…..they were all saying essentially the same thing; she just knew how to communicate the information in a better way.  She felt no need to apologize for this state of affairs either.  After all, she willingly deferred to others in areas where she knew she was not strong or gifted.  Others should do the same in return.  Pretending you are well-versed in areas you are weak is just a sham; nothing of benefit stems from such a dynamic.  Rather, cream always rises to the top of the vessel and dross settles to the bottom.  Of note, this is not meant as a general statement or an indictment.  It only means that in areas where one is wanting you should graciously defer to others who are obviously more talented than yourself.  Conversely, in those subject matters where you possess transparent proclivities, others should automatically defer to your judgment as well.  Without hesitation or question, too.  You intuitively know what those skilled areas are by now; as an adult, you don’t need to be educated about your own strengths by others.  And if someone less talented than yourself in a certain realm tries to invade your territory—attempts to usurp your personal domain, in other words—feel free to simply tell them to go “Fuck off, you bottom-feeding faker!!!”  Rigorously protect your own areas of expertise, and then don’t feel threatened or put off when others rightfully defend theirs…..

…..and the cowards will claim courage and move to take action only after the dynamic they face changes dramatically and  the very ground they stand upon shifts  markedly under their feet.  They will feign conscience and pretend moral fortitude only after the camel’s back has been broken and the rubber has hit the road and critical mass has not only been reached, but long since surpassed.  Cowards never act; they only react when faced with circumstances which they cannot in any way avoid.  Cowards do not require that any forward gears be built into their personal vehicles; they only need two gears with which to navigate life:  “Neutral” and especially “Reverse”…..

Life is a marathon, not a sprint—a sonnet, not some nondescript snippet of haiku.  A shooting star flashing across the night sky piques your senses, but a slow-moving comet inspires long-lasting wonder and awe.  A movie trailer may captivate for a handful of seconds, but that teaser falls promiscuously short of the full dessert yet to come.  A teaspoon of chocolate ice cream briefly charms, but a heaping bowl of the same pabulum enthralls.  The short haul generates excitement, but the long haul generates greatness.  Dig in and confront life directly; don’t go cowardly skirting around its fringes!

…..I don’t ever wanna go back to that innately beguiling place.  Yeah, yeah, it is alluring as all get out and beckons with the magnetism of a ravishing seductress, but the past is a fraud, a liar, a destroyer of youthful dreams.  It can never be trusted.  The circumstances surrounding me today are hopelessly fucked up and a complete mess and maybe beyond redemption, but the past is not the answer for any of that; it is no tonic or remedy or secret sauce.  Rather, the past grossly misrepresents—lies even—with regard to its true underlying character.  Things were never so good back then as they appear nowadays.  Not all roses and no thorns.  Not all laughter and no pain.  Not all days blessed with radiant sunshine and a pronounced absence of stormy nights showcasing howling winds and pelting hail as the house lights flickered on and off while mischievous electrical gremlins decided whether they wanted to pull the plug completely to create even more havoc in your personal life.  The past would have you believe that every day was a stroll through a redolent lilac garden and that no ill was ever visited upon anyone, but that is all a big lie.  A huge, disgusting lie!!!  Bad things did happen to you back then—Lots and lots of them!—but for some unknown reason a mammoth filter has since been erected between the past and the present which screens out all evil and leaves in its wake nothing but rosy memories and sweet reminiscences.  Forget that deceitful shit already!  It’s all a charade, a big fib, a house built of cards.  The past is quite simply a mirror reflection of the present, only it features a younger version of your present day self—and you are inarguably a substantially wiser, more enlightened, less naive individual now than you were back then—but with that aforementioned ginormous filter separating the two timeframes.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You are exactly the same person now as you were back in “the good old days”.  Same person, only living now in a totally different era.  So don’t hyperventilate over the past and believe that it is some sort of panacea for the present and a benign refuge from today’s nagging problems.  It isn’t and never will be.  The past will always look highly attractive and superior to the present—That’s just the nature of the flirtatious beast!—but don’t believe that nonsense for a second.  The past makes a habit of lying indiscriminately and today is no different.  These problems you are currently facing are uncommonly challenging, no doubt, but looking backward in time is not the solution for any of them.  Work on solving them on today’s terms only.  The present can be brutal and bleak and unforgiving, but at least it’s inherently honest.  The same cannot be said of that dishonest scoundrel going by the name of the past; it lies all the time and, what’s worse, it takes great pleasure in doing so and in the process inflicts a lot of needless pain…..

