My decision to try poetry didn’t start with poetry. It started with trying things. Like country music, which I did not like, until I tried it and realized I liked it. Same for sushi, which I had committed to never eating and then never telling anyone that I ate it, and now I am telling you that I like sushi and can eat enough of it that my wallet shrinks and my stomach swells.

So I figured I would not know if I like writing poetry until I tried it. This is my twentieth poem, not counting silly things I make up for my grandkids, like these lyrics, which are the same as poetry but with a tune attached:

Twinkle twinkle little star,
In my peanut butter jar.
Put it on some bread with jelly.
Now the star is in my belly . . .

Hey, it’s not my fault that you aren’t five. The feature poem of this post is more serious. Sort of. It’s also a little tricky. So pay attention. Like all poems, it might have a different meaning for you than it does for me. If it’s just perplexing, leave me a comment and I will share my interpretation. I will offer this context: One can do a lot with a little space.

I Ran
by Steve

Late in February I ran.
And I ran.
And I ran.
And I ran.

In March I was done.
Had I won?
No.
I ran.

I ran in circles and Strait.
Strait was harder.
But I ran.
And I ran.

I ran in April and May.
Thought about stopping.
Could not stop.
So I ran.

I ran in June.
Slipped on oil.
But I ran.
And I ran.

In July I ran.
I was gassed.
The cost was high.
But I ran.

August came.
Sorry to drone on.
But I ran.
And I ran.

To
Be
Continued.

Dear Canada:

Steve, here. I am not a country. Or a state. I am not a leader of a country or a state. Pretty much a follower. I heard that some important legislators from Michigan wrote you a letter. In our country (so far) anyone can write letters, so here is mine.

Like the Michigan letter, I am writing about the smoke. No offense, but it smells kinda bad, and I thought you would want to know. I first suspected it was smoke from Canadian wildfires because the smoke pronounced the word process as PRO-cess and not PRAW-cess like we do here, eh? I am told I am but a few words short of Canadian fluency, by the way. In that regard, I am a bit of keener. Also, applying logic, I am surprisingly open to your way of pronouncing the O sound.

I would like to put an end to this kerfuffle, but I realize that wildfires are called wild for a reason, and that reason is that they are not tame. Tame fires, like the ones for roasting roasting marshmallows, are easy to control, and the if the smoke becomes unpleasant we simply move to the other side.

I am familiar with wildfires, because we have had these in our country. At least here, putting them out isn’t as easy as some people think.

My letter is less aggressive than the Michigan letter, which AI summarized in the probably fake image below:

I am taking a more subtle approach 1) because Canadians, at least according to stereotype, can be reasoned with and 2) because of a discovery I made in 2006 or it might have been 2011: Calling someone an eh-hole (see what I did there?) has rarely, if ever, in the history of humanity, motivated someone to do better. I make that observation despite a widely-held belief to the contrary in our country.

You may wonder, well probably not, because you don’t know me: Do I perceive any benefit from the smoke that drifted in from your fires? Yes, some, but please don’t share that with anyone who would hate me for my chronic perspectivism.

First, it gave me an appreciation for the fresh air I breathe on most days. It’s easy to take that for granted. It gave me gratitude that I only smoked from infancy to late teens. Presumably my recovery from tobacco smoke inhalation—I did inhale—helped me avoid intentional smoking and chronic lung disease in later years. Most of you didn’t know I smoked as a child. Was smoked, I should say. My lips never held an actual cigarette but my second-hand exposure put me on a Marlboro cowboy trajectory. Lastly, I am grateful that none of my kids or grandchildren suffer from asthma.

Perspective aside, which is rare for me, what can be done to help improve air quality in case letters and new tariffs on non-complicit bystanders fail? I bet, without any actual evidence or any actual wager, that financial support of fire suppression efforts, even if we were only to use the bonus tariff money to that end, might help. But here’s the bind for us: We don’t have any money. Actually we have less money than not any. The interest on our national debt is in the neighborhood of $3 billion, which is the most interesting neighborhood ever. That’s $3 billion daily. This amount can be written longhand in one of two ways: 1) $3,000,000,000 or 2) inconceivable.

