#376

I riffled through a newspaper yesterday, an abandoned Chicago Sun-Times on my commuter train. I read about the Bears. They suck. I read about the Cubs. They don't suck. It's been ages since I read a flimsy, flappy, newsprint daily paper. I wonder if M 'n' m have ever read a newspaper. Will 'the paper' even exist when M 'n' m are my age, with a date like 2040 on the masthead? Nope. It's headed the way of cassettes, hitchhiking, dinosaurs, leather football helmets... you know, things we don't see anymore (except in movies and museums). Answering machines, film photography, pagers, payphones, phonebooks, paper maps, paper dictionaries, paper encyclopedias... things involving paper are really on the existential brink. Technology: it giveth and it taketh away. Maybe we'll get some forests back, some hunting habitat, thanks to tech. My grandma used to play with paper dolls. Now there's an app for that.

Population growth feels like a very un-PC thing to talk about, but as I consider the pros and cons of technology growth, I can't help but puzzle over a burgeoning world population. We add another billion people to the planet in ever-shrinking intervals. It used to take centuries, now it takes a decade. We've hit the knee in the curve. What does this mean for M 'n' m?

Speaking of forests and hunting habitat, I'm lucky to be a part of a group I'll call my hunting buddies. They are good husbands, fathers, men. I'm the least remarkable and experienced among them – as a human being I mean, not just a hunter – and for this I'm thrilled and grateful. Hopefully I've told M 'n' m, "If you find yourself in a group or place where you're the least incredible, this is a good thing." And apropos of what I do here is the fact I wouldn't know any of these guys without my dad ('what I do here,' by the way, I think, is scribble about fatherhood and other things I find elusive in terms of clarity, explicability, order, logic). So these dudes are impressive and so is the breadth and depth of the topics they interpret and debate. They are profound, precise, and fucking funny too, which is essential, let's face it. I toss in my two cents – generally lousy on perspective, accuracy, and real insight – because it's my nature not to be silent among friends around a pickup truck or a campfire. Politics, parenting, history, sports, relationships, guns, conservation... it's all covered (in person when we're together once a year, and over email otherwise). Recently, somebody kicked up a discussion about religious fundamentalists and the sacred texts they believe grant them authority and superiority. Of course, the Bible was mentioned, as was the Koran. I have read bits of the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, and other religious writings, also. But my position on the OT – the Old Testament – is the one, due to personal religious practice and familiarity, I find myself examining the most. To me, it's a broad set of books, espousing the whole spectrum of human and divine behavior, good and not so good. In my own heart and mind, I can't reconcile the combination of the OT and the NT (New Testament). The OT gives the NT some context, but I find few parallels in terms of direction and tone. I love the primary figure in the NT, and I feel his example and message run contrary to much of the rules, wrath, and retribution in the OT. (Have I lost ya? "Never talk religion or politics.") I only mention this as one example of the material we plow into as a group of friends and hunters; we go anywhere and everywhere in discussion and it's awesome. I learn. Our spouses, partners, families, and best friends are in our lives too, of course, to examine and dissect the world in conversation, but I think I'll tell M 'n' m: "Get some good hunting buddies while you're at it."