October 5: "Clapp's Pond," Birthday, Nobel Prize

Mary Oliver talks about how connection . . .

Clapp's Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

Three miles through the woods

Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray

among oaks and pines,

the late winter fields

where a pheasant blazes up

lifting his yellow legs

under bronze feathers, opening

bronze wings;

and one doe, dimpling the ground as she touches

its dampness sharply, flares

out of the brush and gallops away.

                         ∞

By evening, rain.

It pours over the roof.  The last

acorns spray over the porch; I toss

one, then two more

logs on the fire.

                         ∞

How sometimes everything

closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments

flowing together until the sense of distance--

say, between Clapp's Pond and me--

vanishes, edges slide together

like the feathers of a wing, everything

touches everything.

                         ∞

Later, lying half-asleep under

the blankets, I watch

while the doe, glittering with rain, steps

under the wet slabs of the pines, stretches

her long neck down to drink

                         ∞

from the pond

three miles away.

Everything touches everything else.

That is Oliver's message in tonight's poem.  Clapp's Pond touches the pheasant touches the doe touches the rain touches the acorns touches logs on the fire touches Clapp's Pond again.  Throw the speaker of the poem into that mix, and you truly have everything touching everything else all at once.

Today, I celebrated the start of my 56th trip around the Sun.  Before I even woke up, people were sending me birthday wishes, from as far away as Germany and New Zealand.  And each and every greeting reminded me how lucky I truly am.

Most of us go through our days feeling completely disconnected, as if each of us is a circus of one--ringmaster, lion tamer, clown, trapeze artist, elephant, camel, and Franky the Amazing Dogboy all rolled into one.  When my head hits the pillow at night, I find myself already already thinking about the next day's circus.  

Yet, disconnection is truly just a feeling--it doesn't reflect reality.  At least for me.  I have people all over the globe who care about my welfare.  The disciples of this blog are spread out from Taiwan to Syria to Dunedin.  This little thing called the Internet (you may have heard of it) has managed to shrink the distances (metaphorical and physical) between peoples.  I'm sitting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and just received a message a little while ago from an acquaintance currently in Rome.  Small world, small tribe.

Now, I'm not deluded enough to think that just because I have a lot of friends on Facebook means that I'm popular or well-liked.  I've said it before:  social media is not a good barometer of reality.  However, when people take a few seconds out of their days to send me birthday greetings, I get the feeling that I've made some small impact on the world and some lives in that world.

That makes me feel pretty darn connected.

No, I didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year (that went to a Norwegian writer this morning--Jon Fosse).  No, I didn't receive a phone call from President Biden wishing me a happy birthday.  And, no, Governor Whitmer didn't sign a proclamation designating today Saint Marty Day in Michigan.  

However, I had seafood risotto and a raspberry chocolate bomb for dinner tonight.  My wife, daughter, and son sang "Happy Birthday" to me.  Then, we played a board game.  When she left to go home, my daughter laid her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Happy birthday, Daddy!"

For Saint Marty, that was better than a call from the Swedish Academy.

May 13: "With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice Is So Delicate and Humble," Social Media, Speckled Egg Moments

Mary Oliver on the noise of contemporary culture . . .

With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice Is So Delicate and Humble

by: Mary Oliver

I do not live happily or comfortably

with the cleverness of our times.

The talk is all about computers,

the news is all about bombs and blood.

This morning, in the fresh field,

I came upon a hidden nest.

It held four warm, speckled eggs.

I touched them.

Then went away softly,

having felt something more wonderful

than all the electricity of New York City.

Okay, I have to say this:  Mary Oliver is amazing.

The world is full of all kinds of noise that distracts.  Every day, there's a new social media platform or piece of technology that is supposed to make life/communication better or easier.  The newest iteration of iPhone.  Upgrades to Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.  I held off from entering the Facebook universe until about seven years ago.  (By the time I joined, Facebook was no longer hip.  It was for old people trying to find out if the library was open.)  

