Voting is Your Only True Right

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Two days from now, Americans have the opportunity to vote. The mariner’s advice up front for every reader in any country that has an opportunity to elect its representatives is to vote.

US citizens do not do this very well and they pay the price. Professional politicians and corporate lobbyists now control the essential concepts that determine democracy; neither is interested in the wellbeing of citizens, democracy, fairness, effective administration, not even the American work ethic. A normal work year contains 260 days for most folks. Congress worked 97 days before the election and will be a lame duck congress for the remaining 15 days.

The House of Representatives is on track to produce the lowest number of legislative proposals since the Clinton administration. During their two-year term, there are a number of House representatives who have not introduced one bill in behalf of their constituency.

US citizens, those few that do vote, are bound to a party rather than to a candidate who possibly may do a better job of repairing federal, state and local government. This causes gridlock because 71% of the general public does not participate in the voting process.

There are other ways to change election processes. For example, 27 states permit direct referendums on ballots without challenge or contradiction. If a referendum passes, the government must abide by the language of the referendum. Many think the referendum is the only way the citizenry can force gerrymandering out of elected officials’ hands and have it run by a neutral agency. The way gerrymandering works now, the ten-year census allows politicians to redefine districts. This doesn’t work, of course, because the majority party draws silly districts that virtually eliminate the opposite party a chance to win in an election.

Austin, Texas is a liberal island in the midst of a very conservative state. Yet Austin never seems to have a liberal representative in Congress. In fact, it has five very conservative representatives. Look at the Austin District map below. The colored districts encompass Austin.

Austin Districts copy

In order to assure no democrat is elected in Austin, its districts have been gerrymandered so far that they reach Fort Worth 173 miles to the north, Houston, 150 miles to the east, San Antonio 71 miles to the south, and 181 miles to the southwest – almost to Mexico. In all this vast space, the population density is low. That’s the reason the districts have to be so large to maintain a republican majority in any election.

This solution required 35,000 square miles to offset 272 square miles that constitute Austin. There are similar examples in every state – some defy imagination. Gerrymandering is the primary cause of dysfunctional government. Vote for individuals who want districts to represent balanced population sectors without regard for party, color, wealth, or corporate zoning without public vote.

The second damaging cause is that (a) the citizenry has a blasé attitude toward voting (b) states, especially conservative states, have written voting rights laws that prevent people of color, college students, lower class people and others from voting without great difficulty or impossibility.

What if elections were held on a weekend instead of a workday? What if voting could be by mail where every individual received a ballot? What if voting could last a week?

Something must be done to give the government back to the people. For now, do your level best to vote for the best candidate. Vote November 4.

Ancient Mariner

The Judge

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Having just seen the movie “The Judge” with Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr., the mariner felt more like Robert Duvall than Robert Downey, Jr. In other words, he felt old. Like Robert Duvall, the frontal lobes were intact and contained a lifelong establishment of reason, morality and a command of human behavior. Still, the body was finished; the brain confused by drugs and memory lapses. The shower scene “done me in,” as a Broadway play once complained; it was the last straw – the mariner, too, had outlasted his biological lifespan.

To make matters worse, the mariner came home to read a frightful edition of Smithsonian, describing the bright ideas that will shape the future. The mariner has always considered he was an agent of change. Indeed, his career was just that, bringing large corporations into new worlds of automated business management.

But technology has caught up and passed him by. Not so much the technical engineering but the changes in what human beings will be subject to in a world where reality and automated fantasy are combined in a smudged and inseparable pseudo-reality. One article in the magazine claimed to implant false history in a mouse brain. The mouse believed it had been severely shocked while standing on a steel plate. Placed in a box with an easy way to escape, the mouse stood frozen in fear that it would be shocked and would not move toward the exit. Yet the mouse actually had never received such a shock.

