Americans still have it better than most people.

I know these are troubled financial times, with Americans losing houses and jobs right and left, and those more fortunate seeing their investments dwindle. No one wants to spend the little they have left, and the retailers are suffering: stores, even big national ones, are going out of business almost every day. It's belt-tightening time, assuming you still own a belt.

But the truth is that we live in the most prosperous nation on earth, and there are bargains not just to be had but that are built into our system. No, we don't offer universal health care -- sorry about that (I'd vote for it any day) -- but we do have non-profit clinics where you can take your kids to be vaccinated and emergency rooms where anyone can be treated for any illness. Granted, you might be billed later, but if you don't have the money to pay, no one is likely to track you down and lock you up. The hospitals just eat the expense.

That's not what I'm talking about. We do lag behind other countries that way. (As I've said before, even Cuba gives its people free health care.) No, I'm talking about the things we Americans take for granted.

Here's a sampling:

1. Postage. We pay 44 cents to mail a letter to anyone anywhere in our country. That may be cheaper than a phone call. I'm not current on the latest changes, but I'm thinking it's something like 28 cents to mail a post card.

2. Waste removal. Every three months or so, I get a bill for less than $100 for hauling away all my garbage weekly. There are countries in the world where your waste material is your own problem. No service? Dump it in the street. Or the river that runs through town.

3. Groceries. We have access, year-round, to fresh fruits and meats and veggies from around the world. And our supermarkets brim with two-for-one deals and other discounts. Granted, you could get fresher produce at a market in Paris, but you would pay more -- and you would have to go there every day to find what you want. Our grocery stores are amazing in their variety and pricing. Have you ever shopped for food in London? Good luck.

4. Lodging. We Americans are truly spoiled when it comes to where to spend the night, whether we're on business or vacation. Any Holiday Inn in any city in America puts to shame what you can find almost anywhere else: a big bed (or two), clean floors, an ice machine, room service, and maybe an attached restaurant. Plus lots of lamps and lots of pillows. Have you ever stayed in a hotel in Paris? The rooms are the size of a Holiday Inn bathroom. I had to ask for an extra pillow -- twice -- before I got one.

5. Parks. No matter how poor you may be, how out-of-work, you can always find, in almost any city, a place you can take your kids -- or just yourself -- to stroll around, to lounge (maybe to sleep, if you have to), to just relax. And all for free. Taxes pay for it. The national parks charge a fee, but it's about $30 a year. Have you ever seen the Rockies? Yosemite? Yellowstone? Pay a camping fee and sleep in your min-van.

6. Gas. We complain about what gas costs, but the Europeans have been paying many times what we pay for years. That's why they have all those mini-cars. We have a long way to go before we match what is paid in other parts of the world (except the big oil-producing countries, where gas is almost free).

7. Roads. We take for granted that every road or highway we travel will be well-maintained: smooth and free of cracks/bumps. And that we can travel from coast to coast -- or north to south and vice versa -- with no troublesome detours through small towns, replete with stop lights, etc. Well, that started with President Ike, who, in the 1950s, saw the need for a highway that let the military transport its equipment cross-country, in an emergency, with no delays. Not many other countries enjoy this fast-transit system for the average driver. Have you ever driven a car in another country? Try Mexico. Tell me you want to do that again.

8. Friendliness. I don't think any country can out-do us on hospitality. We welcome everyone. When you check into a hotel/motel or sit down at a restaurant, you're almost never asked if you belong there. We all belong there. I know there have been some episodes at particular chains, but I suspect that has more to do with local ignorants than it does with the company policy. In America, anyone is welcome to sit down at any restaurant and order any meal. Do you think that policy applies in other parts of the world. Try being Jewish and travelling. Try even looking Islamic and see if it works. In America, all you have to do is lay your money down, and we're ready to serve you.

9. Opportunity. We just elected a black -- okay, a half-black -- President. There are many countries where this couldn't have happened. If you're black or Hispanic or Asian in America, you can not only open your business but also run for office. America remains the main place you can come and be who you want to be. We've had so many ethnicities come through our ports that we're very nearly color-blind. If you have some food we want to eat, or some product we want to get from overseas, or some new idea we hadn't thought of before, we welcome you. Despite what it says on the Statue of Liberty, though, we don't want every other country's refuse. We want people who are looking for a new life and who can make us an even better country. Don't be like Castro, trying to send all his criminals this way. Send us solid citizens, even if they've been repressed in their own country. We want the best you have to offer.

10. Privacy. This is something no one talks about, but it's possible in America because we're so big. If you want to just be by yourself -- legally, not avoiding the law -- you can move up to Montana and no one will ever see you again. But you have to promise not to cause any trouble, as the Uni-Bomber did when he moved up there. If you're willing to live by yourself, in the wilds, America can accommodate you. Mind your own business, and be a good citizen. I can guarantee you'll be left alone. Hey, take that time to write that next Great American Novel!

I'm sure you can think of other reasons we're lucky to be Americans. These ten are only a start.

But even those of us who are suffering the after-effects of the financial meltdown can appreciate the benefits we enjoy as Americans, no? Lots of free things to do. Lots of scenery to enjoy. Lots of cheap things to buy: Hey, don't forget The Dollar Store. I buy all my reading glasses there. A dollar a pair vs. ten dollars or more (much more) at any other store. And, of course, we have that many-branched national garage sale called Goodwill (and all the other thrift stores). If you don't insist on name brands for everything you buy, you can live quite cheaply in America.

So I say long live the American system of capitalism! Yes, it needs some tweaking -- even, in some areas, a major overhaul -- but I'm still behind it, even as it flounders.