So yeah, sorry, but we can definitely offer thoughts and prayers, because, well, that could definitely work—possibly—and it is our tradition. We could also commit to reducing other sources of air pollution. For example, I heard, or at least made up, that the same legislators who wrote the Michigan letter to Canada just sponsored a bill to give incentives for cleaner energy and purchase of hybrids and EVs, and another that would add a tax on heavy vehicles like trucks when empty cargo beds displaying three or more numbers in the model logo. That sentence was generated by natural intelligence, which can make mistakes.

In closing: 1) Having a great time; wish you were here. 2) Thank you for not smoking. 3) A song. Well, part of one. I supply the lyrics. You can choose whatever tune fits best.

O, Canada, our neighbor to the north
Please put out your fires
And bring the fresh air forth

Our president will make you (us) pay
We want to go outside and play

We might help you, well, if we can
But we need money for Iran . . .

Sincerely yours,

Steve

P.S. Give’r!

You probably already know, but just in case you were busy getting measured for halo or wings or walking on heavenly beaches or whatever you do wherever you are, we said goodbye to you at brunch memorial service that fit you so well. After 40 years of knowing you I suppose I am entitled to drop the in-law designation. You didn’t birth me or change my diapers or tolerate my adolescent insolence but you were very much a maternal influence. I will never lose gratitude, Mom, for the gift of my wife, the mother of my sons and the grandmother of my grandchildren. This alone is a profound legacy.

After the memorial service several family members, including five of your great grandchildren, met at your condo. “I remember GiGi because it smells like her in here,” said (five-year-old) Harlow as she entered. After a few hours I surveyed the disarray we had caused. “Grandma’s house has never been this messy,” I said to my niece, who was washing some dishes. I then sat on the floor and picked up the puzzle pieces strewn about in front of your bedroom door. There would be no resting in peace with that much disorder.

It was more a sharing than a goodbye—a refresher course on why your life is worthy of celebration. We gathered to cry and laugh and to glue our memories of you together. Kleenex stock was up $4.

We shared stories and pictures and hugs with people close to us—close to you—some who came from far away, including four of your seven siblings. We surmised that you approved, especially of the children running and chasing and laughing as adults reminisced.

I will remember your strength in spite of the impending creep of fragility. Your joy in your relationships. Your good humor. Your pain and anxiety and how you smiled anyway and the ways in which those closest to you rallied around to make things as good as they could be. There is too much to tell in an article and I don’t have time to write your book. So I’ll share some captions as they float to the surface of my consciousness.

I remember the day I met you, well before the turn of the century, at the O’Neill Iowa football party. You were unfathomably young. I was the not-even-quite-divorced-yet 20-something who had just started dating your daughter. You gave me the benefit of the doubt that felt like certainty. I did not know then that I would marry into this family of Badgers and Packers, but soon enough, I knew that it might be a good idea. You treated me with kindness that first time we met and—literally—every time after that. I have to wonder if that is not some sort of mother-in-law world record to be recorded in a book along with the tallest man and the most times going over Niagara falls in a barrel. It is the reason when someone tells a mother-in-law joke that I don’t get it.

You were a great grandmother long before your grandchildren had kids. And when they did, you were a wonderful great grandmother. Our kids called you Grandma Sandy and our grandchildren called you GiGi. The pictures—in boxes and photo albums, and computers and in my mind—of you with these most fortunate kids are the archived evidence of love. The Sunday before you died, we asked the hospital staff if it would be OK to bring children. I was relieved that they said yes. I have video of toddler, Calum, playing peek-a-boo with your at the side of your hospital bed. We could not know it was the last time you would see him. And, I guess, we still do not know.

