THE SIMPLEST THINGS

Poets notice the simplest things
and tell us how to look at them.
A friend can do that with an idea...
can say, “Here’s what I mean...”
and suddenly the notion is clearer.

I hadn’t thought about Henry Adams
for months... maybe even years
until my friend said what Adams said
about Mont St-Michel and I saw things
I hadn’t seen years ago looking at it
across the bay when I was there...

which is what friends are for...
to make the world clearer and,
dare I say, dearer... so later
riding back home close to earth
I saw grass and spiders and leaves
and flowers and, of course, you.

One of the very good things about journaling is that the journalist (I'm a bit self-conscious with the word to describe myself, but I think journaler may not even be a word.) doesn't have any rules except the ones that are self-imposed... The journal writing today has nothing to do with today's photo du jour, except for my guessing that Dave Ehrhardt holds my Burmese Hero in high regard, as I do.
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Occasionally I attend a very private celebration, not an event exactly but a happening; and what happens at these affairs is so private that I am on these occasions the only one present. The happening may be nothing more than a walk or a sit or a stare into the sunset with all the rhetoric delivered inside my head... to me from me. Today I pay homage to DAW AUNG SAN SUU KYI, one of the heroes of my generation... well, that’s a bit of a stretch. She actually belongs to the generation moving up through time after me... and at age seventy-five, I add quickly with feeling that she is only sixty-five this week as she is finally permitted to walk free from house arrest in her native Myanmar.

I celebrate because she doesn’t cut and run from challenges to democracy in her own country. She doesn’t simply pack up and go when civil rights and human rights are denied and violated in her country. I know how strong the impulse is to get out, just to go away to some other place. I did it once. I ran away to another country. JFK and RFK and MLK, heroes of my youth, had been killed in my own country, and a governor had been elected in my state who, in his first week in office, closed all the mental health out-patient clinics in California which resulted directly in the suicide of a bright student in the school where I was teaching. He should have lived. He would be fifty-eight-years-old now. Looking back on that time, I have no regrets nor any remorse about leaving my country because that wouldn’t change anything in the past, and wouldn’t make the present or future any brighter. I have heard myself saying lately that if some absurd political wind blows someone like Sarah Palin into the White House, I couldn’t stand it. And then I think of Mrs. Ang San Suu Kyi and I am embarrassed. She has family, grown children, in England where she could be comforted and comfortable. She has a brother in San Diego. I think I could arrange a hero’s welcome if she were to relocate to our city; but she won’t come. She has work to do in Myanmar. She faces the possibility of the return to house arrest, but she will do what she has to do.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s father Aung San, a general in the Burmese Army negotiated Burma’s independence from the British Empire in 1947 and was later assassinated by a faction in the army. She had two brothers, one of whom died at age eight and the older brother who emigrated to San Diego and became a U.S. citizen. Suu Kyi, a Theravada Buddhist, was educated in Methodist English High School in Rangoon. Her mother became a significant political figure in the newly formed Burmese government. Suu Kyi followed her mother out of the country when she was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960. Suu Kyi was educated after high school at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, followed eventually by a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science . She married Dr. Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture, and they had two sons, Alexander and Kim, both British citizens. She went back to Burma when her mother became ill. Su Kyi was put under house arrest because her advocacy for democracy was a threat to the military junta in power. During her house arrest her husband and sons were refused permission to visit her. Her husband died in 1999 on his 53rd birthday of prostate cancer never having been permitted to enter Burma to visit his wife. While under house arrest she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

You may remember Cyclone Nargis in 2008. It blew the roof off the delapidated lake residence where she lived under house arrest, and she lived with candles for light at night until she was given permission to have repairs made in 2009. She wasn’t allowed to have a generator, but apparently that problem was solved about a year before her release from house arrest.

...and all those years, I have been free to live as I wish in our amazing country and to visit almost any other place in the world that I wish to go. I am in awe of this diminutive woman who stands up to despots boldly and with dignity. So today, November 14th, her first full day of freedom is Aung San Suu Kyi Day in my calendar.

I don't have to go out looking for BARK photographs. They find me. Riding or walking around San Diego, I see them waiting in every park, beside every road, and standing sentinel in yards all over the city. My friend Ben Christensen said it well: "Metaphorically, "bark" is used (in the BARK PROJECT) to signify the humane protection of victimized people, just as the bark of a tree protects the tree, itself. In another sense, "bark" is used as a "shout out" to say that there are people who are concerned about the bullying situation and are willing to "bark" about it, much like a barking dog warns intruders that they are stepping over the line."