Translate this ability to alter reality to humans. The claim is a cure for Alzheimer’s, dementia, psychological disorders and other ailments of modern life. If one is paranoid of government and corporate prerogatives, one can see manipulation driven by foolish laws and corporate procedures – a capability that can be used for cure or curse.

In any case, one’s knowledge of one’s self may not be real. One’s history that has built an identity of self may be artificial – the self being lost among artificial memories and erased traumas and confrontations that make us who we are.

The mariner longs for that sailboat that will take him away from the modern world and travel among the shores of places that still are behind the technological curve – where real is real.

There are two concepts that dominate international culture today: We do it because we can – and the individual is not the solution. This mixture reminds the mariner of the early industrial age, where human rights were trampled in the name of progress.

Inept governments around the world are not interested in protecting human rights. Profits account for much more than personal freedoms.

Change is always traumatic as new processes displace old ones. The world will change under our feet even as we try to stand upon solid ground.

In the movie, Robert Duvall passed away due to advanced cancer. One could not help but share his release.

Ancient Mariner

Life Force

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The mariner was standing on a street corner the other day when a woman with a little furry thing in her arm (It couldn’t have been a wolf, maybe one of those toys that cries and wets itself. He saw one like it tucked into the abundant cleavage of a movie star. It looked like it belonged there – sort of like a soul patch but lower). The woman had a very large pocketbook hanging off her other arm, perhaps a distraction because the strap implied that it belonged on her shoulder. The woman had unkempt hair (do not judge her for that; my wife often says that it is a hair style and not “unkempt”) She wore black one size fits all pants, and a Detroit Lions sweatshirt under a light blue jacket.

The woman had two daughters along with her and was lecturing them. The littlest girl looked to be about five and the taller one looked to be about nine. They were dressed almost identically: red sneakers, jeans, each had a different t-shirt; both wore school jackets. The nine year old stared ahead indifferently while slowly chewing gum, hands in her jacket pockets. The little one had her head turned to look over her shoulder at something that caught her attention.

The mariner watched as the three continued down the block. The woman never stopped lecturing; the little one never stopped looking across the street and the tall one still chewed, hands in pockets.

Martin Wolf says the entire world is headed for a global financial crisis. The Indians clamor to remove the name “Redskins” from the football team. Every day there is a shooting somewhere that occupies air time on the tv news (The mariner often wonders if the news journalists station themselves in places where shootings may occur – sort of like hunting and waiting for deer to come down the path). ISIL seems a looming threat to the US – at least according to military analysts, military advisers, and military contract lobbyists. 2014 is the warmest year on record and 2015 will be even warmer. Is there enough water in the Ogallala aquifer to grow grain?

The three went into a small restaurant featuring Mexican cuisine.

The mariner wondered what the mother had to say for such a long time. It probably didn’t matter; the girls weren’t listening. There seemed to be some disarray in their lives. Apparently the girls had adopted ways to normalize their lives and the mother must carry burden in her life. It is odd how life can encase one’s existence completely, creating a reality only visible to those encased – like the woman and the daughters. They have a life that no one else lives.

As do you and the mariner. We are encased in our separate lives – unique to ourselves.

Turkey stands by while innocent people are being killed less than a mile away. Russia annexed Crimea and intends to make Ukraine Russian-dependent. Ebola kills 4,600 in Africa.

The mariner walks back home, just a few blocks. The grass on the lawns is still green and neatly clipped. That’s a trademark in this town. A man is washing his car in the driveway. In another block, three men are cutting down an old tree. As the mariner walks up his driveway, a red squirrel twenty feet away watches with a cautious stare.

Life envelopes everyone. It seems a force unto itself tied somehow to history and the journey everyone takes. Yet our journeys are unique and so different. Nevertheless, each of us, living a life unknown to others, is part of the daily history of the earth.

What is the life that envelopes an ISIS fighter? A US Senator? Bill Gates? A barefooted starving child in Africa? A software engineer at Monsanto? A prison guard? Your neighbor? Your child? We share this singular phenomenon called “life.” Yet each of us lives it alone.