In your later years, Florida was your place of winter refuge. There, in this place where you needed but one small layer of clothing and could buy a tomato in February that did not taste like cardboard, was your comfort zone. But for the Canadians who once visited, you abhorred the political climate, but it was sun and sand and not Ron DeSantis that held your gaze. With special fondness and rekindled pangs of hunger I remember our dinners of fresh-caught grouper and pompano, made by you and Kelly in the kitchen of your rental condo—as good as any we had in restaurants. We dined at the table in front of the screen porch before the setting sun, a warm breeze, the pond, a book-marked novel and two basil plants in small containers. We toasted to the good fortune of the moment. And to health. Sláinte.

We took trips to the farmer’s market to buy bread from the French baker who, despite his authentic-sounding accent, could not tell us how to say strawberry in his supposedly native tongue. His suspect authenticity was a running joke. But the bread was excellent. As were the chocolate croissants (the t is silent). Fraise, by the way.

We were so much alike, you and I. Just kidding! We were quite different, but we were quite compatible. I took pride in making you laugh or at least grin, which you did, sometimes with a subtle shake of the head suggesting, “I love you anyway, Steve.” I could not always appeal to your logic, but I could often appeal to your amusement.

Did I want anything from Starbucks? “No thank you,” I answered. “I like everything about Starbucks but the coffee.” It was not true. I like almost nothing about Starbucks. But I knew your order by heart: grande decaf nonfat latte two pumps no whip. I tried to convince you to go with the full fat version, but after 60 years of hearing people of my profession tell people like you that a low-fat diet is a healthy diet, you didn’t buy into my interpretation of the actual science. But at least you stopped taking the statin. Recently I accidentally took a sip of your two-pump coffee concoction. It was so sweet that I wanted to spit it out. And I remembered the advice I occasionally dispensed, “Sandy, you are 85 years-old. You can do whatever you want.” In practice I may not actually believe that, but I kinda do. It was also solid justification for eating brownies.

A row of beautiful basswood trees grew behind your condo in Appleton. You called them “filthy trees” because they shed their seeds onto your patio, not all at once, but for weeks and weeks, so you had the opportunity (my word, not yours) to sweep them away almost daily. Why anyone, me for example, would collect the seeds to propagate this species, was beyond the scope of your comprehension. The trees are gone now—victims of storm and saw, but I noticed a few filthy tree seedlings growing in the rock landscaping near your house. This morning I dug some to move them to the farm. In your honor.

I recall when the act of aging had occurred to you. And surprised you. “When I was 60,” you told me, “I felt like I could live forever. And now . . .” There was no need to finish the sentence. I ponder that often, now that I near the age when the conscript of youth plots its escape. I am at little risk of taking whatever remains of my freedom for granted. I remember, the last time we were in Florida together, praising you for successfully climbing a flight of stairs unassisted. Much of aging is the conversion of the mundane into milestones.

I will forever, and possibly longer, savor the O’Neill family cottage that we almost let slip through our fingers before we last-minute lunged and grasped, then embraced it, and how your dear friend, Jan, who came oh-so-close to being its next owner, is our dear friend now. We will watch you in every sunrise over Boulder Lake, hear you in every loon call and see you in every hummingbird.

Your last trip to the cottage, in this life anyway, was in midsummer. I picked you up in my truck, which you climbed into with better agility than I had predicted. You spent three days with Kelly and me at Boulder Heaven, as you and Rick named it, a tranquil—but for the weekend ski boats—lakeside property shaded by towering hardwoods. Just before we turned off of highway 55 you said, “That corner has gotten really messy.” The mobile home and small buildings had been there for decades—an on-again,-off-again mini convenience store in years past. Now, firewood and an old trailer for sale were displayed in the yard. “What do you mean?” I asked, seeking to understand. “Well, that pile of sticks,” you replied. I glanced back in time to see a tangled pile of weathered tree limbs on the edge of the property. I have driven by it a hundred times and never once noticed it. How interesting, I thought, that this pile—wholly innocuous to me—bothered you. How interesting, with a pristine river to one side and hardwood forest everywhere else that this pile of wood captured your focus.