We'll be launching the BARK PROJECT on the WEB sometime soon. The readers of this BLOG will be the first to know.This young silk floss tree and its companion trees between the two buildings of Casa del Prado in Balboa Park seem to keep watch over a small courtyard. This one has eyes...thorns at its base for additional protection.This hairy palm stands with three others over near the House of Botany.

I went down to the Harbor this afternoon to see the now-famous cruise ship, Carnival Splendor. The big, beautiful ship doesn’t look at all as if anything is wrong, but the whole world knows about the fire in her engine room off the coast of Mexico with 3200 passengers and a full crew stopped dead in the water for three days... not exactly a Gilligan’s Island scenario.

I’m guessing reactions of the people getting off the boat fall neatly into two groups, those for whom the glass is always half full and those for whom it is always half empty. One woman who was interviewed yesterday after the ship limped into dock exclaimed, “Wow! What an adventure!” A man interviewed by the same reporter said he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go on a cruise again. I hope always to be in the woman’s glass-half-full group. If the guy still isn’t sure if he wants another cruise when he gets the full refund and the voucher for another cruise, I’d be glad to congratulate him on his refund and take the trip for him.
Celebrity Spirit

These small white flowers burst out of dry sticks all over out hillside every year in November. I'm guessing they are blooming earlier but aren't noticed because of leaves. Now they seem to be everywhere. Wildly alive, they are no larger than a quarter.Photoshopped to be a dry brush painting. Click on the images to see them larger.

ANGER IS NOT AN ARGUMENT” --Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

A couple of my friends have been waiting for me to say kind, affirming words about an American Conservative Republican. Well here goes. My hat is off to Daniel Webster, not the newly elected Republican Daniel Webster from Florida, but to the famous one who served ten years in the House of Representatives (New Hampshire) and nineteen years in the Senate (Massachusetts). He also served as Secretary of State for three presidents. As philosopher, statesman, and orator he said many things that bear quoting today... especially relevant in the aftermath of the recent elections. He made a lot of people mad, especially when he spoke as an abolitionist during the long long run-up to the Civil War that almost destroyed our country. And when people get mad, they sometimes mistake their anger for strategy or plan or argument.

Another American whom I have always liked is Mark Twain. What he said about anger also make good sense. “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” For months before the recent election I received a steady stream of e-mail messages from a nephew who wanted me to know that he and his friends “are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.” They hate President Barak Obama, and their anger is enough. Like immature children, they think a tantrum is enough. They expect their anger to be enough to persuade newly elected Tea Party legislators to resist any program that has the approval of the President.

David and I met for coffee this morning near Fenton Parkway where Mark Twain hangs out on a bench by a neat fountain. Both he and David were were pretty mellow today... REMINDER: BARK

Some buildings, like some people, make the world seem better just by being there. On my early morning bicycle ride today I climbed the steep back road to the center of the University of San Diego Campus. I stopped between The Church of the Immaculata and the University’s administrative center and let the beauty of the place and the warmth of the early morning light surround me. Nothing was happening. No one spoke to me. Daily mass wasn’t going to begin for another half hour. Although I worship on Sundays at a Methodist Church, the Catholic Basilica in the middle of the USD campus speaks to me and comforts me for reasons I can’t begin to explain... in much the same way that European churches do. They make me feel connected to something intangible but critically important. Both my grandmothers had the same effect on me.

So today, I am taking time to celebrate the ephemeral but necessary something that sometimes touches me fleetingly and makes me think I should try to be better today than I was yesterday... better to my family... better to my neighbors... better even to strangers whom I shall never really know.The Center for Peach and Justice.Saint Francis.

Back on August 10 of this year, Johann Hari, columnist for the London Independent wrote a disturbing piece which she called “The Slow, Whining Death of British Christianity.” I haven’t asked her permission to copy her essay to my BLOG, but there were no warnings on her paper that said I couldn’t do it. Most of the stuff in the Blogosphere as cogent as Ms. Hari’s writing gets passed around to thoughtful people... and the readers of my BLOG are thoughtful.
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“And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. My country, Britain, is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to a 2006 Guardian/ICM poll, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift -- the separation of church and state Americans have known for centuries -- is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day in Britain. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by the taxpayer, are disfiguring Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just like me. A five-year-old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

So why keep them? Their defenders say these schools perform better in exams -- and at first glance, it seems to be true. On average, they get higher grades. But look again. A number of studies, including by the conservative think thank Civitas, have blown a hole in this claim. They have proven that faith schools systematically screen out children who will be harder to teach: children from poor families, and less bright children. Once you look at how much a school improves the pupils it actually admits, the only real measure of a school's success, it turns out faith schools do less well than other schools - which isn't surprising given they waste so much time teaching them crazy nonsense like Virgin births and Noah's Ark. The British people instinctively know all this: 64 percent want every state school to be neutral when it comes to religion.