…..try as he might, he couldn’t hold a grudge against her for very long.  She was just too sweet, too forgiving, too innately likable.  Too perfect for her own good.  Too much of an angel.  Too made for him.  Until she changed.  Until she wasn’t any of those things anymore.  And then it became inordinately easy for him to hold a grudge—even a longstanding, bitter one—against the ungrateful wench he used to adore.  She had been a detestable, ungrateful harlot all along—Okay?!—and he had just been too big of a fool to recognize her for what she really was.  But now he understood, even though that understanding came at an exorbitant price.  He could never salvage the gobs of money he had wasted on the selfish bitch, yet that was the least of his regrets.  All of that money could be re-earned and replaced in not too great a period of time, but the time?  The myriad hours and days and months he had sacrificed to her in the name of “undying love” with the expectation of reciprocity and an idyllic lifelong relationship?  Never.  Never!  That time could never be recovered, and he was now doubtless smarter but also older and less handsome and less virile and balder and surely not better from a mile-high perspective.  And that was all her fault.  She was to blame for it!!!  She had ruthlessly stolen away some of the best years of his life and then casually tossed him into a figurative dumpster like a used latte container.  For that he could never forgive her, nor would he ever want to.  Hatred is what was sustaining him at present and for the foreseeable future.  He didn’t like the taste of it, for sure, yet the taste wasn’t so repulsive that he would willfully turn his back on it—at least for now….

I hear so many people disparaging the year 2020 as it nears its conclusion and just wishing for it to be over, and these people are not wrong.  2020 HAS been a horrific year relative to most years past, but what about relative to that other alternative?  To not being alive?  To being dead?  To not being around to complain and decry all the bad stuff that has taken place throughout 2020?  If one looks at 2020 through THAT relative lens, the year just passed has been perfect:  The luscious cherry atop the sundae, the runaway winner of the Westminster Dog Show, the winning Powerball ticket, the ideal lover who never once disappoints you in bed.  Relative to not being alive to experience events throughout this tumultuous year now nearing completion, 2020 has been a sublime blessing from above and a reason to celebrate sans inhibitions and caveats as we enter 2021.  For lest anyone forget and begin to take life itself for granted, one year of being alive on the face of planet Earth is the rough equivalent of being dead for one thousand years, ten thousand years, one million years, a googolplex of years…..for an infinity, at the bare minimum?  Because such is the mystical, transcendent nature of life when contrasted with the unimaginable, indescribable, amorphous riddle of what MIGHT exist after we perish and our earthly bodies eventually rot away to the basic carbon molecules from which they originated.  For after 2020 fades into the history books and everyone looks back and over time understands that it really wasn’t so bad after all, the alternative to having been alive in the year 2020—the alternative to being alive in ANY year or millennium or epoch—is not something one wants to think about for any length of time simply because that concept is something which totally defies rational thinking and totally defies human comprehension.  2020 may not have been a pleasurable year by classic standards, but it was always there and it always provided us puny human beings with some degree of solace against the unknown.  Against the greatest abyss of all.  Against nothingness.  So gratefully accept the year 2020 and appreciate it for that elementary characteristic if nothing else, since that elementary characteristic means everything to any living organism, regardless of phylum or family or level of sophistication.  To use just one example, Kobe Bryant—who along with his daughter Gianna and several others perished tragically in a helicopter crash in January of 2020, long before all of the alleged “horrible” stuff began happening in our country and in our world—don’t you think he would have willfully—Rapturously!—traded the many inconveniences we all experienced as the result of a worldwide pandemic and a grossly erratic presidency just so that he and his young daughter and his friends could have remained alive throughout this past year??  This is a rhetorical question, of course, inasmuch as we all instinctively know what the rapid-fire answer would be.  Kobe Bryant would have cherished remaining alive even in a world teeming with inconveniences, the others who were accompanying him on that fateful morning would have cherished remaining alive under the same conditions, and anyone reading this should cherish remaining alive as well and not take that seminal fact for granted for even one second, one month, or one particularly malodorous year.  2020 may have been bad by relative standards—Agreed!—but by absolute standards, which are inarguably the only standards that really matter when the issue of life assumes center stage, the year 2020 has been pluperfect and without question the best year any of us denizens of Earth has experienced to date deriving solely from the fact we survived all twelve months of it and are still alive to bemoan each of them.  WE are the gilded survivors—the chosen “few”—and that fact alone puts anyone reading this essay a leg up on countless other people and a promiscuously lucky winner in the game of life—the only game that really matters from a cosmological perspective.