In my youth and middle years I might have viewed your assessment as a shortcoming, but now, in what might be the nascency of wisdom, I am accepting that we all come to perceive the world just how we see it. I had no need to judge your perception. I needed only to accept it. And now I notice the messy pile every time I drive by. I think of you. And I ponder the importance of spotting the beauty amidst the clutter and noise of imperfection. Might I now convince you of the messy pile’s value?

If your final days in your earthly hospital bed had a theme, it would would have been, “I want to go home.” We almost got you there. You died just hours before our discharge planning, which included 24-hour in-home care, came to fruition.

The acute event of your passing—because the actual word for it, death, is uncomfortable—began with a phone call at 3:30 a.m. A call from a hospital at that hour it cannot be good news. I knew at the first word out of the coordinator’s mouth that you had died. I felt my breathing pick up. The voice on the other end did what the bad news bearers do, prefaced his message with sentences that don’t matter. Painful to hear. Painful to say. I know both because I delivered the news to some of the other members of the family. The news of death, even in a person who has lived a long life, is such a peculiar combination of expectation and surprise. We sensed it could happen soon. And when it did, it was astoundingly sudden.

We needed to spend time with you at the hospital. The nurses were so very accommodating. “Stay as long as you like,” they offered. It was the start of a the healing process that won’t likely be complete for many lifetimes. I thought of the night before, just before we left. You thought you were home. I felt some comfort in that. Later that day, great granddaughter, Lylah, asked, “Did she know she died?” The depth of a seven-year-old’s curiosity fascinates me.

In some cultures the finality of one’s passing—one’s death—is a non-concept. It goes like this: A dead person remains a living member of the community as long as she is not forgotten. By saying her name and re-telling her stories she—her essence—is kept alive. And so ends my first contribution to the next part of your longevity, Sandy. I encourage others to do the same. Live well.

With love and great appreciation,

Steve

Welcome to One Seed Farm, also known as the Vampire Free Zone. Before we continue, a moment of silence for vampires and others who hate garlic. I am sorry for not understanding you. As a garlic enthusiast, I may not smell good, but at least you can feel safe with me. You can trust that I sleep at night—and not in a coffin—have normally-sized canine teeth and have not even the slightest thirst for your blood.

What follows is a post I published in one of my former blogs, the one called sosbros. SOS for “sports and other stuff”. Don’t try to look it up. sosbros.com is gone. Dead. The URL may now owned by Meta. You can probably buy it for $142,000.

I think that garlic may be my new favorite plant. But won’t the tomatoes feel slighted? No, not unless you tell them. Garlic has a long list of health benefits, which means that someone once said that and people believed them. Purportedly it’s an aphrodisiac, but I would bet that is only the case if both participants eat it. Garlic breath is meant to be shared. For sure it makes food taste better, assuming you like the taste.

Deer, woodchucks and rabbits won’t touch garlic. Fruit trees are said to benefit from its nearby growth because the scent molecules that garlic exudes are large enough to obstruct the respiratory system of some insects. Breathing is important to insects, so they move on. Supposedly.

Since I first started planting garlic, there hasn’t been a single vampire in the garden. This is bad for novels and movies, but good for sleep and it lowers the risk of being bitten in the neck, not counting mosquitoes and ticks.

Best of all, garlic is the plant that keeps on giving. It is harvested in July in bulb form, which is how you buy it at the store if you don’t have a friend who grows way too much of it. Properly cured and dried, bulbs stores well in a cool place for at least 6 months. I set aside several of the largest bulbs for fall planting. Each bulb has a half dozen or more cloves, which explains why you can reach out and touch garlic from just about anywhere in my backyard.