Ancient Mariner

 

Survival of the Single Soul in a Turbulent World

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The mariner has been tossed about by the trying times of our culture, our economy, our information invasion, our ignorance of science, and the prevalence of greed in all life’s endeavors. The mariner has languished in the knowledge that there is little in our lives that is as it was yesterday or how it will be tomorrow.

Some of the languish stems from his age. He no longer is mainstream in his interaction with commerce, raising families or sporting events. Still, the mariner feels there is something amiss – something that can improve the life experience of each of us individually even in the midst of a massive paradigm shift moving toward macro-marketing, cultural dependency beyond nationalism, and instantaneous awareness of every event occurring around the entire planet.

Fatalism is not the answer, of course. One eventually lashes out at the confusion; retreat from the conflagration is necessary but only temporary. Each of us lives on this planet and must therefore be part of the planet’s history, ecology, and future.

The mariner will retreat to his study and keyboard to discern how you and he, meager single souls in a sea of thrashing whales, tsunamis, rogue waves, hurricanes and monsoons, will keep our ship seaworthy even without a charted course.

It seems, at first thought, that seaworthiness is how individual souls interact rather than being part of a larger organism swept by the tides. Consider the Cesium atom that keeps our time so accurately that only one second of error occurs every billion years. Cesium ignores corporate piracy and suppression of the masses. It abides only by the rules of Cesium atoms. We must search within rather than attempt to race ahead to divert the storms.

Ancient Mariner

How We Arrived Here

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October 15, PBS started a new series called “How We Got to Now.” It is a series about how simple but extremely important ideas made our current society possible. The premier researched the idea of ‘clean’ as in the need for clean streets, clean drinking water and many other comforts and technologies dependent on clean environments.

As regular readers may know, the mariner is vacillating about maintaining his blog. In his last post (What should we care about?), the mariner cashed his chips and turned the fate of the world over to the gods. That fate remains with them; the mariner has donned a fatalist’s cloak. Somehow Doris Day made fatalism appear attractive when she sang Que Sera Sera. In reality, the cloak is a drab color. Nevertheless, there are no questions to answer and no expectations.

How the mariner got to fatalism is the question in this post.

In the last 170 years we have sailed a course worthy of Jason and his Argonauts. While every discipline imaginable shared in the shape and direction of our course, the mariner believes communication has had the greatest influence.

Just a few quick touchstones: Ignorance is bliss. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. We do it because we can. Nothing in life is free. America; home of the free. The war to end all wars. Google. Yahoo. Microsoft. Netflix. Cable tv. Satellites. Hulu. Cell Phones. In a category all to itself, Internet.

Throw in day-to-day accounting of people losing their homes by the millions. Ineffective, greedy government. Beheaded journalists. A nonexistent recovery for anyone making less than $75,000 annually. Every fire of any size anywhere in the world along with every drought, every flood, every hurricane. Being forced to watch news programs showing how everyone except the top 10% of citizens grows poorer every year.

Dying ash trees. Increasingly colder winters and hotter summers. Crop status. Blood test results. Overstated scares about Ebola. Football concussions. We must evaluate the foreign policy of every country in the world whether we want to or not. Crazy news journalists with no regard for truth, taste or moral obligation to the viewer.

Had enough? Not only must you handle too much information, everyone else knows your information as well. Now, cloud technology will take from you the last bastion of privacy – your information will not reside on your computer but in a commercial, for profit data base.

I fear the demise of crocheting, reading paper newspapers, substantive education that enforces higher moral values for all citizens – including the knowledge to activate those moral values.

These touchstones are merely the foundation of a new age that goes far beyond the book 1984 except that uniforms will not be required. Jeans will suffice. Still, modern forms of slavery will become entrenched. There is nothing that can stop this nonsense and still we must be reminded of all of it from television, papers, cable, and, of all things, as if deliberately paradoxical, we will be able to view only information that data controllers want us to know.

