For those unfamiliar with our area, swatches of forest disappear in Stafford County, Virginia every day. I’ve written about this before, including how disorienting the rapid destruction can be to many residents. Bulldozers clear away all vegetation and even the soil underneath, leaving the yellow earth scarred and infertile. Few places seem immune. Just a few years after my wife and I bought our house, the entire forest backing our lot was removed, leaving us atop a windy hill.

Last week, a nearby copse of trees that I’ve admired for decades was unceremoniously scraped away for new homes starting “In the mid-500s.” In the abstract I have long known these trees were vulnerable, surrounded by older houses. But the act itself came as a shock. Especially since this is still early summer and therefore the height of the nesting season. The trees’ sudden erasure sent me back to an ancient puzzle:

What are my kindred members of humanity thinking?

***

A scene from two years ago:

My smartphone vibrates.

A local developer wants to build a village-style retirement community of 141 new homes on Leeland Road. The road runs a mile or so up Potomac Creek from Unicorn Farm, our family home. This proposed subdivision would destroy the 53-acre Clift Farm, currently a graceful expanse of rolling fields touching the old 173-acre farm of Jean Ewalt, a wildlife rehabilitator, and her husband Edgar, both of whom have passed away. These were people I had known.

To build the retirement community, the developer needs Stafford County to re-zone the farmland from A-1 Agricultural to a new designation: R-2 Urban Medium Density Housing. An online petition opposing the change has been created by local residents. Petitioners decry the loss of open space and green vistas that attracted them here, and worry about the traffic that will come. Others speak of the Clift Farm’s notable history; the entire area was a Union Army campsite during the Civil War, and Stoneman’s Switch, a strategic railroad junction, ran just alongside. Abraham Lincoln walked here.

For the most part, the opposition to the retirement community is a classic case of NIMBY politics – Not in My Back Yard. Most petitioners arrived here less than twenty years ago. They occupy newly built, two-story “McMansion” houses, parking their commuter cars along white curbs in the cul-de-sacs where a walnut orchard once stood.

I feel for them, though. Not in my backyard, either. When the petition leader calls me for support, I give him what ammo I have – an online article I wrote on how such housing projects are hurting the water quality of Potomac Creek, which lies within about 1,000 feet of the proposed community – and agree to speak at an upcoming county planning meeting.

A few weeks later, I chat about the coming development with my anthropologist friend Brad, an active citizen of the local Patawomeck tribe. Brad has just finished discussing Indigenous rights with students in my undergraduate seminar. (Afterward, a confused student asks me if Brad is Canadian. His broad waterman’s accent – “about” is “abowt” – is rarely heard these days.)

Brad agrees that the retirement community won’t be stopped. That’s not the Stafford County way. Like me, he worries about the housing development’s impact on the creek, which runs through the heart of his tribe’s ancestral homelands. Increased lawn fertilizers and road run-off will further harm water quality. Brad knows, too, that only minimal cultural resource surveying has been done. He suspects buried sites of historic tribal settlements will be destroyed and associated artifacts lost forever. He informs me of a massive new warehouse, further up Potomac Creek across Route 1, that is also in the planning stages. There, evidence of human settlement has been found (including tell-tale fluted Clovis points) dating back to the earliest Paleoindian era, ten thousand years ago or more. Building the new retirement community may well erase any record of uncounted humans who once lived beside the creek.

Trees and animals will die. Most people won’t notice. But why are we okay with the erasure of our own kind, I wonder? Especially here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which prides itself as “the birthplace of the nation” and “mother of presidents?” As the country prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Virginia’s clever new marketing campaign can credibly boast: “America. Made in Virginia.”

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When considering the wounded land around Potomac Creek, I often struggle to understand the minds of others. It’s a global concern capable of uniting (and occasionally unifying) the social and natural sciences.

Personally, I once tried to glean the thoughts of a visiting migratory bird through science and sheer imagination. I read a number of peer-reviewed studies about the migratory impulse. I cannot say that I succeeded with any confidence. My working assumption was that interiority is, by definition, hidden, but also universal – or something like that.

Then, last summer, standing quiet in the woods, I watched a red-headed woodpecker feed in the bark of a tree several feet over my head. We both paused to exchange glances.

The bird saw me and wondered something, as did I. A moment of mutual regard; I felt illumined, and a little bit startled.

I knew for that instant what it was thinking about: it was thinking about me. A modest but solid insight. Then, as the bird continued its feeding with only a hop or two sideways, I knew, too, that the woodpecker thought rather little of me, despite my species’ awesome supremacy. But I could only make guesses why.

Maybe we shouldn’t mirror-image across species. Assuming a muskrat or owl must think as we do; how immodest is that? Perhaps my whole approach has been wrong. Of course we’re all creatures of nature, fated to act like the animals we are. But differences among species must matter, too, even in an instant of mutual recognition.

Such doubts keep my ongoing book project in flux.

Returning my attention to those of my own species, though, I felt the task of discovery has to be easier.

How do humans understand the land they live on? Well, dead people leave records and material artifacts or write books. Ideas and emotions have archaeologies for us to unpack. An uncovered cache of worn Clovis points clearly says someone viewed this as a good place to find food. A bone flute bespeaks rituals or play. Empathy isn’t such an abstraction here amongst our own; less brute imagination is needed to understand what the dead were thinking. Living humans, too, may tell you directly and in your own language how they feel about a place, as well as about those who came before us.

But, as I had hoped with the birds, you need first to become a stalker of people. Approach quietly. Heighten your senses. Follow them around, perhaps.

The person who pays for the vanquishing bulldozer and the environmentalist who mourns what is to be forever lost; here, too, amongst ourselves, we must seek illuminating moments of mutual regard. Perhaps then we can fathom how the other views the land.

But, for the moment at least, I remain mystified by why we hold such views.

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I’m over the moon today because I get to present the inaugural post of No Lines in Nature’s first guest contributor: Tucker Caldwell!

Tucker graduated from the university where I teach a few years ago with a degree in conservation biology. Although we never met while he was a student, I discovered his incredible underwater videos on social media. Tucker would just lower his camera (and himself) into a river, paddle about, and produce mesmerizing footage of bass, catfish, perch and whatever else happened to swim by. His films offered rare portals into how fish behave in the state of nature. I was hooked! Learning starts with curiosity, which Tucker has in spades. I knew I must meet this guy someday.

Fast forward a few years. When I launched No Lines in Nature this spring, I immediately invited Tucker to share his work. At our first in-person meeting, Tucker spoke passionately about fish, our local waters, as well as the incredible aquariums he maintains that replicate local ecosystems. That latter activity really caught my attention. Since No Lines in Nature centers on Potomac Creek, where I was raised, I jumped at the chance to learn more about what lies under the surface.

