Lessons from a Stone

My Favorite Quote

For as long as I can remember, the above quote has been among my favorites. There is a small sampling of essentially the same message but delivered using slightly different words and arrangements, accredited to a number of authors as the centuries have passed. Note that by the time you get to the last iteration … Continue reading “My Favorite Quote”

Landmark Kitty Genovese Case – Copilot Summary

For as long as I can remember, the above quote has been among my favorites. Above is a small sampling of essentially the same message but delivered using slightly different words and arrangements, accredited to a number of authors over the course of history. Note that by the time you get to the last iteration of the quote on this page, that it is credited to “Author Unknown”. That is the way I found it, and it is the most accurate representation of the quote’s original author, which is, in fact, unknown. Certainly, it is an obvious tenet that can be traced back for centuries. But the actual wording and the supposed author have been up for debate throughout the 19th, 20th, and now, the early 21st century.

When I take this very old and well-known quote and apply it to the above Copilot summary, I’m compelled to wonder what might or might not have happened if the same event were transported sixty-three years into the future to find us here, today. The Copilot summary provides the essentials of the case, which shook the nation to its core in 1964, and left Americans everywhere to contemplate how they may have responded had they been there amongst the 38 onlookers bearing witness, whether directly or hearing the horrible spectacle unfold from not far away. I don’t care to recall the exact number of times that she was stabbed, but it was some ungodly total that took well over a minute, or two, to inflict. This amount of time afforded bystanders a substantial opportunity to react, or, think on it and consciously decide not to.

If you look to history for examples, you’ll find that this kind of a good versus evil occurrence is commonplace, but it is rarely as severe as to what took place on the day when Kitty Genovese, a young New York bartender was brutally attacked and killed just outside her Queens, New York apartment. The term “Bystander Effect” was coined by the various psychiatrists who studied the case in detail. Not one individual in the 38 who witnessed the horrid crime did anything to stop it, including making a simple phone call to the closest responding police department.

It happened just three years after I was born, but I well remember the case because I took a college level Psych 101 class at some point during highschool, and I can still recall the sickening feeling it left in my gut. I could not wrap my young head around the fact that this had been something real and struggled with the idea that story couldn’t possibly be true. It bothered me to such an extent that I still think about it today, some 50 years after first learning about it. early twenties that I remember making a promise to myself that I would never sit back and watch something similar occur on what would be “my watch”. It has been my sad experience in going through life and being the only person among others with enough temerity to engage myself in attempting to bring whatever it may have been to a halt and putting an end to things before they’d had the chance to gain momentum. I had put myself in harm’s way somewhere between ten and twelve times before I turned fifty, and was still quite fit and schooled enough in fighting to tip the scales, never sustaining an injury more substantial than a few cuts and bruises, and, the “road rash” that invariably occurs when a fight goes to the pavement. Sure, some torn clothing, say, a hole in a shirt, jacket, or jeans that hadn’t been there just ten minutes before, but it was a small price to pay to stop four kids in their early twenties for haranguing an even younger male for taking on work at an supermarket chain dealing with strike of hundreds of employees. Though I doubt any of the “Bad Guys” understood the true meaning of the word, they were calling him a “scab” and using all sorts of foul and derogatory language.

It was somewhere in my early twenties that I remember making a promise to myself – that I would never sit back and watch something similar occur on what would be “my watch”. It has been my sad experience in going through life and being the only person among others to engage myself in attempting to bring to a halt whatever bad thing might have otherwise transpired. I had put myself in harm’s way somewhere between ten and twelve times before I turned fifty, when I was still fit and schooled enough in fighting to handle myself. I sustained no injury more consequential than a few cuts and bruises, and, the “road rash” that invariably occurs when a fight goes to the pavement. Sure, some torn clothing, say, a hole in a shirt, jacket, or jeans that hadn’t been there just ten minutes before. Perhaps a bloody lip or nose. But it was a small price to pay to stop four young men from haranguing an even younger, clearly handicapped kid simply for taking on work at a supermarket chain while in the midst of a regional strike. These four had been recently laid off and were out looking for some associated trouble.

I have done these things automatically, without ever thinking beyond the goal at hand, such as getting hurt or killed in direct defense of people (family and friends, my daughter, or people that I came across who were, for whatever reason, at an obvious disadvantage). I have also done these things in defense of myself, outnumbered by people bearing weapons, including guns and knives, in a failed attempt to rob or intimidate me, and during situations where I’ve come across animals who were clearly being harmed. I have an extremely low tolerance for people who harm defenseless animals. In all these interactions, I have never walked away having gotten “the short end of the stick”.

It has been my experience that one man armed only with serious conviction and a determined and dominant way, combined with the knowledge of having good on his side can inflict enough damage that the evil-doers don’t have a chance to respond as a group or, better yet, have a complete change of heart. This is based on the theory that when things quickly turn ugly, individual members of a group tend to lose their “pack mentality” and turn to saving only themselves. A group, any kind of group, is only as powerful as the individuals it is composed of. If you show no fear and, if it comes to violence, you should have already made a plan in your head as to what you’re going to do. If and when this moment occurs, there is no time to stand there and come up with one.

In my 65 years on this planet as an astute observer and a person who is always prepared to “do the right thing” in terms of getting the truly daunting but instantaneous (without warning) things done, I abhor the “turning away from trouble” mentality. I believe that putting ones own safety above that of others has become the default setting for many people but a few of us are born with the instinctive drive to defend and protect (even if it means putting ourselves directly in harm’s way) those who were members of my “tribe” or anyone who was in dire need of help. I believe this is because in our newfound individual anonymity, we no longer belong to tribes or even tightly knit communities and we look to others (such as the brave members of our military or our closest police department) to put their lives on the line on our behalf. Trouble is, when evil shows up unannounced, these warriors cannot be there for us simply because they are nowhere nearby, and therefore, it is up to those of us who feel the “calling” not to turn from it, but to cultivate it. To think various situations through often long before they happen and to train ourselves with the ability to “react” with virtually no time to think and barely enough time to even remotely assess the danger, with the full extent often hidden from view. We are talking about very brief moments in time, usually just seconds. While the masses turn away and help is nowhere to be found, those few of us who carry this primitive urge must do what our instincts and prior experiences tell us to do.

