Marijuana was never a big part of my life. In the late sixties, I was married to a soldier with a top-secret security clearance. He had no interest in risking it with a drug violation. I tried pot twice in the seventies and felt no effect. I probably didn’t know how to inhale. While modest drinking made parties livelier, smoking weed made participants quiet and dull, so we left. With a child in tow, conversation could turn awkward.

Child: Was that marijuana?
Me: Yes.
Child: Isn’t that illegal?
Me: Yes.
Child: Are you going to call the police?
Me: No.
Child: Why not?

The code name “420” for marijuana dates from 1971, when five California teens met after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke pot. One of them later worked as a roadie for the Grateful Dead. Fliers distributed by Deadheads in 1990 encouraged people to smoke “420” on April 20 at 4:20 p.m., and High Times magazine promoted the idea. By then I was paying no attention at all.

​Image: Cannabis sativa.

The best children’s books speak to readers of all ages. One of my favorites is Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.* From the moment he wakes up until nightfall, everything goes wrong for Alexander. One mishap builds on another. He just wants to get away. He wants to move to Australia. At bedtime his mother says gently, “Some days are like that, even in Australia.”

Alexander’s troubles—and most of mine—are minor in the greater scheme of things. Still, when the little stuff all fails at once, it’s like being nibbled to death by guppies. Even knowing full well that computer crashes and burnt-dry tea kettles aren’t in a class with major surgery or job loss, I can border on tears when the guppies overwhelm.

How does Alexander reassure me? Without comparisons, shame, or denial, it reaffirms that this too shall pass. Like traumas and calamities, mishaps are part of human experience. It’s not a character flaw to feel stressed by an onslaught of transitory troubles. Some days are like that, even in Australia.

​* There’s also a movie. I’ve only watched the trailer. This is about the book.

I’m finally watching the Netflix series The Crown. Thank you, public library, for lending the episodes on disk. Queen Elizabeth II’s story is filled with drama, romance, political intrigue, family dynamics, and of course history. Much of the history I never knew, some I remember from news reports, and some I’ve written about (see “Great Stink and Killer Fog”).

Monarchy was unremarkable to my Canadian-born parents. My feminist mother, sister to my Aunt Margaret and bearing the middle name Elizabeth, took pleasure in seeing a young woman on the English throne. My father sang to the tune of the Farmer in the Dell, "The twenty-fourth of May’s the Queen’s birthday. It you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away!” The queen in the ditty was Victoria.

Americans are ambivalent about royalty. The Declaration of Independence is largely a detailed list of King George III’s “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The U.S. Constitution prohibits titles of nobility. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Americans’ fascination with the royal family seems to have no limits.
 
On this side of the Atlantic, “No Kings” rallies this past year hark back to the injuries and usurpations of a British king 250 years ago. The signs at supportive rallies in Europe read “No Tyrants!” instead. European nations with constitutional monarchs are now more democratic and less tyrannical than some without a king or queen. Watching The Crown suggests that modern British monarchs may be more deserving of sympathy than of protest.

​Image: Buckingham Palace gates, photo by Mark Stuckey on Unsplash.

My calendars and devices say I’m posting this on Monday, March 30. Maybe it’s really two days later, with the calendars and devices snickering “April Fool!” behind my back.

Gentle, unthreatening practical jokes can delight both prankster and target at any time of year. On April 1, we positively expect them. Jodi Wellman in Psychology Today describes the benign capers that lead to shared laughter as “pro-social mischief.”

Not all pranks are benign, especially in an unequal relationship. A trick played by the boss on a subordinate, or by a big child on a small or timid one, is bullying. In my camp counselor days, when the campers in my cabin short-sheeted my bed (folded the sheet so I couldn’t extend my legs), I laughed and praised their ingenuity. If campers and counselor were strangers, though, short-sheeting might seem insolent.

In a less happy learning experience one summer, several of us middle-class white college students sent inner-city high schoolers into a suburban woodland at night for a snipe hunt (prey we knew wasn’t there). We didn’t realize the dark forest would be as unfamiliar and scary to them as parts of the inner city were to us.

“In short, the ground rule for practical jokes is radical safety,” Wellman writes. No ridicule, no damage, no fear, no exclusion, no pushing personal buttons. Pranksters should reveal the joke quickly, clean up any mess, and honor their “victims” with some sort of celebration afterward. Then we can all laugh together.

Image: “A-maze-ing Laughter,” bronze sculpture by Yue Minjum in Morton Park, Vancouver, British Columbia.​

Do you ever wonder how hard to push yourself?

For several years, that was my favorite conversation starter with people I hoped to know better. It was personal but unintrusive. They could respond as deeply or as lightly as they chose. It was fine if they veered off in another direction: “Not really, but I sometimes . . .” I invariably learned something about the other person, and often something about myself. Every perspective helped with the issue I was struggling with.

It’s about more than work-life balance. My office job had somewhat regular hours; the quandary was on the “life” side of the equation. So many challenges and commitments looked appealing. Saying “yes” was almost irresistible. For self-preservation, at one point I started writing Empty in my pocket calendar for two evenings a week and two weekends a month.

That issue didn’t get resolved so much as it faded in urgency. Now older and retired, with ample free time but limited stamina and capacity, I'm not asking how hard to push but where. Priorities get clearer. The deer in the garden and the owl hooting in the woods feed my spirit for those priorities. Of all that needs doing in this world, I find my niche and let go of the rest.

Do you ever wonder how hard to push yourself?
​
Image: Photo by Sylas Boesten on Unsplash.

