Wednesday

We skipped the causeway this morning to walk in the neighborhood and enjoyed woodland scenes.

We learned one of our neighbors set a Guinness World Record canoeing all 2350 miles of the Mississippi in record time.

Today’s bike ride to Weaver Park, Stevenson Creek, and Publix with a diversion through Hammock and Highlander Parks.

Late this afternoon, we tweaked our new sprinklers, tightened all the screws in a noisy ceiling fan, and removed the pesky piece of black tape leftover from the dining room fixture installation.

I’m 70% through my audiobook “Why Read Moby Dick.” It’s helping me to understand why it’s a classic, meaning a book that speaks to the human condition in any era. Melville’s book was written in 1851 just before the Civil War. There are many parallels to the place we find ourselves today. 

Ahab is a racist liar who is motivated by hate and revenge and cloaks himself in Christianity to manipulate his followers in his selfish pursuit of the whale in order to settle old scores. He blames the whale for all his suffering.

Ishmael is open minded and generous towards others. He sees that all animals, including humans, must learn to control their “inner shark” composed of destructive lusts or else we will all kill one another. Most importantly, Ishmael believes in the dignity of all beings.

For Melville, the Founding Fathers fell short in one important regard: they refused to see slavery for the evil that it was and thus baked into the country the potential seeds of its destruction. Slavery revealed that money and power were more important than morality and human decency. White supremacy was the lie that was used to justify the subjugation of an entire race of people: the money and power that flowed from slavery made white supremacy a self-fulfilling ideology.

Today, the Republican Party, the great party of Abraham Lincoln, solidified its commitment to an Ahab-like creature and his lies by squelching one of its own, a brave leader who insisted on telling the truth. Now the party is committed to a lie. Whether this lie also leads to Civil War is up to us.

Miles walked: 8.2

Miles biked: 12:37