Potomac Creek is one of many tributaries to the Potomac River, which in turn flows into the immense Chesapeake Bay. Restoring the water quality of the creek is therefore vital to ensuring a healthy Bay. (In fact, I serve on a local entity charged with doing just that.) Tucker’s work reminds us why it’s so important to repair the damage done by humans.

In addition, I’ve written before of my love for fishing. But Tucker takes things to the next level. He spends a lot of time immersed, quite literally, in the Bay.

So, here’s his extraordinary, “how-to” account of how he built his own in-home Atlantic oyster reef community — a miniature replica of one of the most important ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay. Amazingly, Tucker assured me he’s never lost a fish he’s caught in the wild and put in his tanks. And I can’t think of a better summer project to share with a bright kid. The gorgeous photos and videos are his own unless otherwise credited.

Enjoy!

Ranjit

***

How to build an oyster reef at home

By Tucker Caldwell

The Chesapeake Bay watershed, which includes Potomac Creek, supports North America’s largest estuary. The Bay itself hosts a particularly fascinating and vital habitat called the Atlantic oyster reef, which ranges from the brackish lower portions of the Bay’s major tributaries all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The importance of this reef cannot be overstated. It provides essential foraging habitat and shelter for many economically important species. The oyster itself is an animal that maintains water quality by removing nutrients from the water column through filter feeding. And oysters are a delicious and nutritious economically important species.

I enjoy connecting with the reef and its denizens by collecting specimens. The process is completely legal, but you need a saltwater fishing license and must follow the rules. I stick to all state and local laws and fish size and creel limits when collecting. With a Virginia license, non-game species are fine to collect. But you can’t keep the baby stripers, tautogs, etc. that inevitably swim into your net.

Collecting takes some planning, too. To begin, the Chesapeake Bay’s waters are often roiled and turbid. This, and the hazardous nature of rock jetties and sharp oyster shells, can make oyster reef communities a challenging snorkel. In places, however, the tidal nature of this habitat may make it accessible to waders.

Through trial and error, I’ve found that the best way to get a close look at the inhabitants of shallow oyster reef and shoreline habitats, regardless of water clarity, is with a sturdy dipnet like the one below.

This small dipnet, with a metal rim, lets me swiftly glean across rocks, oysters, macroalgae, and the sand bed without damaging itself. This one was a cheap Walmart find. It works.

Of course, the next challenge is keeping your catches alive and healthy. For this, a floating livewell is a must. I drag it along as I gather specimens from the oyster reef. It keeps them fresh by constantly recirculating water.

There are other methods for collecting specimens, too:

Minnow traps: A great option. I’ve found success with meaty baits like squid, shrimp, and fish.

Cast Nets: They’re super fun — and you’ll look like a pro on the beach. The major con is that you are limited to clear, open spots adjacent to the rocks/reef structure. But you’ll catch some different species too!

Fishing rods: Small rigs with meaty baits will catch a large array of juvenile game and interesting non-game species. This method increases the odds the fish will be harmed, however.

Take a look at these pictures to see what might end up in your net. These varied examples show the reef’s importance as a fish nursery:

Note: Live oysters don’t work in aquaria due to their high nutrient demands as filter feeders. But empty oyster shells do. Collected and stacked with aquarium-safe glue gel, they are sufficient to replicate the natural habitat. Many oyster reef residents shelter and even breed within empty oyster shells.

Now we get to the indoors part:

Building an Oyster Reef at Home

With patience, I’ve succeeded in creating my very own oyster reef community aquarium. It’s a surprisingly straightforward project. If you’d like to better understand marine life and oyster reef communities, here’s how you do it.

The Setup:

First, understanding aquarium basics is important. I needed to familiarize myself with:

1. The nitrogen cycle

2. Mechanical/biological filtration

3. Lighting

4. Stocking density

Tank size is also a consideration. I recommend at least a 20+ gallon aquarium for most of these species, but a ten is doable.

Emulating a Habitat:

I do a lot of research on oyster reef ecology, and use tools like iNaturalist to locate specific species I’m particularly interested in.

I’ve also found salinity maps like this one to be very helpful for setting up the aquarium. In the beginning, I like to keep the salinity close to the range of the collection site.

A hydrometer is your best friend for this task. It removes the guess work when you’re trying the replicate the salinity of the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve found it best to keep the salinity close to ocean level: around 32 ppt (parts per thousand). This allows me to keep both brackish and marine species.

Euryhaline Vigor

A wonderful aspect of many oyster reef residents is that they’re almost all euryhaline species. This means they can tolerate and even thrive in varying salinity levels due to the ever-fluctuating nature of the tidal Chesapeake Bay. This makes these species a forgiving gateway into saltwater fishkeeping!

Setting up the aquarium

I wanted to jumpstart a stable nitrogen cycle and have the highest biodiversity possible, so I collected all of my substrate, rocks, and most of the shells directly from the collection site. This material is loaded with beneficial microbes to help boost the mini ecosystem. It may also contain lots of interesting small fauna and flora that will appear and disappear as my aquarium matures.

I really enjoyed this pink and green macroalgae that appeared in the aquarium. It died back recently — I suspect from changing marine salts. The original formula I used was for reef aquaria, with more trace minerals, so I switched back to that formula hoping the colorful macroalgae will return.

Part of the joy of this “wild style” aquarium is that it is constantly changing!

Oyster Reef Community Residents

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Small, year-round residents of the Chesapeake Bay oyster reef can make excellent captives. Many are active diurnal micro predators that take quickly to frozen meaty prepared diets. And they are endlessly amusing to watch.

Skilletfish (Gobiesox strumosus) are widespread in the Bay. I’ve found them close to the Bay mouth and well into the middle portions in the lower Potomac River. They’ve been a joy to keep. Very inquisitive, they’ll “suction” your fingers with their disc-like pelvic fins once they recognize you as the bringer of food. They constantly swim against the glass, and in and out of shells and rockwork.

The striped blennies (Chasmodes bosquianus) are currently my favorites. They behave more like small lizards than fish. Very observant, a blenny will watch you almost as much as you watch them. They seem endlessly curious, darting in and out of hiding spots, and will often perch somewhere looking around, observing the activity of the other tank mates. Striped blennies can be territorial like most blennies. But my female is pretty mellow most of the time — until food is involved.

