The complicated world of DNA surprises

 Regarding the article "Missed Connections, Inside the world of DNA surprises," written by Jennifer Wilson and published in the August 25, 2025 edition of the New Yorker:

Those of us interested in genealogy have always known that there was an element of doubt in the matter of paternity in our genealogical ancestry.  We were not able to quantify that doubt, but we knew it existed.  Thus, it seemed fruitless to trace one's ancestry back too far because there were bound to be some cases of paternal ancestors which weren't our biological ancestors, even though they appear in research and documentation as such.  Our present ability to scientifically determine who our nearest paternal ancestors are, has created a number of other concerns which the article and Wikipedia references.   There is now an acceptable term to describe the phenomenon, N.P.E., which stands for "Non-Paternity-Event."  Some notable experiences developed once it became easy to check one's genealogy are referenced in the article, for example, 

Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, Kara Rubinstein Deyerin – Speaker | Advocate | Storyteller , has made a name for herself in this arena:   "She was raised in Seattle as the daughter of a white mother and an African American father.  As she grew up, Rubenstein Deyerin, like many Black Americans, became curious about her African origins, a history lost in the slave trade.  "I said, 'Dad, let's take one of those tests.'  But when she opened her DNA pie chart, her sample didn't cluster with any part of the African continent.  Instead, a large portion was labelled 'Ashkenazi.'"  'I had never heard of it, Rubinstein Deyerin told me'.  She called her mother:  Her mother said, 'But I don't know anyone Jewish.'  I was , like, well, you knew at least one."

There is a potential for lawsuits.  For example, if a person discovers she is the result of an N.P.E and that her hitherto unknown biological father had an inheritable disease that her mother and her biological father kept secret from her, for example, from Wikipedia:  Ashkenazi Jews have a higher risk of certain inherited genetic conditions, including Tay-Sachs disease, Gaucher disease, Canavan disease, cystic fibrosis, and familial dysautonomia. These are autosomal recessive disorders, meaning an individual must inherit two copies of the altered gene, one from each parent, to develop the condition. Carrier screening is recommended for all Ashkenazi Jewish individuals and their partners, especially before or during pregnancy, to identify carriers and inform family planning decisions."  

When Rubenstein Deyerin contacted her wealthy biological family. it didn't go well.  Her mother was 18 at the time, and her biological father was Sam Rubinstein, a 50 year old wealthy philanthropist.  Rubenstein Deyerin obviously had her named changed, since she didn't know about the Rubenstein connection until she got her DNA results and questioned her mother.  

The article states, "In regard to how much an individual's ancestral records can be considered to be compromised by N.P.E.'s, "A few years ago, a research team at Baylor college of Medicine surveyed more than twenty-three thousand customers of these kits and learned that three per cent of them had discovered that a person whom they'd believed to be their biological parent wasn't.  (That number is in line with a 2005 study from a university in Liverpool which found a 3.7-per-cent median rate of misattributed paternity in the general population.)  If the ratio holds, that means around two million Americans who have taken one of these tests are N.P.E.s".

And also, I wonder, since the Mormon church uses assumed genealogies in their theological concerns, whether they have issued a papal-like statement in regard to how such matters as N.P.E.'s are to be viewed by the church.

After the buffalo went away

 

In this morning's news letter from The New Yorker is an article on "loss."

"When the Princeton classicist Dan-el Padilla Peralta was going up for a promotion to full professor, in early 2023, it occurred to him that one of the central preoccupations of his career was loss. Being a scholar of the preservation of knowledge, he realized, also made him an expert on its destruction."

The New Yorker writer Jonathan Lear condenses Padilla Peralta's comments about some books, one of them is Radical Hope by Jonathan Lear:  "The book is organized around a statement by Plenty Coups, who was a longtime chief of the Crow Nation. Shortly before he died, he gave an interview where he said, “When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this, nothing happened.” One of Lear’s goals is to tease out the significance of those last words, “nothing happened.”

