October 11, 2024

I am not sure how many Westerners are aware of this, but, according to the Chinese calendar, it is the Year of the Dragon. The dragon always fascinated me when I looked at my cheap place mat seemingly replicated for every Chinese restaurant. The dragon was the only mythical animal among the twelve animal symbols. How did it beat out the panda, or the whale, or beaver, I wondered, while I waited on my sweet and sour pork?

Given how destructive the dragon can be, 2024 is providing me personally a lot of evidence that it serves as an apt figurehead for the year. Please recognize that I have no direct ties to the hurricanes that have beset the south the last month, so this reflection is not meant to distract from or undermine the destruction faced by Florida or North Carolina; if anything, those of you dealing directly with the hurricanes probably could add your own two cents. Just as long, as you will see in a bit, you're not tossing in a wooden nickel.

All I know is that for me, personally, the Year of the Dragon has shown its tremendous power to completely destroy and obliterate much of what I hold dear, spewing its torrent of terror through its greatest acolyte, modern man. Perhaps I speak with hyperbole (it wouldn't be the first time), but hear me out.

My home sits in a lake community where zoning laws are apparently pretty loose. When I moved here in 2011, a house stood incomplete in its construction caddy-corner to my home (2011 was the Year of the Rabbit, so maybe the owner simply scampered away). Once or twice in the last 13 years a minimum of work has been done to the house, but it still stands deserted  and unfinished. It unfortunately makes for an easy landmark for people trying to find my house ("take a left at the abandoned home").

The atrocity of that unfinished project was relatively easy to live with when my family and I looked at the beautiful woods behind our house and the lovely Georgian-style house directly across the road, replete with the archetypal white picket fence. (It helped that the deserted house could only be seen from one room and the garage, so we could put it relatively out of mind.) However, in the space of six weeks, the Dragon has swooped in and destroyed both the woods and this Georgian home.

The woods went in the last week of August. A young couple has bought the land, and while they look to be saving more trees than most homeowners, the cleared land has stayed empty, the bulk of the trees gone, and the local hawk dead, either directly or indirectly, by the dragon's breath (see "The Hawk And The Dove" for that specific heartbreak). The cleared land has remained untouched since before Labor Day, with the exception of a few stakes being laid.

I know perfectly well that people who buy land can do, for the most part, what they want with it. All those years it stood unsold, I made no attempt to buy it. The same philosophy applies to what is going on with the home across the street, which had probably been built there half a century ago by the doctor who lived there until his death five or so years ago. He was so well known around here that everyone simply called him "Doc," and we all referenced "Doc's house" as an easy landmark. But once Doc died, the house has been sold a couple of times (first owner tried to make it an Air B 'n' B), with the latest owners apparently tearing it completely down and presumably building from a new footprint. If nothing else, for a few weeks, I should have a gorgeous view of the lake that his house had blocked.

I am sure it was unlivable by modern standards. His wife had been in a wheelchair, so he had had to make adaptions that probably weren't suited for the young family that appears to have purchased the property. Again, not the decision that I would make, but not my money, not my property, not my dragon.

I can live with the willful eradication of property, man-made or nature-made, as part of progress, or personal choice, or whatever. I don't do it easily, especially at the age of 62 and wondering what kind of world we are leaving my son (and his eventual children). The problem is that today I also got a slap in the head from the dragon's tail, reminding me that his reach is both physical and metaphysical, destroying something more precious: common sense. You see, I got in a conversation with someone in my neighborhood that turned to the hurricane in Florida (get your wooden nickels ready). I was told that these hurricanes were being created by a "heart machine" to annihilate red states in the South. That it was all a ploy by the Communist left to take control of the country.

Polite (and knowing that what I will say won't matter), I said nothing, but my body language (the folded arms and turning of the body to get away would be pretty obvious) must have told my fellow human something: "it's true, Dave, you can find it on the internet," they implored. I wish I could say that you can't make this shit up, but obviously somebody has. And obviously there are real people who I share my community with who eat it up.

Seeking relief, I headed to an already scheduled lunch with a dear colleague, fellow retiree from the academic army, both of us setting down our briefcases, pencils, and tweed jackets to a life with no urgency and no insanity. The problem is the world probably needs us to pick up the blunt tools of our labor again and get back into a space where common sense can be taught. However, he and I both agreed we have no capacity to return to academia. The changes within higher education, often manifested in the visions of so-called "agents of change," have gutted the high-minded ideals once at the heart of a liberal higher education.

How does one set out to educate in a world where education has been destroyed by an American society that frankly has always distrusted learning? As long as we can crank out the welders, the machinists, the nurses, the doctors, the engineers, and the plumbers, we have no need to fill their souls with the curiosity of knowledge; or to get deep reflection about the delicate balance of a world where just because we can doesn't mean we have to, where just because it's said in the circles of our peers, doesn't mean it is the truth.

I realize that my curmudgeon badge came early in retirement. I will wear it proudly. Meanwhile, dragon, I don't think you can burn the place down soon enough.

Pictures of the woods and Doc's house (mid-demolition, partially hidden by its shed). I will not show a picture of the destroyed common sense (or its vessel):