I’m not here to train people on how best to handle themselves. It is fully up to the individual. It is extremely complex and takes years of forethought and personal experience to know what works best for any given person. This is something that you have continually prepared yourself for over the course of your life. If you are youthful and strong, all the better, but that is not the only criteria required for a successful outcome which means only that you brought the occurrence to an end and that you’re able to get up without major injury and walk away all the more wise from the encounter.

Just think about what I’ve said, for it is based on some of the greatest truths of all. We see and hear about people who step-up in these moments and they become immediate celebrities (celebrated people) and almost always are given the label of “hero”. If a particular event is caught on video (which is likely with almost everyone carrying a smart phone and the millions of closed-circuit cameras seemingly stationed everywhere these days) it goes viral. I suppose this is as it should be in modern times, but fame should never enter into the running algorithm maintained in your innermost brain. If you have the greater good in mind, it tends to be of serious interest when we are still young, long before adulthood drags us down with all of its “more important” responsibilities and diversions (like social media and hollow friendships), while we can still discern the differences between who we aspire to be and who we become.

There are roughly eight billion human beings weighing the world down. Don’t you feel a deep yearning to aim higher, not only with the subject at hand, but in the context of every choice you make on your journey through life. We are here but once. By making choices that are steeped in sound values, you will put yourself in a place that when your time is up, you will have lived honorably and are therefore without regret. None of this is intended to motivate people to go out and “look for trouble”. Doing so would result in becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’m simply saying that when and if trouble (bad, evil) crosses your path, do your best to move steadfastly into it with some sort of strategy in mind for getting to the other side, where the problem has transcended from the present and become part of the past.

Back to the Quote

“The only way for evil to exist is if otherwise good men turn away”. Author Unknown

This is my own version of a wordier quote that delivers the same message. It has been used in a variety of forms for centuries, so I am comfortable with using fewer words to deliver precisely the same message. Originally thought to have been written for JFK (I’ve also read FDR in a speech made during WWII) and a preacher at the turn of the last century, then traced to the 1800’s to Sir Edmond Burke, but there are references which precede biblical times. Versions of it have been found in the works of classical literature and both Roman and Greek philosophers coined their own.

I’ve spent hours digging into the subject myself and was unable to find any single source. In my opinion, it’s such a basic concept (Good versus Evil) to ponder that I don’t believe there is just one author. So I took the liberty of using “Author Unknown”.

I am an avid cyclist and am considering carrying a concealed hand gun for which I have a license to carry concealed. Does anyone else carry while riding and what are folks using to holster the gun?

Response to a Question Posted on Quora

I was an elite road cyclist and expert/elite mountain bike racer from Colorado where I competed throughout for almost twenty-five years while holding down a high-level engineering career. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly over such a lengthy period. After sixteen years in the foothills of the Front Range (about seventy five minutes from Denver) but working closer to home, in Golden, I made my home in Durango for the last fourteen years of my thirty years in Colorado. While living in such a hugely competitive state for mountain athletes, with Durango being considered the “Mountain Biking Capitol of the World” (it may still be), I was compelled to continue racing and did well enough into my mid- forties to win (or place top five) in the few events I entered during my years in that much less populated part of the state. Towards the end, I was racing in just one or two events per year.

Being an accomplished elk hunter, both rifle and archery, and learning how to shoot and be safe around firearms by the age of seven, I have always been a “pro-gun” individual, but I have also lived and spent much of my time in rural, if not remote places, so I never felt the urge to “carry” while out riding. But that all changed in 2011 when I was forced to leave my adopted home state and move to Houston, if I had any chance of remaining gainfully employed in the oil and gas industry. It was a rough deal because I had hoped to stay in Southwest Colorado to retire, spending my “Golden Years” hunting and fly-fishing to my heart’s content. My wife and I made the reluctant move to the Houston area where she had already secured a solid position with BP at their US headquarters in Westlake, thirty minutes west of Houston. I found enough consulting work to get by at a time when I had two major back surgeries to coincide with the horrible (for me) move. I had to give up all my mountain activities but, after I healed from the surgeries, I continued to run and ride and enter a road racing event every now and then here in Texas.

Before I could even wrap my head around such a move, I was riding through some pretty rough areas of Houston, still in significant pain, to get to some halfway decent roads without getting hit, and I was set upon twice by small bands of the “criminal element” in a car moving in quickly from my left and they’d push me to the side of the road (as if they were well practiced in their craft) under some bridge or another. But I never rode with anything of value except for thirty bucks and the bike I was on.

During each of the two instances, I was able to “talk my way out” by first handing them the thirty and then stepping off the bike, showing absolutely no fear while making it known that I wasn’t going to make things easy for them. Standing six-four and weighing (at the time) between 185 and 190, (I’m not your typically diminutive rider and know how to defend myself), I somehow wriggled my way out of some bad circumstances based mostly on the “luck of the draw”. I had a gun pointed my way each time but no one with the gumption to pull the trigger and, like I said, I had nothing of value except for that thirty bucks and expensive bike. Fortunately, none of these “would be muggers” had the need or desire to attempt to take that from me.