Special rights for the religious don't stop at the school gates. They automatically get 26 unelected bishops in the House of Lords. Public broadcasters are required by law to give them large amounts of money and time to screen religious propaganda. Jews and Muslims are allowed to ignore the laws on animal cruelty and engage in the barbaric practice of slitting the throats of live animals without numbing them in order to create kosher and halal meat.

And it seems that, in crucial cases, religious figures are virtually exempted from the law. There is now overwhelming evidence that Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope, was involved for over twenty years in an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children by priests in his Church. (Check out the superb edition of the BBC's Panorama, 'Sex Crimes and the Vatican', for the evidence.) But when he arrives in Britain in September, our politicians will fawn over him, rather than dialing 999.

Given all this unearned privilege, how can Christians claim they are in fact being "persecuted"? Here are the cases they offer as "proof". A nurse called Shirley Chaplin turned up to work wearing a crucifix around her neck. Her hospital told her that they were worried the elderly and confused patients she worked with could grab at it, so they said she could pin the crucifix to her uniform instead if she liked. That's it. That's their cause celebre. Oh, and a woman called Theresa Davies who worked in a registry office, but refused to perform civil partnerships for gay couples, so... she was moved to working on reception.

In response, Carey and the CofE demand Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public -- and that any case where a Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court of "sensitive" Christians. If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975, the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed their mind the day the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be "Mormonophobia" to object?

When Lord Chief Justice Laws, who is a Christian himself, ruled the exemptions demanded by Carey would be "irrational, divisive, and arbitrary", he threw an extraordinary tantrum and said Christians might begin to engage in "civil unrest". When I saw Carey make these threats on television, red-faced and rageful, it made me think of a nasty child in the playground who had been beating up the gay kids and spitting at the girls for years and is finally told to stop - only to start bawling that he's the one who is being picked on.

As their dusty Churches crumble because nobody wants to go there, the few remaining Christians in Britain will only become more angry and uncomprehending. Let them. We can't stop this hysterical toy-tossing stop us from turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is granted special rights just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible supernatural being. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Holy Lamb of God to carve into kebabs - it's our new national dish. Amen, and hallelujah.”
---Johann Hari

WHICH AMERICANS SHOULD GET HEALTH CARE

Leaders of the new majority in Congress have announced their determination to undo recently enacted legislation which makes adequate health care available to all American citizens, a program they call Obamacare. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky and Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia in the House have issued declarations which are equivalent to the famous mythical response to the plight of hungry people of France, “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.” Let them eat cake. Their determination to destroy the health care program takes second place only to their vow to keep the president from being elected to a second term.

In 1945 President Harry Truman, with a Republican House and a Republican Senate tried to establish a national health insurance plan but was stopped by opponents who warned of the dangers of “socialized medicine.” Truman backed off, but some people in government didn’t give up on the idea. Administrators within the Social Security system worked to develop a plan aimed at insuring Social Security beneficiaries, but it wasn’t until 1965 during President Lyndon John’s administration that Medicare and Medicaid programs were signed into law. Former President Harry Truman was the first to enroll in Medicare.

Many Americans don’t seem to know that even before the enactment last year of the Healthcare legislation by Congress, Americans who had worked at least forty quarters, paying into the Social Security Program, have been eligible under Medicare for considerable financial help in paying for medical treatment of conditions related to catastrophic illnesses such as polio or kidney failure. For example almost all dialysis or kidney transplant patients are eligible for Medicare. There are two parts to Medicare: Part A (or Hospital Insurance) and Part B (or Medical Insurance). Part A pays for most costs of being in the hospital. Part B pays 80% of dialysis costs, doctor bills, and other outpatient services. Even the most rigidly resistant legislators in fights to avoid “socialized medicine” couldn’t find a connection between deadbeats and kidney failure. Few ten-year-old American kids who developed kidney failure were fortunate enough to live in families who could even begin to pay for medical care, so we finally got some help for some people. Cancers apparently weren’t catastrophic enough... neither were disfiguring accidents and diseases. Even for people who were financially able to buy health insurance, a precondition was covered in most policies. The new healthcare program won’t allow insurance companies to refuse to insure people who are already sick. President Obama wants all Americans to have access to care when they are sick. So do I.