In late winter, the stored garlic starts to sprout. Some people think this is bad, because the garlic is then unusable, which would be true if it were not false. You can still use the cloves, or you can plant them. Spring-planted sprouting cloves won’t yield bulbs as big as the bulbs from fall-planted cloves, but they will be big enough. You can harvest and use the young spring-planted garlic as you would a scallion, which is a secret chef word for green onion. Green garlic is also known as gallions, not to be confused with an old wooden ship. Yes, I made up gallions, but it’s obviously just right. Garlic is incredibly cold tolerant. It survives underground in winter and you can spring plant it as soon as the ground is thawed.

But there’s even more. In June the scapes come. What’s a scape? It’s a way to remove oneself from imminent danger. Just kidding. A scape, as opposed to escape, is a serpentine growth from the top of the garlic plant, whose purpose, if left alone, would be to make a garlic flower, which might not work for bouquets because it smells like garlic. The best thing about scapes is that they can be harvested, chopped, and used in any dish that needs garlic, which is pretty much all dishes that you would not serve with ice cream. The scapes will store for many weeks in the refrigerator, which means garlic has no off season. Kind of like Major League Baseball.

Schedule summarized:

October-November: From your stored cache of garlic, take the largest bulbs and separate them into cloves. Plant each clove. Over the growing season a single clove will magically become an entire bulb.

March: Fall planted garlic emerges. If your stored garlic is gone, you can dig some of the green garlic and eat that. At the same time the stored garlic often starts sprouting. This can be planted in the spring and harvested green in about six weeks. Or you can leave it in the ground and it will grow back year after year. I call this “perpetual garlic”.

June: Harvest the scapes.

July: Dig the new bulbs. Dry them and store in a cool place. We keep ours in the root cellar, because we have one.

All months: Eat garlic.

My wife, Kelly, bought a wooden raft for free. It is buoyed by four 40-gallon plastic drums, three of which don’t have leaks. Each year we drag the raft from the shoreline with great effort, anchor it about 30 feet from our dock, use it once or twice. In the fall we drag it with even greater effort back onto the shore.

Sensing it would be more burden than asset, I never wanted the raft. I did want Kelly to like me so I was a good sport about it. More or less. Well, more less than more, but other than to share my observations that the raft has a low utility-to-effort ratio, I mostly let it drop. Float.

This year, out of sheer neglectatory (yes, I am proud of that word) procrastination, the raft remained grounded until the weekend of the July 4th. I had hopes of getting rid of it and Kelly finally said I could.

Then something oddly generous or generously odd, which might have been a virus or a social media algorithm or a robot that can distinguish between a bus, traffic light and a bridge, came over me.

I said to Kelly, “I think I am going to put the raft in.”

“Really?” she asked, with a tone of affection not dissimilar to the aaawwwww one might make when seeing kittens or baby elephants.

“Yes.”

And I did. It took awhile partly because it was hard and partly because I wanted it to look harder than it really was. And Kelly smiled. And then she said, noticing an old frayed rope tied to a hook on the corner, “What’s that (ugly) rope for?” At the time I did not know why it might have been tied there, but was sure it had no modern-day purpose. I told her I would get rid of it. But I didn’t because I was distracted by other things I had been ignoring.

The following week we returned to the lake. I waded out to the raft to see why one corner was low. The leaky barrel had taken on water. While I was pondering how to fix it, I noticed a stunning dragonfly perched on the end of the rope. It didn’t seem to mind my proximity so I returned to the dock to get my phone. The dragonfly was still there, patiently waiting for me to take its picture.

Beautiful creature. Finally, I was glad we kept the raft. Glad I dragged it into the water. Glad the rope was still there. My fascination with the way seemingly unrelated things lead to each other is intact, as is the observation that there is sometimes value in waiting to get rid of things. I got a picture of a magnificent creature, the gratitude of my wife, and another chance to appreciate the marvel of an excellent camera that also sends text messages and shows me the weather forecast. And, I got a story to share with you.