From then on, I simply racked my bike and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to reach those country roads, where I could safely park (though I did have my truck broken into once) and take off riding from there. After a couple of years, we were able to move to a nicer part of Texas, well away from the Houston area (a city I’d spent time in and learned earlier in life to abhor). Fortune had smiled upon as my wife scored a very good job in San Antonio, not far from her hometown where many of her friends and relatives still lived. We found some property and a wonderful new home in a very rural area, roughly fifty-five minutes from her new job. But she continued her “lucky streak, and, when combined with a strong work ethic and commensurate capabilities, she was given the opportunity to work from home for the last six or seven years. I managed to find a few sporadic consulting opportunities working from home and formally retired just over a year later, several years earlier than I had planned. Let’s just say that retirement has been tighter than I’d ever thought it would be, but the upside was that I would now be riding in some of the best cycling country Central Texas and the Hill Country had to offer, and again the need for carrying while I was riding went away as quickly as it had come.

Had this story gone differently and I’d been forced to remain in Houston, I could picture myself happily walking into a gun store, of which there were many, so I could have easily found what I’d have been looking for. After doing a bit of research, with all the options available today, I’d likely go with a Walther PDP 9 mm, as pictured below, with its 4-inch barrel. There are several important reasons I’d choose this make and model above everything else available in the veritable smorgasbord of handguns on the market today:

-It has the muzzle energy (“stopping power”) of a 9 mm;
-The four-inch barrel is a better choice for a 9 mm than anything shorter;
-The gun is relatively lightweight, but not too much so;
-It is Walther built and of Walther quality;
-It has good capacity for a compact at 10 rounds +1
-It is uber-thin and very streamlined with no major protuberances to get snagged on polyester jersey material;
-It’s a great looking gun and is well proportioned;
-Great sights and plentiful accessory options.

Last, (IMO), it is priced very reasonably when comparing build, features, and deadly capability.

Of key importance is that it would serve two important purposes. Its primary function would be as a personal/home defense weapon that had “concealed carry” capabilities for my wife. I would simply borrow it if out riding and would knowingly be passing through the kinds of places I described. Again, had I been forced to remain in the Houston area, this is the compact handgun that I would choose. I have huge hands and would have difficulty fiddling with anything smaller. For me, subcompacts and miniguns are out of the question.

Walther PDP Compact in 9 mm, with a 4-inch barrel

The African Wild Dog

Originally Written for Medium

The Piercing Gaze of An African Wild Dog
burrard-lucas.com

Among the many species of creatures that are in jeopardy of fading into extinction, there isn’t much information out there on the plight of the African Wild Dog (AWD). These incredible canids once roamed freely throughout much of Sub-saharan Africa but are now predominantly confined to small parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. But the countries where they are still found comprise a much larger area than the patchwork of comparatively small national parks and game reserves held within them. In looking at a map of protected AWD habitat relative to the geographic area in which they are found today, one can quickly see the small and disconnected patchwork of sanctuaries, wildlife parks and reserves where the species can go about its business without the perpetual threat of encountering humans and the associated dangers that have already brought the species to its knees. It’s like connecting the dots to form a blotchy and incomplete geographic space where they are safe, with a gauntlet of hundreds of miles of unprotected and hazardous African bush between protected areas. That would be fine and is what these incredible canids are built for if it didn’t mean that they’ll eventually have some sort of encounter with man or the many hazards that are associated with mankind. Worse yet, they have no way of knowing where these protected areas lie, so these places where they can seek sanctuary are largely ineffectual. If they did much good, the species wouldn’t continue to decline at such an alarming rate.

I used Copilot to provide a summary showing the historical versus current range of the AWD and provide an explanation of these maps along with relatively up-to-date information as to their continued decline over the past 100 years.

Click on any image or screenshot to view it in its entirety.

Current Versus Historical Range
animalia-life.club

For African Wild Dogs that are fortunate enough to have been born into or ultimately find themselves living within sanctuary boundaries and tending to new generations, there is the still the neverending risk that they’ll eventually venture outside of these habitats of relative safety. When this occurs, more often than not they are killed before landing safely in another. Unfortunately, and not unlike any animal, they can’t read signs or comprehend borders. Worse yet, the areas between these “safe zones” comprise the bulk of where most AWD’s spend their lives. It is, for all African species, the majority of their overall living space. The risks include but are not nearly limited to being hit while crossing roads, dying at the hands of poachers, or being shot for straying too close to a native farmer’s goats or cattle. Put differently, these are far-ranging apex predators and whether they remain within a given national park or any other form of sanctuary set aside for the protection of African wildlife and their habitat, it is simply a roll of the dice. Most AWD’s spend their entire lives traveling and maintaining pack territories well outside the boundaries of the relatively small areas which provide the very habitat that have been set aside for their survival. The larger the protected area, the greater the likelihood that they’ll remain.

It is when you look at Africa as a whole that you see just how small these protected areas are relative to its overall landmass. In our conquest to populate the African continent, we made an attempt at creating a few wonderful spaces and they do fall into some of the best habitats for many African species, but for Africa’s wildlife and their predilection for widespread travel and vast migrations, they are far too small.

When I began following the plight of the African Wild Dog four or five years ago, the estimated population remaining at that time was a staggeringly low 17,000. As a lover of dogs and their wild counterparts, I had no idea that the AWD was already so close to extinction, and I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of both sadness and anger. The reason for the sadness is obvious, but the anger was more complicated. How could we, as the supposed caretakers of the planet, have allowed such a massive decline in a species which looks very much like its close cousin, our beloved domestic dog?! If the population data as reflected above provides us with a reasonably accurate estimate, then there are now just 6,000 AWD’s remaining in the wild, or roughly a third of the population which existed just a half-decade ago. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it has become the “Eleventh Hour” and saving them now would require a complete workover to catapult them into the forefront of public consciousness in the same way that mankind came together to save itself when faced with the COVID pandemic. This is the sense of urgency that I spent a year on Quora trying my damndest to advocate for threatened and bighly endangered species only to find that the overwhelming majority of people who are supposedly committed to this very thing are still lost in talking about wildlife conservation without so much as lifting a finger to get involved in a way that their time and purported compassion results in “moving the ball down the field”. While they’re discussing the issue of the demise of keystone species all over the world, the very creatures they’re hoping to save are, each day, moving inexorably closer to oblivion. In other words, many “Red Listed” species will reach the point of extinction while these “talking heads” are still talking about it.