I doubt I'll order the Padilla Peralta book, but the Plenty Coups' comment has been something to think about.   I have given a lot of thought recently to the matter of leaving the Marine Corps back in 1955 when I had the rank of "buck" Sergeant.  I was interviewed by a not-very-articulate sergeant who offered me some incentives if I would stay in.  My current duty, was rifle instructing at Camp Pendleton.  I did extremely well, never failing to get any of my charges qualified.  Thus, I was offered an immediate increase in rank to Staff Sergeant.  That was definitely not a common occurrence by the time that someone's three-year enlistment was over.  No doubt I was appreciated, but also the Marine Corps needed to replenish the Staff Sergeant ranks because they lost so many during the Korean War (I had been given an increase while I was in Korea, to corporal, for the same reason).  When I enlisted, the war was still going on and my first assignment was to the El Toro Lighter than Air base, an easy drive from my home in Wilmington California.  I enlisted to get away from home; so I immediately asked to be sent to Korea.  It wasn't hard to find someone who didn't want to go, so I went in his place.  That also was considered an admirable trait in a Marine; however I wasn't thinking in those terms when my enlistment was up.  I had been sent to Twenty Tine Palms after I got back from Korea, the most unpleasant, boring place I had ever lived in.  I spent my free time at the base library resolving to leave the boring Marine Corps as soon as possible.  Shortly thereafter a request was sent around for Marines who had fired Expert who wanted to become rifle coaches at Camp Pendleton (where the weather was much better) I signed up at once, packed up my sea bag, and a short bus ride took me to my new duty station.

Now, in relation to the Plenty Coups' comment, I "thought" all the buffalo had gone away when I left Korea.  There were some stressful moments over there, but I never saw actual combat.  I did check out the chances of being sent to the front -- not the only Marine who had done that -- but was told they weren't accepting any more such transfers inasmuch as there were truce talks going on; so I settled into being there for the full 13 months.  I was there for the last two battle seasons.  My very first job was to guard three prisoners who had gotten drunk and drove to a town over-seen by the Air Force Police from the much more populous Air Force Base a mile or so from our base.  They ordered the Marines away.  There was a confrontation and all the Air Police were killed.  

There were about 130 of us there where the Yellow sea came up through our barbed-wire fence and then withdrew so far we could no longer see it.  I soon made a lot of friends who taught me to drink beer, smoke, and a number of other things.  They didn't twist my arm, I was happy to fit in and be one of them, and I was.  Each month a "draft" would have completed its thirteen months over there and be sent home.  Each month there was a party for those going home.  No one I was stationed with at Kunsan and Cheju Island was sent to the same duty station I was at Twenty Nine Palms.  I believed the buffalo had gone away.

After a few months I became a rifle coach at Camp Pendleton and enjoyed that duty even more than duty at Kunsan and as much as at Cheju Island, but I wasn't sophisticated enough being only 19 to evaluate the disappearance of the buffalo.  Even though I enjoyed duty as a rifle coach at Camp Pendleton, I had previously done some boring time with peace-time Marines at Twenty-Nine Palms.  I don't recall how long I was there, but it was long enough to decide I didn't like the peace-time Marines and with no new wars on the horizon, I resolved to leave after my enlistment was up and go to college.   Had I gone straight from Korea to Camp Pendleton perhaps I would have decided to stay in, but I had the negative experience of Twenty-Nine Palms and wanted out.   I never reevaluated matters at Camp Pendleton.  I simply set aside thinking about getting out.  It was never a matter for discussion until I was called in and asked if I was going to "ship over" (the Marine Corps term for reenlisting), and by that time I realized that after we had gotten everyone requalified, I would be sent back to my duty station at 29 Palms.  Although if I knew of some other place I'd like to go, perhaps I could have told the reenlistment sergeant I wanted to go there and see if that was possible, but I didn't know of any such place other than Embassy duty.  The reenlistment sergeant said the waiting list for that was very long.     

I started work at Douglas Aircraft Company because I had bills to pay, not because I thought of it as beginning a career.  Had the Buffalo gone?  Well, maybe so, but I was probably more versatile than Plenty Coups.  I did well in Douglas Aircraft Engineering, and was working on my Master's Degree at night, but after some unpleasant experiences with a college professor who gave me what I thought was a view into what my life would be like if I entered that field.  I had a good excuse for dropping out of the Master's program.  A number of college graduates went to work at Douglas in order to pay bills and earn enough money to return to college.  Douglas frowned on that and took a hard look at people who were working on advance degrees at night; so I gave that up, and reconciled myself to a life in engineering.  Had the buffalo gone or not?

