A couple men who have reviewed Lies That Bind have noted that our love story is a bit of a fantasy.  I agree in a way.  My relationship with Celia is a fantasy-come-true.  From another perspective, I have no idea what led to these comments.  Celia thinks that perhaps the fact that we met via the internet sounds farfetched.  Delinda assures us that many people meet on the internet and that during the course of her work as a social psychologist she’s met several foreign heads of state and their ministers of health via the internet.

So what is it about our story that sounds like a fantasy?  Ordinary women meet heads of state all the time.  Heads of state have affairs way more often than they should. 

Let me explain some of the factors that lead to promiscuity among men of power.  Well first, let me point out that my behavior wasn’t promiscuous and that Celia was of an age and social status appropriate for me to know.  I do not approve of orgies.  I consider victimizing children or subordinates an abuse of power.  On the other hand, power is a powerful aphrodisiac.  It is hard to pretend not to notice women who are making obvious sexual advances.  I’m talking about more than a smile and pleasant comment here.  I’m reminded of an opening scene in an Indiana Jones movie when he is teaching a class, and his female students look besotted.  What many national leaders experience is more intense than the Indiana Jones experience.

In addition to the plethora of available sex partners, a leader has some strong sources of stress whispering in his ear, “It’s okay to take what they offer.  It will soothe the knot in your gut and the tension at the back of your neck.  For a few minutes you can forget the criticism of the opposition, and the needs of starving women and children.  You deserve a reward for all you give up to serve your people.”

I confess that I soon became overwhelmed by the hideous stress associated with my job as president.  In my first four months in office, I outwitted an attempted coup, lost a lawsuit against the government for not enforcing child labor laws, started procedures to nationalize the steel mill that had been employing children, and started an unpopular project to build dams in the mountains.  Also one of The Compound guards made an attempt to molest my fifteen year-old daughter when she came home from school.  These events are why I don’t call my country civilized or stable.  This job produces a steady stream of outlandish problems for me to solve, usually with no time to do so.

I confess that my relationship to Celia was not what other men would call normal.  In addition to the stress of my job, I had some personal failures that caused me to be more needy than I imagine other men to be.  I’d not been successful with woman.  My first love died.  My second love left me for another man.  I didn’t foresee this trouble so she was gone before I could do anything to stop it.  Finally, I married my beautiful, elegant Leah.  I lived with her for twenty-five years without knowing what went wrong in our relationship.  Between the loss of Fiona and Leah’s incomprehensible behavior I think I developed a fear of being dumped for reasons I’d never know.  I know I was harder on Celia than I should have been when she would get upset.  A terror would clutch at my heart and I would not give up on the subject until she could tell me what was troubling her.  I was so afraid something would build inside her until she ran away.  On one hand I want to call my fears irrational, but Celia has confessed that the immorality of our relationship occasionally bothered her to the point that she would resolve to go home.  I admit that I needed Celia more than most men my age need a woman.  I don’t know why she put up with me.

I’m writing this as an explanation of my colleagues behavior as much as mine.  Sex is healing.  It is an effective method for reducing the destructive forces of stress on the body.  Reality is often so grim, that living in a fantasy world is the only way a man with responsibility for the welfare of his people can remain sane.  Then there is the nature of power.  It is a force that grinds at a man’s soul.  To wield power without being consumed we must have a release that ties us to the mortal world and keeps us in touch with our own vulnerability.  It is easy enough to see who was quickly consumed by power and who has found a connection to reality that keeps him sane.  Celia became my connection to sanity.

Northwest Farming

I’m taking a break from my first harvesting venture of the year.  The daffodils are up.  The flowering current is flowering, and the hellebores are waiting to be picked.  I have one other chore that must be done, and soon.  I have Creatures of Mass Destruction in my gardens.

Most people know that the Seattle area is rainy.   Our cool moist climate is perfect for growing many things including slugs.  We grow great slugs.  Our banana slugs routinely grow to seven or eight inches long depending on how they like to stretch out.  I don’t worry much about purebred banana slugs. They stay in the forest and eat decaying leaves.  However those that have bred with our imported black slugs come out of the forest and eat daffodils.  We have several other varieties of slugs in various sizes. They start hatching in late January or February. 

If I am to have any success in the garden, I must be constantly vigilant in slug patrol.  The ducks are my very best weapon in my War on Slugs.  I let them loose to forage through the gardens.  It is so delightful to stand at my window and watch the ducks digging through the grass looking for gastropodial treats.  The chickens help by scratching up the moss and dirt to expose more of the little critters.

My poultry is great at keeping about a half-acre slug free.  However, they don’t visit some areas of the garden, and I never let them outside the deer fence for their own safety.  Thus, I have areas of my garden that are not defended by poultry.  These areas call for my second line of defense.  Beer.