As was the case with the American bison, historians today have no concrete number as to the pre-white settlement population of buffalo roaming all over what would become the United States, but best guess estimates range from between 40 and 60 million animals. For the AWD, the number a century ago is estimated to have been in the “hundreds of thousands” roaming all over Africa. That there are estimated to be just 6,000 remaining today is beyond heartbreaking. It means that we, as the most powerful species on earth, haven’t learned a damned thing. Please let that resonate for a moment before continuing to read any further.

The primary reason as to why so many species of both flora and fauna are in serious trouble the world over is related to loss of habitat due to human encroachment. In Africa, humans and their activities such as burning, logging, farming, and mining have quickly spread throughout this magnificent continent once teeming with hundreds of animal species, large and small, roaming freely over hundreds of millions of acres of wilderness. Many African creatures are larger than creatures found anywhere else on earth and these large animals require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. More and more creatures cease to exist in and around regions of development and the entire African continent has become fragmented and discontinuous in the span of just two-hundred years. The entire landscape changed, beginning with European colonialism and followed by the Industrial Period when railroads connected towns and towns became cities, while nations became nations, and boundaries began to exist everywhere in a place that had never known boundaries.

Among other things, loss of habitat coupled with poaching, meat hunting, and legalized trophy hunting of many of the large ungulate species (herbivores), results in a major loss in food resources while apex predators like the African Wild Dog, lion, leopard, cheetah, and hyena quickly decimate what’s left of the remaining herds and other prey species that are caught in their own struggle for ecological survival. Whether predator or prey, they share the same fate from accidental human interaction through legalized hunting, poaching (which continues to run rampant even today when measures are in place to help curb the animal parts and trophies trade). The anecdotal analogy of the “thumb in the dyke” in an ill-fated attempt to keep billions of gallons of water from slashing its way downstream and taking with it everything in its path, seems appropriate. There aren’t nearly enough resources to fight the poaching problem head-on. Worldwide bans on the “animal parts” trade have helped, but from what I know of the issue, it has been like placing a bandaid on an arterial bleed, or fixing a single dent on a car ravaged by hail.

We are living in a time when most people are aware that Mother Earth is gravely displeased with our goings-on and the collateral damage left in our wake on our way to drastically overpopulate the planet to a point that defies our own logic and reasoning. It would seem that Ted Kyzinsky’s manifesto on “Industrial Society and its Future” wasn’t far off the mark. I read his manifesto when it was first published by the New York Times in 1996, while he was still hard-at-it making bombs to be unleashed on those he viewed as the creators of technology and unimaginable future technologies which were having or would ultimately have a drastic impact on the relatively controlled world he had known. In a nutshell, his manifesto blames humanity for taking technology too far and well past the point of diminishing returns, to a level where it controls us and no longer does the converse exist. It is worth reading and is even more relevant today than it was then. I obviously don’t condone his means for getting his point across, but as a prognosticator of the future of mankind, he was spot-on. There was a part of him that was truly sociopathic, but it shows that even a madman with a high IQ may have seen the world more clearly than many of us. He knew what was coming, and what the world has been up to since his demise proves it.

I fail to understand how global society can continue on its social media-driven path while allowing for the wholesale extinction of some of the world’s most beautiful, intelligent, and fascinating animals. I am not a member of any of the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (“Instant Gratification”). You will never hear me “tweet” about anything. There’s simply too much at stake to get lost in such nonsense. It would be an altogether different matter if social media didn’t function as a perpetual diversion from things of greater importance and these same platforms were put to better use in disseminating important information such as that which could be used to save our dying planet.

I do not think humankind has proven itself to be responsible enough to be the world’s top apex predator while also charged with being the planet’s caretaker. There’s a fundamental conflict of interest associated with such a responsibility. I suppose that many of you reading this will find that to be a harsh blanket statement, but someone needs to be an oracle for creatures who, while incredibly intelligent, simply don’t speak our language (though some of their languages have proven to be far more intricate, elegant, and complex than our own). I just don’t meet enough people who would risk the relative ease of their lives to do whatever it takes to save some of these creatures, including the African Wild Dog. If we refuse to do what it takes to save the AWD from almost certain demise, what does that say about our relationship with the most historically significant and beloved creature we’ve so carefully cultivated over a thousand centuries – the domestic dog?! Will we eventually turn our backs to “man’s best friend”, as well?!

There are, of course, certain wildlife conservation groups that have been charged with the monstrously huge task of saving these animals from the rest of us, but these groups are vastly understaffed and underfunded and are just not militant enough to address the very significant issue of poaching. I don’t care if a poacher is some person from a native tribe trying to make ends meet. Whatever his reasons, his actions border on evil. Get some funding out there so he can be given a job protecting these species in lieu of annihilating them.

There are now close to eight billion people populating the globe and fewer than 6,000 African Wild Dogs (650 breeding pairs). This statement should serve as a “shock and awe tactic” to compel people to do something as opposed to just sitting around and talking about it. But my plea will likely die along with the creatures it is intended to protect. When a population of any animal gets too small to be viable (no longer sustainable because there aren’t enough individuals remaining to formulate a healthy gene pool), there is no going back. When the number of animals for a given species has reached this point, there is little that can be done, particularly if that species has proven itself unfit for captive breeding. Some animals are simply too wild and require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. Perhaps they don’t breed in captivity as a way of saying, “We are simply too good to submit to your machinations and would rather die than live out our once free-ranging lives in captivity!”.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you feel as guilty as I do for being a human being and, however unwittingly, taking part in the destruction of our planet, perhaps you’ll do some research of your own and find a wildlife and wild places organization you feel good about supporting. It may just be the most important thing you’ve ever done.

Here is a list of places to start. To expand it, just click.

