet of shellfish. Layers upon layers of white guano covered the rock, giving it the distinctive white appearance that made it visible from miles out at sea. It was a landmark that was easily recognizable, whether approaching from land or sea.

According to a marker near the rock, a “mischief-maker” painted it black during the night in March 1950. The act prompted a community picnic to clean and paint the rock. The rock has been vandalized and painted black on other occasions, most recently in September 2020, when it was painted black with the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in white over the black. According to a Wikipedia article, city staff keep the rock white by periodically repainting it.

A bald eagle was perched atop a tower at the end of the pier. The bird might be one of the eagles we routinely see perched on a snag on Semiahmoo Spit on the American side of the bay. We joked that it was in Canada as part of an exchange program that allowed Canada geese to spend time on our side of the boundary. Perhaps the eagles switch places occasionally, given that it is currently an onerous task to defend freedom in the United States. After the Canadian national elections this week, the task of defending freedom in Canada seems like a much easier task than under the authoritarian regime in Washington, DC.

After walking on a warm spring day, some ice cream seemed in order, and White Rock is a good place to get ice cream. Every other storefront across from the promenade features ice cream. Parlors are boasting Italian ice cream and German ice cream. Another store boasts “nearly 50 flavors.” We chose Angel’s Ice Cream. We liked the name and read on a poster outside the store that it was voted “best ice cream.” We always find “best” titles to be a bit silly. Who voted? The owners and employees might have all voted the place to have the best ice cream. Other stores might have different opinions about whose ice cream is best. However, having tasted the ice cream at Angel’s, I find it excellent and the best I had yesterday.

It was a pleasant day with the only challenge being the long lines to return to the US. Going into Canada, there were no lines, and it took us just a couple of minutes to clear customs. Returning to the US, only three lanes were open at the 3rd busiest crossing between the two countries, and the lanes were moving very slowly. About a quarter of the cars entering had to open doors and trunks to allow the officer to take a look. After waiting in slow-moving lines for about 45 minutes, we passed through customs easily, and the officer asked us only one question: “Where have you been in Canada?” Assuming he meant where we had gone on this trip, we answered “White Rock,” which seemed to satisfy him, and we were waved through in just a minute or so. The cars behind us stretched for a mile, and still there were no lines of vehicles wanting to enter Canada.

NEXUS is a joint program of the U.S. and Canada that expedites border crossing. We could apply and become trusted travelers, allowing us to use the speedy lanes at the border and airports. We are considering applying for the card. The location of the interviews for US citizens is in our community and very convenient for us. We plan to continue to cross the border despite increased tensions. We are grateful to live on a peaceful border and appreciate our neighbors in Canada. British Columbia has many beautiful places to visit. And the ice cream is delicious.