Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer

     For a discontinuous ten years, five before and five after a divorce, I've picked up trash on the three-quarter mile walk to work. It's a scenic stretch of a side street that runs beside the west branch of Price Run, the only above-ground creek in the karst town of Lewisburg, West Virginia. The road is bisected by two ponds, watering holes for assorted fowl and furry fauna who've watched me fill a shopping bag at least once a week. That's five-hundred and twenty Kroger bags of other people's garbage.
     The content of my gift bags has changed over this decade of walks. The fast food detritis - Hardee's in winter, Dairy Queen in summer - has transitioned to water bottles and candy wrappers. Scattered along the way, literally and temporally, has been evidence of addictions, though packaging has progressed from Diet Coke to designer spritzers, Bud Light cans to mini-liquor bottles, Marlboro reds to Juul whites. It seems the litterers in my neighborhood are becoming more sophisticated, to say the most.
     After these ten years I'd like to conclude that the volume of litter has decreased as awareness of plastic pollution has grown, but householders still leave the lids off their trash cans for crows and raccoons to scatter. Teens of all ages jettison the evidence. The wind forever blows through yards, shops, and backends of pickup trucks. One can only hope that the materials of human consumption will become more compostable as we run out of extractable hydrocarbons. In the meantime, I'll shoot for two bags a week.

Not To Reason Why

https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/breaking-in-hiking-boots.html

     "How long will you continue to practice?" asks one of the important people in my life during one of our semi-regular lunches at the Bean.

It's a reasonable question from someone starting life after college to someone else opening a new office after the age of sixty. Implicit are concerns about finances, longevity, and fortitude for work. Why would one want to do something hard that doesn't have to be done?

___________

   The financial equation is unique to being a lifelong medical educator with a large and extended family. A life of contributing everything to the growth and well-being of the households leaves one unable to secure a loan to start a business. Living hand-to-mouth becomes a way of being when expenses are more or less equal to income.
    Brushes with skin cancer and, like many health care providers, tuberculosis raise concerns about being able to practice long enough to become profitable. New businesses generally take about five years to reach maximum income potential, though having been established in an academic practice in the same town for twenty-five should speed that up. Still, life and new ventures are always a gamble.
     It does take fortitude to bring energy to the table for the good of others day in and day out. Fortunately for me, doing so refuels the spirit at least as much as emptying it. On most days I feel better after having helped a handful of people in some small way.

__________

   


     After a moment's contemplation to the question at hand, the answer comes as an image of old man charging up the Judyville hill:

"I'll continue to see people as long as I can walk to work."

So take that Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ours but to do OR die!