What do the stars mean to you?

If you were one of the first people on earth, the stars were likely mysterious lights in the sky. Sort of a backdrop, up high, to your own hard existence, which consisted mainly of trying to find something to eat avoid being attacked and eaten by some wild animal or even some other early human.

Somewhere along the way, maybe once you'd figured out the survival thing and had a warm cave to live in, and maybe even found some others like yourself you could hang out with and one in particular you wanted to have sex with and who bore your kids and who shared your group's sense of "safety in numbers," you might have started to look around with an esthetic sense.
I mean, once you had a sort of community -- each one looking out for the interests of the group -- and a sense of at least some safety, it might have been time to really take a good look at your environment.

The animals you killed were kind of interesting, as was the forest/jungle, so you started to use the earth's clays and pigments to sketch pictures of them and maybe of each other. Why? Who knows? Who knows where art comes from? The human brain, of course, but was it programmed in from the beginning?

In other words, once you were more or less secure from attacks and able to spend a whole day not trying to kill something or keep from being killed, did you turn to art because you somehow needed to? Or here's a novel thought: maybe it was the women, trapped with young'uns in the cave, who produced all that art. Never thouht of that, huh? Makes sense, though. Smart but primitive women, bored in the cave, hearing nothing but tales from their nearly-mute hubbies about the hunt, turning it all into cave art. I like that idea.

Back to the primitive male (and female). You had a fire, you had a family and a tribe of like-minded individuals. You had enough food for a while. You'd looked around you, so why not now look up? After all, there it all was, spread out every night: millions of pinprick lights up there in the darkness. Yes, there was the moon in the night, and the sun in the day, and you could make up stories about them, but the stars presented a unique intellectual problem: why were they there? So tiny and so many of them!

Just for decoration? Not likely. They must mean something. So you made up stories about the way they were organized, in shapes and patterns, that mirrored your own primitive life: the hunter, the bear, the this or that. (Little did you know that your categories would enable latter day charlatans, astrologists, centuries in the future, to make a living interpreting people's lives based on those dubious arrangements.)

But somewhere along the line of human evolution, very smart people started to look at the stars in a different way. Maybe they really were like our sun, but just further away. Much further away. Maybe they were all blazing bodies of gas that originated when our universe did and were still out there in space, so far off that they only appeared to be those pinpricks in the sky but were really enormous furnaces that could swallow our whole solar system without even a burp.
Early astronomers got in big trouble with the Catholic church over this and had to recant to save their lives. (Do I hear the Catholic church apologizing? I'm listening.)

With the advent of astronomy, the study of stars became a real science, albeit one not observed under a microscope, where every intricate detail is delineated, but one only studied from a long way off. Still, with the advances in instruments and theories, we've come to think that the stars are very old and do lead us toward an understanding or where we all came from (if not why).

If you look up at the stars tonight from your backyard -- with your eye or through a telescope -- you will get just a general impression of what they mean. Most of them are tiny blurs. But, even at that low level of magnification, they are beautiful. Silver/white pinpoints of light that you know are so much more. They're huge and full of fire almost not imaginable to us here on Earth. They are indeed mysterious. We don't know why they're there or what they should mean to us. Do they have planets circling them? We don't know. If not, why not? And if not, why do they exist?

And here's the really mind-boggling part: There are millions upon millions of them! Sort of like grains of sands on all our beaches. What's that all about?

We don't know.

I'm good with that. Are you? I love the mystery.

You want to be convinced that we humans are clueless about the universe that spawned us?

Go outside tonight and look up.

Flowers are sort of like people.

I'm not a botanist or a horticuluralist, but I do like flowers. I know nothing about them but have always enjoyed watching them come up in the spring -- a miracle! -- and appreciate them just for their unexpected beauty. When I was a kid in Texas, the tulips came up near my birthday, in April, but even before that, all kinds of flowers had lifted their beautiful heads from the dirt to announce that spring was here!

Lady Bird Johnson, wife of LBJ, sponsored a program to grow wildflowers along the highways of Texas, where I grew up. She had an eye for this particular gift nature gives us every spring, no matter where we live. The state flower of Texas, for the record, is the bluebonnet.

As I've gotten older, I've begun to realize that I like certain flowers more than others and am wondering why -- and whether it has something to do with me, the kind of person I am. And also how and why certain flowers differ from others.

One of my first observations, from when I was a kid, is that some flowers smell good and others don't. Why is that? Tulips, my childhood favorite, have no aroma. They are pretty, in all hues, but cool. You look, you cut and arrange, but you don't smell. And once cut, they die pretty fast in a vase (or in your garden). All their energy has gone into their looks. In adulthood, I found another flower like that, the poppy, whose unique orange color and wispy petals wowed me early on. But, again, no aroma. And another one, from a trip to California: the Birds of Paradise.

What kind of insect pollinates flowers like this? Are there insects attracted only to color? I can't imagine a bee hyper-ventilating over a tulip.

But then I thought: I've known women like that. All looks, cool like the tulip or sultry but aloof, and kind of Oriental, like the poppy, or absolutely gorgeous but way-out-of-reach like the Bird of Paradise. Beautiful in their own ways but not particularly inviting. Look but don't touch types.

I've noticed, too, that some flowers grow in groups while others don't. I don't think that I've ever seen daisies growing except in a patch: lots of them in a small space. The same could be said for others I can't name. They never appear except with large numbers of their own kind. To stretch my metaphor, are these like the girls -- or boys -- who only thrive when teamed-up somehow, who need lots of friends, a wide social network?