The mariner gives up. Only the gods can right the ship. He feels his single ballot is useless to stem the tide. His age and energy prevent him from stirring the blood that was present when he was a young activist.

Sailing away to visit information-deficient places in the world sounds very healing to the mariner. And to put up his feet under a palm tree in some underdeveloped country (read minimal information capability) may heal wounds.

“Live in Donnellson,” my learned wife says. “It would not be hard to be an isolationist as well as a fatalist.” Ah, if there were only palm trees and open water….

Ancient Mariner

What Should We Care About?

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The mariner has experienced the hopelessness of righting the mighty wrongs of this world. Henceforth, he will trust in the vengeance of God as Armageddon is smote upon us.

He will abide the future ordained by the imminent asteroid.

He will bask in the warmth of whatever it is that is getting warmer but doesn’t exist.

He will ignore the burdens loosed by Pandora.

He will trust the horsemen to deliver the Apocalypse.

He will leave our resolve to the Sun.

 

The mariner will focus on matters of the mundane, inquisitive, whimsical and oddly irrelevant, all things considered:

Puppy farms persist in Iowa.

Cricket invasion in home town.

Mentioned to some readers, the mariner still is intrigued by unintended phenomena from genome manipulation.

Will Robert Downey Jr. find honor in “The Judge?”

Is the Catalina 22 sailboat a sporting model for the Gulf?

Why is coffee so important to the liver?

On World News Now, what happened to Reena Ninan?

It was mentioned recently that diabetes will kill someone before smoking does. Does this mean diabetics have nothing to lose if they smoke?

 

We’ll see how it goes…

 

Ancient Mariner

 

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree…

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It has come to pass that the mariner is preparing for that isolated but pleasantly benign part of life called the very old. Finally. It will be a relief. He has grown weary if not traumatized by the unending crassness, abuse, greed, enmity, and ignorance of Homo sapiens. He will not care whether we first kill ourselves through destruction of the global ecosystem or have so many specimens that many will take to living under water or in space.

The mariner will no longer ponder the irrationality of finding ways to keep H. sapiens alive for more and more years without providing income and a place in the workforce, curing dementia and diet, and eliminating the side effects of a good twenty dollar Cuban. An entertaining thought to the mariner is that when everyone can genetically select the perfect fetus, all women will look like Amy Adams or Halle Berry; all men will look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Derek Jeter. Even more stultifying is the holy nature of childbirth without holy euthanasia on the other end. Love thy neighbor will be very important when there are twelve billion H. sapiens climbing all over each other. The mariner no longer worries. It will be irrelevant.

The mariner has quit television. None of it is important; all of it is ill-reported, and the entertainment deliberately avoids everyone over sixty and anyone with a modicum of functional intelligence.

The mariner has chronic back pain. For years he has taken a fistful of anti-seizure medications leaving him wandering about with little more focus than a zombie. There is no chance a grand mal is in his future. Since the chronic back pain persists in spite of prescribed remedies, the mariner will trash medications and at least be able to complete simple tasks.

The mariner is going off the grid as much as possible. No intensely monitored loans, no intensely monitored mortgages, no intensely monitored credit cards, no intensely monitored browsing on the Internet. Checks if he has to otherwise cash only. Only his assets will be visible – to everyone. It is not the government he fears; it is nosy fee lice that wander the Internet clouds seeking to bleach his privacy into nonexistence. It’s no one’s business which car he will buy next. A perfect retreat would be somewhere in Costa Rica – totally nameless.

The mariner will fulfill his desire to sail in warmer waters than are available in most of the United States. Winter is no time to be above the sub-tropic zone (20°N). He is still puzzled that early ancestors thought walking into snow and subfreezing temperatures was a good thing to do.

The mariner is selling his sixteen-foot sailboat because there is no decent water within which to sail it.