African Wild Dog Conservation Organizations

Photos.willbe.com (Burrard-Lucas Photography)

The Allure of the Guitar

Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post

I didn’t start playing guitar until I retired twelve years ago. I had just moved from my long time home in Southwest Colorado to my last job as regional director for a large engineering company in Pennsylvania. I’d been having back trouble for years, but it was during that move that things got serious. I was more than a little concerned about starting a new, high profile job while my back had begun to spiral out of control. I had seen enough specialists over many years, including a recent visit with a spine surgeon in Durango, to know that I would now be in need of a major corrective surgery.

I began my new post and could immediately tell that it was going to be hell. Loads of responsibility and pressure trying to turn water into wine. By now, I was in serious need of seeing a pain specialist and getting some help with the quickly deteriorating circumstances. Soon my situation became untenable. I’d come from Colorado a well conditioned athlete and mountain bike racer but now it was all I could do to sit through my fourteen hour days. The company had located a wonderful home for our two-person, two dog family and we moved in. But I was immediately in need of finding a place closer to work to mitigate the fairly long commute, which meant more sitting. By far, the most uncomfortable thing I could do to my body was to sit for long periods. The walls containing my life were collapsing all around me. I finally found a pain management clinic that would squeeze me in. Unbeknownst to me, there was a war going on and it was called the “Opioid Crisis”. At least in Pennsylvania, with some of the harshest laws covering the transfer and sale of oral opioids, it was like playing musical chairs and when the music stopped, I would be left standing without a chair. Clinics were booked solid and doctors were being forced to discern how much pain a given patient might be in while interrogating them to see if their pain was real or whether they were exhibiting “drug seeking behavior”, which closely mimicks being in severe pain. I was refused by three clinics before a doctor agreed to take me on as a genuine pain patient. At this point, I’d only been in Pennsylvania for three months and was already fighting to be able to perform well enough to keep my job and all that I had gambled when I left Colorado. The country was deep in the throes of a major recession, largely due the “House Mortgaging Crisis” which had been two decades in the making, and virtually every industry, including mine in oil and gas, was hurting and solid engineers in my particular field (natural gas development) were being laid-off left and right, which is why I was forced to make such a faraway move at such a bad time for me and my rapidly declining spine. I had lived and worked hard making my way in Colorado for thirty years. To me, it was the end of an entire way of life. Just a few months prior to the move, I had simply gone in to see our local family doctor in Colorado and was, with no trouble at all, given a prescription for the very same medication that I was now fighting for my life to renew. I was fortunate that I’d found a pain clinician who, after seeing X-rays, an MRI, and a CT-scan could see how badly I needed surgery, as my lower lumbar spine was completely decimated from years of concussive sports. He wrote a script for just enough medicine to just take the edge off so that I could at least get a few hours of sleep at night and continue working while attempting to locate a reputable spine surgeon. But, make no mistake, the pain was still bad enough that I could barely sit at my desk, let alone travel to and from Houston, something required for my new position as the company was headquartered there, and I reported to the CEO.

It was at this time that I was compelled to find something pleasing to concentrate on to keep my mind off the pain. Since I’d always looked to numerous mountain sports and activities for stress relief and to maintain a semblance of work/life balance, but was now having serious difficulty with short runs and was forced to exchange my runs for short walks, what I was looking for was something immersive enough to help me relax and fend-off the profound associated stress and vastly debilitating anxiety. I had been saving two time-intensive passions to dive into after retirement as I’d done just enough of each over my working life to have a burning desire to take them up when I finally had the necessary time to commit. One was to learn to play and become an accomplished guitarist, and the other was creative writing. As a function of my career in engineering, I had become a highly proficient technical writer, but since taking some literature and writing courses in college, which I had enjoyed immensely, I had had an overwhelming desire to one day pursue creative writing as an avocation. This, too, would have to wait until retirement as becoming an accomplished creative writer doesn’t happen overnight. I decided to continue to put the writing on hold as I wasn’t yet ready to retire in earnest and had hoped to get my back under control and continue working for another four or five years, but I thought that learning to play guitar would help get me through this very difficult period and would be something that I would continue pursuing while finishing up my working life.

No sooner than I had made the decision, my wife and I went to the nearest Guitar Center while I spent an entire Saturday working closely with the store’s assistant manager who, himself, was a gifted and regularly gigging guitarist. We had found a surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh whom I believed could do the work but my surgery wasn’t scheduled for another two months. I needed this change in my life in the same way the desert requires an occasional rain to sustain its own extremely beautiful life force. Years ago, I’d played a bit of acoustic in college and decided that I would initially pursue electric guitar. By the end of the day, I had settled on a very limited edition “Old Growth” redwood Fender Telecaster, the very first guitar to have caught my eye on that momentous day, a good quality tube amp, and everything I would need to get started. Even with the severe pain, I felt an overwhelming sense of elation! We got home and, though it took me two hours to get everything setup in the manner I was instructed by the uniquely helpful and super-knowledgable Guitar Center employee, I got everything set up to be able to play the next day. I went to bed completely exhausted from what had been a long day considering the horrible condition I was in. Exhausted, but full of hope and desire.