Sunflowers are an odd example of how this can go either way. There are more than a few excellent photos of them growing in numbers you can't calculate, whole acres of them. But do they really desire the company of their fellows, or is it just the way we plant them? After all, a sunflower can grow to six feet high or higher, all by itself, brooding in the sunlight, with a flower head so huge it droops over. A magnificent being that needs no company. So are we breeding them, as we do chickens and pigs, to please us -- tightly squeezed and too big -- when they would rather be on their own, growing tall and singular? I think they can go either way.

The state flower of Colorado is the columbine, which has no aroma but sports two sets of five petals each, one inside the other-- my favorite variety being white set into purple, with a yellow center. They are often found in small groups, but maybe just as often growing alone, or with one other of their kind -- and always (at least in the woods) in the shade. Their growing season is short, and their delicate beauty always reminded me of a poem; I think of them as the Emily Dickinsons of the flower world.

Also, there are some flowers that grow at certain altitudes, where others can't. I live up high, and tropical flowers -- orchids and those colorful monsters in paintings of Georgia O'Keefe -- just don't make it up here. They are meant to thrive in a different climate. If you go up even higher, you find flowers that can make it through any winter and come back the next year, but they are very small, tightly grouped -- as if against the weather and the wind -- and don't smell like anything. Tundra flowers. Tiny. It's a wonder they can make it through the harshest winters; maybe, like mountain people the world over, they survive because they huddle together. And
you can't dig them up and transport them to your backyard. They live where they live.

I wonder who pollinates them?

In additon, there are flowers that come up every year and others that die off every year and have to be re-planted. Why is that? Are they like those of us who like to be re-born every year and beome someone else? What's up with annuals?

Maybe the biggest question is this: Why do some flowers not only look good but also smell good? I'm thinking of the rose and the iris, particularly. They are both absolutely beautiful flowers that also have an intoxicating aroma. There are others -- lilacs, but with smaller flowers all in a group along a branch -- but none so extravagant as the rose or iris. These two, so far as I can tell, are set apart from the other flowers I'm most familiar with. They combine beauty and a sweet smell. They're like the Marilyn Monroe of flowers: looks and personality combined.

And what does any of this have to do with us humans? In the case of roses, I'm reminded of the marriage of Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe. He was a famous baseball player known for being cool and aloof, but he fell, head over heels, for Marilyn. They married. It didn't work out, but he spent many years after her death delivering roses to her funeral plot.

Maybe when we choose our flowers, we're not just attracted to those that re-inforce our view of ourselves -- daisies or daffodils for those of us who like to be in groups -- but also to those not at all like us. The old rule: opposites attract. Maybe the most gregarious of us sometimes favor those solitary flowers, like the columbine, which lives its brief life away from public view, showing its beauty only to those willing to search for it.

If I had to choose a favorite, I might have to go with the rose, in all its infinite varieties. (There are, as you are probably aware, many clubs devoted to it.) It is not only beautiful and aromatic, but it also is guarded by very nasty thorns that can bring blood to your finger in an instant.

The iris says, in all its stately beauty, "Love me for my majestic beauty and my perfume, but I won't be around that long." The poppy and the tulip say pretty much the same: "I'm beautiful, but if you put me in a vase, I'll die."

But the rose says, "You can leave me in the garden, or you can cut me down and display me in on your dining room table or you can let me dry out and hang me from a doorway -- but just don't approach me unless you understand the dangers."

Joe couldn't resist it, and neither can the rest of us rose lovers.

So when it's time to send that special person in your life a flower, choose one that is you, or one that is who you want to be, or want to project. Or choose one that reminds you of that person -- and hope that he/she interprets it correctly. Good luck.

Still, for lots of us, botanists and just flower-lovers alike, it's hard to resist the wild ones that grow all by themselves on our highways and bi-ways, in great proliferation, like the bluebonnets in Texas. Unfortunately, most (maybe all) states discourage or even outlaw picking them.

But we all have one in common that we can do with what we want, a most maligned mongrel in our own yards every spring: the lowly dandelion. A very pretty yellow flower -- and it really is pretty -- the dandelion sprouts wherever we didn't have anything else planned (or even where we did).

In fact, they may be the familiar flowers that best embody our most admirable human traits: they're attractive, durable, self-sufficient, well-rooted, adaptable, comfortable alone or in groups, and they never give up. They remind me of what Henry Fonda said about his fellow Okies in the movie The Grapes of Wrath: "We're the people. We keep on coming." So do dandelions, God bless 'em.

And I'm told the spiky leaves, the greens, are edible. This from a weed. Go figure.

Childhood friendships don't always age well.

When I was a kid growing up in a small town in Texas, I had more than a few good male friends I did stuff with. We might walk the creeks that ran through town, barefoot, looking for crawdads, which are called crayfish in other places. We didn't eat them, though, as they do in New Orleans: we just liked to dangle a piece of something on the end of line and let them grab hold of it. Once we'd had a look at them -- miniature lobsters -- we let them go again. And did you get that part about "barefoot"? We didn't worry about people throwing empty beer bottles into the creek that would splinter and puncture our bare feet. The age of innoncence, no?

I also remember playing a version of baseball with some of my buddies when we were pre-teens. We actually sewed up balls stuffed with old socks or whatever. The reason? We were playing in our backyards and didn't want to smash baseballs into neighbors' windows. Of course, we all played Little League baseball, too, on regulation fields, but that wasn't as much fun since it involved adults. We made up our own rules.

