I started grade school during the hyper-Americanism of the early- to mid-1950s. Each school day started with the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a patriotic song. My Weekly Reader featured the addition of “under God” to the Pledge, to distinguish us godly Americans (as I learned later) from the godless Russians. My teachers told us we lived in the only true, free democracy in the world. At home, gently so as not to criticize my teachers, my Canadian-born parents said democracies and freedom existed outside the U.S. They said Russian people weren’t bad, though their government was.

When one of my Sunday school classmates and her family suddenly left town, my parents told me about Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. My friend’s father had lost his state job because of his long-ago membership in a Communist student group. My parents described college friends in the 1930s exploring a variety of novel ideas, as students often do. They hadn’t yet realized the extent of Stalin’s atrocities.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, the saying goes. In today’s revival of hyper-Americanism, stoked by paranoia, citizens and immigrants face investigation or worse for voicing opinions deemed a national security risk. Student visas and green cards are revoked. Jobs are lost. Political leaders equate refugees from Latin America or western Asia with the very gangs or governments they are fleeing. Much of what made America great is lost in the drive to make it great again.

                “Observe the paramecium,” she said,
                And suddenly I’m dizzy with the line:
                The softness of the “s” and “v,” the sweet
                Shakespearian rhythm circles in my head.

I don’t recall the rest of the sonnet, composed for a college class more than half a century ago. A poem was due the next day, and I couldn’t think what to write. My roommate looked up from her biology text and read the three-word imperative aloud. Something about “Observe the paramecium” must have tickled her too. I settled in to write.

Most of us have dry spells. My professor said writing about failure to write (as I did in the sonnet) was a stale cliché, and clearly his comment stuck. Writers writing about writing continually discuss the tension between inspiration and discipline, schedule, or routine. Columnists, commentators, and cartoonists under contract to produce on a regular schedule can’t sit out a dry spell while they wait for inspiration to strike.

For the rest of us, turning to creativity only when we feel creative is an option. Some find this satisfying. Others find nothing gets created. There are always distractions. Perfectionism gets in the way. For me, the commitment to produce a blog post every week—every Monday since March 2016, without exception—pushes me over the speed bumps that might give me excuses not to start.

Most surprising, to me, are the times when the very act of writing generates new ideas. For twenty years or so, I handwrote three full “morning pages” daily as proposed in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. On uninspired mornings, I might start with a concern or question and repeat it in circles. About the middle of the second page, my mind would take hold and break out of the circle, racing toward a resolution by the end of page three. Routine and inspiration can work together if we don’t let the speed bumps deter us.

Image: Photo by the National Cancer Institute.

My literal, human mother never made my nose run or my eyes water for weeks on end. She never sent a swarm of wasps up from the grass to sting my arm and legs, as happened last month.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to walk a forest trail or weed the garden. I love to watch deer cross the lawn or wild turkeys peck at the grass. I know humankind evolved on this planet and depends on its bounty for survival. So much on Earth inspires our gratitude. “Mother Earth” is a fitting metaphor, if we remember it’s only a metaphor.

The problem comes when we take it literally and expect Earth to give us maternal love. The “appeal to nature fallacy” equates natural with safe. Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn’t. Picture spring wildflowers and clear mountain streams. Picture arsenic, cyanide, and deadly avalanches—all natural. Yet people will pay a premium for “organic” or “natural” over synthetic products that are chemically identical.

The fallacy grows dangerous when parents trust “natural immunity” to protect their children better than vaccine-induced immunity. Before measles vaccine came to market in 1963, measles infected some three to four million Americans a year. Though only a fraction were formally reported, the disease was far from harmless. Each year about 48,000 measles patients were hospitalized in the U.S., 1,000 developed encephalitis (swelling of the brain), and 400 to 500 died. Vaccine changed all that. By the end of the century, the U.S. was measles-free. Recently, alas, the appeal to nature fallacy has fed vaccine hesitancy and led to an epidemic. More than 3,500 measles cases have been reported in the U.S. this year so far.