…..history will remember you; you can’t run away from history.  Or in the interest of accuracy—to recite a nauseatingly overused bromide—“You can run from history but you cannot hide from it”.  History will unfailingly find you and subsequently pass judgment on you and your behavior  irrespective of whatever seemingly impenetrable temporal hiding place you decide to take refuge in now.  History is indefatigable; don’t ever forget that!  You may be able to fool the present and however many simpletons inhabit this temporal fortress, but history is a different specimen altogether.  History will remember you.  And history WILL pass judgment on you for the sheer reason it has no other choice.  History never forgets and, what’s more, if you have applied multiple layers of glossy polyurethane over your being to artificially gussy up your appearance, history will strip away those fake layers of persona with greater efficacy than the staunchest solvent known to mankind.  In the end, your legacy will be laid bare for all the world to see and judge for time immemorial.  You may be able to fool the gullible present, but that gambit never works with succeeding generations, especially the further one moves into the future……

The Legion of the Maskless

By Frederick J. Blahnik

They are patriots of the highest order, these paragons of virtue,  these modern-day Ethan Hales, these dedicated upholders of uniquely American ideals and values.  Sort of like our brave early American ancestors who were actively  involved in the Boston Massacre or disguised themselves as Indians and then pitched bales of tea into Boston Harbor to protest British  government overreach.  I tell ya, Reader, the fealty to cause and raw patriotism these individuals demonstrate should never be questioned or downplayed.  They are truly American patriots of the highest order.

THEY are proud charter members of The Legion of the Maskless.

Yes, that’s right, The Legion of the Maskless.

Those other stupid idiots walking around sporting masks virtually full-time?  Fuckin’ scaredy cats is what they are!!  Stupid, cowardly assholes!!!  Lemmings!!  Blind conformists!!  Liberal Democrats!  Don’t those gullible cocksuckers know this whole coronavirus ruse is nothing more than a hoax being perpetrated on contemporary American society by leftist agitators and anarchists? 

The 350,000 dead (and counting) victims from the pernicious infection?  An exaggerated number, undoubtedly, but most of those who do actually die from Covid-19 are nothing more than old geezers who probably would have perished a month or so from now anyway stemming from pneumonia, diabetes, congestive heart failure or any of a host of other natural causes; take your pick from that lengthy list if you want! They are/were parasites on society, to put it politely.  A fatal coronavirus infection might actually prove to be a big blessing for some of these senescent, deplorable old goats inasmuch as it will spare them a hideous, more prolonged death from some other cause.  That’s basically a good thing in the long run, isn’t it?  Natural selection and the survival of the fittest and all that stuff??

The Legion of the Maskless groupies know that science and modern medicine are just cockamamie schemes cooked up by those aforementioned leftist agitators and CNN talking heads to brainwash every citizen into subservience.  The very idea of filtration, in this instance filtering deadly pathogens out of the air before they can enter one’s vulnerable pulmonary tract, is pure baloney.  Pure baloney, I tell ya!!!  It’s never been proven in everyday life!

Why, in order to debunk the underlying theory of filtration, the Legion of the Maskless have decided to start running their motor vehicles without air filters just to prove that debris sucked into one’s internal combustion engine from the outside atmosphere will cause no damage to the motor itself.  Furthermore, the Legion of the Maskless have elected to remove all filtration apparatus from their drinking water sources and thereafter just drink pure, unfiltered, old-fashioned tap water rife with nitrates and bacteria.  That glut of fancy filtration equipment which water has to pass through in order to be considered safe for drinking is a gigantic waste of money and is plainly a Leftist conspiracy intended to generate obscene profits and make ordinary citizens beholden and subservient to their various levels of government.

The Legion of the Maskless know that asking ordinary citizens to wear a mask when out in public is a ham-handed attempt to steal away our constitutionally guaranteed right to do exactly as we please(?) and obviously is NOT a compassionate attempt to prevent us from becoming gravely ill or from infecting other people innocent of any crime.

Let’s face it, The Legion of the Maskless know everything; there is nothing they don’t know; they are experts on every subject under the sun.  The opinions of virologists and epidemiologists and medical experts who have studied in their respective fields for decades and even scores of years pale in comparison to the instinctive judgment of  members of The Legion of the Maskless.  These gifted people just know through blind intuition that Covid-19 particles in the air are too miniscule to be filtered by any conceivable type of mask, including those worn by surgeons and ICU personnel.  Turns out, in fact, that those overly credulous medical people have been arrantly wrong all along:  Donning masks to squelch infections in a hospital setting is a silly waste of time, therefore there is no valid reason why they should be doing so! 