Perhaps I need a new analogy.  Perhaps at some point I abandoned hunting the buffalo.   But, I would contend, the buffalo were not what they used to be and I had lived so long that the buffalo I knew had grown old and died.  The days are dusty now.  It's hard to breathe when I spend too much time outside listening for hoof beats.  I can no longer mount a horse; so when I am honest with myself I must admit that it makes no difference whether the buffalo come back or not, but if they do, I must assert in my own defense, they won't look anything like the buffalo I was familiar with back in the Corps and I most certainly won't want to hunt them.  But that doesn't, at least for me, eliminate a sense of loss.  

Sometimes, late at night drinking a cup of espresso, I wonder how my life would have turned out if I'd told that reenlistment sergeant, "Okay, make me a staff sergeant but leave me at Camp Pendleton as a rifle instructor."  He would have agreed to that, but in thinking about that reconstruction, I would have been at Camp Pendleton when Lee Harvey Oswald went there to re-qualify.  He had not qualified before and as head of the "unqualified" detail I would almost certainly have improved his ability to shoot (but probably not more than the coach, whoever he was, who actually trained him).   I have never given any thought to how I would feel if I were the one to have qualified Oswald.  I have though often wondered how the coach who did qualify him felt afterwards  Maybe the buffalo that I longed for would have stampeded right over me if I had reenlisted.  Also, after I had been in for four or five years of my reenlistment, Vietnam would have been warming up, and the person I became subsequent to the life as a Marine was not happy with the way our leaders fought that war.  Would it have been enough for me to simply suck it up and do my best; which I would certainly have done, or would something else have happened which I wouldn't have been happy with if I had managed to survive and return home?  When I go on one of these memory trips, I do sometimes wish I'd stayed in the Corps, but the wishing fizzles quite a bit when I travel into subsequent years . . . sitting here, for example, two months shy of my ninety-first birthday, in better health than most people who become this age, drinking espresso, while the cleaning lady is downstairs cleaning, finishing up this email and getting ready to return to the book I'm currently reading, "Maddy's Floor," by Dale Mayer, probably not a work of great literature, but entertaining.  Sometimes I feel a bit guilty because I am not concentrating on writing or reading something "worth while."  On the other hand, when I do bear-down mentally and work on something serious, i discover that my blood pressure goes up, and high blood pressure is the only ailment my doctors are concerned about controlling.  I have never discussed poetry with any of my doctors and probably never will.  I'm quite convinced that nothing I have to do is going to bring a single buffalo clumping down the street I live on.  There is a saying to the effect that if you hear hoofbeats, think Horses and not Zebras.  Maybe one shouldn't think about buffalo either.  Maybe I should read the Jonathan Lear book.

 

 

My fist

The concept was just a bit ago

Clear; then in its midst I lost

The ability to move.  I must

It seems, be able to clench

My fist and then my mind in that

Order.  Without that I merely dream,

Drifting like a slow moving cloud

Whose outline seems fixed until

Measured against another. 

Even if I think out loud and in

The brief time past look down, 

I can watch my fist unfurl.

On a sunny Friday nearby

 

“Just swallow the sunshine”

Pressed the Shadow.  Well

For him to say in his hiding.

I’ve lost substance by his

Side these passed few years,

Cloven from shielded eyes.

The last of us trudged up

Here to set our baskets down

Saying one to the other,

“This much is good” and

Began to weep.  There

Was music pulsating 

Behind.  Urging inexorably

Our staying here in this

Place till we

Who can still stand

Crane our necks and stare

At the sun till we go blind.

Marching, Marching

 

Pushing open the wrought-iron gate

I’d had enough of just looking in –

Needing to be there on the other

Side.  I let it slam behind me.

The clang introduced an

Element of doubt.  I had skills

My history proved them,

But no evidence of this,

Clicking through to a place

I’d neither studied for

Nor imagined.  Looking 

About I saw they neither

Dressed nor looked like me

Their hair hung in tatters.

Their homework was rolled up

Under their arms.  Up on the

Walls, well armed guards

Walked to and fro; yet

No one challenged me for

Being there.  It wasn’t long

Before I learned my place.

Life moved swiftly then.

My dreams of Susan

Faded.  My doubts

About being there when

She was not diminished.

The cripple-ness in my knee

Began to spread.

Outside in the morning

Walking across the front lawn

Early in this chirping-crisp brisk

Morning – the sun blinking its

Bright light through the trees,

Breezes meandering, spread

Widely enough to stir the leaves,

And grasses and flowers beneath them.