When I think back to my childhood -- before the teen years brought out the hormones --I have fond memories of old friends who shared with me the discovery of the world: not just sports but bugs and the woods and learning to ride bikes and a hundred other things. It's hard to put myself back into that mindset except in memory. But since I wasn't abused -- poor, yes, but not abused by anyone -- the memories are mostly pleasant (and still vivid).

Fast forward a few decades. A high school reunion. Everyone a lot older, obviously, some looking pretty much the way they used to, a little more jowly (is that a word?), a little pudgier, but -- when you look close enough -- recognizable. Some not regnizable except by their name tags.

So here are two of my best friends from childhood (who will go un-named in case they read this someday), who both look pretty good -- but who have nothing to say to me.

I've had a few beers and am ready to re-visit old times -- like when we used to go to the bank and take from the teller rolls of coin and sit down and try to find rare ones (which we did) or when we started our own whiffle ball league -- but they're kind of awkward about it. What's up? I wouldn't say that either of them -- my separate friends from age 10 to 13 -- don't remember what we used to do together: They just aren't interested in talking about any of it.

And it's really the only things we have to talk about nowadays. We've all moved on and had different experiences -- marriage, college, jobs, maybe divorces and other traumas -- until we're just not those kids anymore. I can go back in time and re-live all those good (and bad) times, but they can't. I'm not sure why.

For some odd reason, this reunion, so many years later, is more awkward for them than for me. sure. I don't need to renew this connection -- and, in fact, haven't (and won't) -- but I am more ready to talk about the old days than they are. I mean, the class reunion is a time to do that, and I'm prepped for it. But here they are, two close buds from decades before, who are not at all comfortable with me. It's not like I've achieved great things that might intimidate them. It's just that we aren't the same people we were back then, and they, for whatever reason, can't go back in time and enjoy those bygone days together.

I guess the point is that early relationships don't always age well. We encounter certain people at certain ages and certain times, and we click with them. We get along. We do things together. We're of one mind. We think we'll be friends forever. We can't imagine it not being so.

Ah, but then the miraculous occurs! We change. We grow. We become someone else. Not someone else entirely but a different version of who we used to be: natural to ourselves, un-recognizable to others (especially our old friends). It's to our credit if and when we evolve, but it can be disconcerting to "old friends", who expect us to be exactly the same as when they knew us back then, just older. Or it may be that they are the ones who have changed and can't relate to us for that very reason.

I do have friends who have stayed in the old hometown and who have continued to grow up together and who remain close to each other. They are a tight-knit community of like-minded souls. It's not for me, but it works for them. They remember each other as teens and even as children, but also know each other as parents and even grandparents; they've watched each grow older, and they find comfort in that continuing story. For them, it's not stifling but re-assuring. God bless 'em.

I think we need to grow beyond our roots, to sprout blossoms, get pollinated, and move on. If we do come back to our roots and find a kindred soul from our earliest days, it's a blessing. How nice to think that there are people who remember us from when we almost don't rememver ourselves! I have a photo from a kindergarten class at a church in that small town, and I can identify several of the boys I knew when I was five years old! One I made contact with not so long ago, and we reminisced like crazy. It was great. Still, I doubt that I'll ever see him again.

For the most part, we make our true life friends when we're grown. Maybe because we're not still in that old town, but probably more because we meet people who share our interests as we grow, not those who just share our memories. It's the way life works, for better or worse.

Most memories are best left memories. Myself as a kid with these friends, for instance. We had fun, we made some discoveries, had some adventures. But at some point it's time to tuck them all away, like those old comic books under the bed. Treasured always, re-visited and enjoyed all over again from time to time, fondly remembered. But just memories nonetheless. Not necessarily the basis for renewing a friendship.

If you have an old friend from childhood who is still your friend, consider yourself lucky and know what a rare thing it is.

Just don't go to your high school reunion expecting to walk into a time-warp and become a kid again: All your old friends are grown-ups now, and we know how that changes things, right?

Oh my, don't we?

Common sense is not always so common.

Here are six examples of what I think is "common sense" but that others apparently don't.

1. Don't talk on your cell phone -- much less text -- while you're driving.

Come on now, do you really think you can talk on a cell phone and pay attention to traffic? And don't tell me it's like eating a cheeseburger or punching buttons on your radio. When you're on the phone, in your car, you're not paying full attention to traffic -- the sounds as well as the sights -- and you're much less likely to drop the phone if you have to than you are the cheeseburger. Besides, I can eat a cheeseburger or punch buttons on my radio while still paying attention to other cars. Can you really do that when you're having a conversation with someone not in your car? In my own town, an otherwise normal woman drifted into the bike lane -- a narrow strip of the road, barely three feet wide, not protected, just marked by a line of paint on the pavement -- and ran head-on into a little girl, killing her. The driver was talking on her cell phone. Only a few weeks later, a guy rolled his truck while on his cell, killing his daughter. I've never heard of a tragic accident like this attributed to a cheeseburger.

Common sense: Wait till you're out of traffic, or even parked, to get that cell phone call or make one.

2. Some guns need to be registered.

So you own a gun. Maybe several. That's cool. A shotgun for hunting birds, a .22 for target practice, something bigger for game you're allowed to hunt. But do you really need to own an automatic weapon? A machine gun? Or one that can easily be converted to automatic? What would you use that for? Shooting multiple elk? I don't dispute your right to own one, but we, your fellow citizens, need to know that you own it, so that if it's ever stolen, we can track its disappearance and try to find out where it is now. (And no one should be allowed to buy one at a gun show, where it's not traced.) When I was in Viet Nam, I learned to shoot the M-16, which extruded an amazing 20 bullets in less than that many seconds. I don't think the average hunter needs a gun like that, do you? If you own one, we, your fellow citizens, need to know where it is.