The Legion of the Maskless know this information is the gospel truth, hence why don’t doctors and nurses and all of the so-called “medical experts”?  Those guys are just a bunch of dupable fools, a bunch of born suckers, a bunch of impressionable conformists…..a bunch of ignorant nincompoops!!!  They should be coming and seeking advice from the Legion of the Maskless if they really want to know the truth about the efficacy of mask-wearing.  Members of the Legion of the Maskless will be more than happy to enlighten them regarding the foolishness and futility of mask-wearing to fight a worldwide pandemic; it’s useless and unwarranted; it’s totally unnecessary; it’s a damned Leftist conspiracy is what it is!!! 

After all, The Legion of the Maskless followers know far more about the subject than any practitioner within the medical profession, well…..both them and the nighttime pundits at Fox News.  Those evening commentators at Fox News admittedly know a helluva lot about the stupidity of wearing face coverings to combat a respiratory pandemic too, so their views and opinions should be widely accepted as well and not derided as liberal anarchists would ask you to do.

The Legion of the Maskless sycophants know literally everything when it comes to the efficacy of wearing face coverings to battle airborne pathogens.  What’s more, they KNOW they know better than any and all members of the medical and scientific communities, and what better way to broadcast this intellectual superiority than by gallivanting around in public sans a face covering for all to see?  Such a statement says everything the world needs to know; such a statement lets the highly naive public know in very stark terms that not only is the purported coronavirus pandemic a giant hoax perpetrated on the general public by our nefarious federal government, but that recommended and sometimes mandated mask-wearing is a diabolical extension of that hoax. 

The Legion of the Maskless devotees know all this and therefore it is incumbent upon each member to educate the public at large about the two hoaxes being foisted upon them.  The Legion of the Maskless takes this responsibility seriously; they feel it is their duty as front-line patriots.  And in the end, that is what people who adhere to the teachings of the Legion of the Maskless adjudge themselves to be:  Front-line American patriots defiantly battling their federal government to defend some undefined, invisible Constitutional right that apparently only they are privy to—the right to do whatever they please, whenever they please, wherever they please, however they please…..with nary a thought or a care for how their infantile behavior might adversely impact other citizens around them.  The “constitutional” rights of the Legion of the Maskless are paramount and come before all others.  If others’ rights—including and especially the right to avoid becoming deathly ill and by extension the right to continue living—are trampled in the process, who the fuck cares anyway?!

Yeah, who the fuck cares if some liberal agitator who probably believes that Black Lives Matter and that Donald Trump is NOT the greatest American president since Abraham Lincoln becomes deathly ill and maybe even dies???

Not disciples of The Legion of the Maskless!!!

No, most decidedly not disciples of The Legion of the Maskless!!!!!

Let’s just get rid of as many of those shameful, whimpering liberals as we can by whatever means possible!!!!!

The Legion of the Maskless followers know they are right on every subject imaginable, thus whatever imbeciles and stooges choose to think is absolutely immaterial to them.  These patriots of the nth magnitude have their invisible “constitutional” rights to defend, after all, and that is a tiring, full-time job in and of itself.  All that other peripheral stuff—facts, scientific truths, consideration of others, social responsibility, compassion, noble citizenship, irrefutable evidence—none of that theoretical horseshit matters one iota when you are one hundred percent certain the truth is on your side.

Understand now???

I thought you might after having the nuts and bolts of the situation carefully explained to you…..

Long story short, it always helps if you know everything and everyone else knows nothing, especially if you can sling an automatic rifle over your shoulder for added emphasis and then prance around in public implicitly threatening everyone around you with the weapon.  That allows you to be nothing less than an expert on every subject known to mankind and the following summation, probably more than anything else, best describes the Legion of the Maskless:  Brilliant in any and every discipline you can conceive and name, yet with no formal training or apparent expertise  in any of them.  Come armed with this hubristic attitude and you will almost certainly be granted admittance into The Legion of the Maskless on your first application.

Just don’t make the unforgivable mistake of ever forgetting the official motto of The Legion of the Maskless:  IGNORANCE CONQUERS ALL!!!!!  After all, facts and actual truths are dangerous little critters that pose a grave threat to every American citizen, ergo we must avoid those dastardly things at all cost!