Even now, the computer is turned on less frequently. Email response may be slower than the Pony Express. The cell phone has always been worthless. A rotten log receives a better signal.

What’s left are home flower gardens and landscaping in season. Someone else will make home repairs. Finally, all there will be is visiting family, and most importantly, discovering new ways to be an unabridged H. sapiens.

So, to quote a trite phrase, “So long, farewell, aufweidersehen goodbye.”

Ancient Mariner signing off.

Ten Ways to Trim Sails in a Paradigm Shift

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The mariner doesn’t have ten ways. He always has been puzzled that one who presents a list of ten items can encompass a subject in ten definitions – no more, no less. The fascination is with the number ten and its influence on how one describes a subject. Other common numbers are three and five. He supposes the five and ten items are influenced by ancient Arabic and Roman counting systems greatly dependent on the number of fingers we have. However, there are numbering systems based on twelve and the infamous binary system based on two, which is the basis for the bar code one sees on any purchase and also the communication skills of a computer. Then there’s texting – a topic worthy of its own space.

So the mariner will use three, which seems reasonable for this space. Most of us, except Governor Perry of Texas, can retain three thoughts about a similar subject. However, none of us can remember the three silly words we’re asked to remember in those dementia tests. One must always have a memory tree at hand for such circumstances. The mariner digresses.

ONE: Stow and secure the boat. Every item in its place, every locker closed and latched. This is an allegory that says know what is important in your life, including family, finance, home and belongings. Take steps to assure that no matter how things may change, the core of your life and happiness will suffer little damage.

Stow and secure the family requires consistent reinforcement of habitual values and practices. If your family principles are led by religious practices, stay with them; even increase them as a purposeful compass. Assure that regular activities continue. If the paradigm shift involves moving to another location and a new job, the first order of business is to stow and secure common activities in the new location. Little league at the old location is ensconced as soon as possible at the new location, etc. Friday night out, a common rehabilitative exercise, must continue uninterrupted at the new location. Children in secondary school especially need additional attention and reinforcement that was not needed at the old location. The reader understands that as the changes of a paradigm shift arrive, the first action is family planning to minimize the effect of those changes.

TWO: Trim the sails. Sails are a metaphor for finances. In a storm at sea, normal sail configuration can change dramatically and involve survival methods not used under ordinary conditions. The same is true of finances – and this is not limited to salaried and retired folks, paradigm shifts occur in all social classes. What may be trimmed is a planned new car, a trip to Disney World, pricey cuisine, buying that island retreat, hosting a big family reunion at Christmas. Place emphasis on paying debt and, if possible, save as much as possible even if it’s only a dollar or two each week. If the cause of the paradigm shift is job loss or layoff, try to keep family activity and values as unchanged as possible and find ways to adjust the budget in unseen ways.

Similar issues arise even when the paradigm shift brings financial success. No matter, the same routines are just as necessary. A paradigm shift is a paradigm shift – stow and lock. Keep family activity as normal as possible.

THREE: Set a new course. No matter how high or turbulent the seas become, one must set a course to navigate through the paradigm shift. The new course may take you to unknown waters. It is important to establish a good compass reading and know your new location on new charts as quickly as possible. It is one thing to be stuck riding a storm at sea for several days and another to change course to move away from the storm.

If the paradigm shift is a new home location, chart the neighborhood, its churches, recreation and other places of interest so that family practices can be restored as soon as possible. If the shift is a new job, quickly determine new daily routines.

As the boat passes the storm, if all has been stowed and locked and sails have been trimmed, it will be easy to restore normal sailing practices. Put some seafood on the grill and sail into the new reality.

That’s three items. If the mariner continues, he must think of two new thoughts so as to reach five items. It may be possible to talk about little things like cap your beverages or put your underwear in a high locker, but he feels further metaphors would only dilute the seriousness of surviving a large change in the reader’s life.