Beer traps are exceedingly effective against slugs if used and positioned correctly.  If you have northwest sized slugs, forget the cute little beer traps sold in garden supply catalogs.  You need supersized traps for our supersized slugs.  I use plastic half gallon orange juice bottles.  I cut a big slot about four inches from the bottom of the bottle.  Then add a can of beer.  A trap this size is necessary because it will be full of dead slugs within hours.  I use the cheapest beer I can find.  I avoid light beer not knowing if it is smelly enough to attract slugs from a distance of fifty feet. 

Now, the placement of the trap is important.  It needs to be among those plants that slugs find attractive.  I also put traps in areas where slugs are likely to hide.  I usually keep one among the pots on the patio. 

Okay, you have your half-gallon bottle with a big slot, a can of beer, and have selected your site for the trap.  This next step is very important.  I’ve adapted this from something I learned in college.  Fill the trap with the can of beer.  Gently place it on the leveled spot you’ve selected.  Now, call out in a loud voice, “Frat Party!”  For the piece de resistance, sing the Washington State University fight song.  This will immediately attract the attention of all slugs within hearing distance, and they will come a crawling to drown themselves in your beer trap.

Some people find emptying the beer trap gross—just think beer-marinated escargot while dumping the full trap on the compost pile.  I like to count the dead bodies.  This helps me know if I am getting an area cleaned out. 

Aside from occasionally needing to skewer or decapitate the rare abstemious slugs that show up in the evening or early morning, the combination of the ducks and the supersize beer traps keep the garden adequately slug free without expensive chemicals.

Dear Readers, 

Recently someone sent me a chart on wealth distribution in the United States.  It shows that wealth distribution in the US is as seriously skewed as it is in my own country.  I read with interest some of the suggestions for changing the balance.  Some are workable other suggestions were unrealistic.  However, the first step is to know the truth.  It is going to take some critical thinking, self-discipline and healthy skepticism to sort through the opinions and information that bombards us each day to get to the truth.

My job as a prosecutor of many years has been finding the truth.  There are several questions I ask myself when listening to a witness.  How does this witness know what he is telling me?  Did he see it?  Did someone else tell him?  Did he just know?  There are several common fallacies that creep into our dialog that are excellent clues that the speaker is lacking in veracity.

Clairvoyance is the most common sign the speaker is not telling the truth.  Nobody can know the wants and thoughts of another person or a whole class of people.  Often however someone says, “Those people want only one thing.” or “He thinks he can get away with anything.”  These are very revealing statements when you have a witness, or a celebrity or politician who snarls that The Other thinks this or that.  The speaker has no way of knowing what happens inside the mind of another so the only statement he can give you is a statement of his own inner workings.  As the speaker claims others are doing, so run his own thought processes.

The redefinition of words.  The word entitlement is another curious word I hear often.  In the world of contract law an entitlement is something that you have paid for under contract and the other party is obligated to provide the goods or services you contracted for.  Yet, I hear the word used again and again to excuse the power elite from meeting obligations under a contract.  They speak of entitlement as if it is a desire for something unearned.  Listen to what the power elite say The Other thinks and wants and you will hear what the speaker himself thinks and wants.  In this case, those who use the word entitlement as a slur to avoid honoring a contract, are telling you a great deal about themselves.  They may well feel entitled to abscond with money that is not theirs to keep.

Fortune telling may be another indication that the speaker is out of touch with reality.   The witness who says, “I just new he was going to do something bad,” is no help to the prosecution.  One of my greatest sources of mirth has always been the predictions the news media have made about my behavior.  They assume that I will behave in a manner that is greedy and unjust.  That tells me that at least the owner of the paper is greedy and unjust.  Nobody knows the future.  Those who predict the future are really saying, “This is how I would behave if I were the president, or the prosecutor, or someone in a position of power.”

Diversions are so much fun.  This is the person who in a conference on corruption in politics, makes a passionate speech about the horrors of prostitution.  Some people can never focus on the economic needs of the nation because they are constantly distracted by the sex lives of everything under the sun.  Any discussion of greed will be met with a discussion on the need for a strong defense budget.  We really need to have the discussion on greed, not as a function of the poor, but as an obsession of those who have wealth beyond the limits of our imagination.  This may be the most important conversation we can have, but it always gets diverted to another topic.

The fifth indication a speaker has departed from the realm of reality is the use of coincidence as causality.  My favorite, “You’ve got trouble right here in River City.  That’s trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with P, which stands for pool.”  Despite Meredith Willson’s satirical depiction of how easy it is to mislead people with this simple form of falsehood, we see this happening daily especially among the media commentaries. 

There are other tricks people use to mislead.  Think about what they might be.  Become a detective looking for the truth by learning to spot falsehood.  Your well being, and the future you leave for your children and grandchildren depends on your ability to find the truth.  I will discuss later how to use the truth to change your world, but for now, just seeking the truth is enough.