A Morning Walk

(March 19^th, 2020)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Note:  Since this essay was penned, irrefutable evidence has arisen indicating certain species of mammals can indeed become infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, including dogs, cats, minks, and a handful of others.  That being said, animals other than human beings infected with the COVID-19 variant of a coronavirus are largely asymptomatic, are not known to die from its complications, and do not transmit the pathogen to Homo sapiens.

                Perhaps the one thing most striking about this hideous coronavirus pandemic we earthlings are presently facing is the fact it is peculiarly a human problem.  Nothing else on Earth is truly affected by it or adversely impacted by it.  The world as we know it moves on relentlessly independent of the existential risk the tiny coronavirus poses to every human being on the face of this planet.  The world we live in looks no different, feels no different, sounds no different, smells no different, IS no different in any appreciable manner from before…..other than the frightening, indisputable fact there is currently a Lilliputian predator “out there” that wasn’t present in its mutated, human-assailing form as recently as fifteen weeks ago, and that coldblooded little bastard is now busy stalking every Homo sapiens on Earth.  In that regard, our world—our HUMAN world, that is—is utterly unrecognizable from the one of November, 2019; that place now seems a billion miles away.  We are living in a totally different environment than before, no question, but the rest of the creatures that share this small blue planet on the outer fringe of the Milky Way galaxy are not.  Just one thirty minute walk this morning down to the “T” at the end of the gravel road my wife Carla and I live on in extreme southeastern Minnesota confirms this fact.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                As I step out the front door of our split-entry, Wedgewood-hued house on a drizzly morning, a handful of robins—recently returned from their southern winter haunts—go hop-hop-hopping about on the front lawn of our modest estate in pursuit of dumb, oblivious nightcrawlers and obviously do not sense there is anything significantly different about this planet of ours.  The ones that aren’t hunting—they are temporarily resting in nearby trees and unwittingly offering the slimy subterranean denizens that frequent our estate a reprieve from death if the angleworms cannily choose to hastily avail themselves of said—chide me with their distinctive, strident trills as though I am the trespasser and nervy usurper on THEIR recently reclaimed territory.  The gall of those sassy birds!  The red-breasted animals are dapper and sanguine this time of year—happy to have escaped their crowded southern aviaries and eager to build nests so the female can immediately begin laying a clutch of eggs to hatch and thereby perpetuate their species.  Nothing markedly more complicated to their lives than that—eating and propagating and dodging any predators that might target them or their offspring.  The robins do not fear—nor are they even aware of—the grisly coronavirus crisis facing our cowering human population, and why should they?  All the robins of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members on the organic food chain.  Make no mistake no about it:  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not care one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                The pair of bluejays I can hear but not see squawking their signature raucous warning calls from the top of a nearby spruce tree as I shuffle out of our yard do not know there is a coronavirus crisis raging across the face of the planet.  Unlike the aforementioned robins, uber-hardy bluejays stay all winter in southeastern Minnesota and therefore were here when the coronavirus decided to migrate not unlike a multitude of those birds’ cousins and subsequently expand its range into North America from far-off Asia, at which point it instantly became a Western Hemisphere concern back in January of this year.  But the boisterous, blue-tufted birds had far more important things to do at that time, namely lurk around the feeders I have hanging on the back deck of our house and fight like the dickens to survive a Mephistophelian Minnesota winter in order that the females of their species–same as the robins–could lay eggs in the spring and hatch a brood of squawking little sapphire squabs to assure a continuation of their unique DNA lineage.  All the bluejays of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members on the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not care one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                Approximately one mile down the road in a westerly direction from our two-acre homestead I take especial note of two mounds of freshly dug soil in the roadside ditch.  Pocket gophers are fully out of their winter hibernation and busy digging tunnels again!  This is of particular interest to me owing to two separate observations:  Pocket gophers beginning to dig in the muddy soil is one of the surest and truest signs of spring, and it also means the frost from last winter has retreated sufficiently out of the ground to enable the ugly little rodents to commence their new round of home-building.  Either way, this is a good and joyous sign in a normal year—which obviously the current edition is not–but do those same pocket gophers that spend ninety five percent of their time underground know there is a coronavirus pandemic racing across the face of the Earth—threatening the health and much less frequently the life of every human being alive? 

