A Few Thoughts…

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

“Stuff” can be translated to mean many things, but this is a family newspaper, so “stuff” is what we will call stuff.

We’re all receiving stuff in the form of ugly, glossy flyers about how bad the other guy or gal is, or this idea or that cause. The flyers don’t even make good fire-starter. This newspaper works better. But, read the paper first. The flyers, not so much, though proponents and opponents of ballot questions and participants in candidates’ races use the “strategy”; an unfortunate waste of time, money and resources. Those who send these atrocities don’t garner respect. It seems they have nothing good to say about themselves, so they trash the opposition. They aim gut level — or lower — meaning to alienate, not consolidate. And don’t get me started on television ads. The truth doesn’t matter. Libel and slander laws don’t seem to apply. Modern politics is perfecting the art of prevarication. 

Author Sandy Compton. Courtesy photo.

Campaign reform idea No. 1: Proponents or opponents of ballot items and candidates can’t mention the other side. They can only tell voters why an idea is good or bad or what their candidate proposes to do to lead us forward. 

Idea No. 2: Political action committees (PACs) must make donor lists public, especially major donors. (PACs are often responsible for nasty ads, but nobody wants to admit being purveyors of lies.) This could cut into the super-sized postcard business, but so be it.

Idea No. 3: A requirement of citizenship is to vote in all national elections. Kind of a radical idea, but if you live in these United States, you should give a “stuff,” right?

Idea No. 4: Think. Most ads, flyers, social media posts or whatever throwing negative stuff at you are designed to engage people on an emotional level by threat, innuendo and fear-mongering. You may wish to validate claims that activate your adrenal gland before you vote.

Enough of this stuff. We’ll have more than enough in the next few weeks. 

In my dictionary quest, I stumbled across — and I mean stumbled — the noun redia; plural, rediae: A larva of certain trematodes that is produced within the sporocyst and that can give rise to additional rediae or to cercariae [New Latin, after Francesco Redi (1626-1697), Italian naturalist]. 

Naturalists must have big brains. I had to look up three words within the definition to get a vague idea of what a redia is. You can guess which ones. And before you start digging around in your dictionary, I warn you that you may not want to know. Ewww! Vague hint: After rabbit-holing “redia” (rabbit-holing may be a new compound verb), I’ve reconsidered my taste for escargot. 

Francesco Redi may have had too much time on his hands, but scientists are always looking further in and farther out, trying to figure out what, when, where, who and sometimes why. They think about stuff.

I’m currently engrossed in the essays of scientist Loren Eiseley, an anthropologist of note during the mid-20th century. He’s one of the most beautiful writers I’ve ever read. You’ll learn more about him in future “Thoughts.” He was also a naturalist, and prescient, calling out the future of the planet by translating his findings of the past. He died in 1977, but saw clearly, protested and warned us about the human disregard for the nature that nurtures us.

One of his thoughts is that evolution continues unabated. We’re not done. The biota of the planet is not static. But as a species, humans may have the ability to determine the direction of their evolution. 

Maybe we can, if we think about stuff.