Common sense: We have a right to know who owns powerful weapons in our communities. Their disappearance may be a cause for alarm. Register those puppies, just like you register your car, which, like that gun, is benign until, in the wrong hands, it kills somebody.

3. For heaven's sake, legalize marijuana!

Marijuana makes people silly or introspective or both. It lulls them into a sort of trance and makes them think they're smarter than they are. It also makes gives them the munchies. But it doesn't make them violent. You've never heard of the police being called to the scene of a violent crime and saying that it was because the perps were smoking pot, right? Let's legalize it and collect the substantial revenues that would come from taxation. We could pay for health care for the least fortunate among us without raising anyone's taxes. Admit it: Wouldn't you pay a pretty heft price for a bag of pot without risk?

Common sense: Lots of adult Americans smoke pot, and they don't cause any trouble. No bar fights. No domestic violence. It's a miracle substance, one of the few cheaply-grown weeds that gives people pleasure and causes no pain -- in fact, in the case of its medicinal form, actually relieves pain. And no, it's not a sure gateway to other drugs -- coke and speed, etc. -- because those are addictive. Pot isn't. If you run out of pot, you don't knock over a drugstore. Legalize it and collect the taxes.

4. Reject any religion that calls for killing those who disagree.

I'm not naming names (or religions) here, but if my religion calls for me to kill all those who don't agree with my idea of God and what He (never She) wants me to do in this life, I'm criminally disturbed. I need counseling. No credible prophet -- Jesus, Mohammed, et al -- ever preached taking out those who didn't ascribe to my belief. And keep in mind that it's just a belief: You don't have The Answers any more than I do; we're all just guessing. So don't kill me because I don't think your Answers are right, and I won't kill you. Agreed? How hard is that? And, by the way, I don't think it's just the Islamists or any other group who are guilty of this kind of thing: Have you ever heard of the Inquisition? The Catholic church centuries ago hunted down and tortured and murdered many non-believers. They just don't like to talk about it. All religions harbor nutcases who take things too far, for their own selfish and mis-guided or even delusional means.

Common sense: All the leaders of the world's religions need to sit down and talk about what is the same about their beliefs -- which I suspect comes down to respecting others and loving them, or at least tolerating them, certainly not killing them -- and come to a universal declaration of some kind that would involve all religions and denounce those who violate the basic human rights included in all religions.

5. Everyone should have basic health benefits.

Doesn't it stand to reason that we should all, rich or poor, be able to go to the doctor when we're sick -- especially when we're really sick? Can any of us, whatever our political stance, think that a sick child shouldn't have access to a doctor? Or someone with cancer, regardless of age? I hear the objection: Take the kids, or yourself, to an emergency room, where you can't be denied. But chemotherapy isn't administered in ERs. The fact is that many in our otherwise healthy and wealthy society can't go to a doctor when they're sick, even deathly so, because they don't have insurance -- meaning that no one will agree to pay the cost they may not be able to. If it's within our means as a nation, a country, to be sure that none of our citizens has to suffer needlessly, shouldn't we find a way to ensure that?

Common sense: We may not all be assured a nice house to live in, or a nice car, but we should all have a guarantee that someone will try to keep us alive if we need it. This isn't a luxury; it's sort of a basic human right. Most of the developed countries in the world provide it. Lord, even Cuba provides it! Come on, America, shape up!

6. Don't run up more debt than you can reasonably expect to pay off.

I heard a segment on NPR recently about a woman who had financed her college education and the launch of a new business on credit cards and who now has a debt of over $100,000 to pay off and no way to do it. Hello? What am I missing here? In her defense, she said she thought she could get it paid in five years -- that's $20,000 a year plus interest -- but, of course, the economy went sour, and now she's stuck. Well, duh! Not much sympathy here. If you don't have it, and don't have a fairly good plan for earning it, don't spend it! By the way, I'm not a foe of credit cards. In fact, I think you should have several, as it increases your borrowing ability in case you need it somewhere down the line, and it also decreases the chance that your credit card card company will price you out of the market with interest charges, etc. But you really need to keep them all paid down. Think about it: If you borrowed money from the bank to buy a car or a house and then didn't/couldn't pay them back, you'd expect them to re-claim the car or the house (ouch!). But credit card debt is sort of invisible except as it appears on that statement you get every month. There's nothing to re-possess . . . except your good credit standing, which is hard to get back once you've lost it.

Common sense: It's way too easy to swipe that card through a machine and walk out of a store with merchandise and your cash intact. But it's all being toted up somewhere, with added charges, and will come back to bite you in the end. I remember complaining to my mother once in a grocery store that writing out a check was a big hassle, and she said: "That's the point. When you have to write it all down -- twice -- you're more likely to pay attention to what you're spending." Don't charge more than you're convinced you can pay back in a month or two.

So it just seems that some things I thought were "common sense" -- meaning so obvious that it's hard to believe they aren't adopted universally -- apparently aren't. There are many more. I'm sure you know a few yourself.

How about simple decency, respect for privacy and the rights and beliefs of others? How about kindness, tolerance, love of learning and the arts, etc. Respect for women? Reverence for children and their potential to make the world a better place? To be sure they're properly cared for? Aren't these, and more, what we, as humans, are all about? Aren't these some of the values that make our lives not just tolerable but actually pleasurable, even worthwhile?

So what do we do about those who would deny the rest of us these rights? (See #4 above.) Do we really have to track them down and kill them? That's always been the easy way to get rid of those who don't agree with us. Shouldn't we first try to talk to them? If talk fails, we can always track them down and kill them. But . . .