Call Earth “Mother” if you wish, but don’t think “she” loves us or hates us. Earth doesn’t care. Nature doesn’t have intentions for us. It’s up to us to study the facts, consider the consequences, and make our choices with intention for ourselves and our human family.

On the first day of his second term, January 20, 2025, the U.S. President signed Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” It designated North America’s highest mountain Mount McKinley (formerly Denali) and the sea between the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba the Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico). A further executive order (#14422), signed last month on August 27, was titled “Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.”

What makes a place name official, and who gets to change it? People refer to places long before officialdom gets involved. Anyone in my rural area could recognize Big Hill or Goose Pond. After the U.S. Civil War, westward exploration and settlement boomed. Inconsistent names and spellings proved a challenge for planning maps, mines, and railroads. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) was created in 1890 to standardize usage throughout the federal government. Today the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with BGN, maintains a database called the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

Executive Orders 14172 and 14422 direct the Interior Secretary to implement the place name changes, remove the former names from GNIS, and have BGN work with federal agencies to update maps, contracts, and documents accordingly. The orders are binding on the U.S. federal government only. Cities, states, foreign nations, non-governmental agencies, and private companies can use whichever names they choose, and so can you and I.

Image: Ontario Beach Park, Rochester, New York. Photo by Andre Carrotflower, 2020.

Parked at the border on the way to my grandparents’ home in British Columbia, we children pranced back and forth between American and Canadian soil. No one stopped or questioned us. No one asked for our passports. Our parents told us this was the longest unfortified border in the world. My Canadian cousins quipped that Canada should annex the U.S. as an eleventh province.

A state park to the south and a provincial park to the north comprise the international Peace Arch Park. The arch stands on the exact national boundary. Its U.S. side bears the words:

     “Children of a Common Mother.”

On the Canadian side is inscribed:

     “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity.”

Like many siblings, we've sometimes squabbled. We took opposite sides in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In 1859 in the disputed San Juan Islands between Washington Territory and Vancouver Island, an American farmer shot a British-owned pig he found rooting in his garden. British authorities threatened to arrest him, American settlers asked the U.S. Army for protection, and both sides landed troops on the island. Fortunately, diplomacy ended the “Pig War” with no casualties except the pig.

With World War II, Canada and the U.S. became close allies in military production and defense. Their strategic cooperation continued with the creation of NATO in 1949. An early-warning radar system against Soviet missiles in the 1950s evolved into the bilateral North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD continues to monitor North American air space for post-Cold-War threats like terrorism and drugs.

The U.S./Canada economic policy pendulum swings between protectionism and free trade. After the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 hiked the U.S.’s already high import duties, Canada retaliated. International trade collapsed. Later tariff reductions culminated in the bilateral Free Trade Agreement of 1988; its trilateral successor, NAFTA (1994), which added Mexico; and a NAFTA update, USMCA (2020). Whether new U.S. 50-percent tariffs on specific Canadian goods in August 2026 are legal under USMCA is above my paygrade. This trade war is another swing of the pendulum.

We’ve heard these issues will disappear if we eliminate the border by making the U.S. and Canada one country. Eleventh province, anyone?

Image: Peace Arch monument, Peace Arch Provincial Park, British Columbia.

Summer, counted as the warmest three calendar months of the year, concludes today at the end of August. Others date summer from the Solstice in June till the Equinox in September. North American convention extends it from Victoria Day (Canada) or Memorial Day (U.S.) to Labor Day. Some cultures identify more or fewer seasons, and my nose says ragweed season is upon us. In temperate zones, though, we regularly speak of “the four seasons” as if that number were built into nature.

Why four? We live surrounded by twos and powers of two: hot and cold, right and left, up and down, past and future, ahead and behind. Either/or thinking is quick and efficient. It helped our early ancestors to escape predators by reflex. Modern computers use binary code to solve complex problems.

Useful as it is, treating opposites as mutually exclusive is simplistic and often polarizing. Binary thinking rules out compromise, shades of gray, and bell-shaped curves. It discourages creativity. It blinds us to commonalities and nonlinear possibilities.