As worn to a nub as I was, I couldn’t wait to wake up the next morning and try my hand at playing. That day turned out to be epic as I played until my fingers bled (I’m being completely honest about that!) and played went on to play some more. It was nightfall before I quit for the day. I remembered more than I’d have thought from my bits of playing acoustic guitar in college and found something I’d never known about myself. I could play by ear. I never knew what that meant until I played to a bunch of old favorites and turned Pandora to a blues-rock station where I attempted to play lead along to each song and found myself putting together many of the notes and fitting them in nicely to match the lead guitar on the song. As with all things, there is a spectrum when it comes to playing by ear. Let’s just say that I could do it well enough to thoroughly enjoy what I was doing. Most people spend months, or even years, working on music theory and learning basic chords before enjoyment takes the place of frustration. For me, frustration would come much later when I’d gotten to be a reasonably good player but I was now attempting more complicated things, so the learning curve slowed and got steeper. Time was coming up on my surgery date and the surgeon had instructed me to prepare myself for a long and painful recovery. I was thankful for getting into guitar when I did because I would need it for what would end up as years of chasing pain and having other surgeries, six in the course of the following twelve years. I was forced to retire during the height of my career with just a few more years to go before I could retire “comfortably “. Times got pretty rough and I’ve all but completely lost myself at times, occasionally falling into deep despair from the pain and associated depression, but as bad as things got, I continued to play and began expanding my newfound avocation into buying, selling, and collecting guitars to an extent that my fascination with the guitar would become an obsession. I would read about the history of guitars and learn all about the market for vintage acoustic guitars by Martin and Gibson. I became an “enthusiast” and an expert on vintage acoustic guitars all while my playing continued to get better. I’ve been playing for almost fifteen years now and have developed an equal love of playing acoustically. Today, I’m roughly 50/50 with equal time playing both electrically and acoustically.

The 2011 Fender “Old Growth” Redwood Telecaster I purchased that one fine day at Guitar Center

Aside from problems with my back, I would have a half-dozen major health issues to contend with, three playing out as near-death experiences. Several of the presiding doctors over the gruelling period have made wonderfully compassionate observations as to my inner strength, resilience, and unique ability to endure under the most demanding of conditions. I have spent long periods of time where it was only by the grace of God, support from my family and a very small circle of friends, and my love for making music that I made it through. I had three major surgeries in 2023 alone. One, another spine related surgery and two that had to do with other long-term life threatening illnesses. In the aftermath, I had to relearn how to walk and, on most days I still use a cane to get around. But through it all, there were my guitars standing at the ready to help me through the worst of things. Then, there is my wonderful wife and three fine dogs. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to live mindfully and being thankful for the things that matter most.

But nothing has gotten me through these difficult times like remaining positive and playing the guitar like there’s no tomorrow. It wouldn’t be a stretch for me to say that my love of guitar and making music have saved my life several times over. When I occasionally reflect on all that has transpired, I can only hope and attempt to draw strength from what I have already accomplished as I am currently battling bladder cancer, the one remaining illness that I have yet to conquer. I was diagnosed in mid-2024 and had two surgeries and a failed form of frontline treatment, yet I still had a seven month period of remission only to have it reappear. Over the last six months, I have had two more surgeries to remove two more tumors, the most recent was just a month ago. This time, it was the smallest tumor yet, caught early. I have a follow-up “scraping” surgery in a month (to make sure my surgeon gets all of it), and have just begun a second, less efficacious form of treatment called systemic immunotherapy. It is given through an IV for two-to-three hours at my oncologist’s clinic in Austin, every third Friday for a period of twelve months. I do not know if I have enough gas in my tank to beat this last, most pernicious illness, but I’m going to give it everything I’ve got left. I still have “places to go, and people to meet” and am not nearly done with the things I hope to accomplish in my lifetime.

As always, good thoughts and prayers are more than welcome and are always deeply appreciated…from the bottom of my heart!

Some of the guitars from a collection that has taken me fifteen years to build. The most important pic to me is the last one. It’s a shot that my wife, Genie, took of me and our pure-golden-hearted little girl, Sage. RIP 2021 Age: 15

Thanks for reading!

Rattlesnake!

Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post

A Five-and-a-Half-Foot Western Diamondback at the Bottom of Our Front Porch Steps

I’ve lived in Western Diamondback country for much of my life, but not until a move to rural Central Texas in 2014 was it that I saw them regularly. In almost thirty years of mountain biking, trail running, hunting, and fishing in my adopted home state of Colorado, I had seen fewer than a dozen and had just three close encounters. Since then, I’ve had many more over a much shorter period and have been compelled to learn more about these reptiles than I ever wanted to know.

After eons of evolution and a less than fifty years of scientific study, much of their behavior remains a mystery to us. I’ve read that certain environmentally-driven changes in reptiles don’t take thousands of years to occur, but significant change can come in as little as a few generations. No one knows all the reasons why, but I’ve witnessed marked evolutionary changes that have occurred over a period of just twelve years. Take rattling and the purported reasons for it as an example. As children, many of us are taught that rattlesnakes rattle primarily to keep close encounters from happening. That before we even spot the source of a rattle, it is a way for rattlesnakes to communicate their presence to virtually anything or anyone, whether the animal (including humans) is approaching with purpose or the would-be encounter is a function of happenstance. It is designed to help prevent those other creatures from continuing on a path which will force a confrontation. It is a wholly defensive mechanism and, believe me. when you hear your first adult-sized rattlesnake rattle, it is a sound you will never forget and will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at full attention. As humans, this is a response that is well written into our genetic code. The sound will make a person freeze in their tracks to have a tentative look around in an attempt to see the source of this primordial sound. In my fifty-plus encounters right here on our rural Central Texas property, I’ve heard that telltale rattle on just a few occasions before coming dangerously close to bumping into one. I’ve talked to longtime residents of this part of Texas, including a number of multigenerational ranchers, and other outdoorsman and there have been some theories derived surrounding this radical departure in behavior.