Common sense is not so common after all, is it?

Respect your spouse's family.

So you fell in love. Hey, it happens. And you've been with this person long enough that it's time to introduce him/her to your family and to be introduced to his/her family. It's inevitable. After all, these older people will maybe be the grandparents of your children someday -- Grandma and Grandpa or whatever names they assume: please not Me-Maw and Pa-Paw! Ouch!

These are not the people you fell in love with. These are the mothers and fathers who bore that person you fell in love with and their mothers and fathers. They may be totally different from your beloved, but they are the ones who made him/her possible. They're also the aunts and uncles, the siblings, the cousins. They're your loved one's family.

And you're going to have to deal with them, sooner or later.

You owe them respect, at least the parents and the grandparents. In fact, you may have to make allowances to compensate for thier failures in raising your beloved. If they thought their son/daughter was going to marry better than you, they may actually disrespect you. Suck it up. You and your loved one are a couple, for better or worse, and you should have talked about all this ahead of time. Maybe even rehearsed what to say if this or that snide remark might surface, or this or that objection be raised (religion, e.g.).

Just know that when you choose to marry this person, he or she -- unless an orphan -- comes with relatives attached. He or she didn't choose these relatives but has had to deal with them all his/her life, and now you do, too.

Be respectful, even if you have to bite your lip when Uncle Whoever cracks a racist joke or when Aunt Somebody talks about how many (much better) choices her neice had. Just be polite and don't get drunk and say something that will poison relationships for years to come.

When it comes to your in-laws, the onus is on YOU. You are are the stranger being introduced into this group of people who know each other well and who had certain expectations of your mate and his/her choices of a mate for life.

Dress nice. Carry yourself well. Speak with respect. Curb your f**king tongue for once! Save it for late-night talks with your intended, who probably shares the same impressions/reservations.
You're on display. Play the part. If you're a man, do all the things a gentleman would do: open doors for ladies. If you're the woman, treat older women with respect. Defer to them, even if you think they're all harpies out to sink your marriage. Smile. Act the lady. Bite your lip, but do it!

As time goes on, the dynamics of your spouse's relationships with your new in-laws will become more apparent, and you'll learn which need to be catered to and which can be ignored. But in the beginning, when they've all gathered for your wedding or reception or a family reunion, be on your toes, ready to step or side-step on command, impressing everyone equally.

You're trying to make things easier not for you but for your spouse: he/she is nervous about you meeting all these people he/she has known forever.

If you're marrying into a home-grown family from the South, cousin Bobby may lay a big arm over your shoulders and ask if you like NASCAR and you may think: What is NASCAR? It's auto-racing. Nod and say yes, that you love to see guys racing cars around a track.

On the other hand, you may have married into a more refined family with roots in New England. A cousin, a little tipsy, may ask if your family came on the Mayflower. You have to remember that it was the ship bringing the first English settlers. Just say something like "My ancestors arrived soon after the first ships. Were yours on the first one?" It puts the ball back in his/her court to prove that he/she is descended from the original settlers. In the end, we're all good Americans.

For some bizarre reason, there are people who trace their roots back to those who first landed on these shores -- and claim it as something special --when we all know that America has become not so much a nation as a club that you choose to join or not. For those of us born into this country, and for so many who have made it their home, America is who we are: you may have been born in whatever country, but now you're an American. In time our ethnic identities fade away, as we start to think of ourselves more and more as Americans. At the same time, some of us, from other countries, may still cling to age-old celebrations -- Cinco de Mayo, for instance -- and we love that America embraces and celebrates them along with us.

America, and Americans, love a party, and the more the merrier! It's okay to keep your own traditions as long as you accept the bigger view of yourself as Americans, members of the club.

Back to the original point: respect your wife's or husband's relatives. Once you're married, you will likely have to deal with these people again. They'll visit, you'll visit. You didn't just marry a person. You married a family. Maybe a culture.

Be fair, be polite, and be inclusive. And remember that your spouse worries about your response to his/her family and theirs to you. That's the person you fell in love with, so make it easy for him/her.

When you marry, you don't usually just marry a person you love. You marry everyone he/she loves. Get used to it. You'll be happier in the end, and so will your beloved. Your life will be richer -- and easier.

And there will be more parties!

Fat people get a bum rap.

If you're overweight, you've no doubt been the object of looks or, even worse, comments about your size. (Even if they think you didn't see/hear them.) You know very well that people look at you and judge you: he/she can't control his/her appetite. Tsk, tsk.

But fat people -- and I apologize for the term but will keep using it nonetheless -- suffer unjustly because of one simple fact: their vice is visible.

We can all see it -- and you -- and know that you are struggling with your weight and your diet and your compulsion to eat too much of what makes you feel better, whether it's cookies or cakes or just high-fat dishes from your favorite restaurant. And our American restaurants are notorious for offering patrons way too much to eat and meals laden with fats and salts and sugars. They're trying to lure you in, to make you want to eat more of what you like.

In fact, some scientist just wrote a book -- "The End of Over-Eating"? -- that makes clear that eating certain foods that contain way too much fat/salt/sugar actually changes the pathways in your brain, making you want more and more of those foods. Hello? Addiction?

Which brings up the point of addiction. Most of us who are addicted to drugs or alcohol don't appear that way to our friends and/or family. We may be in good shape, the right size, and able to carry on a reasonable conversation and hold a job, but we may -- in our own brains, in our own lives -- be struggling mightily against something that is about to claim its final prize: our lives, us. We may know that we're out of control, barely holding a marriage or that job, or sanity, but we keep up the appearance of a normal person.

