PINE NUTS – A Dog Named Lucky
October 19, 2024 | McAvoy Lane
My America of today reminds me of a sign I saw in the oldest bar in Nevada, “Lost Dog! Blind in one eye, missing one foot, recently castrated, goes by the name of LUCKY!” That’s us all over. We are blind in one eye when it comes to dealing with the causes of climate change. We’re hopping on one foot in pursuit of gun safety, and well, yes, feeling particularly lucky when sidestepping a castration…
A lady hailed me from across a parking lot today and motioned for me to roll down my window. We talked for five minutes about saving the world, and I felt rejuvenated and refreshed on the drive home. I don’t know about you, but I need more of that kind of interaction. There’s something health-giving about looking into a stranger’s eyes, seeing that singular smile, hearing that singular laugh, and absorbing some wisdom…
She said, “We really do need to conduct a fair and just election, end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and get back to making art and music and babies. Where we were once able to conceive of our world as round, instead of flat, it now behooves us to stop behaving like our world is inexhaustible. With eight billions of peoples roaming the globe, things do tend to run out, and just when you need that thing the most.”
I thanked that lady for hailing me and regaling me…
We each have a bully pulpit, no matter how small, so it becomes our personal obligation to use that bully pulpit to mitigate social incivility that leads to hatred, and all too often, violence. I like to try to remember what our mutual friend, Mark Twain, reminds us, “It’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most.”
So let us stand up and sound the clarion call to terminate the bane of internecine wars, mass shootings, and political hostility.
We have the United Nations and the World Bank, but it’s conversations over the clothesline that will be the saving of us…
What if all ladies in the world were to go on strike, so to speak, and demand that we stop the killing before they will have anything more to do with us men, well, I’m no longer a betting man, but I will bet that killing as a problem solver between men will drop into the annals of profane history…
I would recommend that this history altering strike should begin on New Years Day, 2025 and hopefully last not more than a month…
We might all agree that it’s not going to happen, but we can revel in the prospect that if it were to actually happen, well, we might just find ourselves feeling like that lost dog, “Lucky!”