I have a couple naked gobies (Gobiosoma bosc), one male and one female. The male is very possessive of a particular shell he likes to nest in. This bottom-dwelling species seems to stake out small territories in the aquarium. One will chase the other away if it ever crosses their tiny self-proclaimed boundary. They’ll eat almost anything; I’ve gotten them to eat sinking carnivore pellets!

Grass shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus) are the translucent and very delicate grazers/scavengers of the aquarium. An abundance of grass shrimp is an indication of a healthy system. This species is an important prey item to many animals in the Bay.

I keep several of these Bruised Nassa snails (Phrontis vibex) as the community’s essential clean up crew. In this faux natural habitat, they act as scavengers, spending most of their time buried in the substrate until they pick up the scent of food. They quickly — for a snail — rush out of the sand to grab any morsel of food missed during feeding time. This native species is popular in saltwater aquaria.

The flat clawed hermit crab (Pagurus pollicaris) is a common species along the Atlantic coast and within the Chesapeake Bay. Hermit crabs are active scavengers, and also enjoy eating macroalgae.

Check out this beautiful black fingered mud crab (Panopeus herbstii)! The species has proved abundant everywhere I’ve looked when collecting near structure. These guys are pretty peaceful with other tank mates, despite their formidable appearance. But I would be cautious with them around very slow animals like pipefish. They’ve turned out to be quite industrious little engineers, too, constantly rearranging the shells and rocks I place — to my frustration and delight!

Build your own reef and enjoy the show!

There’s usually plenty of action, too. Here’s the male naked goby (Gobiosoma bosc) defending its nest from the black fingered mud crab:

The daily squabbles are so much fun to watch.

Oyster reef keeping is a very rewarding project. If you’re in the Mid-Atlantic region with access to the Chesapeake Bay, I can’t recommend it enough.

The beauty and complexity of the reef is far more than just the clusters of oysters. Although today’s reefs are only a fraction of their historical size, they are still home to a stunning array of marine life.

So grab a dipnet, learn some basic science, and dive into a fascinating underwater world that’s right beneath our noses.

Bonus video:

Double-click on this incredible video from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It really showcases the oyster reef community well — you never know what you’ll find!

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***

I penned an article a while ago on the fascinating human history behind a prolific invasive species, Japanese stiltgrass. Stiltgrass is everywhere here in Virginia. In fact, its continued progress across the landscape is inevitable. So much so that one is compelled to question the whole point of the struggle to contain it.

Despite this inevitability, the methods used to halt its spread often involve the use of toxic chemicals and mechanical violence. Stiltgrass, like spotted lantern flies, Burmese pythons, and many other non-native species, is caught up in the endless and deeply controversial “War on Invasives.”

My point here: “War” is such a revealing metaphor, isn’t it? We see ourselves in violent conflict with so much of the life surrounding us.

And it’s simply too much to ask someone with my personal and professional background — an immigrant professor of politics who formerly taught for a national war college — not to look for the moral dimensions of the use of violence. Even violence directed towards a plant.

Perhaps, especially, a plant.

I cannot judge the ecological or scientific merits of the competing sides in the debate over invasive species. However, in my view, moral questions arise at every stage of the decision to pull a live plant from the ground it needs to survive. Such questions include: Who decides which species shall live or die? Upon which and whose criteria? By whose hand? And by what means?

I would also argue that doing the right thing matters greatly in the war on invasive species. Defining success, in particular, is a moral imperative. After all, this is a debate about life and death, and on a massive scale. I doubt I’m the only person who feels a pang when tearing a live plant from the ground.

And all this means such matters shouldn’t be left wholly to the scientists.

***

Allow me a momentary diversion. I promise it connects to the above argument.

I want to tell you about my cherished Indian cousin.

Now a leading expert in robotics and machine learning, he came to the United States for undergraduate studies in the 1980s. Lacking funds, he took on multiple unskilled jobs. The most memorable ones – in the olfactory sense – were in the sweltering kitchens of local seafood restaurants and crab shacks.

To minimize the impact of this dirty work, he wore the cheapest possible shoes, the type with velcro ties that cost eight dollars. For years, he smelled of pungent crab spice.

Until he could drive, my cousin bicycled to work, forced to use multilane highways built only for gas-powered cars and trucks. His skinny silhouette embodied the striving immigrant: dark, with a thick mustache, pedaling the gravelly shoulder of the road to get somewhere he needed to be.

This was too tempting a target. A large truck swerved right to knock him into the ditch. His bicycle wobbled and crashed. Lying shaken in the dirt and fast-food wrappers, my cousin looked upward to see who had forced him off the road. The truck driver stopped to stare down at him and laugh, before driving on.

Undaunted, my cousin found refuge on our family farm on Potomac Creek. And there, his American roots finally took hold.

Yet another metaphor: “roots” — what one needs to thrive in place. So often we speak of people in such terms. Botany gives us powerful frames for understanding all life.

“Plant” itself is both a noun, denoting vegetative life, and a verb, describing the fixing of life into the soil to grow, from the Latin plantare: “to drive in with the feet.” The verb itself celebrates the use of power; the Roman legionnaire’s boot willfully introducing something where it was absent before. Likewise, to pull a plant from the ground is also an act of force – to “uproot” what already grows.

All life struggles within this pendular world, swinging between just and unjust uses of violence. How concisely these two words, “plant” and “root,” capture the struggle over a given place waged between willpower and brute force.

In this way, the story of Japanese stiltgrass and the immigrant’s tale offer a connectivity I have been seeking: the knitting together of old knowledges to make a new whole. Environmental scholar Christopher Stone understood this necessity when he wrote we need a new myth “that can fit our growing body of knowledge of geophysics, biology and the cosmos.”1 Biology, history, ethics, law, politics — I am prompted to look for more and broader connections.

The truth may well be that the human migrant looks at the war on invasive species through a different lens than the native-born. This is because the act of unleashing, as well as of containing, new species is always an exercise in politics, culture, power, and moral reasoning. And because the migrant always lives a contingent existence.

The debate over invasive species is only partly a question of science. It is also a question of how we move through the world.

I’ll leave it there for now.

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To send you off in unique fashion, here’s a look at the inspirational muse behind much of my work, the “gar-bird.” Years ago I created this mythical, Carrollian beast to amuse my boys. Of course, I quickly realized I was really amusing myself far more (and freaking out the poor cat). Today, the gar-bird sits on a shelf in my university office where —oddly — no student has ever asked me about it.

Go figure.

Best wishes,

Ranjit

Four years ago, our farm’s motion-sensor trail camera caught this scene — a large-ish cat padding confidently through the woods along a stream, perhaps one hundred yards from the barn where the dairy goats sleep.