How often did I wake here

Trousers cinched with a broad

Belt, my ancient Ninety-two

Pulling them further down than

They did when we were new?

I might know if I were thinking

Clearly, the way to the top.

There was a time I wouldn’t stop

On such a morning until I stood 

Up there, drinking espresso

From my thermos’ cup, but I

Can’t make it beyond here, this

Morning, being too old and feeble

For anything more than this.

Sailing back from some place else

 

We were often there, taking 

The stairs two at a time

While the chance of falling

Wasn’t a consideration, and

A helping hand being there

Was for touch and not

Really for help.  I recall

The touch.  I thought I could

Handle losing it, but failed

To understand the breaking

Down of her understanding,

That withdrawing

Touch of consequence, 

Memory loss, loss of most

Of what she was.  I would

Have stayed at sea if she could

Have stayed, but she was

Slowly leaving in her mind,

Me hearing her go in every

Conversation, time trickling away

Like sand through my fingers.

My Old Pen

 

There was a blaring 

Back up beyond the hill we’d 

Just come down.  Someone 

Pursued us.   A bull horn

Voice strengthened and

Threatened.  Unable

To think, I stumbled

Away as well as I could. 

I had been writing and

Raised my hand with a pen

There clinging.  My other 

Held a walking stick

And at my feet Jessica bared

Her few remaining teeth.

My pen was knocked away

And my poor hearing

Turned their sounds into

Raucous screeching.  They

Shook their heads at

My conspicuous ineptness

In this now-righteous domain.

Going back again

 

Brooding at my desk

From an open book

Resisting a hand full

Of sleep from time

To time, recalling

As I drift forward

Or aft the soft sail

Boat sway on a calm 

Day, Susan brilliantly

Smiling into a morning’s

Rising sun – time stilling,

Watching my main

Sail flutter, and never 

Caring until that time

Ran out and runs out still

Sitting here snapping awake

From my palm-perch which

I flex and flex until I have

The feeling back – the

Rest of me though loses all

That is back there once again

Death application

If you wish to die, strike one on 

Your keyboard.  When the next

Screen appears, select your 

Reason from the ten provided.

After this you will need to strike

Your signature key.  If you 

Do not have such a key,

Go to the “create your signature”

Screen and create one.  You will

First need to answer the questions 

Listed.  You will be notified within

Two weeks if your signature has 

Been approved.  If your yearly

IRS Tax bill has been under ten

Thousand dollars a year, expect

Near-term approval.  If higher

You will be directed to a Grief

Counselor.  If after two years, and

With your counselor’s approval

You still wish to die, your request

Will be reassessed and you will

Be directed to a new Grief Counselor

Setting out on a new spring day

 

Hobbling along a cobblestone

Road, it won’t take long

To run me down.  How far

Can I get?  I’m sure they

Wish I were not out here 

Ahead of them again, but at

Least I’m no one urgent.

My existence anywhere being 

Merely overdue.  There were

Calculations, slide rules

At first and adding machines,

But now its smart phones and

Artificial intelligence.  It knows

Each step I take and where

I’m likely to go.  When I don’t

Go there, an algorithm files

Another complaint of the sort

I’m tired of responding to,  

Searching down this road

For a better place to hide. 

Concluding strains

 

In the last act, viva voce,

The soprano softly sighed

Gasping the words of her

Remaining song.  They were,

She sang, of her love and how

I’d vowed to care for her

Until this our end now

Being portrayed.  I could   

Not then sing. I tried

Instead to smile.  Her wan

Look faded with each

Uttered word sung softly 

In diminishing refrains.

We heard the approaching

End. I sang the anguishing 

Solo as the lights dimmed.  The

Ushers jangled the doors wanting

Us gone.  With my hand in hers

I turned to the emptying chairs

And bowed -- one – last – time.

Working in the Dark

 

     Having been given the murder
    I quickly scanned all the
    Previous detective had, the
    Rusty knife, the empty shells,
    The blood-soaked room, the
    Body stretched upon the floor.

    My old mind feared I wasn’t
    Up to the task; yet I’d always
    Managed once I focused upon
    The crime.  I stood in
    The dark and conjured
    The man who killed the woman
    Upon the floor.  The door began

    To open.  I drew my Glock and
    Moved against the wall.
    The killer had returned to
    View his crime.  He came
    In nimbly, firing, but I
    Was the quickest into his
    Darkness and into mine.