Fat people can't do that. Their excesses are on display for all of us to observe. When you see a fat person, you know things are out of control in that person's life. "Things" meaning their diet. That fat person is giving himself or herself over to the easy condolensce of food, probably fast food or sugary stuff. And he/she can't hide the consequences.

The rest of us can. I may be a compulsive gambler, but if I don't lose the family fortune, no one will ever know. I may be a drug addict, but if my face doesn't fall into my dinner plate some night -- as happened to a friend of mine -- I may never be detected. I may be an alcoholic, but if I never get stopped by the cops and hauled to jail, most people I know will never suspect that I had that problem. They might have sensed it but, because they liked me, denied it.

But let's suppose you aren't addicted to something but are just hiding a secret. At the worst, you murdered someone you thought needed to be murdered. No one has fingered you yet. You're living with that awful secret. Or let's suppose you've been taking money from your company. Maybe just a little at first, then more. It made your life easier, but you know it's wrong and that sooner or later you're going to be found out. Does anyone who deals with you on a day to day basis suspect anything? Of course not. You're polite, even helpful. Your secret is your own.

What if you've been committing adultery? Not even your best friends know, unless you've told them. But it could mean the end to a whole way of life, an end to your family, to what your kids thought of as stability. It's a big deal, but it's invisible. Like most of our sins.

Not so with fat people. Their sins of the flesh are on display all the time. And doesn't that make them actually more honest than the rest of us? Oprah keeps coming on her show talking about her battles with her weight. I give her credit for being honest.

Fat people get a bum rap because, to repeat myself, their vices are visible. I think about the story of Jesus, who said, when a "fallen" woman was brought before him, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." (Or something like that.) He knew that most of us have secret sins that aren't apparent to the rest of the world but that we know exist in our own lives, our own hearts. (I remember a joke about that, wherein Jesus got a rock thrown against his brow and said, "Mother!")

When you look at a fat person and are tempted to pass judgment, look inside and be sure you're pure of any over-indulgence that doesn't happen to show itself so clearly. I'm betting not many rocks would be thrown.

But you have to be honest with yourself -- and that's a whole different matter, isn't it?

Can the universe be explained -- to me?

Some years ago, I bought the book by Steven (Stephen?) Hawking called something like "A Brief History of Time," and found it, after the first chapter or two, un-readable. I mean, I'm pretty smart, but what he was trying to explain to me was WAY beyond what I could understand. I heard later that this book was "the least-read best-seller" of all time. All of us pretty smart people wanted to hear such a truly smart guy explain our universe to us that we bought the book, but it turned out that either he couldn't find the words to do it or we couldn't muster the brain power to follow his explanations.

Is it possible that our universe -- how we started, where we are now, where we're headed -- can't be explained in terms that most of us fairly smart people can understand? Or is it just that no one, including Mr. Hawking, genius that he is, can clearly and simply express it?

I always remember Einstein -- our touch stone for intelligence -- saying that he wasn't good at math. Obviously, he was better than most of us at it, but I think what he meant was that his ideas about physics -- about time and space -- came to him not as mathematical equations but as what we might call "epiphanies" or sudden ideas. He left it to later scientists, better at math, to prove or disprove him. (For the record, they proved some, still doubt others.) Einstein wanted to discover an over-reaching theory that would explain everything about our universe, but he came up short, as he admitted. But does such a theory actually exist?

And if it did, could it be explained to me, fairly smart -- but in the liberal arts, not the sciences -- in words I would understand?

Which brings me to my most problematic problem: Can the universe only be explained using higher math?

Math is where most of us leave the scene. We all know about adding and subtracting numbers -- hey, we do it with our bank balances -- and we can handle some basic algebra (x equals y), but anything beyond that leaves us not just cold but frozen in place. Okay, multiplication and division, maybe even fractions, some basic geometry -- this side times that side shows how many square feet of carpet we need -- but soon math goes off into spheres of thinking that we can't follow, and that, of course, is where lots of science -- especially in physics and astronomy -- takes off . . . which leaves most of us in the dust.

Can the universe be explained to intelligent people who aren't good at math? Can it be explained at all? And is math a necessary prerequisite for understanding it,much less explaining it?

I think there are History and English and other majors who occasionally have an inkling about science -- something that comes to us while showering or waking up or stoned -- that might actually be right about the universe. But we have no way to share it with the scientific community, who are, of course, publishing papers by each other and for each other. And we don't possess the math skills to turn our notions into equations, so we couldn't publish them even if we had a way to do so.

Shouldn't we have a sort of community forum for anyone who has an idea about something scientific -- but not the background or the math ability -- to share it? There are many smart people in the world who very well may, like Einstein, who was working in a patent office at the time, from time to time come up with new and important ideas about scientific stuff they're not trained in. Or at least the germ of an idea that scientists could then take off from. Think about the early observers of the stars and the sun and the planets. Copernicus didn't need a degree in math to know that the sun didn't revolve around the planets. He looked up and figured it out.

The universe is obviously complicated, almost beyond our means of deciphering it. Almost but not quite. We can do it and will. As we'll decipher, eventually, cancer and love and all those other mysteries of life. But can we find the words to deliver our discoveries to the rest of us?

Ah, that would be true genius!

Birds are cheap entertainment.

I'm not an avid bird-watcher. I don't use binoculars to identify specific types, and I don't belong to a club that goes out regularly, or a group that yearly participates in counting all the different ones that appear in my town. I'm not a scientist who studies birds -- an ornithologist -- or even a member of a raptor-preservation society (those devoted to saving hawks and eagles, et al).

