The DNA of Original Sin

I note this week a new weather phenomenon unfamiliar to most of us around these parts - a 90 mph 'straight wind.' Roofs on 18th century farm houses, torn off; empty silos blown to the ground. Frankly, I slept through it. There would have been no impact at all in our household except for lost power, which brought us through the night, unhindered as we slept, to dawn, when I could neither shave, shower, or go to work.

That's when the trouble started.

Acting last summer upon a mother-in-law suggestion, I'd hammered a three foot tall piece of sheet metal around the trunk of a tree to frustrate the squirrels who plundered the bird feeder above. It didn't work, leaving a beautiful maple wearing an ugly metallic girdle for no good reason. Determined to restore nature to its primeval state, I tackled the chore with optimism, forgetting about the chain saw chain embedded in the similar soft wood of a downed maple, from last year, which still rests on the lower forty today.

The nails held fast. I banged, thumped, cursed and yanked, accomplishing nothing but a deep gash in my thumb. I must confess, as we stood at the sink to dress the wound, blood pooling in the palm of my hand, to feeling so woozy I had to sit down. Why must a minor disfigurement produce such an arresting reaction?

The Chicago Trib's William Mullen says blame may be deflected for this unmanly behavior onto my inner fish. According to Mullen, and Chicago scientist Neil Shubin, "even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, nonhuman ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today." Just as Shubin says we hiccup due to a breathing malfunction passed down to us from tadpoles, I reckon a man faints at the sink, after a steel girdle mishap, because it was useful for his ancestors to play dead while a sabre-tooth tiger gnawed off his hand.

One more scientist in the news this past week, Judy DeLoache, of the University of Virginia, says she has a snake phobia "because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors, so a fear of snakes remains hardwired into human beings today." This explains, in the case of married men, a fear of the mother-in-law.

I can't quell queasy reactions to public events any better than revulsion over a slightly dismembered thumb. Still banking on the harbingers of Spring to raise spirits above winter doldrums, I watched a series of ESPN classic baseball programs whose theme is 'Five Reasons' to either keep believing a controversy was settled fairly, or not. When it comes to Pete Rose's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame after denying for 15 years he didn't bet on baseball, before admitting it, Jim Palmer, an HoF voter, summed it up nicely, saying, if he ever believes Pete is thinking more of the game, than himself, he might consider it. The sought after change of heart wasn't much in evidence during the show as Pete assessed the importance of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti's tragic death by heart attack only in terms of how it damaged his Hall of Fame prospects.

The science of economics oft merges with the personal in ways to make them indistinguishable. The NY Times reports "only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide in San Francisco take advantage of subsidized meal programs because of the stigma of accepting a government lunch while others are paying for food." One student said, "lunchtime is the best time to impress your peers; being seen with a subsidized meal lowers your status." It's not hard to calculate how the short evolutionary odds of any man around a prehistoric campfire who couldn't slay his own dinner are hardwired within our survival instincts today.

After tens of thousands of years, it's broadcast by imnumerable tragedy, like the case of the 15-year old Oxnard, California, middle school student, who shortly after coming out last month, was murdered by a 14-year old member of a pack of classmates who'd harrassed what they'd perceived as an external threat to their tribal identity of adolesent masculinity.

It's one thing to know these deadly instincts linger; how they comprise the dna of our original sin. Does anything suggest they can be overcome?

Just as I search for small signs of Spring to restore a winter-ravaged mind and body, there are ever present small omens, drawing upon finer instincts, balancing darker aspects of our personalities. The local rag recently carried an obit, "it is with broken heart I announce the passing of my lover and best friend, aged 63 -survivors include his companion of 24 years." Here are lives well lived, two joined as one, despite a small town non-comformity, where it was possible none the less, to surmount the instincts which surfaced in Oxnard with deadly effect.

Editorialst, Michael Gerson, reports he's 'seen the future of evangelical Christianity,' as displayed at a college convention where "there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection." Gerson says, "judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life - but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture."

I cotton to 'generally,' which leaves little room for other words like zealously or fanatically. I'm generally pro-choice but respectful of a youthful idealism that concerns itself to run the other way. 'Generally' overcomes the dna of original sin.

Our General Store in the center town is where we meet to take cover from straight-winds, around the hospitality of a worn pot-bellied stove, instead of huddling furtively around the glow of an ancient flickering campfire to ward off the terrors that fly by unceasing night.