No, of course not, the “stupid” pocket gophers neither know nor care about this.  Their species is not being threatened by a grave health threat of any kind if you exclude ornery famers who despise and oftentimes trap them, thus their roster of priorities is markedly different from the current human one:  Digging new underground lodges in tandem with a virgin network of tunnels to connect same, restoring their caches of food which were largely depleted over the course of the just-completed winter, copulating whenever possible to ensure that a new brood of youthful pocket gophers will be born in time to mature over the summer months and be responsible, fully capable adults when next winter rolls around, and staying on the lookout for opportunistic coyotes that may come snooping around at the same time a mature gopher may be making one of its rare forays above ground after dark.  All the pocket gophers of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to own it and rationally address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                I ultimately made it up to that “T” intersection with Robinson Creek Road (A fancy misnomer for merely one more gravel township road, this one admittedly slightly wider and more traveled than the one I live on) and now I’m on my return jaunt home, making good time as I trudge along at a brisk pace in an easterly direction.  Not far past our neighbors to the west—the Meyerhofers—as I walk by a small draw which features a muddy waterway on the north side of the crushed rock road where gnarly underbrush and a few scrub trees have managed to escape the farmer’s plow and are now clustered protectively along a moist shallow ravine, I look down and take note of a bounty of deer tracks of all sizes in the wet muddy gravel on the shoulder of the township passageway.  Being an avid deer hunter, I automatically recognize this to be a natural funnel for deer coming from the south because not far to the north of the brushy draw a fenceline harboring still more opportunistic small trees manifests, and whitetail deer—sublimely shy, wary mammals by instinct—are drawn like opposite poles of a magnet to naturally protected travel lanes wherever and whenever they may exist.  But do you think these uber-vigilant deer are worrying about the coronavirus pandemic which is currently the foremost thought on virtually every human being’s mind who lives on our shared planet? 

No…..think again! 

Even if deer were aware of the coronavirus—which they undoubtedly are not—they would not give one good damn about such a thing inasmuch as it is a purely human problem with zero relevance to their own well-being.  In fact, deer are facing their own existential crisis in the form of Chronic Wasting Disease—an affliction weighing heavily on their numbers and physically embodied by a microscopic organism even more diminutive and organically stranger than a coronavirus called a prion—so why might you think the deer of the world would care that the human population they share the crust of this planet with—legions of whom go out in the fall of the year toting twenty-gauge shotguns complemented by Yeti coolers heaped full of beer…..and then attempt to murder as many of their cervid kind as possible in “only” a week’s time–is facing the highly unlikely prospect of species extinction?  Well, they don’t; they could not care less.  All the whitetail deer of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain.  The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move to unite and quickly own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                Upon reaching my place of residence after finishing that brisk thirty-two minute morning jaunt, I still have one item of business to accomplish before stepping inside Carla’s and my house to eat breakfast.  Some reckless motorist accidentally hit and killed a skunk (Yes, redundant language, I know; what person in their right mind would purposefully hit a skunk and in the process stink their vehicle up for the next two weeks?!) on the road only about an eighth of a mile to the east of our place.  The air is waterlogged and heavy this morning, a strong breeze is blowing out of the east, and this combination of meteorological conditions means our two-acre property is receiving a powerful dose of skunk “redolence” for the indefinite time being.  I therefore stop to grab a small scoop shovel from the garage attached to our house and thereupon walk down the road in an easterly direction until I come face-to-face with the dead skunk lying in the middle of the road (Wasn’t there a vintage Rock n’ Roll song with that weird, albeit iconic, title back in the 1970s by one hit wonder Loudon Wainwright III??  Come to think of it, with a erudite name like that the guy was condemned to be a one hit wonder in the world of pop music!).  In any case, two things strike me immediately when I take the mandatory deep breath and look down at the stricken animal. 

First, the sheer size of the black-and-white varmint.  Skunks are naturally small mammals–and I have seen many a skunk in my day to use as accurate frames of reference–but the one I am staring at now is extremely large for its species; I whistle under my breath at its impressive stature.  Secondly, and more poignantly, it becomes immediately obvious this was a female skunk because the animal’s belly is grossly enlarged independent of the post-death bloating which naturally occurs in any deceased animal, belying a late-term pregnancy and doubtless a large batch of baby skunks soon to come from within that distended belly—a batch now needlessly aborted owing to an egregiously speeding driver. 