I doubt Mary Oliver ever owned a cell phone.  In fact, I would bet a year's salary that she didn't.  She was more interested in unmediated miracles.  Miracles she could touch with her fingers, smell with her nose, taste with her tongue, hear with her ears.  Mary Oliver encounters a nest of speckled eggs.  What does she do?  She doesn't take out her phone, snap a picture of them, and then post the picture on Facebook with a caption like, "Better than all the electricity in New York City."  Nope.  She gently touches the warm eggs, admires them, and then, when she gets home, writes a beautiful poem about them.

Isn't that a better way of encountering the world and life?  (This coming from a person who has published over five thousand blog posts.  I know.  I'm kind of a hypocrite.)  My jobs require a certain amount of social media interaction on my part.  Social media is a necessary evil.  (And I use the term "necessary evil" hesitantly.  Because it's a cliché.  Also because I don't think all social media is evil.)  In order for people to be aware of readings or programs or concerts or books or blog posts, I use social media.  For example, when I am done with this blog post, I will use Facebook to tell people about it.  That, I think, is a legitimate and healthy use of social media.

However, when I go to dinner tonight at Texas Roadhouse, I'm not going to go home and post a picture of my sirloin on Twitter with "#feeling_blessed."  .  (By the way, I don't do Twitter.  Have never done Twitter.  Don't intend to start doing Twitter.  Don't really understand the need for Twitter.)  When social media becomes a way to convince the world that your life is wonderful, there's a problem.  A big problem.

Have I posted pictures of my kids on their birthdays?  Yes.  Have I posted pictures of my wife on our anniversary?  Absolutely.  Yet, I don't create these posts to convince people that my life and family are perfect.  Any longtime disciple of Saint Marty knows that I embrace imperfections.  I freely admit my failings and struggles.  That's what life is--a series of mistakes interrupted by occasions of wonder. 

When I go on social media, I don't want to see doctored photos of flower gardens.  Don't use a profile picture that's ten years old.  I want truth, in all its beautiful ugliness.  Show me your gray hair.  Your dog-bitten hands.  Show me you.  

I think that's what Mary Oliver is writing about in this poem.  She knows the world is a hard place, full of sorrow and loss and violence.  Social media thrives on that shit.  Oliver isn't preaching that we should ignore the cruelties of life.  In fact, she wants us to realize that the world isn't good or bad, kind or cruel.  The world is just the world.  How we interact and react to the world is what makes the difference.

I am in Wisconsin tonight with my family.  We went shopping.  Ate some good food.  My son went swimming.  It has been a wonderful day of relaxation, except for the traffic.  I'm not a big fan of four-lane highways and city driving.  Tomorrow, we may go to a museum or do some more shopping.  And tomorrow night, we are taking in a traveling production of Hamilton.  My daughter has been obsessed with this show since high school.

I'm not bragging or trying to convince you that I have a better life than anybody else.  Go back and read some of my older posts.  My life is messy, just like anybody else's.  But, every once in a while. when the stars align, something amazing happens.  Speckled eggs in a nest, more wonderful than all the electricity in New York City.  

This weekend is one of those speckled egg moments for me.  I get to spend a lot of time with my family--the ones I love the most.

Saint Marty thinks that is better than all the water in Lake Superior.

February 15: Blood Trail, Hallmark Movie, Double Down

Santiago cleans his wound . . . 

Shifting the weight of the line to his left shoulder and kneeling carefully he washed his hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged, for more than a minute watching the blood trail away and the steady movement of the water against his hand as the boat moved.

So, here is Santiago cleaning out the cut he received on his hand from a dumb mistake.

Yesterday, I wrote about Valentine shaming.  The thing that happens on Facebook every February 14 where people post pictures of their perfect loves.  I knew that I might receive some pushback on my words.  I did.  Perhaps yesterday's post was a dumb mistake on my part, and I'm still bleeding a little from some of the responses.

I'm about to double down on my dumb mistake.

