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On the road again:
Greetings from a cattle ranch in extreme northern California
Today’s Story
The ranch is owned by Cyndy’s cousin Keely, who, pretty much alone, maintains this pastoral property of 129 acres and 40+ head of cattle and calves.
One more was birthed this morning in the frost-covered pasture.
As I write this, Keely and her five herd dogs are searching for the placenta “before the coyotes get it” and become attuned, as predators, to the smell of easy prey.
I’ve been helping with the evening chores of feeding hay to the herd over the four days that Cyndy and I have been here.
For the past many weeks, I’ve also been crafting a series of eBooks about my travels in previous years, a book about what souls experience in the ethereal “time” between earthly lives, and some short stories. That’s why I’ve not written a blog since August.
Cyndy is feeling better, eating more, and exhibiting greater vitality as she continues to improve from the case of necrotizing pancreatitis that manifested last June while we were in Arizona.
In the first week of December, we will return to the Tucson area and she will undergo another procedure and further assessment.
At the end of October, we returned to Michigan to visit family, attend to personal and professional business, and vote.
On this coming Friday, we will visit Cyndy’s daughter and son-in-law in Reno.
We are being careful to avoid the coronavirus. Please pray that we remain successful in that endeavor.
So that’s where Cyndy and I are … personally.
Politically, our nation is in transition.
The situation is like the biological transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The main characters in that genetic drama are the organism’s larval cells and its imaginal cells.
Larval cells depict the immature form of an insect or animal prior to the creature’s metamorphosis into adulthood.
Imaginal cells are tissue-specific progenitors that remain dormant during the creature’s larval period but activate and organize to facilitate change.
In very simplistic terms, Scientific American Magazine says, “To become a butterfly, a [larval] caterpillar first digests itself. But certain groups of [imaginal] cells survive, turning the [transformative] soup into eyes, wings, antennae and other adult structures.”
The publication’s article, titled
“How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?” describes the caterpillar as “very hungry, … stuff[ing] itself with leaves, growing plumper and longer through a series of molts in which it sheds its skin.”
To me, this description perfectly describes the current political and societal systems within the United States.
We have the wealthy one-percent stuffing itself with more and more net worth while ninety-nine percent of the people in our monetary organism, even the middle class and those with jobs, become comparatively poorer and poorer.
What the leaders and executives, with their caterpillar mentality, fail to realize is that they have become parasites that, like the immature larval cells, feed upon and will eventually destroy the monetary structure on which their wealth and influence are based.
This is as insane as the caterpillar mentality of companies like Monsanto who, in the interests of higher crop yields, manufacture poisons that kill the pests and pollinators who are part of the natural world and upon which our food supply also depends.
Don’t these executives and boards of directors realize that, eventually, the poisons they produce will spread into their and their families’ food chain too?
Don’t those elected and appointed to serve within our government see the growing uproar among the people who are our human imaginal cells?
Apparently not.
No, in the spirit of gluttony, they hang on to that which is no longer tenable while kowtowing to their vociferous voters and strident stockholders … and while ignoring the needs of the greater whole.
Donald Trump is the prime example. Having lost the November 3 general election to Joe Biden, he continues to grasp at straws within a judicial system that has repeatedly rebuked his attorneys’ attempts to claim election fraud and malfeasance.
From his self-constructed pedestal, the narcissistic Trump, as well as his sycophant Republican supporters, are flailing and drowning in caterpillar soup.
That’s not to say that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party are the butterfly of our political system.
No, indeed! Far from it. They are also part of the caterpillar establishment that created the divisive political chaos from which Trump emerged.
The true imaginal cells in this political drama are the people here and there who are putting their boots on the ground to:
- fight against gerrymandering,
- fight for rank choice voting,
- fight to end Citizens United and money in politics,
- fight to dismantle the Electoral College.
- To stand up and shout out for justice in the form of human equality, fairness, and “liberty and justice for all.”
The true imaginal cells are YOU!
You are among the people who are awakening, clustering, and communicating about a new option for a healthy government and society.
What are you doing today—or going to do soon—to bring about a more beautiful butterfly world?
~~~~~ ~~~~~
Thank you for reading my stories.
Thank you for caring.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