The animal is almost out of frame and not nearly as clear as we would like. But there could be only one explanation. We have a resident bobcat!

This was easily the second most exciting wildlife video we’d ever captured. It’s rare to see a bobcat almost anywhere. And there can’t be that many left in urbanizing Stafford County, Virginia, especially east of the I-95 highway that runs from Florida to Maine. I had just assumed we didn’t have them in our area. I don’t think I’d heard one before. Bobcats are well known for their distinctive chirps and startling screams.

Fortunately, however, our little farm abuts Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve, a 3,000-acre mix of hardwood forest, steep ravines, and plenty of swamp. The Preserve also protects a portion of Potomac Creek and, presumably, plenty of prey for hungry cats.

From the Smithsonian’s National Zoo page:

Bobcats mostly eat rabbits and hares. They may also eat rodents, such as squirrels and mice, or hunt small deer, snakes, lizards and domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, sheep, goats, and poultry. They can even leap high enough to catch low-flying birds.

Bobcats are excellent climbers and can run up to 30 miles per hour. They stalk their prey with unparalleled patience, and often travel 2 to 7 miles in an evening while hunting and patrolling their territory. They will place their back feet in the same spots where their front feet have stepped to reduce noise when hunting.

We walk the woods a bit more thoughtfully now.

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But there is a sad postscript to the story.

I recently heard of a neighbor who claims her son shot a local bobcat. In Virginia, one must have a permit to shoot bobcats, which I suspect the guy didn’t have.

But much more importantly, what an idiot.

We live in the data center capital of the world. It’s the kind of place where one can become disoriented driving five minutes from home because the furious pace of housing and commercial development means old landmarks disappeared almost overnight. Stafford County’s wildlife is in existential retreat.

Apparently, the guy wanted the bobcat for display purposes.

That pitiless mentality recalls the recent effort to reintroduce zoo-based captive red wolves to neighboring North Carolina. Declared extinct in the wild in 1980, the unfortunate animals are one of the rarest predators in the world. Local hunters blew away most of them before they could become established.

The confident bobcat captured on our camera represents so much. Not least of which is hope.

Scream more. Shoot less.

***

N.B. This article is dedicated to Minou, our beloved, imperious housecat and mouser extraordinaire, who passed away recently. She was a superb “Zoom kitty” during the pandemic and a very patient writer’s muse. As the picture suggests, Minou was the epitome of cattitude.

Rest in Purrs.

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Also, the views below are mine alone. Please pardon the profanity — I know better. But profanity here is, in my way of thinking, a relatively temperate and justifiable response to what I consider to be true obscenities.

***

America’s 250th birthday is coming up very soon — and I can’t find anything to celebrate.

Anything at all.

Why not? Well, listed below are some of the terrible truths that I hold to be self-evident in 2026. I could add many more, trust me. This essay won’t even scratch the surface of what I really have to say.

But it starts with one simple question:

What the fuck has happened to my country?

This essay is a bit of a chore since I’m in no mood to grace the text with pretty pictures apart from the “distress” flag show below. Consider it the anguished outburst of a citizen in pain. But for those of you lacking the stamina needed to eat the whole enchilada at once, here’s my plaint in brief:

The United States today is no longer committed to progress — moral, economic, or otherwise. Quite the opposite. In fact, the US has become a bad actor in the world and a serious danger to its own citizens.

And why the hell would I celebrate that?

Now, for some context.

I am old enough to remember the 1976 Bicentennial.

I was a kid on our nation’s 200th birthday. It was hot. We lit a few cheap fireworks in the dirt on our family farm. Then we watched television as tall ships and navies from around the world sailed through historic American ports like Boston and New York, joining in a majestic celebration.

America’s birthday then was a truly global event. It was inspiring, too, and not just for Americans. Dozens of countries eagerly paid public tribute to the United States.

Not that everything was fine in the USA. Of course it wasn’t. Miscegenation laws had only recently been overturned by the high court, and that didn’t erase baked-in racism overnight. The economy had yet to recover from oil shocks and a severe recession. The wounds of Vietnam still bled into the open. Gerald Ford had assumed the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon, a bitter, venal man that comedian George Carlin said looked like he hadn’t taken a shit in a month.

But there was a tangible sense of common purpose and reason to be hopeful. Americans then were committed to fixing things.

Importantly, Nixon resigned in disgrace largely because his own political party was fed up with him and his illegal shenanigans. The fact that most people agreed a man like Nixon had to go — even if they’d voted for him — seemed a really big part of being an American. He was shown to be a crook. No one was held to be above the law. Accordingly, Congress and the courts prudently limited presidential power.

Small wonder that, for all our evident flaws, folks in other countries looked up to the United States.

But that’s unthinkable today. Far more than five decades separates us from that moment in time. Our national psyche is different now. Things that were thinkable in 1976 — even if they hadn’t yet been realized in fact — are simply unthinkable today.

What’s changed?

Let’s start with our place in the world.

We were wrong in Vietnam. But when it comes to America’s conduct abroad today, we aren’t even wrong anymore — we’re malevolent.

Historically, there’s always been a gap between America’s avowed liberalism and our country’s behavior overseas. That disconnect killed innocent people and exposed the country to persistent charges of hypocrisy. But one could live with that, as much as they may dislike it. In 1976, the US abroad was like the parent who sometimes does things they tell you not to do; you see the shortcomings but love them anyway, because you know they have a good heart and mean well. They’re trying.

I mean, Gerald Ford was president, for chrissakes! A fundamentally decent man whose principal vice was clumsiness.

And when I grew up and traveled to places like Syria, where the food was great but the government broke the bones of its own people, it only reminded me of how truly American I had become. I was grateful.

None of that applies today.

America has stopped trying. And the old temptation to reduce US foreign policy to a tool for economic interests has morphed into something far more dangerous, dark, and total. There’s no sugarcoating it:

Today, America abroad is nothing more than a league of illiberal corporations backed by a compliant, taxpayer-funded military.

That’s it. Prove me wrong.

It is evident that today’s USA cares not a whit for democracy, human rights, international law, aid for poorer countries, press freedoms, or any liberal principles at all. I won’t provide every weblink, but each of the following observations is google-able.

Say you’re on a boat in waters where drug dealers ply their trade. We kill you. No trials or courts. We don’t like your country’s leadership? We send the military to capture your president and his wife (Venezuela) or murder it en masse (Iran). Fuck your rule of law. And hey, buddy — don’t you see the immense oil deposits these countries have?