The most widely held belief is because just ten years ago, in the extremely rural areas surrounding the town of Lockhart (population: just over 14,000) there was an entire landscape which made for absolutely perfect habitat for growing snakes of all kinds which are indigenous to Central Texas. Between the large expanses of unmaintained ranch lands which have, over the course of numerous decades, gone from being open prairie interspersed with high-quality native grasslands and hayfields, with just islands of brushy species of trees to a landscape overrun with high-density walls of brush consisting of many species of thorny trees and thick stands of red oak, juniper, and mesquite. The area hasn’t had a significant fire (nature’s gardener) in decades to bring the unmitigated brushy growth back under control, restoring the prairie to its true form. This is partially due to the fact that wildfires have had the tendency to be squelched by ranch owners and area fire departments for over a hundred years. This kind of ecological transformation hasn’t happened in our area alone, but has become a serious problem throughout most states. Additionally, and in more recent history, many people have been fleeing the high cost of living in Austin, roughly an hour’s drive to the north, and relocating to Lockhart (the closest small town to where we live) and the surrounding areas. Large tracts of land here in Caldwell county could be had for a tenth the price and land speculators and developers were busy buying-up land for near-term subdivision and longer-term investment. Soon, county planners were inundated with proposed communities and homes began springing up across the predominantly rural landscape. Wildlife was pressured into relocating to areas not yet touched by heavy equipment and land clearing machinery. Also happening during this same period was the steady influx and proliferation of feral hogs, which will eat just about anything, including choice morsels of rattlesnake. The third environmental change to affect the region was the tremendous rise in the Mexican eagle (caracara) population flying overhead. Their historic northernmost range had, up to just ten or fifteen years ago, been two counties to the south. Rattlesnakes weren’t the only snake species impacted by all of these changes and copperhead densities were also on the rise along with a dozen species of nonvenomous snakes. This part of Texas happens also to be the westernmost boundary of the copperhead, which is surprisingly abundant. And, of course, the nearby San Marcos River just so happens to be the westernmost boundary for the cottonmouth, aka, water moccasin. If you’re a lover of North American venomous snakes and nonvenomous snakes of all manner, this is a great part of the country to find them in unusually high densities.

When combined, these environmental changes to historical rattlesnake habitat have seemingly created a shift in the rattling instincts where, with so much newfound pressure, the rattlesnakes began a decline in the times they chose to rattle because, when doing so, they were giving away their positions which could mean being shot on sight, getting gobbled up by hogs, or attract attention from above and find themselves on today’s menu for several caracaras flying overhead. Like all birds of prey, red-tailed hawks have incredible eyesight and will also dive-bomb an unwitting rattlesnake . This change in rattlesnake behavior, rattling far less often, took less than twenty years to genetically take hold. Again, this is the primary theory related to the change held by people who have lived in this area for several generations.

In our time here, we have had as many as four dogs at a given time and two have felt the sting of an envenomation to the face. One bite to our young (less than a year old at the time) black lab-mix, Josie, proved to be non-life-threatening, though we still had to endure not only the fear of losing a beloved friend, but veterinary treatment for rattlesnake envenomation is extremely expensive. Another involved our prized Australian kelpie dog, named Kelpy by my then six year old daughter, who took the worst hit possible and spent three or four touch-and-go days in professional care. That dog meant as much to my wife and I as many people’s children do to them. It was an extremely scary and anxiety-filled experience, one that I would not wish upon anyone.

My first order of business during our numerous moves has traditionally been to build a nice dog kennel. When we moved here, we had two medium sized dogs so the kennel was a roomy 24′ x 32′. Later, when our two dogs had grown older, we took in two larger dogs and I expanded the kennel to a whopping 48′ x 82′. We referred to it as the “Taj Majal”. But long before the new dogs, it would become abundantly clear that I had to do something to keep my dogs and wife as safe as possible. The learning experience in terms of our dogs came the hard way when Kelpy took a big hit on a cold and blustery Christmas night (when virtually any other snake would have been tucked inside of its den) inside the relatively “safe” confines of the kennel. I was in our loft playing guitar with her by my side when Sage, our wonderful chow-mix called out with her five-alarm bark and Kelpy flew down the stairs and out the dog door, crying out with a single yelp before flying back in. Sage was still out there barking but, wisely, not getting too close. After quickly examining Kelpy, I immediately saw the telltale fang marks and blood beginning to trickle just below her left eye, missing the eye orbit itself by less than half an inch. I grabbed my handgun and, after having Sage revealed the location for me, I shuttled her indoors for my wife to examine while I went right back out and unloaded an entire clip from my 9 mm into the snake. My sense of defending my family had taken over, so it was certainly a case of overkill. It was a thick-bodied, five-and-a- half-foot female searching for her denning site which at that time (before I had sealed-up access to the crawlspace and the latticework under the front porch), the area beneath the porch provided access to the crawlspace which had served as a major denning site (unbeknownst to us) before we ever bought the place. The house, barn, and four acre property sat idle and surrounded by hundreds of acres of undeveloped ranchland, between completion of the home in early 2013 and when we moved in during February of 2014. I left the snake there as we feverishly made our way into town to meet our vet at her facility. Bless her heart for putting herself on call for the most sacred of holidays. I carried Kelpy in and stayed with her for as long as our vet would allow and came back first thing the following morning. I arrived at 6:30 AM and she opened the door for me. By then, Kelpy was in sorry shape with her head and neck swollen to virtually twice their normal size. She had been treated with three vials of anti-venin and horse plasma (horses have evolved to have a substantial resistance to rattlesnake venom, but they are not nearly immune). Though I would have had no way of knowing that a rattlesnake, or a snake of any kind would be roaming around on a chill Christmas night with a cold rain mixed in, I felt responsible for the incident, and the sight of seeing my cherished dog in such utter distress made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t get the thought that I was somehow responsible out of my head. In any other place I’d lived up to that point, a well-built kennel was all that was necessary to keep my dogs out of harm’s way. She would spend three more days in the hospital recovering. Immediately after the ordeal, I went down to the local farm and ranch supply house and purchased a few rolls of 24″ x 1/4″ mesh to surround Kelpy and Sage’s kennel and used the material to secure the open latticework under the front porch. Later, when we adopted Josie and Jett, our sibling male and female pair of black lab-mixes and I built the large kennel addition, I wrapped the same bottom two-feet with 1/4″ mesh. Since then, we’ve had one incident where a young (less than two-feet) but still dangerous copperhead found its way through a slit in the mesh that I must have unknowingly hit with the edge of our large field field mower which is designed to be pulled behind an ATV or small tractor. I couldn’t believe it! The young snake must have wandered along the kennel fencing until it happened upon a slight tear. The chances…geez! Josie, who is now “snake-wise”, came across it one evening last summer and barked her own “five alarm” bark and literally came in to get me to see what the fuss was about. I took care of the snake and that’s the only time in the ten years since I started using the mesh when a snake slipped its way through our defenses.

