Every so often on an ear­ly morn­ing pad­dle, I come upon a great blue heron. Poised with silent, eeri­ly-still ele­gance, it’s wait­ing for small fish or frogs to come with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the dag­ger-like beak at the end of its long, sin­u­ous neck. The bird’s infi­nite patience and way of deal­ing with unwant­ed dis­trac­tions are traits many of us who are per­plexed or vexed by much of the world could use.

The heron has no ambi­gu­i­ty about per­son­al space, men­tal or phys­i­cal. If I slide my kayak over the invis­i­ble bound­ary, there is a whoosh and a whump as wings that span near­ly two meters lift the bird off to glide fur­ther down the shore­line. The mes­sage that I have trans­gressed is made clear, with­out aggres­sion or rau­cous protest.

Com­pare that to the demands of those who insist on unques­tion­ing adher­ence to tenets and rubrics that reduce ideas and rea­son­ing to febrile shallowness.
Most of us under­stand that it’s prop­er to respect the rights and beliefs of others.
Respect as a noun, how­ev­er, is earned, not man­dat­ed, which leads me to won­der why the Wash­ing­ton Post (and oth­ers) felt it nec­es­sary to note that a “Jeop­ardy” win­ner was “the first trans­gen­der con­tes­tant to make the Tour­na­ment of Cham­pi­ons, where the top play­ers from each sea­son compete.”
What, pray tell, does gen­der — trans or any oth­er desired des­ig­na­tion – have to do with skill and knowl­edge? Why should it mat­ter, or any­one care, one way or the oth­er? Mak­ing a point of men­tion­ing it is in effect a form of denigration.
Keep­ing up with the evolv­ing per­mu­ta­tions of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics is like try­ing to cre­ate and then remem­ber “strong” pass­words; frus­trat­ing to say the least. Pro­nouns top the dif­fi­cul­ty list. Unless told a spe­cif­ic pref­er­ence, using, nev­er mind get­ting right, any­thing oth­er than the con­ven­tion­al is no small feat for the those taught gram­mar the old school way.

                         TO ADD TO THE CONFUSION

As a per­son whose so-called “gen­der iden­ti­ty” is het­ero­sex­u­al male, I’m also non­plussed by the term “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty”. I ful­ly under­stand the def­i­n­i­tion as applied to what one study described as “traits that serve to fos­ter dom­i­na­tion, the deval­u­a­tion of women, homo­pho­bia, and wan­ton vio­lence.” Beyond that, how­ev­er, the lines get blur­ry. The study also not­ed that: “In mod­ern soci­ety, peo­ple often use the term tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty to describe exag­ger­at­ed mas­cu­line traits that many cul­tures have wide­ly accept­ed or glorified.”
When I first start­ed tak­ing out girls, my father told me firm­ly that it was my “respon­si­bil­i­ty as a man” to ensure that my date was safe­ly in her house, with the door shut, before head­ing home myself. But that was the ear­ly ‘60s, when teenage years were, thank­ful­ly, a lot less com­pli­cat­ed. Nowa­days, an attempt to accom­pa­ny a date to the front door car­ries the risk of an insin­u­a­tion, if not charge of sex­u­al aggres­sion. Even stand­ing in the street and watch­ing can be con­sid­ered “creepy”.
So where does this review of the lat­est Tom Cruise movie fit? “We need a healthy dis­trac­tion — but espe­cial­ly this film and this star. Mav­er­ick is a text­book char­ac­ter of old-school, testos­terone-suf­fused man­hood — full of Amer­i­can virtue and irrev­er­ence paired with a cocky, wise-guy atti­tude toward author­i­ty and any­one who chal­lenges his supe­ri­or game.”
The U.S. media’s fix­a­tion on appeas­ing all sides, with­out caveats, is as baf­fling as its obses­sion with whether or not Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will run again in two years time.  How do sto­ries spec­u­lat­ing who gets the GOP nom­i­na­tion if Trump doesn’t make anoth­er run at the White House, and self-crowned “Pow­er Rank­ing” pun­dits pick­ing “the nine like­li­est Democ­rats to win a 2024 pri­ma­ry fight”, con­tribute to the font of use­ful human knowledge?
In my news­pa­per days pieces of that ilk were derid­ed as “thumb­suck­ers”, not wor­thy of any, nev­er mind promi­nent col­umn inch­es. Today, the are inescapable. It feels like there are more of them in print and on air than there are prop­er­ly report­ed news sto­ries on sub­jects of imme­di­ate con­cern and import.
Which nat­u­ral­ly brings up FOX News.
In an effort to broad­en my out­look, some months ago I allowed it into my per­son­al view­ing space. But, as the Bea­t­les sang, “You know it don’t come easy”.
Hav­ing my intel­li­gence insult­ed con­sis­tent­ly and with­out shame for any­thing longer five min­utes pro­voked a heron-like need to move along, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by very un-heron-like expostulations.

All in all, deal­ing with the encroach­ment of life’s annoy­ances by emu­lat­ing a great blue heron has con­sid­er­able mer­it – apart from stand­ing around wait­ing to snag a raw frog for break­fast, that is.

 

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