May your sails be full and your winds favorable.

Ancient Mariner

Homo sapiens: Reagent of Planet Earth

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Frequent readers are aware that one of mariner’s favorite subjects is “reality.” Reality, seemingly simple on the surface is a collection of facts representing a moment in time yet simultaneously a complex amalgam with nuances from the sciences to the arts to the senses of each individual. Reality is a conundrum to say the least.

Let us travel out into space, perhaps halfway to the moon and look back at Planet Earth. We see weather patterns floating about over land and water. We see Earth turning in its rotation every 23 hours and 56 minutes. It appears to be a blissful scene. It could last forever.

But it won’t. Did you know that 250 million years ago it took only 22.8 hours for Earth to complete one rotation? Each century, the rotation slows by 1.7 milliseconds. Avoiding a scientific treatise on the subject, the important element is that Planet Earth will not last forever. Further, a few million years down the road, the Sun will have an increasing role in the weather, radioactivity and axial tilt of the Earth. As spoken wisely by every generation, things never stay the same.

The numbers cited above are meaningless given the relatively short time it took for the first vertebrates to evolve into Homo sapiens. Still, it is obvious that nothing organic or living is forever and, in fact, is a bit unstable. To narrow the scope, consider the existence of vertebrates. Homo sapiens is wiping out dozens of species every day. This does not include disappearing insects and creatures that have no spine, for example, coral, bivalves and plant life.

Seven billion people cover Earth like a giant scrubbing pad, scraping the surface as if it were a dirty dish. The “soap” is carbon-based abuses of every kind mixed with chemical and radioactive byproducts of Homo sapiens, and the excessive space and food required to sustain each human. Note that every nonhuman vertebrate lives a balanced natural footprint, taking and returning to nature in a way that does not significantly disturb the status quo.

Why are humans selected to be a rapid reagent to life on Earth? Is this a good thing? Can human intelligence that will force change be attributed to evolution and processes of natural selection? Are humans the latest example in a series of evolutionary shifts? Must the world go through drastic transitions every million years or so? Is this a way of recycling Earth’s resources?

The questions beg a larger understanding of why we are a naturally occurring reagent that will change life on Earth.

Individuals often conjure a logical relationship between dinosaurs and people – both dominant in their time. The dinosaurs lost out to a meteorite that ended normal weather for a long time. Therefore, humans will be stopped only by extraterrestrial events. Nothing on Earth has enough effect to end the species. However, some claim radioactive poisoning from Sunbursts, excessive volcano and earthquake activity or a modern, unstoppable plague.

It is popular to say we are our own worst enemy and at some point Planet Earth will rebel and significantly reduce our number. Nevertheless, across Planet Earth’s lifespan, is destruction by humans a natural cycle? Is Homo sapiens the next “meteorite?” If Planet Earth were aware of human behavior, that behavior may be considered insignificant; we quite often assign ourselves too much importance with regard to geophysical reality.

Reality may be that Homo sapiens is indeed the peak of a long run of vertebrate existence. Scientists project that our population will top out at 12 billion – almost half again more than exist today. Numbers this large definitely will change the global ecosystem, including weather, species and topography.

Reality is that we are evolving faster and faster toward automatonic behavior. Key parts of our normal bodies will be electronic. Our manner of communication will be through electronic networks much more easily than if we had to speak or write. A tiny forerunner of this future world is the grocery card one uses at the grocery store. The store knows what you buy so it will be available to you; the store knows when you shop and how much you pay; the store knows you changed brand due to pricing changes; the store knows you have a new baby or a teenager. The store pharmacy has your health profile. With this information, the store sends you personal coupons, suggests magazine subscriptions, advises available neighborhood clinics and doctors, and may even make it not necessary to come to the store at all – your food is delivered to your door if not to your pantry and freezer. Neither you nor a grocery employee ever said a word to make all this happen.