No New Messages

  One more silence to add

To all the rest, resting in

Peace perhaps, he surmises

Leaning back into his agitation.

It’s hard to sort the maybe

From the inevitability of

Dissolution.  Words swirl

Perhaps, thinking thoughts

Being in nine decades

Past what most think

Convenient, too old to

Learn the new procedures,

Too set in his ways to

Accept the urging down

The stairs, the bucket

At the bottom, the crutches

And alarm clock chanting

Electronically with no way

To shut it off, the instructions

Being too small to read with

The weak eyes of such a man.

REJOICING THUNDER

 

I am running again, faster

Than before, with phantoms

Thrusting larger, slavering

Jaws joyful under smiling eyes.

Street after street we pass

Beyond the critics who can’t

Accept her as she is nor me,

Never having studied the wall

Nor seen its etchings, “snap,”

The whip flicks out.  I don’t

Feel it as it does.  My dog would

Field the insult if I did, caring

At its peak, and I’ve no

Wish to create more.

We come back up the canyon.

Careening cars flick by, whistling,

Honking.  There is a flutter of rain.

Nothing slows.  We’re again as we

Were earlier in the day.  She doesn’t

Pause to judge me nor I her – nails

Sparking on the road as we run by.

Further thoughts on the Dire Wolf

I went to Youtube to see what else was being said about the Dire Wolf.  The consensus seemed to be to take what the scientists said about how they made up the Dire Wolf, i.e., using as much actual Dire Wolf genetic material as they had, and then using a similar species, the wolf to make up what was missing.

I suppose I made some mental jumps.  I went past such quibbles without pausing.  But, now, moving back and looking at them, I ask, why would we want to bring back into existence a species that precisely uses a habitat that we destroyed ages ago?  Look out!  The way to the La Brea Tar Pits is thoroughly clogged with people nowadays.  

We don’t, but if we had the capability, we should modify the genetics of any species which was once solely dependent upon a habitat that no longer exists.  I’m not arguing that the scientists who created the animal that they are terming the Dire Wolf should have done that.  From what they described they don’t have the capability.  They don’t have the genetic material to accurately create the Dire Wolf.  As an acceptable alternative, they used as much Dire Wolf genetic material as they had and supplemented it with the genetic material of the closest species genetically available.

So, rather than celebrate the great achievement of Colossal, some are choosing to quibble about terms, criticizing the logic of calling something by the task designation: Dire Wolf, when they didn’t achieve it 100%.  The scientists were undoubtedly proud of their achievement.  Not us though, we’d rather quibble about what to call it.

I read someplace else that we are attempting to modify the genetics of some individuals so that they can endure the radiation they would be exposed to in travel to other planets.  Wonderful! Now let the scientists alone who want to enable the species they are calling Dire Wolf to have genetics sufficient to permit them to live on this one.

Some thoughts on the Dire Wolf

 

There will be an article in the 4-17-25 issue of the New Yorker on the Dire Wolf.  I am a subscriber and they also send me their news letter which also has this article.  

Much of the information contained in the article I had already encountered elsewhere, but I was shocked to learn at the end that the scientists do not intend to let their Dire Wolves, two males and one female, breed.   So I sat still for a long time thinking about it.

The Dire Wolf, they tell us some place doesn’t derive from the wolf but from the dog, Canis Familiaris.  Perhaps this breed of Canis Familiaris was never domesticated, but it could have been, as all dogs after them, that we know about have been. 

The article is full of how much the science costs, but there is also mention of application, which when it happens is a way to get paid for their work.  I suspect more than a few wealthy dog lovers would pay for a breeding pair of Dire Wolves.  The idea of the Dire Wolf as a pet was in this article dismissed, but the wealthy dog-lovers I imagine could spend a lot of time with them and verify that they are as safe, for example, as safe as any of the ferocious dogs you can see on Youtube being described as the best protection you can own.  The Dire Wolf, never trained to be a ferocious guard dog might very well be less dangerous than some of our ferocious breeds, some of which are larger than the Dire Wolf.

The tenor of the article prepares us to understand that an important impetus in the science is in getting the presently extinct breed back into nature in order to bring nature back into balance.  The Woolly Mammoth is described in that regard.  If they get this animal de-extincted, they can get herds of them shipped to Siberia where they can stomp and poop about and reestablish a balance of nature – make Siberia habitable once again – perhaps double the population of Russia, create more soldiers.  Putin should be delighted.