My earliest memory of literary expression is the time when I wrote my name in mud on the front of the neighbor’s house. Kids didn’t have tablets in the 1960s. I thought my mom was magically omniscient when she immediately identified me as the culprit. Besides being too young to understand the value of pseudonyms--I should have used my brother Matt’s name instead--I had written S-T-E-V-E backwards. I had no idea that dyslexia was my first trademark. Soon after, I accomplished two things: 1) With my mom holding one hand and my other holding a bucket of soapy water, I was perp walked down the street to restore the defaced house to a blank slate, and 2) I learned, through a series of special exercises, to orient the letters correctly in my brain and on paper—and probably on buildings, but I haven’t that again. Yet.

I don’t know for sure that I had dyslexia. I have since seen many young kids write letters backwards. But dyslexia was what they, the people who called things, called it. And it makes for a compelling story: Once dyslexic child overcomes adversity to become writer.

Fast forward to second grade, when I wrote my first book, presumably with the letters facing the right direction. You never heard of the book because the original manuscript is lost to humanity by way of a folder in a box on a shelf in some attic or garage, and because I didn’t have a publicist.

The story went something like this: A mouse had crawled through a hole in the pantry. He ate so much that his expanded girth prevented egress through the same hole. And no, I did not use words like girth and egress when I was seven, because my classmates would not have known what those words meant. This was not a mouse who gave up easily. He found the nearest plate of butter, smeared it all over his body and was then able to slide through the hole. (The modern version would have replaced butter with Ozempic.) The story was feasible because we never kept our butter in the fridge in those days. I remember the praise from my teacher, Miss Kaberlein. It was surely excessive and probably annoying to some of the kids who were not me. Miss K would be in her 80s now. That means I would be in my 60s. Yikes.

In middle youth I wrote only to satisfy academic obligations. I had good memory for arbitrary conventions of grammar that would shield my homework from three- or five-point deductions written in red ink but that was the extent of my literary prowess.

When I went to college I became proliferative, not in class, but in letters to my family and to my hometown girlfriend. I possess none of those letters--because I sent them to other people--but I recall them as creative or at least silly, often to the point of bizarre. I signed them with a caricature of a pig. I don’t know why. Foreshadowing for a time when I would raise actual pigs? Much of my eclectic style was attempted humor. I still wonder if anyone else thought I was as funny as I thought I was.

Circa 1990 I got serious, while still trying to be funny. I became a sportswriter, or at least determined, more or less, to be one, more or less. It was an endeavor borne of injured pride and mock retaliation, in response to incessant teasing by my dear friend and sports nut, Brent, and my dear wife and sports nut, Kelly, who noticed that my sports trivia IQ was 32, wind-aided. They took advantage of most opportunities to make fun of me.

It wasn’t that I lacked an understanding of sports--I played three varsity sports in high school (sometimes adequately) and I often attended college events at Camp Randall and the UW Field House--but I stumbled and stuttered when asked about details, for example, “Name more than two players on the 1989 Badgers basketball team.” Danny Jones and Patrick Tompkins and . . . their teammates. I did just as poorly with the Packers. I cared about the team, as time allowed. I just didn’t care that LeRoy (pronounced leh-ROY) Butler’s jersey number was 36.

I decided to show them. I started writing an e-mailed sports column. That’s right: Substack did not invent this method of sharing articles. Did I mention I also discovered penicillin? I wasn’t the first to discover it, but there was a time when I discovered it.

Before long, I learned the trade secret of sports writing: to create the illusion of knowledge from mere opinions. Importantly, I retained enough useless sports trivia to stay off the radar screen of embarrassment. One day I realized, as a writer, I had arrived. Brent didn’t know he paid me a complement, but I overheard him ask another friend, “Did you read Steve?” My name had become synonymous with my writing. At least it was for one guy. I was inspired to keep going.