It has taken me twelve years of steadfast work to carve our property out from the surrounding wild and overgrown lands which have proven to be absolutely perfect Western Diamondback habitat with a vastly inordinate snake density rarely encountered elsewhere. Where there was nothing but brush and enveloping weeds with little quality native grass, there is now restored Central Texas prairie which gets mowed regularly to keep the snakes from once again getting a toehold and overrunning the place just as they had when we bought the place, named Lonesome Dove by the builder. There is now a well-worn trail that follows the boundaries of our property on all four sides and this trail gets used many times a day to walk the dogs and allow them to mark their territory. I keep the trail mowed such that there’s at least ten feet on either side where the grass is kept short, along with keeping the remaining parts of our property mowed regularly. Snakes don’t like crossing open ground, so the trail helps serve as a barrier to keep more snakes from finding the property’s inner-sanctum. I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect my family and have spent far more time on this one very imminent threat than I care to remember. I’ve spent time in grizzly country and would choose potential run-ins with them to being forever on guard searching for a threat that is virtually impossible to see. That is, before it’s too late!

As for me, it seems that I am out and about working on our property all too often and exposure to a potential bite is much higher than I would prefer, but when I’m using things like our push mower to mow under the limbs of the trees, or the brush cutter, chainsaw, ATV and utility trailer, I can’t help but from looking out for my personal safety and, where applicable, I put on a very good pair of snake boots or below the knee gaiters and thick leather hiking boots. I also take this precaution when I take the dogs for a hike on the trails of the nearby state park where I’ve had several encounters. Nonetheless, I’ve still had more close encounters that I can remember and remain alert at all times. These are not the immersive, relaxing hikes and trail runs I had in Colorado where the chances of an encounter with a creature of the venomous kind were far more remote, particularly during the winter months. These animals are incredibly well camouflaged and difficult to differentiate from the surrounding fallen leaves, rocks, and forest floor, but I’ve engaged in the serious game of finding them before I walk right over one (which I’ve done) for many years now. Paradoxically, it is their evolutionarily perfect patterns that my eyes have been trained to pickup on. The only way I can explain it is to say that my eyes must now find their markings to be “too perfect”. During the times of year when they’re most prevalent, I’ve learned to take a proactive approach and regularly go out “snake hunting” when it gets just warm enough in the morning for them to find a hidden place in the sun to warm themselves after the cool of the night. Better to find them before they unwittingly find us.

About six months ago, I had my closest call to date. I was out in the barn’s carport working on the ATV. There were several maintenance issues that I was performing at the same time and I had the machine pretty well stripped down, creating a couple of piles of fairing and parts. I was having particular trouble removing the CVT belt (the drive belt) without a couple of tools designed expressly for the task, using only my hands and fingers to turn the assembly and have the belt slide off. It just so happened that I’d enlisted ten minutes of help from our A/C tech who was finishing up with the annual spring checkup on our system. He was kind enough to offer his “second set of hands” and we pulled the belt in no time. Just as we were patting ourselves on the back for making short order of the job, the guy spoke softly while informing me of the very particular predicament I was in. I had donned a pair of cushioned knee pads to do the work and directly under my left knee I had a small, coiled rattlesnake pinned between my knee and the ground. He must have crept into the area where we were working while I had gone from standing to kneeling. It was the knee pad that not only provided enough cushion that I never felt the snake attempting to move beneath me but also kept me bite free. I stood up slowly and took two quick steps back. The snake didn’t appear to be all that “rattled” and that must have meant that he wasn’t in much discomfort. The floor of the carport consists of a layer of fine cedar chips which are pretty soft to walk on and work from. His tail had been free but he never rattled in the ten, or so, minutes he must have been pinned. Our A/C tech had a look of complete disbelief that such an uber-close encounter could have happened as I reached for the short sledgehammer I happened to have nearby and put a humane end to the snake. Not a second later, I was consumed with guilt over what I had just done. While having ample opportunity to bite, he chose to remain still as his best defense. Over the years and due to our rare set of circumstances with the sheer density of snakes with whom we have shared our property, I’d had no choice but to kill them on-sight lest they eventually have a future run-in with a member of our little family (perhaps after they’d grown much larger and were all the more dangerous). I simply couldn’t take that risk. Plus, the naturalist in me knew that the population was way out of control and needed some serious tough love. It would have been highly dangerous and impractical to have tried to capture and relocate each of them someplace nearby (fifty-plus times and counting). I’d have only been increasing the snake density on some neighboring ranch owner’s property.

Finally, after twelve years of living here in a place we love just as it were a living, breathing member of our family, we are enjoying our time in a way we were never able to before. All I can figure is that, at least on our property, rattlesnake densities are much closer to what would be considered normal. In those twelve years, a number of other homes have sprung up nearby and the building activity would have pressured a lot of the rattlesnakes in close proximity to us to move on. There’s still plenty of undeveloped wildlife habitat near us, so I don’t think it’s caused the rattlesnakes and copperheads much difficulty. But in a year like 2016, the time of Kelpy’s envenomatiom, when I killed as many as four or five per month for several months, I was never afforded the opportunity to simply relax while being out on the property. I was responsible for the health and safety of my family, a job that I took very seriously, and I was always out of balance with my feelings about having chosen this place as our next home. I had always lived in rural country and knew there would be a fair share of “creepy -crawlies” here, but never in my wildest nightmares did I think this kind of venomous snake density was even possible.