There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent niche for the Dire Wolf.   Some areas have been rehabilitated by the ordinary wolf, the wolf which had been part of nature before we killed them off.  They have been reestablished to good effect.  No one is likely, I wouldn’t think, to suggest that the Dire Wolf could replace them and do a better job.

But just being looked at by this dog-lover in the midst of his outrage, consider all the jobs we’ve given to the ordinary dog.  There is a very strong argument to the effect that we humans did not evolve all by ourselves.  We evolved in symbiosis with the dog.  For example, we could never have raised sheep that need the dog to herd and guard them.  We could never have established villages which needed dogs to guard and warn us of danger.  The list is long.  Everyone knows it. 

But, the scientist might object, just because the Dire Wolf is genetically a dog doesn’t mean it could ever be pet quality.  Look at the African Hunting Dog.  Can anyone imagine trying to make a pet out of one of those?  Well, maybe not.  And perhaps the Dire Wolf may turn out to be no more safe to cohabit with people than the African Wild Dog, but note that the scientists, without even raising the question has determined to let this revivification of the Dire Wolf die out.

The Dire Wolf went extinct just after humans during the last ice age came across the Bering Straits and south into the North American continent.  Many other species went extinct at the same time.  Maybe there were other reasons for the cataclysmic North American loss of species.  Never lost, were smaller canids that were less harmful and more useful and agreeable to humans.  

There is no evidence that the Dire Wolf was ever domesticated, and I’m not suggesting that they ever were, but what boots that?  Any day on Youtube you can watch videos of species such as the cheetah and panther that have been domesticated and are living uncaged in someone’s home.  Surely a form of Canis Familiaris wiped out during the taking of the Americas by prehistoric man should not be excluded because it once hunted violently in order to make its living.  We are all part of the species that once did the same thing.

Before posting this note, I read some other articles.  There are some who argue that too little has been changed from the present-day wolf for the now-being-touted Dire Wolf to legitimately be entitled to that designation.  Ah me, anyone exposed to the sort of breeding that exists in dog-show circuits might with the same justification deny that any breed is truly entitled to its name.  Whatever it is that is lying near me on the floor as I type, I have great affection for it, her in this case, Jessica, and whomever they are that are on 200 acres somewhere hidden and intended to live their lives as a scientific experiment, but prohibited from breeding and intended to die once again as a species, despite the vaunted term they bandy about, “de-extincted”

A cold spring day

  You know how when you walk

Through mud each up-step

Involves a suction-pop telling

You you’ve left the earth

One step at a time, she being

Unwilling to let you go?

You might try dying

And break loose, but

She’ll hold you fast to

What she needs, and if

God lets you watch your

Remains, you’ll be 

Appalled.  The mud you

Slid through becomes you.

In all the earth there is a

Great coming back to what

Will be whistled out of 

The wind, and in that 

Bristling sound all of us

Will sense the force before

Which all of us answer. 

Not Breathing

        In past times swimming

I was determined in

Ways untested.  Far

Enough away to be

Able to say I’d given up

Thinking of being there,

Failing in being despite

The old confidence

I had back when melded

To my current state of mind

Which while blended

To each conscious step, left

When I dreamed of being

Beneath the kelp drifting,

Dreaming like a bass in

The sun which shined down 

Between the leaves bright

In the world where no

One breathes.  Small fish

Swirl away leaving large

Ones like me breathless.

Paradise Lost

Flying too close to the sun

Then lying panting as I now

Am with broken wing, all

Thoughts of vaunting my

Gladiatorial pretensions have

Faded beneath his causing,

As though He never noticed

Me, scrunched up in 

My room reading what

Ever is left.  He may not

Notice this reconciliation

As if it stands for all the 

Flying I’ve done and 

Thinking still to do in

These inept times, and there

Is no one left to compare

Them with.  What ever boast

I might think hasn’t wind

Enough in it to be heard

Beyond the room I’ve dithered

To.  There is still some

Barking to be done, but not

By me and squawking with 

McCaws who voice their own

Version of these times as I descend

And ascend the stairs beyond

My room, as I once approached the

Sun till He wearied and sent me here.