I say that because we all know skunks are not speed demons by nature and this skunk in particular could not have been moving very fast secondary to her third-trimester pregnancy, so whoever hit her—and I have a strong suspicion who that might be based on unsavory past experiences with a now-adult neighbor girl–should have had ample time to see the ambling rodent before inadvertently ending its life.  Let’s put it this way:  A deer abruptly shooting out from the shoulder of the road, skunks definitely are not!  And if this minor rant makes it sound like I am some kind of nutty skunk lover with a peculiar infatuation for the malodorous little animals, well,  I am not, but I nonetheless felt pity and remorse at being forced to witness any healthy creature have its life gruesomely ended right before it was due to give birth and extend the circle of life—ANY life, really, apart from those goddamned, lifestyle-altering coronaviruses which swooped down on mankind out of nowhere just months ago.

Anyway, I somewhat troublesomely scoop the oversized skunk up in the bowl of my dinky shovel and—after walking some distance to the east (I’m quite certain the neighboring Lilly family will graciously thank me for that!!)—throw it as far as I possibly can into a plowed field.  But as I do so, I wonder if this skunk was overcome with angst—right up until the fateful moment when the Grim Reaper carried it away—regarding the coronavirus scourge that is the prevailing, foremost thought on every human’s mind nowadays. 

And of course I know the answer to that question is an emphatic “No!!!”  Doubtless the stricken skunk had only one thought on her mind at the instant she was struck and killed, and that was simply finding the best place in the natural world to safely birth her large litter of kits and then conscientiously raise them through the upcoming summer so that all of them would be ready to accept the mantle of adulthood and full independence when late fall arrived.  That was almost certainly all she was thinking of at her moment of death–that, and probably where she was going to find her next meal to ensure both her own survival together with the survival of the  myriad progeny temporarily residing within her womb; both were of equal importance in her mind.  All the skunks of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain. The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

                So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to unite and own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

                My walking for the morning is now complete.  Truth is, I even managed to squeeze in one necessary chore to this daily walking routine, the aforementioned disposal of that dead skunk before my wife or I would probably have somehow carelessly driven over the slain creature during a transitory episode of daydream-driven dementia while running an errand.  And as I re-enter our yard from the east and hear that same pair of bluejays from before squawking up in the treetops and as I intuitively smile at the robins gamboling about on our filthy-from-winter lawn in joyous pursuit of non-thinking earthworms and just take note of the fact that everything around me looks exactly the same as it did before the coronavirus pandemic became easily THE most compelling issue on every earthling’s mind in the early spring of 2020, I experience an epiphany and realize that we human beings constitute just one species of life on the surface of this Earth. 

That epiphany is further reinforced when Spartacus comes racing down to the end of our driveway to greet me.  Spartacus, you see, is Carla’s and my American Eskimo hybrid dog who is too skittish to take along on walks away from our property because he panics at the sight of any vehicle on the road and pursuantly scoots off chaotically just to get away from the motorized monster.  Spartacus is neither a smart dog nor a brave one, but he is extremely friendly and extremely loyal and those estimable qualities alone render him a cherished yard companion.  So, anyway, Spartacus comes running up to me as I access our acreage from the east and I ask him point-blank if he harbors grave concerns about the coronavirus pandemic currently bedeviling the human populace of the world. 

As expected, Spartacus shoots me a blank stare, but his tail continues to wag indefatigably throughout and his eyes sparkle like glistening diamonds purely at seeing me return to the premises following a short absence.  Spartacus obviously isn’t aware of any existential crisis facing mankind, nor would he give a roaring rip if he were to somehow find out such was the case, that is, with the exception of Carla and me—his regular food sources; he would surely miss us a lot if we were to somehow mysteriously disappear from the face of “our” planet!  And by extension, Spartacus is a reliable bellwether for his canine species.  All the dogs of the world neither know nor care that the human population is facing an existential threat from one of the smallest, lowliest members of the organic food chain. The coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly human problem, and the rest of the planetary population does not give one hellacious shit about it.

So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must move quickly to unite and own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

 Although we Homo sapiens habitually feign superiority and near-godliness and infallibility and invincibility, it becomes abundantly clear the world would go on very smoothly and tranquilly if the entire human population was suddenly wiped off the face of the Earth.  We are not special; we are just one species among many.  The existential fear we are facing right now is the same one every species of animal has faced at one time or another throughout the eons since that first scarcely organic fish crawled out of the primordial soup of a prehistoric ocean and struggled mightily to breathe atmospheric air through its primitive gills until evolution gradually interceded and worked its adaptability magic.  We do not own special privileges on this planet, although large numbers of us for some reason believe such is the case.  The COVID-19 pandemic we are currently facing—this existential scourge, this mass assault on our exceptionalism, this ultimate wake-up call—should make every person alive step back for a moment to reconsider their place in the larger scheme of things. 