Later I branched out into several renditions of web-based blogs, writing about topics other than sports. Like golf. I dabbled in entertainment, fashion and politics, but when it came to pop culture competency I was mostly faking it. Over time I got so busy doing cool things, like growing enough garlic to wipe out the entire vampire race, to write about that I had little time to write about them. I posted with decreasing frequency on Facebook to the point where I had to be close to losing my membership. It was good to reconnect with my friends, some of whom I had never met, but I always did so reluctantly, hesitant to support Meta Mark.

That was 35 years ago. If I am at the halfway point of my writing career, I will still be writing when I am 100. That seems far off. Also kinda close.

As we writers like to say: To be continued . . .

I posted Patriot Games in 2019 in a blog I called Letters to Ma. I thought this would be a good time to recycle it.

Talk less.

Smile more.

Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.

--Aaron Burr’s advice to young Alexander Hamilton, in the musical

Dear Ma,

As you may recall, I was once a fourth grader. Andy was my friend and classmate. Nice kid with a full face and long straight brown hair. He was sitting in his one-piece kid desk by the window, behind me and a few rows to the right. Our teacher, Mr. B, must have commented that we were lucky to be living in the greatest country in the world. What happened next plays like a movie I have seen a hundred times, even forty-eight years later.

“But what about all the pollution?” Andy asked.

There was a moment of silence while Mr. B set his glare. “Love it, or leave it!” he scolded loudly with an expression of loathing that startled me. Andy stared at the floor. Nobody moved.

Mr. B, also the school’s principal, was one of my favorite teachers. I simply assumed then and for many years after that he was right and Andy had screwed up. Already reluctant to raise my hand in class, I thanked the gods of my own and several other religions that I had never thought anything bad about my country, let alone blurted it out in my teacher’s presence.

The story came back to me recently when a former friend (FF) called Kelly a “f—-ing liberal” on her Facebook page. He offered to buy her a ticket to Canada, and I don’t think he meant for a fishing trip. It was unsettling to read such overt expressions of hatred directed at anyone, let alone by a well-educated once-liked professional, directed at someone I love and respect.

I have been trying to put FF’s comments into some sort of perspective. His words made me realize that our political divide has never felt wider. We see this on social media, in print, on television, and at all levels of government, where partisan lines have become partisan walls (that word again). The spirit of compromise and collaboration seems all but dead. All sides have lost introspection. When was the last time you heard a politician say, “Well maybe I was wrong” or “Help me see it from your point of view”? When was the last time you heard anybody say that? Could another pair of questions better define political suicide?

FF’s invective made me wonder: Is it really unpatriotic to criticize one’s country, its government, its leaders or their decisions? If so, why would our founding fathers (short-lived Alien and Sedition Act aside) bother with a Constitutional provision specifically protecting the right to levy such criticism? First Amendment aside, can we love our country and still find fault in it?

For our friends who say no, I ask this question: Can we love our children and find fault in them? Would our children be better or worse off if we agreed with everything they did or said, even if we felt they were wrong? Were you wrong, Ma, when you scolded me for my adolescent tantrum on the golf course or for telling me I would someday regret quitting piano lessons (which I do)? Was it loyal or disloyal for you to want me to be a better person than I was?

Since you have lived a long time you probably know that divisiveness is not new to our nation. Our nation was practically founded on divisiveness. People should read history books if they don’t believe me. Was Thomas Jefferson unpatriotic for his criticisms of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton? According to the book, they hated each other. Were Hamilton, John Adams and other abolitionists unpatriotic to criticize the human trafficking in which some of our most prominent founding fathers engaged?

Could we look at the loyalty question from a business point of view? I think so. Show me a business that seeks only positive feedback and I will show you a business destined for well-deserved failure. I tell people—my colleagues and my patients—that I want to meet the person who is most unhappy with the service I provide. Compliments feel good, but feeling good not improve my group’s viability, especially in the venture capitalist-eat-dog world of medical practices, which is a sandbox toy dispute relative to countries and the global world order. Only knowledge of my deficiencies will make me better.