What about the countries we “like?” Well, gratuitous verbal insults of traditional allies have become our thing. In material terms, whether it’s Denmark, Canada, Panama, or elsewhere, we openly talk about seizing whole chunks of their sovereign territory for our own. It’s not just geopolitics or resource envy at work here, either. It’s shameless profiteering by America’s ruling rich-but-never-rich-enough. Watch in awe as Ivanka cheerily claims she “discovered” Albania’s sole island by herself like some peroxide Ferdinand Magellan, and how she and hubby Jared, son of a convicted felon, should be allowed to build luxury resorts on this publicly-owned nature preserve.

Today, the US abroad assumes elite corruption and self-dealing. Of course, we’re simply mirror-imaging our own debased government. And forget that NATO allies like Albania came to our defense after 9-11. You say that Danish, German, Italian, Polish, and Czech soldiers died alongside ours in the deserts of Afghanistan? Well, then they’re losers. We owe them nothing. Fuck ‘em.

No wonder these same countries wouldn’t join our war with Iran when we asked. It’s not just because this war of choice is illegal, poorly-conceived, and utterly counterproductive. Many abroad no longer trust — or even like — us. Surveys suggest that even human rights-denying China has a better global reputation than the US.

How the hell does THAT happen?

It isn’t because the Chinese are geniuses at rebranding. They aren’t. Rather, it’s because we’ve shown the world what jerks we truly are. It starts with shit like calling Canada “the fifty-first state” and renaming the DoD the “Department of War,” as if we’re no longer interested merely in defending ourselves. Who wants to deal with that asshole?

And it never seems to end, does it? The US floods genocidal Israel with weapons while the whole world reels at the clearly deliberate mass killing of innocent Palestinians. (Protest that and you land in jail, like my students did.) Ukraine’s president, whose life is at risk daily, visits the White House and is humiliated on world television. His sin? Pleading for American help as his democratic nation resists Russia’s brutal invasion.

Only the cruelest dictators regularly enjoy our respect. North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il starved his people into eating leaves, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Sultan ordered the dismemberment of an American journalist, and Vladimir Putin is the architect of Europe’s bloodiest war since 1945. No worries. Each has pranced across the global stage with a beaming US president. No human rights record is too abominable.

And pssst! — we like to kill, too.

“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is one way to describe cognitive limitations. Yes, today’s United States is certainly cognitively limited. As my brother sums it up,

“Postwar America is always prewar America.”

He’s right, and you know it.

That’s because force is our coin of choice. Remember when, in 2017, the US dropped the largest conventional weapon in our arsenal — the 22,000-pound “Mother of All Bombs” — on an Afghan valley holding Islamic State fighters. It was a military first; nobody had ordered the bomb dropped before. Reportedly, the cloud was visible for twenty miles. Did it do anything to shorten the war? Not at all. Who cares? Kinda cool.

What else can be expected from a country where people slap “Punisher” skull and “AR-15 family” lifestyle stickers on their automobiles?

Officially, though, our wars are now manifestations of God’s providence. So even when America kills over 100 Iranian schoolgirls in one blow, we express zero remorse. It’s like we were doing them a favor.

And when force fails and the US decides to negotiate, do we send in diplomatic experts who’ve studied history and culture and immersed themselves in foreign languages? Nope. The American president sends his relatives and golfing buds (who immediately start crafting lucrative business deals). In other words, he sends stupid.

America abroad is stupid.

***

The United States is harming the world. But the domestic scene is even worse.

American democracy is dying. It’s now ranked twenty-eighth in the world and the trajectory certainly isn’t upwards. I know serious people who wonder aloud if we’re even going to see another election. And for the most part, it’s the government we chose that’s killing our democratic institutions. How’s that for irony?

Our government actively sows popular mistrust in elections without any evidence. Think of that. That fact, alone, should beggar belief.

But it doesn’t stop there. It also attacks the press, rendering it increasingly unfree. Unflattering jokes can get a comedian fired by a parent corporation seeking favors from the government. DHS agents invade homes to arrest legal immigrants and US citizens without warrants and without evidence that any law has been violated. Our ruling party has initiated a nationwide gerrymandering campaign that now spins out of control. It wants to disenfranchise voters across the country, especially people of color. Women and minorities are barred from senior military leadership without a stated cause. Fuck Blacks and women. The triumphs of the Civil Rights era evaporate before our eyes.

Science and the humanities — the leading agents in America’s Cold War victory — are routinely disparaged or considered unAmerican. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) serves as the president’s ridiculously over-funded praetorian guard. Despite executing two American citizens, ICE received a budget exceeding the Marine Corps’ and remains beyond effective supervision. A Roman emperor would tip his crown.

On that note, from all this institutional wreckage, we see a monarchy clearly rising. Ours is the first president (henceforth Would-Be King, or WBK) who doesn’t even bother with the pretense of serving citizens who didn’t vote for him. WBK’s government won’t fund social programs, but compels taxpayers to pay for the trappings of a tawdry Versailles: a billion-dollar White House ballroom and 24-carat Oval Office. It combs the public treasury for money to reward his violent supporters of January 6th. And, as WBK’s people gut agencies like the National Park Service, they imprint his face on each NPS annual pass, on huge banners hanging from federal buildings, and more.

If this was just a cult of personality, that would be one thing. But WBK is increasingly beyond the reach of the law. The genie is escaping the bottle.

WBK has legal immunity from prosecution for his presidential actions, according to his Supreme Court. A decade after falsely promising to show his tax returns, he, his family, and businesses enjoy immunity from the IRS, too — surely, the first person in American history with such undemocratic privileges. WBK’s corrupting hands go virtually unchecked. Only two years removed from 34 felony convictions, the American president has become divine, the untouchable god-king that his own AI-generated memes portray him to be.

And every such meme delivers a clear message to each of us: Fuck YOU!

If all that still isn’t enough to chill your Fourth of July, consider the economy. You don’t need a lot of coffee to see that 19th century Social Darwinism is back with a vengeance. For weeks last year, the world’s richest man retooled the federal government however he fancied. He larked about like a spoiled child in a sandbox, pulling wings off federal agency houseflies, until he got bored. No one had voted for him. But he’d spent $270 million-plus on WBK’s electoral campaign. That was enough to toss him the keys to the federal government.

Billionaires rule this country. So it’s no surprise that American inequality in income and wealth persistently leads the industrialized world. That’s a fact both accepted and praised by the uber-rich, and even many of the not-rich.

In today’s America, inequality is patriotic.

***

And what of the future?

The sentient world sees the threat of climate change and is busy adopting alternative energies. Completely on brand, the US heads the other way fast, and excoriates those who do otherwise.

That’s because America today is at war with nature itself. There’s no other way to put it. Clean air and water? Alternative energy? Public lands spared from private exploitation? Fuck. Them. All.