Two months ago, the nearby village of DeForest was filled with yard signs. As best I could tell, they were unanimous in opposing plans for a $12 billion data center at the edge of the village. As in other communities resisting data centers, residents questioned potential effects on water supply and energy costs. Once built, the data center would occupy a vast tract of land but provide few local jobs. By late January or early February, the proposal appeared dead.

Other communities are resisting ICE plans to convert privately owned warehouses into immigrant detention facilities. No matter how residents regard immigration policy, they care about their quality of life and the strain on local resources. Federal facilities won’t bring local tax revenue. Municipal governments can’t bar ICE from moving in, but public pressure can deter the private warehouse owners from selling. This process has quashed plans for warehouse conversions in Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Ashland VA, and elsewhere.

I always used the term NIMBY with a degree of derision. “Not in my back yard” implied wanting the benefit without the nuisance, paved roads without any gravel pits. Now I’m starting to look at NIMBY differently. National and global changes can push us apart as though we have nothing in common. When those changes encroach on our home communities, though, local impact matters more than ideology. At least sometimes, backyard neighbors see shared interests without regard to party. This brings me hope.

My grandmother’s friend Mrs. Moyse disapproved of daylight savings time. We should stick to God’s own good time, she told me in all sincerity. Blasphemous or not, this Sunday morning my household reset all our clocks that didn’t magically reset themselves.

What is time, anyway? Time flows, time flies, time’s a-wasting. We spend it, save it, use it, run out of it. We’re pressed for time or have time on our hands. Is it divine will, human invention, practical resource, or a fundamental of physics?

Einstein wrote in a letter, “For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.” I'm happy to treat time as a fourth dimension, letting me denote a when as well as a where. When I try to follow Einstein deeper into relativity and the warping of spacetime, alas, I can’t wrap my head around it. Believe me, I’ve tried. The distinction between past and future seems as real to me as between the distinction between above and below, right and left, or behind and in front of.

If time is meaningful only in our minds, isn’t the same true of much else we consider real? Beauty, truth, justice, hope, even meaning itself? Take sentient life out of the picture and what remains but the interactions of matter and energy, space and—maybe—time? I’ll keep trying (and likely failing) to grasp the physics of it. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to reset the clocks twice a year. I doubt God objects.

Image: Christophe Carreau, Spacetime Curvature, European Space Agency, 2015.

I dropped the kids at school and drove away toward the office. Halfway down a residential street, the car stalled, blocking traffic. My first impulse—to panic—wasn’t going to help. Mobile phones hadn’t yet spread beyond traveling salesmen and organized crime. I took a deep breath, rang the nearest doorbell, and asked to use the telephone.

My work those days involved sending dentists and doctors to volunteer in refugee camps in Southeast Asia. Waiting in the car for the tow truck, I imagined talking with one of the boat people from South Vietnam. They’d fled their country by sea. They’d survived storms and pirates. In my mind, I tried to explain why it was so terrible that my car wouldn’t start.

Such mind games aren’t denial. They’re more like reframing, with a twist. I could have just told myself it’s going to be all right, the garage will help me, by next week it won’t matter. Instead, my imagined comparison of a stranded driver to a desperate refugee was so ludicrous as to be comic. Once you’ve done all you can and the next step is to wait, laughter is a great antidote to stress.

Image: Photo by J. Balla Photography on Unsplash. 

It’s jigsaw puzzle season again. My latest depicts the biblical Tower of Babel, left unfinished when people stopped understanding each other because their one language splintered into many (Genesis 11:1-9).

By coincidence, I’ve also been following a course on the history of Eastern Europe, one of the most linguistically diverse regions I know. Its many tongues fall into whole different language families: Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Indo-Aryan, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and more. Borders are continually changing or being challenged, sometimes in the name of national sovereignty (think Yugoslavia), sometimes for the benefit of neighboring empires (think Ukraine).

I can’t help wondering if the United States is suffering a Tower of Babel period today. We claim one English language, but the meanings of words are splintering. Liberal: To some, it’s openness to new ideas; to others, it’s repudiation of traditional norms. Security: To some, it means protection by armed defenders; to others, it means keeping one’s life and data private. Freedom: To some, you’re allowed to do as you please; to others, you don’t suffer discrimination or threats. Patriotism: To some, you love your country enough to try to improve it; to others, you love your country too much to accept any criticism.

Small wonder we can’t understand each other enough to build something together.

           America! America!
          God mend thine every flaw
          Confirm thy soul in self-control
          Thy liberty in law!
               - Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful,” verse 2

In my grade school years in West Virginia, we didn’t ask whether “Presidents Day” needed an apostrophe. We celebrated Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12 and Washington’s on Feb. 22. We practiced patriotism in other ways all year. Each school day began with the Lord's Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a patriotic song. We learned only the first verse of each song, so we got no clue that America might have flaws. God was integral to patriotism in Cold War rivalry with the godless Russians. “Under God” got added to the Pledge of Allegiance to emphasize the point.

Back to that apostrophe: It depends on the state and the style guide. Federally, no such holiday name exists to raise that question. Washington’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1885 and was moved to the third Monday of February starting in 1971. Its formal name remains Washington’s Birthday, even though it never lands on Feb. 22. Third Mondays must fall in the range from the 15th to the 21st of every month, every year.

“Presidents Day” became popular usage and an official state holiday in many states. Some insert an apostrophe before or after the “s.” Using no apostrophe is also common.* Depending who you ask, the day honors both Washington and Lincoln, or all U.S. presidents, or the office of the presidency. Wisconsin, where I live now, doesn’t recognize a February holiday at all.

* This treats Presidents as not possessive but descriptive, comparable to Labor Day or Veterans Day.

​Image: The 48-star flag of my childhood. Photo by Bret Lama on Unsplash.