I am not jaded or angry or depressed.  I believe in love.  Real love.  On social media, we want everyone to see us at our bests.  That's why we photoshop pictures.  We live in a mediated age, where reality isn't good enough.  We all want to be Hallmark movie stars.  I want to be a Hallmark movie star (although I lack the physique, jawline, and flannel shirts).  But that just isn't what love is.

As I said yesterday, life is messy.  Love is messy.  You can't get around it.  Any person who has been in any kind of long-term relationship will be attest to this fact.  If they don't, they're lying.  There is no way to reflect in a Facebook post the kinds of struggles and joys that occur in lengthy love relationships.

Instead, what we end up seeing on social media are the kinds of posts that make some people insecure and/or depressed about their own love lives.  Or lack thereof.  My Valentine's Day post was my dumb mistake way of trying to tell people that love is not a Hallmark movie.  It's more like Terms of Endearment, hopefully without the terminal cancer.  

I fiercely love the people in my life, with all their faults and downfalls.  I am lucky to have people who fiercely love me, despite all of my failings.  That is what I want to celebrate.  Unconditional love.

There, I said it.  You can all go back to your Hallmark fantasies now.

And Saint Marty is going to go clean up all the cuts and bruises he received after yesterday's post.

April 17: Xenophobe in Chief, Stop Being Stupid, Poem from "Kyrie"

You know, I've been seeing these theories floating around social media (fueled by the Xenophobe in Chief sitting in the Oval Office) that this pandemic isn't simply Mother Nature being Mother Nature.  The story goes that Covid-19 was created in a Chinese laboratory and was somehow loosed on the world, either accidentally or purposefully.

I suppose this is a natural response to an event that is so mind-boggingly catastrophic.  We want to blame someone or something.  That's what humans do.  Place blame.  By that logic, we have to blame the United States for the deadliest pandemic of the last 100 years (the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed almost 50 million people worldwide).  It seems to have begun in the heartland of the United States, spreading from there.  There were three waves of the Spanish flu, and that pandemic lasted well over a year, and it kept returning because human beings simply refused to keep isolating.

The second wave of that pandemic began because World War I ended, and citizens of my home country had to throw parades to celebrate.  People crowded the streets, hugged each other, rubbed shoulders, cheered.  Because of those celebrations, another outbreak of that flu occurred, killing more people in total than World War I did.  So, again, America is to blame for that second bout. 

My point is this:  people need to stop being stupid.  Human beings mess up the world, and the world corrects things.  That's how it works.  Instead of looking for someone to blame, how about stopping idiots from throwing massive protests, blocking routes to hospitals, and spreading this fucking virus even more.  This isn't about socialism or fascism.  It's science.  We stay away from each other.  The virus can't spread.  The virus goes away, like an uninvited relative at Thanksgiving. 

Instead of listening to brain-dead, swastika-wearing, gun-toting hate mongers, how 'bout listening to the ones who know a few things about epidemiology--you know, those women and men in the white coats who we all run to when we get sick.

This message has been brought to you by Saint Marty and common sense.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Martin Achatz

Hogs aren't pretty but they're smart,
and clean as you let them be--in a clean pen,
hogs are cleaner than your average cat:
they use their nose to push their shit aside.
And not lazy:  if a hog
acts sick, you know it's sick.

As long as I've known hogs, I've known sick hogs,
especially in the fall, the cold and wet.
Before the weather goes, you slaughter hogs
unless you want to find them on their sides,
rheumy eyes, runny snout.

It's simple enough arithmetic,
so don't you think the Kaiser knew?
Get one hog sick, you get them all.

July 7: Went Mad Now, Social Media, "The Brady Bunch" and "Breaking Bad"

Arthur has just discovered that the Magratheans are building another Earth . . .

"Well, the Earth Mark Two in fact," said Slartibartfast cheerfully.  "We're making a copy from our original blueprints."

There was a pause.

"Are you trying to tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that you originally . . . made the Earth?"

"Oh yes," said Slartibartfast.  "Did you ever go to a place . . . I think it was called Norway?"

"No," said Arthur, "no, I didn't."

"Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that was one of mine.  Won an award, you know.  Lovely crinkly edges.  I was most upset to hear of its destruction.

"You were upset!"

"Yes.  Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much.,  It was a quite shocking cock-up."

"Huh?" said Arthur.

"The mice were furious."

"The mice were furious?"

"Oh yes," said the old man mildly.

"Yes, well, so I expect were the dogs and cats and duck-billed platypuses, but . . ."

"Ah, but they hadn't paid for it, you see, had they?"

"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"

For a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence.  Then the old man tried patiently to explain.

"Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice.  It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one."

Only one word was registering with Arthur.

"Mice?" he said.

"Indeed, Earthman."

Arthur's whole meaning of life has just been turned on its ear.  He, like any resident of the planet Earth, never knew that his home planet was actually an experiment being conducted by rodents.  That means that everything--cancer, earthquakes, the Reagan presidency, famines--all of it was part of a gigantic laboratory run by mice.

I don't deal well with life-altering revelations.  I don't like my life being turned upside down with one sentence or phone call or IM.  On the flip side, I don't like living a lie either.  I'm pretty much an open book.  If you want to find out what's happening in my life, all you have to do is ask me, or read my blog.  The details all out there in the open. 

Of course, you can't always trust social media to provide an accurate depiction of a person's life, either.  People don't paint ugly pictures of themselves.  That's why most captions on Facebook read like Hallmark cards:  "So blessed tonight!" and "The perfect family!" and "My kids are so awesome!" and "Look what my wife/husband did for me!"

On the other hand, most people will not post things on Facebook with captions like "Just got out of the psych ward!" or "My son cut down a tree on the school playground and used it to beat a classmate!" or "Hurray, I didn't get the raise I was expecting!"  People don't advertise the hurts and pains and disappointments that enter their lives.

The truth lies somewhere between The Brady Bunch and Breaking Bad.  There's always something behind the smiles in photos.  Happiness exists, but only because sadness complements it.  Joy exists, but only because despair is there to define it.  However, we all don't walk around in states of perpetual grief.  That isn't accurate, either.

My point in this post is simply not to believe all the smiling faces on Facebook.  Don't gauge your happiness on somebody else's.  Social media is a useful tool, but it can sometimes be deceptive and downright harmful in relationships--family, friendship, love, and marriage.  (Go ahead, you can sing theme to Married with Children if you want.)

Those of my disciples who know me in RT (that's Real Time) know things about me that simply don't make it onto this blog or my Facebook page.  Those of my disciples who simply know me as Saint Marty would probably be very disappointed to meet me in real life.  I'm not nearly as deep or funny.

The real Saint Marty lies somewhere in between.

All that being said, I hope you enjoyed the pictures in this post from my family's visit to Lakenenland this afternoon.  I've included ones of my beautiful and perfect children . . .

July 6: Expansive Monster, "The Truman Show," Medical Procedure

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have you, as a sensible physiologist, simply- particularly remark its front aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he has- his spout hole- is on the top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of his head; nearly one third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head; but with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so thick is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indian-men chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes.

Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is- by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais?

This is one of those chapters that I find a little confounding.  Melville is striving to catalog and anatomize every inch of the sperm whale, tail to head.  Now, he has reached the "battering ram" of its head and its brain.  He's laying the framework for the rest of his tale, trying to counteract any disbelief that may arise as he finishes the story of Ahab and the White Whale.  It's called a willing suspension of disbelief.  It's sort of a contract between an author and his/her audience.

This morning, I had a medical procedure.  Nothing major.  However, as I was being poked and hooked up to monitors, I was thinking about the kind of trust that is exchanged between medical professionals and their patients.  It helped this morning that I've known many of the people taking care of me for some time.  Plus, I've had this procedure before, so there wasn't a whole lot of anxiety on my part.

Everything turned out fine.  The doctor was pleased with the results, although he took a few biopsies to be safe.  I'm not concerned at all.  I have a willing suspension of disbelief that this story is going to have a happy ending.  I went home, slept for a while longer because of the anesthesia.  Did nothing else of consequence, aside from helping my daughter and her boyfriend return some cans and bottles at the grocery store.