Here, climate change is a “hoax,” a “scam,” and a “con job.” We’re actively dismantling the already inadequate infrastructure needed to fight it.

So the rest of the world trundles on without us. While the US buries its head, China is happy to grab the technological lead. Europe’s chief contributor to greenhouse gases, Germany, is targeting climate neutrality by 2045. 54% of its electricity now comes from renewables, up from 6% in 2000. Today, solar power is the leading source of electricity even in Pakistan, a poor country where child labor is still a problem. And on and on.

The United States casually dismisses the welfare and happiness of its future generations. Fuck ‘em. America chooses oblivion.

***

This screed doesn’t cover two percent of what’s really going on. And it would be misleading to center my ire on Donald Trump, the current president.

That’s because the presidents we elect reveal who we are at the time. Trump is dangerous and unstable. He succinctly embodies the contemporary American ethos, which is also dangerous and unstable. Think of how JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama reflected the values of the country that elected them.

In 1976, the year of America’s Bicentennial, we elected Jimmy Carter — the kindest, most selfless president in our modern history. The man who never started a war and installed solar panels on the White House.

You get my point? Trump is America today.

***

So, as a taxpaying citizen, what am I compelled to do? I am compelled to support genocide, fossil fuel subsidies, feral (that’s no typo) agencies that turn on their own people, and massive public aid to the billionaire — now trillionaire — class.

But am I also bound to act proud on July 4th? To mindlessly pretend I live in the greatest country in the world?

No, I am not. At least not yet. When, in the course of human events it becomes necessary to do so, the refusal to celebrate may be the most “old school” American action still available to me.

And all this surrounding nihilism inspires two more responses that seem far more appropriate than lighting fireworks — at least to my mind.

First, I’m looking forward to the fall.

Lord, let US global influence collapse like tired puppy. Let us become a “normal” country before we do even more damage — a middle power no longer able to dictate its will over entire hemispheres. Think Canada, Australia, or South Korea. Forget Rome.

Isn’t that cheering on American decline? Yes it is. And on July 4th, no less. When asked “Do you support your country?” our first question should always be: “Well, tell me what it’s up to, and I’ll give you my answer.”

That’s because America ain’t my kid, folks. Pride in one’s country should always be conditional; ask the Germans, the Japanese, and your immigrant forebears who fled life in unbearable places.

Fact is, we’re being hubristic dirtbags, so it’s time for a reckoning; any Greek would tell you that.

Second, flood the zone with abject ridicule.

Thoreau wrote that citizens should refuse to pay taxes and risk going to jail rather than uphold an unjust government. Kudos to Henry David, but the neck-bearded philosopher didn’t have kids and a mortgage.

Rather, the best available strategy for those seeking to confront the powerful and indecent may well be fiery ridicule.

I’ve long taken to heart novelist Amos Oz’s observation that the mark of a fanatic is his missing sense of humor. So this Fourth of July, let’s make open fun of our country, its leaders, and its government. (I know it’s not “our” country — that’s the problem — but you get the point.) Mock their most fervent supporters, too. Puncture their paper-thin skins with crude satire and rude gestures. They simply can’t handle it. That’s why they hate comedians.

Sure, it won’t change their minds — they’re fanatics. But it might save yours.

And nothing shatters the illusion of immunity and inevitability like honest public ridicule, the louder the better. Follow Bugs Bunny and take a left turn at Albuquerque. Mock our leaders’ tacky Bible-hawking and ridiculous Holy Wars. Tell them their gender-affirming makeup schemes fool no one. Roast their comedic inability to pronounce country names, and so much more. Make the costs of ruling higher than the benefits of power and corruption.

Let the humanities — theater, art, music, letters, television, Tiktok, Substack — rise up and strike another historic blow for freedom.

Today’s America isn’t my America. It isn’t our America, either.

On this July 4th, tell their America:

“Fuck you! Fuck you very much!”

And wear a very silly hat.

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***

Over twenty years ago I completed a doctorate on authoritarian politics in the Arab World. I created a model that linked variations in opposition groups to ruling elites’ certainty of the costs of unity or defection. I tested this model via field research conducted in various Arab countries, where by that time I’d lived for over seven years.

In my dissertation’s obligatory “Acknowledgements” section — the last section anyone types up — I thanked professors, family, and friends. I also added a heartfelt tribute to our family home on Potomac Creek:

The Unicorn Farm continues to bark against the creep of suburban homogenization, enduring as a green island of eccentricity for generations of offspring, immigrants, and innumerable life-spans of grateful animals.

My doctoral research appeared in various forms: a chapter in an edited volume, an article in a peer-reviewed journal, etc. I went on to pen enough analyses of Middle Eastern politics to earn tenure at my small university.

Yet, I find that — apart from reflections on the art of teaching, like this — my work of recent years has only concerned people, nature, and the environment, especially in the area of our family farm (as may be seen here, here, and here). I could not have known it at the time, but that homage to the farm was portentous: Even as I put the finishing touch on the most laborious intellectual project I’d ever completed, a part of my mind was always elsewhere.

And that has proved essential.

***

I sometimes join friends counting nests in Potomac Creek’s great blue heron rookery. It’s an annual event conducted in late January, before the birds return for the spring nesting season. The heron rookery lies on the other side of the creek, just a few hundred yards from our farm. I used to bring my kids along when they were small and less distracted.

Counting twiggy nests perched high in the crowns of sycamores and pin oaks (the two tree types they seem to favor most) is muddy, laborious work even on a fortuitously nice midwinter day.

It’s really hard going.

Many trees that hosted heron nests in previous years are helpfully numbered with small metal discs pinned to their bark. But you need to find them and to get to them. That means passing through plenty of sharp bramble and boot-sucking wetlands.

Even muck boots offer no guarantee of dry feet. On our map of the rookery, a few trees have been playfully named after past volunteers who took icy baths in the attempt to reach them. Thus far, I’ve avoided such honors.

Sidebar: I make a point of walking on the narrow tops of campus curbs to stay ready for challenges like stepping on slippery logs to cross streams. This tests my balance. It also recalls the mannerisms of personal hero biologist Bernd Heinrich. Heinrich wrote that he habitually runs from his car to his campus office. I won’t go that far. But I like to think that we both provide students some amusement.

These Potomac Creek trees can play host to two, three, or four nests. A precious handful have up to 25 — they are veritable bird condominiums seventy feet or more above the marshes. Elsewhere, I’ve portrayed blue herons as introspective philosopher-birds, but one can only imagine the racket when dozens of heron babies are screaming for food in a single tree. Such unicorn trees raise questions of why herons are so attracted to one particular tree and not another. Let me know if you’ve got the answer.