Reality is that we are master of our own genome. We can alter Homo sapiens dramatically in one generation. It will be possible to change every feature of a fetus to have the perfect child. Medicine will modify genes to prevent genetic diseases and mental disorders. Homo sapiens will be freed from the slow, evolutionary process of achieving character traits through accidental changes generation to generation. Examples of all these evolutionary powers already exist. Only the process of making the changes available to the public need be added.

Reality is that the definition of “nation” will become less of an independent state and more like a consortium of producers.  Nations will retain traditional cultural values but will no longer require a complete Gross Domestic Product. The GDP will be comprised of economic output shared with other countries in an international marketplace (corporatism).

Given that Homo sapiens will not perish on a planet that is changing, our reality will never stand still and will be indefinable as we move into a new evolutionary phase – automatons. Our differences in appearance, freedom, and choice will be virtually controlled by electronic collaboration of banks, government, retail and presumed class. The mariner learned long ago that the opossum had a very stable genome because it was an ancient species that long ago stabilized any irregularities or inefficiencies. But, the mariner asks, “Can you tell one opossum from another?” As we evolve, we will be more like the opossum.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Musings on Athleticism

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When the mariner was young (a long time ago – Merlin was an acquaintance), he enjoyed sports and physical activity. At age eleven he favored American football and joined a recreation league for ages 11-13. The games provided an immense amount of emotional release for the mariner.

He moved on to the 13-15 league where experience and technique was insignificant but having played in the 11-13 league, the structure of football offense and defense was not strange to him and he did not have to go through the learning curve required for first time players. Playing on the team and being in the games became a linchpin of his identity. Consequently, the mariner played with desire if not with savoir faire.

In high school, he played on the varsity and simultaneously played in a 16-19 recreation league, which was against school policy but many school players played both anyway. Solely through experience, technique became an advantage. Intuition about the intricacies of game situations was often correct.

To make an already long story shorter, the mariner went on to play in a semi-pro league and at a liberal arts college. The need to reveal this history is to demonstrate that technique, experience and playing with an attitude of zealous vigor – especially zealous vigor – was enough to be a starter on the various teams.

However, as the mariner played in the older leagues, athleticism emerged as a noticeable advantage. More players had the same zeal; more players had acumen. Some, however, seemed a cut above the rest. Their advantage was athleticism – a combination of well proportioned bodies, faster reflexes, and an ability to flawlessly execute physical movement without thinking about it.

A quarterback on the semi-pro team had never played golf but when we showed him how to use a few clubs, he was able, albeit in an unpracticed way, to be within a few strokes of the rest of us even though we had played for several years. John Unitas, quarterback of the Baltimore Colts, liked to eat in seafood restaurants. With great fanfare, he would catch his own fish barehanded in one lightning quick strike with a grip the slippery fish could not escape. He had an air of physical assuredness.

Athleticism is genetic superiority. It is the final factor that allows a few to go on to greater achievement. Television brings us only the best and the most athletic. Every sport that has professional teams or national competitions is made up of individuals who can achieve physical performance most humans cannot.

All of this came to mind as the mariner watched the tennis US Open in New York. With some practice, a viewer could discern those who had zeal, who had mastered the mental aspects of play, but did not perform with the ease, physical pre-consciousness and physical skill of natural athletes. If the mariner played tennis instead of football, he would never be capable of hitting a tennis ball 135 miles per hour and with dependable accuracy place the ball within an inch or two of the sideline. Nor could he do it effortlessly. A reader may take issue, citing players in the top ten rank that seem not to be natural athletes. That may be true but the proof in the pudding is effortlessness, relative lack of concern within the physical act and reflexes that respond quickly enough to catch a fish barehanded. Non-athletes may achieve parity, even persistence, only by working twice as hard as a natural athlete. However, they will never surpass the performance of those with natural athleticism.

Oh – a postscript: the mariner played outside linebacker and retired from football at age 29.

Ancient Mariner