I often think of the movie The Truman Show with Jim Carrey.  He plays a man whose whole life has been scripted for him.  From birth to school to puberty to job to girlfriend to marriage and children, Truman is the unwitting star of his own reality TV show.  So, if anything bad happens to Truman, someone already knows what's going to happen.  His whole life is art.

Now, as social commentary, The Truman Show really strikes home in this social media age.  If it doesn't happen on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, it simply doesn't exist anymore.  The first thing that people do when they hear about somebody dying or getting engaged or having a child is to check some social media outlet or text.  At the moment, even the United States of America is being run by a reality TV star (and I use the term "star" ironically).  Donald Trump lives by the Tweet.

It's an interesting idea to think that my life is somehow all laid out in a script, like Truman's.  That God is some kind of television producer/director, and I am the star of his show.  So, today's episode of the Saint Marty Show was titled "The EGD Part Two:  The Acid Reflux Redux."  It was brought to you by Prilosec, for 24-hour relief from your heartburn.  Stay tuned for coming attractions from tomorrow's episode titled "The Lawnmower Man."

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for nurses and doctors and good results.

June 23: One Dam Ingin, Social Media, Cat Videos

When in the Southern Fishery a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades,* kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.

*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general shape, corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.

"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."

Again, Melville lapses into stereotype with Queequeg, making him talk pidgin English--the same kind of dialogue used by actors playing Native Americans on Bonanza and Rawhide.  It reduces Queequeg from a fully realized character to the "savage" Melville's readers would expect.  It's not surprising.  No character with skin of any shade darker than white fares well in the book.  This little chapter is simply a reflection of a larger social issue, one that has been a part of the United States since its inception.

I'm not going to spend this entire post ranting about racism or ageism or sexism or homophobia or Islamophobia.  We can all agree--hopefully--that those problems are blights on the American landscape.  What is on my mind this morning is the danger of social media in propagating these kinds of beliefs.  For a computer savvy racist out there, it's not too difficult to splash offensive subject matter all across Facebook or Twitter.  Stuff that flashes across the screens of smart phones and laptops, right into the minds of young people who are only beginning to understand the adult world.

I suppose that's the point.  Get 'em while they're young.  For example, when I was a kid, my exposure to pornography was limited to the magazines I would find under the mattresses of my brothers' beds.  And it was pretty tame stuff, comparatively speaking.  Now, hard core porn is only a computer click away.  If a young boy can operate a mouse or has access to an iPhone, he can find just about anything he wants to see.

I know it's ironic that I'm writing about this subject in a blog post.  I use social media a lot to connect to people, speak my mind, share poems I like.  Yet, I can get sucked into the cesspool as much as anyone else.  On Facebook, I will stop and read anything that is critical of Donald Trump and his cronies, because it validates feelings that already exist in me.  (It doesn't help that the Trump administration has an agenda that is completely antithetical to my Christian faith and my values as a human being on this planet.)

Social media has always been a part of the human experience.  First there were cave drawings.  Stone tablets.  Then bards wandering around, singing songs and telling stories.  Papyrus.  Theatrical plays.  Pamphlets.  Posters.  Books.  The Information Age has just made it a lot easier to spread messages (good and bad) across the globe.  Social media can be useful (fundraisers for flood victims) or damaging (gatherings of Neo-Nazis).  It all depends on who's using it.

I don't think Herman Melville was trying to further the cause of racism and colonialism with Moby-Dick.  He was trying to write a book, and he was a product of his culture and time.  As a parent in the 21st century, I find that I have to be really vigilant about what my kids see and watch on social media.  Point out the flaws and mistakes in political posts.  Discuss the harmful images of women and sex in pornography.  Try to raise my children to be responsible citizens in the Digital Age.  And, maybe, pass along a funny cat video every once in a while.

Saint Marty is thankful today for his kids, who usually think he's pretty cool.