You know how when we were children we could look at clouds and see all kinds of fantastic things. I’m still doing it, but now it’s more trees than clouds. Until a few weeks ago I hadn’t bothered to notice that absolutely every tree in the world is different from every other tree... and the bark is like fingerprints on people, only far more interesting. The two BARK images today are from the parking lot at the Mission Valley Library next to the Fenton Parkway Trolley Station.

Stay tuned for information about the BARK Project. While you’re waiting think about this: Different is good. It’s nature’s way. There are no two trees in the world exactly alike... no two mountains... no two rivers... no two people. Celebrate difference. Be glad.

In Spite of Everything... Yes!

Yesterday and the day before and the day before that I was definitely feeling down and discouraged that the world had taken another turn for the worse: a storm was bearing down on the people of Haiti hunkered down in their tents... Chaldean Christians had been brutally massacred in a Bagdad church... Three San Diego Somali immigrants, one of them an imam, sent money to help Al Shabab continue terror attacks in Somalia... Another teenager killed herself because she couldn’t take the abuse she got at school and on Facebook for being lesbian. A good policeman was killed in my own city... and on and on the bad news comes... but in spite of everything, I believe:

Yes we can find a way to provide shelter for the homeless and at the same time keep our own good homes. We can find jobs for everyone who wants to work and still keep our own good jobs and our own safe retirement. Yes, we can find a way for hungry people to get food and still have the wonderful breakfasts, lunches and dinners that we enjoy every day. Yes, we can provide medical care for people who are poor and sick and still get the care we need for our own illnesses and the illnesses of the people we love. Yes, we can see that every child has the opportunity to learn in a good, safe school and still send our own kids and grandchildren to whichever schools we choose. Yes, we can comfort bullied and beaten people, and we can help them heal without losing any of the safety and comfort we and our families enjoy in our own places in the world. Yes, we can find ways to help bullies learn not to do harm to others without resorting to behaviors that demean and damage them. Yes, we can affirm people whose sexual orientation is different from our own without losing or damaging our own secure marriages and love relationships. Yes, we can affirm people of religious faiths different from our own without giving up any of our own customs of worship.

Yes! We can!

Да! Мы можем!

Ja! Wir Können!

¡Sí! ¡Podemos!

Oui ! Nous pouvons !

نعم! يمكننا!

In Spite of Everything... Yes!

We can continue to believe in the America Emma Lazarus dreamed about in 1883 when she wrote her tribute to The Statue of Liberty and to America. We can still be what she dreamed we would become... without losing anything.

The New Colossus

Not like brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

THE WAY I SEE IT...
OURS IS BECOMING AN UNCIVIL SOCIETY?

I constantly see urban landscapes marred by taggers who have no compunction against leaving scars on the city and walking away from the mess. They leave a mess for somebody else to clean up. It reminds me of another kind of mess a couple of years ago that was left for a bright, energetic, open -hearted and open-minded young president to clean up. I like Barack Obama. He is an intelligent, civil man. He is one of us. It worries me to hear his political enemies like Mitch McConnel declare that their first goal is to see that President Obama is kicked out of office two years from now at the end of his first term... But first priority! I can understand Republicans wanting a Republican in the office... but I’d like hear McConnell and Boehner say something about bipartisan cooperation with the Obama Administration to help the nation extract itself from wars begun by the former administration... and to begin reasonable recovery from the tremendous cost in money and loss of lives that those two wars have cost.

Listening to the Tea Party leaders crowing yesterday and today over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, I kept waiting to hear about their plan for addressing what’s left of the mess left to the Obama Administration two short years ago by the eight year administration of George W. Bush. In yesterday’s crowing there was no acknowledgement that the economic house of cards had begun to fall in the last months of the President Bush’s second term of office. Nothing is being said about the slow but sure recovery from the worst recession in years. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself not a card-carrying Tea Partier, is still the leader of a minority in the Senate; but he insists that “the American people” have spoken, and that Republicans will take immediate action in response to “the people’s” demand for smaller government, lower taxes, the abolition of the recently established Health Care program, the protection of American families and the American military from homosexuals, and finally the expulsion from the People’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue a person who, according to many Tea Party people, may not even be a legitimate American citizen.