 

Days of sand and high dreaming

        I hopped from rock to rock

Not fearing what a misstep

Might bring.  I could dance

Away from any such thought

Or eventuality.  My days

In those leaps and landings

Were the words later heard

In a daze sitting at a

Desk dreaming I might

Hold my breath forever,

Phrasing the swirls and

Surges down here

Where one must belong

To a toiling or if not

To be a fleeing,

Days pinned down by

Circumstances and books

And well toned high

Heels not suited to

Sand but well trod anyway

Keening with seabirds’ swearing.

Around campfires dancing

What inklings rise up

Round about like worms

From moist soil look

Askance as I, have 

Their work to do

And I may have mine

It sometimes seems 

Late in the day torn

Bleeding from the 

Pushing and shoves of

Medieval medicine’s 

Demands, I have hand

Cuffs some place, 

Lost, perhaps, a sign

That I’ve been and

Then forgotten save

For regular visits

Not to be missed

Lest I fall from grace

And am erased 

Before my time.

On the seeking of literary immortality

 David Pryce Jones in an article on Evelyn Waugh wrote, "About the best that most writers can expect from posterity is cultural embalming, probably in the form of a monograph written by some academic paid to read books nobody else is reading."  The prospective writer might take note of this as he evaluates, as much as he can, his future.  We learn from history that the term "immortal" was applied to a number of writers and poets, but if we examine those writers and poets we in almost all cases observe that their immortality has expired. 

Is the work of any modern writer or poet likely to be less transient than the tunes the modern teen-ager listens to?  I was once enamored of Chinese poetry before China transitioned into Maoist Communism.   I read poems about old men boating down to picturesque meeting places where they would drink wine and read recently written poetry to each other, poetry that they had written. They pretty much all seemed to write poetry.  It was enough for them if their friends liked it.  There was no thought of achieving immortality as poets.  They wrote for the joy of it and listened to each other read it in the same fashion. 

I wonder if in modern day China the poets I read (in translation) are still being read today -- perhaps only by "academics paid to read books nobody else is reading."

So if today a young person discovers he or she has writing ability, there is a great market in fiction of various genres, but perhaps, the the number of people who make a financial success of this approach isn't high.  There are several other fields that seek good writers.  In my own case, I was hired by the Chief Engineer of the Skybolt program back in 1959.  The Air Force complained that Douglas engineers couldn't write well enough to be readily understood by Air Force personnel.  I had a wife by this time who regularly spent more than I made, and since the realm of workers (not managers) at Douglas Aircraft was a meritocracy, I learned a variety of other skills and thus managed to work there as Douglas merged with McDonnell Douglas which was eventually bought out by Boeing. 

Now at age 90 I can sit in my second-story study and look out my window through the trees at mountains that were within walking distance when I retired here 25 years ago.  Now because of a damaged knee I wouldn't try to walk that far.  In any case I don't wish to.  I do still write a lot.  I keep journals, write a lot of letters, and a few articles and poems I might post on a simple blog that was set up for me by a nephew many years ago.  The stats tell me that 1,783,486 have looked at various of the articles and poetry since it was first set up. It's been convenient.  For example, I had always planned to study the American Civil War and so several years ago, did that.  I ordered probably most of the authoritative literature on that war from eBay and Amazon and joined forums discussing various matters, strategies, battles, theories about the merits of various generals, etc.  Tempers can run high on these subjects.   For many, I found, these Civil War discussions were overriding.  I was invited to stick with it and make everlasting friends with those I agreed with, but after I had enough, had written enough articles, I stopped, gave most of my Civil War books to my brother-in-law and went on to other subjects.

Another reason it does not seem wise to seek literary immortality is that our language is rapidly changing, and has been for a great many years.  No one will understand what we write in a thousand years.  Anthropologists and geneticists estimate that our species has existed for about 200,000 years.  We have had written languages of any sophistication for less than 12,000 years. 

One of our "immortal" authors, Geoffrey Chaucer lived from 1342 to 1400.  His famous work is the Canterbury Tales.  I've read them several times and took an upper division (elective) course in Chaucer where we were given to read him in the original to get the rhythm of his poetry correctly, but we weren't required to read him in the original for understanding.  And, unless one becomes a scholar and specializes in Chaucer and Middle English literature, one isn't going to be able to read this literature in the original with any degree of confidence.  Was Chaucer concerned about his "immortality?"  It has been only 625 years since Chaucer died and no one today is reading him in the original except for academics paid to read authors no one else is reading.  Even if we count translations, I wonder how many read Chaucer in translation today.