Of course, some trees that held nests in previous years are now empty. The creek is a dynamic place. Windstorms knock down both nests and trees. The ongoing decimation of ash trees by the invasive ash borer is also limiting the herons’ choices. I’ve come across dead and dying herons before (and kept a small heron skull in my university office until it crumbled). There are many variables at play.

Our annual nest count therefore provides only estimations. But since our nest data goes back to 2007, it allows comparative insight into the general health of the large heron community that calls the Creek home.

Despite good years and bad, the Creek’s heron population appears relatively stable. Steps have been taken to keep it so. In the mid 1990s, a local non-profit, the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust (NVCT), purchased the 70-acre rookery to protect it from human predation and abuse: housing developments, timbering, hunting (herons are big targets even though federally protected), trash dumping, unruly ATVs, etc. Today, the rookery is buffered by a Muslim cemetery and largely embedded within Stafford County’s 3,000 acre Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve, established in 2008.

The rookery has become a sanctuary. The herons that returned to the Creek this spring to start the next generation seem safe for now.

***

And that’s what I’m getting at.

In a turn of events no one could have predicted twenty years ago, for three years I served as chair of the board of directors of the NVCT, the non-profit that first protected the rookery. And today I serve on the county’s appointed wetlands board.

This modest work has been absolutely necessary for me. As I was discovering environmentalism, horror unfolded across my area of professional expertise. The former Syrian regime brutally murdered its population. In the course of a long civil war, it dropped as many as 80 thousand barrel bombs, often targeting hospitals, deploying the double-tap technique that maximizes deaths among emergency responders.

One city the regime singled out for special punishment was Aleppo. When I was 19, I spent a year and a half there.

Aleppo was a beautiful, ancient city that wrapped me in its maternal arms. We fell mostly out of touch, but I know that some of my old friends, their spouses and children, are dead now. The luckier ones were displaced or became refugees. Yet to prepare for classes, I needed to read accounts of torture and watch gory videos of innocents suffering. I needed to know what was happening, and was or wasn’t suitable for the classroom.

In the last three years, the predicament repeated itself. I used to live in the Gaza Strip, too.

It can be a mercy to worry about nature, even as it faces unprecedented challenges. I’m not in any way dismissing them. I consider myself a clear-eyed environmentalist.

But my “green” colleagues and I talk about herons, creeks, and trees. That is, we talk about beautiful things we can reasonably hope to protect.

From our own dysfunctional species.

Mercy on us all.

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As the Guardian article details, the US government is actively targeting immigrants from Chad, Niger, Sierra Leone, and other countries hardest hit by climate change. The feds have banned or paused the issuance of visas to discourage their arrival.

My personal take: Our government is at war with nature itself.

This president’s record of unapologetic racism and xenophobia is well-established. So is his persistent denial of climate change, the direct and indirect effects of which are pushing many of these migrants to leave home. So no one should be surprised by the administration’s actions.

But, I can’t help wondering: Is there anything more natural than movement? For people, as well as for many creatures having legs, fins, and wings?

This upsetting news arrives just as naturalists celebrate another noisy season of hemispheric migration. The shad and herring have come and gone from our local rivers and creeks. The songbirds arrived weeks ago from South America, and are now frantically parenting their offspring. The forest here is alive with animal energy.

From the very start, though, we bipedal homo sapiens have also been wanderers given to epic migrations, often across continents. And we’re still at it. As a species, we seldom seem to stop.

Donald Trump himself illustrates this truth unequivocally. The Trumps are every bit a migrant family.

Donald’s father’s parents arrived to the US from Germany. His mother Mary Anne was born into a Gaelic-speaking household in Scotland. Biographers hold that she and many of her ten siblings fled deplorable living conditions to find better lives. Trump’s inaugural wife, Ivana, was Czech. According to Wikipedia, she first married an Austrian, moved to Canada, wed Trump and became an American, then later married two Italians (not concurrently). His third and current spouse, Melania, is Slovenian by birth. And so on…

Obviously, the Trump clan knows to get moving in search of better opportunities.

And there’s nothing wrong with that; they’re animals. Animal migration is dangerous, capable of sapping every resource at one’s disposal. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that life itself is largely about staying in motion. For many species, the road itself is a kind of home.

The important thing — as the Trumps know well — is always to be in the right place. And never to become lost.

***

These thoughts lead me to reconsider our magnificent birds of summer.

As Craig Childs has written, birds hold a special place in the human imagination: “[I]t seems everyone wants to be a bird” in some future life.1 Perhaps this is because, erroneously, to many of us birds embody freedom. We dream of being a bird more than we dream of becoming any other animal.

Migratory birds are distance athletes, and every bit as colorful as their sapiens counterparts. Fortunately, the lush summers of Potomac Creek offer breeding grounds or stopovers for many types of neotropical landbirds.

Surveys conducted on the local Crow’s Nest nature preserve show that wood thrush, red-headed woodpecker, yellow-billed cuckoo, and many types of warblers find the creek’s forest interior suitable for breeding. Water birds like blue-winged teal, Caspian tern, green-backed heron, Bonaparte’s gull, spotted sandpiper, and double-crested cormorant also appear along the creek.2 Their names alone evoke flying circuses of avian colors. In the warmer months of the year, lens-carrying birdwatchers approach this place with awe.

The scarlet tanager is a particularly beautiful visitor. A bit longer than an ink pen, tanager males appear on the creek dressed for a papal conclave: bright red, with black wings and tail.  Apparently, they have a special taste for bees.

All these migratory birds are from here, and elsewhere, too. They’re innate travelers.

That is how it must be. We know that animal migration is far older than human migration. Among people, such movement goes back perhaps 70,000-100,000 years. The major push towards human migration seems to have been climate change. But other animals began traveling long distances in predictable, cyclical patterns millions of years ago. Natural selection often favors the traveler because an intelligent world responds to change. As with humans, for many birds historical shifts in climate (think glacial cycles, for example) were likely a major factor in compelling their behavior. One in five bird species migrates today.

This brings me to two hypotheses. First, a changing climate induces movement amongst species. That appears evident. And second, the scarlet tanager has three proper places to be: a summer home, a winter home, and an in-between – the journey itself.3

To be anywhere else is to be out of place, i.e., “lost.” Too often, that’s what happens when movement is unexpectedly interfered with.

Perhaps no prospect is more frightening for a living being than becoming lost. And I don’t mean in the romantic sense.