Summer and winter are shorthand for the warmest and coldest quarters of the year, or the quarters with most and fewest hours of daylight. We know these terms are only approximations. We don’t expect every tree to change color the same day. Our seasons progress by fits and starts, not always predictable, rarely at the extremes. That’s true of much in nature and human life. As summer turns to fall, let’s delight in the glorious variety of our multi-dimensional world.

Image: Photo by D.R. [sic] on Unsplash.

Having two left feet, I don’t always put my best foot forward. Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth. This time I lost my footing and broke a toe. To start on the right foot with the doctors, I toe the line: rest, elevate, and avoid standing or walking. My mind drags its feet to match. I’m not keeping on my toes today or thinking well on my feet.

My dear ones wait on me hand and foot, bless them, while I don’t lift a toe. No one puts a foot down about my endless requests or grouses that I’m treading on their toes. Their kindness sweeps me off my feet.

​I get cold feet at the prospect of driving, but I’ll dip my toes in before too long. My obligations are few, and Medicare foots the bill. Eventually I’ll land on my feet. It could be worse. 

Entering a nearby breakfast-all-day restaurant, I felt more in the mood for eggs Benedict than a cheddar-broccoli omelet. Knowing the menu held other options gave me a nice sense of agency, but I never saw reason to open it.

I’ve often said, half in jest, that going by routine or habit saves my thinking power for matters I care about. It turns out scholars now say the same in earnest. Making choices taxes the brain, especially if they’re high stakes or difficult. Overdo it and decision fatigue sets in. The rational brain tunes out in favor of procrastination or impulse.

Our prehistoric ancestors evolved to keep decision fatigue at a minimum. They did most things the way they had before. So do we; it saves on brainpower and carries a track record of survivability. Humans evolved a fast system to respond to immediate threats with little or no conscious thought. When chased by a tiger, you don’t decide, you just run. And they evolved a slower, more deliberate system to weigh complicated options. Nowadays, we often expect a heavier load of rational decision-making than our brains evolved to handle.

So I’m comfortable leaving the menu closed, knowing I have lots of options but needn’t consider them all. I’m happy to enjoy spontaneity and novelty when I’m in the mood or invested in the result, and to leave the rest to habit. I trust my thinking brain to be alert enough to keep my impulses within safe bounds.

Maybe next time I’ll order the omelet.

Image: Photo by Bady Abbas on Unsplash.

On one of those beastly hot mornings this summer, the view through my home office window looked eerie and mysterious. Was it fog, I wondered, or wildfire smoke? Through a smaller side window, the world was clear. The apparent haze was condensation on the glass, no puzzle at all, but eerily mysterious all the same.

Mystery, wonder, and puzzle overlap, but they’re not quite interchangeable. The experiences of gazing at the stars with mystery and wonder, enjoying the puzzle of a mystery novel, and wondering why my friend made a puzzling remark are as different as reverence, reasoning, and curiosity.

How would you explain this to a class of English language learners? While you puzzle out how to present it and wonder if your students will understand, think with awe of the mystery by which language lets us humans communicate at all.

Some things we do mostly for pleasure. No motivation needed. Others we do only to get them done; we’d skip the laborious process if we could. For those, my inner pep talks come from songs. “Keep your eye on the prize, hold on,” I sing to myself when I need a reminder the goal is worth the trouble.

Sometimes, though, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. When a project feels overwhelming, dwelling on end goals will distract and frazzle me. Writer Anne Lamott recalls her big brother’s panic, at age ten, over a school report on birds that was due the next day. Her father’s advice: “Just take it bird by bird.”

Two songs play in my head when I face such a challenge. One is Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”:

     You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table
     There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done

The other is David Mallett’s “Garden Song,” later sung by John Denver, the Muppets, and Peter, Paul, and Mary:

     Inch by inch, row by row
     Gonna make this garden grow

These lines help me let go of the uncertainty and perfectionism that pull me off task. They help me stay in the moment and focus on the work at hand.

Image: Photo by James Nilsson on Unsplash.