I am waiting to hear Tea Party plans for making life better for Americans. What about health care? What about unemployment? What about the continuing outrageous practices of unscrupulous movers and shakers on Wall Street and in financial institutions all over American who brought us to the meltdown of 2008? What about the shrinking middle class and the growing group of Americans living in poverty while the richest segment of the population grows larger and wealthier? What is the party of NO’S plan “to get America working again”? What is the party of NO’s plan to address the needs of older, sicker Americans if they eliminate Medicare? What is the Tea Party’s plan for Americans approaching retirement if they are successful in eliminating the Social Security program... and will somebody please explain to me what Bible these most conservative American Christians are reading? It can’t possibly be the same one I read which details in exact language what the person for whom the religion is named says about our responsibility for the poor, the meek, and the afflicted. Surely it’s not the same one I read which describes what the moral person who has everything does for those who have less than we have or nothing at all. Senator-elect Rand Paul explains Republican economic philosophy: “We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people...” So he says we should definitely not increase their taxes. Don’t bother telling me that the solution to curing what ails us can be described in three words: “No More Taxes.” Show us some other part of the mysterious plan the Tea Party folks have been saying they have.

I took time out from working on the BARK PROJECT to do a couple of other things. One of them was to write a BLOG rant that had built up in me while I watched the national election returns last night. Then I went outside to look for today's photograph and found the beautiful Maria Jose sitting on the lawn with her beautiful Mother. When I went back home to load my day's catch of images into the computer, I knew the rant would have to wait for another day. Maria Jose took all the indignation out of me. She, not any politician, is the symbol of all our hope for the world.

(ab-strakt, abstrakt)

Art in an alley, only as meaningful or as meaningless as I allow it to be, matches my mood today... election day in America. In an alley I came across a building that has fallen victim to graffiti bandits. The alley is the site of a battle of brushes. The term abstract never has had more meaning than in the context of these paint smears. As an adjective abstract describes something that is set apart from concrete existence. Whatever is only theoretical, not applied or practical, is said to be abstract. If something is difficult to understand, is abstruse, it is said to be abstract.

There are other definitions of abstract, but today I’m not summarizing the important points of a text. What I am doing is feeling as if meaning has been stolen from the Political process in America. Of course, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin are free to say whatever they want to say to whomever they wish to say it. To remove without permission, to filch, is also a meaning of the word abstract. These people are abstracting dignity and logic from the American way. They claim to be the purveyors of truth and right; but are actually clever people who have discovered a schtick that has turned out to be a goldmine. They have recognized that a good chunk of the American population is willing to pay to be fed nonsense that feeds their fear and anger. Is it any wonder that the former short-term Alaskan governor gave up her relatively low paying government job to earn what is estimated to be something in the neighborhood of twelve million dollars feeding the Latter Day American Tea Party frenzy? I’m not at all sure they believe what they say they believe any more than any good actor really has to believe the part he/she plays. Theirs is an impersonal abstraction, only theoretical, not at all practical.

HEAD FIRST

The creation myth of the San People in the Kalahari Desert begins with insects and animals. The first human appears when a bee carries a mantis across a wide river. The exhausted bee leaves the mantis on a floating flower after planting a seed in its body. The seed grows into the first human. I don’t know if the adult San folk try to convince their children that the tale is absolutely true the way many Christians insist that the creation myth in Genesis is real history to be believed exactly as the Bible says it happened. I like the bee story and I like the one from Genesis that says God is a being much like us who sometimes is lonely and walks in a garden in the cool part of the day... and that in a garden once upon a time long ago he decided he would do something about the loneliness by making a creature much like himself. I like both the stories. We spoil ours when we insist that it is an accurate account of how people came into being. In fact, we spoil most of the Bible’s stories by insisting they are accurate history. How wonderfully rich and useful all the stories can be when we are permitted to admit that they are myths which teach us important things about ourselves.

I like the Kalahari people’s myth because all kinds of things can be said to children about the importance of work. As a matter of fact, bees are hard workers; but in the San story bees get tired the way people get tired, and they have to decide what to do when they are so tired they can’t go on. The bee that carried a mantis (impossible in a non-mythic world the way taking a rib out of a man and fashioning a woman with it is preposterous...) got tired and stopped midway across the river but did something important before it died from exhaustion. It planted the seed in the mantis body, a seed which grows into something very important... a person. The bee doesn’t live long enough to see the good thing it had done, but that’s not the important part of the story.

I thought about the Kalahari myth today as I was photographing a yellow hibiscus at the same time a bee was gathering pollen, and I couldn’t help but notice that the bee didn’t timidly back into the center of the flower but went right in head first. I went away wishing I could show my photograph to some children and talk with them about the importance of work... the importance of going about work in the right way. I’ll bet they would have all kinds of things to say about bees and about how much we learn from them... about the fact that bees obviously know how properly to be part of a group. I know they would say it is important to be able to work alone knowing the work is good for everybody. Take a look at my hibiscus and my bee. You’ll see what I mean.