Years ago, I read a history that briefly but unforgettably mentioned several Europeans who survived a nineteenth century shipwreck off the South African coast. These sailors – Portuguese, I think – visited the Zulu court. There, they found a Chinese man who served as a pitiful object of royal entertainment. This sad, unnamed man apparently passed into historical obscurity. In this way he resembled the “Finn-men” whose appearances along Scotland’s Orkney islands were first recorded in 1693. Mistaken for natives of Finland, these luckless men were really Inuit hunters paddling skin-covered kayaks. They were probably blown far from home by ocean storms. The Inuit men died, nameless and alone, in a foreign land. 4

Irremediably off-course, never to return home, these people were tragically out of place – lost.

However, the scarlet tanagers, herring, butterflies, et al of Potomac Creek are neither out of place nor off-course. They are exactly where they need to be.5 They follow nature’s imperative. They are not free to do otherwise.

And whether it’s a border wall that halts a herd of pronghorn antelope, an artificially bright night sky that disorients a flock of songbirds, or a visa official with orders to turn around Somalis, we’re not denying freedom by our actions. Quite the opposite. The migrant is simply doing what they must. In contrast, we’re showing our contempt for nature’s laws.

And placing far too many migrants at risk of becoming lost.

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and…

“World-shattering.”

I looked up synonyms for “revolutionary” on my favorite online thesaurus, Word Hippo. These are a few of the terms that popped up.

Why my sudden interest in revolutionary wordplay? I’m facing a self-imposed deadline. And I am ready to do something intemperate.

The backstory:

Many Substackers seem to have book projects lying around. I, too, have been working on a nature-centered book manuscript for some time.

Bucking the odds, I successfully acquired a very good literary agent from a well-known New York agency. I also have several draft chapters in the bag, so to speak. I think they’re pretty strong. In fact, some have already been adapted and published by journals and magazines. So, I am now determined to send my book proposal to publishers (via my agent) no later than this summer.

However, my agent — wise to the ways of the publishing world — has advised me that I simply must acquire a larger “platform” in order to attract a worthy trade publisher. The problem is that nobody knows who I am. After all I’ve done and been through — how belittling!

The adoration of my sainted mother means so little in this heartlessly commercial world.

That said, I’m sure many of you have received the same advice. In this day and age, having a “platform” typically equates with a strong social media presence. Unless, of course, you’re already famous, beloved, celebrated, or notorious in your own right; I see you, Charles Manson. Clever!

Unfortunately, if I’m to submit my book proposal so soon, this “platform” requirement limits my choices: I can become a serial killer, join the Trump cabinet, or acquire a substantial following on social media, including Substack.

I am equally averse to the first two choices.

This leaves option three.

It should be noted that I’ve toyed with this idea before. Like most mammals, I’ve had a Facebook account for years (see Karl Lagerfeld’s cat). But I have kept that for my real-life, in-person friends. I also joined twitter just before Elon Musk destroyed it. Last time I looked, my “X” account was dormant yet followed by thousands of impossible “women” who message every male. They post nothing about themselves, but really, really want to meet me. Not quite the platform my agent has in mind.

So just this spring, I started an Instagram account. Then — unbelievably — a Tiktok account! Both exist purely to promote this Substack. Despite technical assistance from my students, however, the results have been modest at best.

I’ve therefore come to the realization that I am not very good at this. I’ll wrap my failings in virtue and blame my childhood: My generation was taught not to show off.

But there is one activity that I am pretty good at, and which people seem to appreciate: I find arrowheads. Sometimes without even looking. You may have seen my recent long article on this. Compared to most of my online essays, this one got a very healthy response — especially on Tiktok!

Have I cracked the secret code?

Therefore, by tying all these things together in the pursuit of an honest “platform,” I am prepared to do the most American thing possible.

I will become purely transactional!

My offer to you:

At time of writing, No Lines in Nature has between 100 and 200 subscribers. Perhaps that’s a decent start for a new account by a nobody like me, but not likely to catch a publisher’s eye.

So I’m prepared to offer a nice bribe prize to the person who becomes No Lines in Nature’s one thousandth subscriber. That’s certainly a stretch given the current numbers! But in exchange for subscribing, that lucky person — no sex bots! — will receive a genuine Native American arrowhead that I discovered on our family farm alongside Potomac Creek, Virginia, which serves as the locus of most of my nature writing. I’ll mail it to them personally. I’ll even tell them the arrowhead type and date as determined by an expert friend. Finally, I’ll thank them in the book’s acknowledgements.

Boy, did that wake you up, or what?

Now before you sign on to this proposition, allow me to anticipate your questions.

Does one have to become a paid subscriber? Nope. Just become a free subscriber to my Substack and stay there. If you want to pledge money, I’m grateful. But I haven’t even turned that button on yet.

Who pays the costs of mailing the arrowhead? I do.

Even if the winner lives in Afghanistan? Yes. Been there. Twice, in fact. (But I’m not offering hand delivery).

How will you know who won the prize? If there’s any doubt at all, I’ll take the names of the five or so people who subscribed at that crucial moment in history and conduct a fair little lottery. Then, I’ll advertise the existence of a winner here on No Lines in Nature. I’ll also reach out privately to request their address so that they may claim their prize. If there’s no response within four days, the next person gets it.

Actually, I recently did something similar on Facebook. I gave away a whiskey flask with our folk band’s name on it in order to solicit donations for a worthy environmental charity. Happily, my plan resulted in many generous donations. Then, I put the eligible names on slips of paper in a handsome Fez hat. Our dog Cash used his talented nose to select the winner. It all worked nicely. (And if the winner of the arrowhead should find an engraved Tollbooth Buskers whiskey flask a bit more “useful” than an ancient artifact — well, we can discuss a switch.)

So there you have it. This is a serious proposal. If it helps you to think it through, comrade Karl Marx argued that speculative games like this expose capitalism’s inherent irrationality. More usefully, his brother Groucho allegedly said that

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Let me know what you think, fellow travelers: Is this tacky madness or inspired hucksterism? Have we got a deal? After embracing base transactionalism, I suppose the next most American thing to do would be to threaten you all with invasion should you fail to comply. But that’s not me. Gas is already too expensive.

And yes, Word Hippo tells me that another synonym for “revolutionary” is “desperate.”

Onward, comrades!

Ranjit

Nota Bene: My artistic muse swears that the first and second buttons below are pure magic.

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***

Every mob hitman knows at least one environmental fact: If you throw some…

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“How do you keep finding arrowheads?”

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I have a question for you.

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Not long ago my niece snooped through family photo albums, and came across this gem. It’s not hard to assign it a rough date if you know the people involved.

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