I'm just someone who has always found birds to be kind of fascinating. For one thing, they are about as different from us as any species can be. After all, they can fly! And don't we all have dreams of doing that from time to time? And they have beaks instead of mouths, wings instead of hands (yes, snakes are weirder, but they're also creepier), and -- get this -- they weigh, at least the little ones, almost nothing. Of course that's why they can fly, but if you've ever held a dead bird in your hand, you know what I mean. They're all tiny bone and feather and not much else. The big ones, the ones we eat, chickens and turkeys, are much heavier, but they can't fly very well: their attempts to get off the ground are sort of like the Wright Brothers' first attempts at Kitty Hawk. Geese and ducks occupy a middle ground: good-sized, good to eat, but also long-distance flyers. I'll leave it to the ornithologists to explain that one.

A second thing that makes birds worth watching is that they're all around us. All you have to do is put out some kind of feeder on your porch or deck or patio, fill it with seeds, and soon you'll have more birds than you've ever seen in your life -- right there outside your sliding glass door! Usually birds are up in the trees. We hear them, we see them flitting about -- but set out some food for them, and they're all over it. Bird-word gets around fast: buffet at such and such address, backyard deck feeder.

A third thing that makes the fairly moderate expense of buying a feeder -- from your local Home Depot or pet store or wherever -- is the variety of birds that you'll see. A caution, though: you have to buy a feeder that will discourage (1) crows and (2) squirrels. The former -- and this is an interesting piece of bird-watching -- will take over the area and (I'm not kidding) post guards to keep other birds away while their colleagues are eating. The latter, the squirrels, will chase away all the birds and eat the seeds themselves. But once you have your proper feeder hung up and stocked with seeds -- get the kind best for your part of the country -- you'll be amazed to see how many different birds come to feed. Everything from common sparrows to wrens to jays to -- who knows? And it's interesting to watch their interaction: the "pecking order," as it's called, meaning who gets to eat first, who chases who away, etc. Spend a little free time just watching and you're in another world entirely.

I once saw a woodpecker come to our feeder. In our area, they're called flickers. A handsome bird, pretty big, with a sturdy beak. But my interest in this particular bird was short-lived, as he soon took up duty on the side of our house, poking big holes in the siding! I heard the rat-a-tat for quite a while before a neighbor pointed out that we had severe damage to one side of the house. Apparently they're trying to attract mates, but why they think a house is the same as a hollow tree -- a good place for a nest -- I'm not sure. The problem is that, once a woodpecker targets your house, he can peck holes big enough for squirrels to get into your attic and chew on wires and . . . you can guess the rest. You can hire someone to get rid of the squirrels, but good luck getting rid of the woodpecker!

They're protected species most everywhere, meaning that you can't shoot one with a BB gun (which I wouldn't want to do anyway). I've hung old CDs on a branch next to the holes, which, so far, seems to have discouraged him. Why? I have no idea. He doesn't seem to like the silver discs twirling in the wind. Or maybe he's just moved on to another house or hollow tree. I would say consult your local authorities or pest removal agencies; they have solutions, none of which are cheap. (This is the downside of bird-watching, at least for the home-owner.)

But while the best way to watch birds is to get a feeder and put it where you can see what's going on -- ideal being a patio or a deck -- you can also see them doing what they do by just watching them from your front porch or stoop, in your front yard. For instance, I saw today a big fat orange-chested robin walking -- okay, hopping -- around my front yard, stopping from time to time, sort of cocking its head toward the ground, absolutely still. Suddenly it pecked down into the grass and dirt and -- voila! -- came up with a worm! I watched it devour the poor thing bit by bit. Whether it was listening, as I assume it was, for movement underground, close to the surface, or whether it saw the worm poking its pink head up, after a rain, trying to breathe, the bird knew just where to peck to get its meal, for itself or to take back to the nest. I watched this happen over and over.

Fishermen looking for bait would do well to know how that bird detected that worm.

One of the most intriguing examples of this behavior I saw while visiting relatives in Texas a few years ago. A mockingbird -- the one that, for whatever reason, imitates other bird calls -- was in my mother's front yard in Texas. I saw it walk a few inches and then throw out its wings, like an angel about to take flight (or calling the sinful to redemption) -- and then it would, like the robin, peck down into the turf and come up with a worm. Again, I'll leave it up to the ornithologists to tell me what the worm saw or sensed in that raising of the bird's wings that impelled it to the surface, where it was suddenly supper, but I saw it happen over and over.

The world of animals is so much different, in so many ways, from our own, and I think one of the best, and easiest, ways to observe it is to start with birds. As I said before, they're all around us. Also, they're easy to lure into our range of view. Plus, they don't sting, they don't destroy anything, they're not creepy (like snakes), and they don't really even bother us. And they come in such distinctive colors and sizes and habits!

How can we NOT want to watch them?

I've always been kind of appalled at people who keep birds in cages, whether they're magnificent parrots or cute parakeets or even simple finches. What those well-meaning care-takers are doing is depriving their pets of the most profound thing they can do that we can't: fly!

Isn't it sort of like keeping humans -- innocent humans -- in prison for life? Think about it.

Spend a few bucks and get a bird feeder. Put it up where the crows and squirrels can't get to it. Sit back, pop a beer, or have a glass of sun-tea with lemon, and get ready for the equivalent of going to an aquarium, where the colorful fish swim around for our enjoyment, oblivious to our presence. But birds, as a rule, are much more interesting. Remember: they can fly!

Try it. You'll be glad you did. (And hope a woodpecker doesn't target your house for a nest!)