Almost every human being now alive will survive our generation’s personal existential scare, just like our ancient ancestors survived apocalyptic Ice Ages and massive volcanic eruptions and devastating meteor visitations and Bubonic Plague infestations and mindboggling earthquakes and God only knows however many other species-threatening calamities that have preyed upon humankind ever since our ancient human ancestors first ventured northward off the plains of eastern Africa toward the Middle East millions of years ago, but that is completely missing the point; that information is neither enlightening or germane. 

We should rather use this challenging moment in history as a reality check, to recognize and acknowledge our relative insignificance in the bigger order of things, and just stop for a moment to pay homage to the sobering fact that our collective exodus from the Universe as we know it would not even create a minor wrinkle in the infinite fabric of space/time.  We human beings are larger than life only in our own minds; no other living creature feels the same way about themselves, and the inanimate actors which populate our Universe obviously could not care less either.  We are not special; we are not exceptional; we are not indispensable; we are not irreplaceable.  Akin to spoiled, bleating children, we only feel that way while constantly reassuring each other about this false truth.

Yes, we only feel that way.

We only feel that way…..

Until the day comes when we no longer may be granted the privilege of surviving, let alone flourishing, on the surface of a planet and within the confines of a solar system and a galaxy which are wholly indifferent to our continued presence….

.

So let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:  This coronavirus pandemic is ours and ours alone, and thus we tribe of vastly disparate human beings must unite and move quickly to own it and address it or risk facing planetary irrelevance…..

Heaven on Earth (Part 4)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

December 31^st, 2009.  7:15 a.m.  Driving north along a gravel township road in Pleasant Valley Township, Mower County, Minnesota, United States of America, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, As Yet Unnamed Universe Because the Existence Of Alternative Universes Can Never Be Empirically Proven.  The road itself is a veritable skating rink, totally glazed over with residual ice left behind from the great Christmas Day meltdown, when an epic blizzard long forecast for that day degenerated into a rainy, soggy mess in the face of uncharacteristic, mid-thirties temperatures. 

Just off to my left lies a great, majestic orb hanging in the New Year’s Eve day sky—a gargantuan “blue moon”, the second full moon of this December.  One stares at it—fully mesmerized—wondering with equal parts awe and bewilderment how something so typically small and self-effacing could now be this gigantic and overpowering.  The morning air is crisp and pregnant with the sounds of winter as I carefully glide down “325^th Street”–which in reality is nothing more than a narrow, nondescript, gravel township road–towards a “T” intersection with its big cousin, blacktopped Mower County Road #6. 

And that spectacular blue moon continues to dangle low in the northwestern sky, barely clearing the flat horizon, seemingly begging everyone on Earth to indulge in her once-in-a-year pageantry.  And what a unique day Ms. Luna has chosen to spotlight! 

For this is no ordinary day, not at all, not by any means……. 

A new year awaits less than twenty four hours hence, and not merely a standard, run-of-the-mill year either……but a whole new decade!  If one hasn’t particularly liked how the past ten years have gone, you can now—with some small degree of luck—enthusiastically enlist in the dynamic new decade parked immediately in front of each of us and steer your life in a decidedly alternative direction. 

New year……. 

New decade…… 

Same old issues and problems as before, you say…..??? 

Well…..does it really matter in the big scheme of things??

Truly?!?!?!

Today is undeniably a day to look forward, NOT backwards! 

As I swing a right turn onto County Road #6 and head off toward another day of work in Rochester, I reluctantly bade the transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime blue moon farewell in my Elantra’s rear-view mirror.  And this curious thought strikes me as I drive south on the uncommonly lonely highway:  How many other wayward travelers have carried on a similar conversation with “Ms. Blue Moon” in centuries past—long before I was even born—and how many more will be asking the same existential questions as me in the distant future…..long after I am gone?  Will anyone even still be around to witness the sheer beauty and peculiar awesomeness of our Universe then?!?  Unlike the moon and the sun and the stars which are not saddled with organic vulnerabilities, will humankind overcome its intrinsic foibles and blunders and blatant stupidity to survive for near perpetuity as well?

Only time will tell, but today is not the day to worry about esoteric celestial matters.  No, today is a day to exalt in the advent of a brand new year and a brand new decade, if only owing to the fact so many other earthlings did not experience our same level of good fortune and last long enough.

Therefore…..let the partying and merry-making officially begin!!!!!