Do we live in the greatest country in the world? Does it depend on what we are measuring? Does it depend on who we ask? Does the veteran holding the cardboard sign, or the farmer in foreclosure, or the divorced mother of three kids with two part-time jobs, who can’t afford health, answer the question differently than Jeff of Amazon, or differently than a doctor who made a small fortune in farming by starting with a large one, and by redefining the meaning of fortune to include the shade of trees and a grandchild’s fascination with baby chickens? Surely we can find worse countries—places were the oppression and desperation are more rule than exception. But does that mean we have nothing to learn?

Would the citizens of the greatest country in the world believe that their country had no flaws? Would the citizens of the greatest country in the world elect leaders who believe they are never wrong and those who berate anyone who daring to question their judgement?

Could it be that our country is like most countries and most businesses and most communities and most families and most people—good at some things, inept at others (exhibit A: the mess of our tax code) and a lot in between? Isn’t it true that we have good people and smart people and humble people and generous people and greedy people and lazy people and industrious people and arrogant people and dedicated people and some who just don’t care? Don’t we even have people who believe in the Constitution, but not in freedom of speech?

Is being the greatest country in the world like the Nobel Prize or the Lombardi trophy that, once earned, is kept forever? Or is it the greatness of a country dynamic—tied to a set of ongoing actions whose trajectory changes often out of a quest for excellence? Maybe, Ma, there is a more valuable question than whether or not we are the greatest country in the world.

Maybe it’s this: Can we be a better country in the world?

Hope you are well. Let me know if there is anything I can do better.

Love,

Son S

P.S. Exhibit B: We are still setting our clocks an hour back in the fall, then forward in the spring. For no good reason at all.

At a certain point it’s time to stop preparing and do something. This article is the something. I have fourteen Substack drafts ready to go but most are closer to inception than completion. As far as I know, there is little deadline pressure, but I don’t really know. That word, deadline, is at least a little morbid, suggesting that a clear example of too late is the onset of mortality. And one thing we know about mortality, besides knowing we wish to avoid the subject, is that we never really know.

The question you might reasonably ask is this: Where the hell has Steve been? Not Steve the farmer, or Steve the grandpa, or Steve the doctor guy, but Steve the writer. Lately I have been a literary whale, surfacing at long intervals on Facebook, then mysteriously disappearing for a lot longer than a whale ought to be able to hold its breath. I am here now. Floating on the surface.

When I learned of Substack, I was quickly intrigued. It’s a non-billionaire-centric site for writers to share their work. One part blog. Quarter part social media. One part stuff I don’t know about. The platform is straightforward once one wades through a few feet of complexity. According to people who say things, it’s best to just start; publish soon, deliberate later. Three months passed since I read that.

Some deliberation is worth it. It took several renditions and a little lost sleep but I finally came up with a title that fits me—my purpose and message I envision. It came to me, like so many ideas do, in the darkness of the early morning. If you already know me, you’ll know why Cultivating Imperfection is, well, perfect. If you don’t know me, pull up a screen and see what I mean. The rhyme was unintentional.

Seventeen hours later I realized I should have purposely misspelled Imperfection. But enough tinkering. Unless my site name turns out be a registered trademark of SpaceX or Meta or some guy named Tony, I am leaving it alone.

So, there. I published. My first post is not perfect but according to the theme, it doesn’t have to be. At least the seed is planted. I invite you to join me to watch it grow. Next up, and possibly soon (ish) is a post about the origins of my writing.

By the way, did you notice I used a semicolon in the third paragraph? I did it so you would know I am a sofisticated literarian. And now you wonder; did I mispell sophisticated on purpose? And isn’t spelling misspell with too s’s two wasteful? Yes, two s’s and too wasteful. And did I just make up the word literarian? We could have fun with this.