Humanity Has So Far To Go:

This photo moves me. It was taken March 10, 2009 in Sri Lanka. A religious celebration is taking place. In the foreground you can see a man with a tambourine like drum about to strike his instrument one last time. An older, gray haired man is walking in the middle of the procession and flames are licking at his ankles though his face has not had time to react to what is happening behind him. Others faces are still unaffected by the impending doom which has occurred a nano second before. Fourteen people died in the blast perpetrated by a suicide bomber/murderer who felt his beliefs and feelings trumped other people's right to live, let alone live in peace. There is a shirt in the air in the upper left hand corner. I wonder if it is the shirt blown off of the killer.

We need to pray daily for people who live with such fear, whose family members die in such ways, who have to suffer as survivors for the rest of their lives. The survivors suffer, many times, from physical injuries that are permanent. Certainly they all suffer extreme trauma emotionally for the rest of their lives. They are not Americans, they may not be highly educated, they are not rich, and maybe their life's expectancy is shorter in Sri Lanka and dreams less grandiose. Yet, they are all our Lord's children made in His image. And, yes, they suffer just as we would and perhaps even more. Do we allow ourselves to notice? I hope we pay attention.

I've Really Got The Bug!

I am really going over the edge with this dream of fishing in Lake of the Woods. That is in June. Now I am doing nothing but dream about it. I am dreaming of walleye, northern pike, muskies, bass, sunnies, crappies, and now rainbow trout. I spent a couple of hours looking through the Cabela's fishing section. I was looking for a fly rod to add to my collection of fishing poles that is currently 300 times bigger than it has been for my entire life. By adding a fly rod, which to date I have not, I would increase that 300 times by 33%, if that makes any sense. I did purchase a two hour video on the subject from the Cabela's sales representative whose name is Greg, a grey haired fellow, about my age, who has nearly forty years of fly fishing under his belt, or better, in his waders. I watched the DVD straight through stopping frequently it to get a handle on knots, weights relative to poles and lines, leaders, reels, and casting techniques and more. It was a Cabela's produced piece and I have to say that it was not all that well done. It was dated 2002 and that was interesting, but still it was good enough to get my attention. The trout being caught in Wyoming rivers was particularly interesting. Oh, baby! I could see my self doing that with some friends of mine... perhaps even my wife...nahhhh.

I wonder...does anyone actually eat the fish they catch anymore? I remember a time when you fished so you could eat fish. Odd the old days. On all these videos all the fisherman are working hard, spending hundreds of dollars, and hour after hour to catch a certain fish. Then, when they have landed it, they practically fondle the thing to death. Finally, with great affection (and sometimes even with a kiss on the nose of the fish) they magnanimously release this poor beast back into the water so that it can again be tortured and released. Seems to me that sometimes this catch and release program, or ethos, is more "torture and release for further torture" than anything else. (I am sure better men and women than me have thought this thing through.) After all the fish is fighting for its life! If fish can be scared I am sure they are scared when they are hooked and dragged or pulled out of the water. What's a camera, dude?

Anyway, I am dreaming of catching, filleting, and eating. After some twenty plus years in seafood sales, distribution, and marketing, I know a thing or two about cooking a trout or a salmon; any fish for that matter. That is the deal for me. I like the thought of the art of fishing. I love the idea of cooking and swallowing.

My Three Poles

At the time of my last birthday I had yet to own my first fishing pole. I have accidentally caught three fish in my life and intentionally caught one, all on borrowed equipment. The first was a small rainbow trout at a quarry that was being filled in when I was about nine years old living in Denver, Colorado. My neighbor's father chummed the water with bread crumbs and I put a naked hook in the water and pulled the beautiful little thing out. Those fish must have been really hungry. The delicate trout struck me in the face as I effortlessly lifted it out of its home, then flopped helplessly on the rocky ground. "Ya can't let it suffer!" my friend's father yelled. I didn't know what was going on, no words came to me, so I didn't move. I remember this large man coming over with a small bat and striking the fish on the head/body until it stopped moving as much. Blood appeared around the gills. It stopped moving only after a while despite the repeated blows. I didn't make the mistake of putting my hook in the water again that day. My buddy's dad came home with seemingly hundreds of fish on a stringer, I with only one. When asked why I only had one I said, "Dad, I didn't like fishing." Dad replied, "That is all right son. Not everyone does." Fifty years later it now is interesting to me that my friend's father didn't offer to share any of his abundance with our family. I guess just because your friend is your friend doesn't mean that his father is your dad's friend.

My second fish was at Kentucky Lake near Paducha, Kentucky. It was a large mouth bass and again I was just messing around with a pole and a hook, this time the hook had a worm. The bass had apparently been lurking around this pier for a time, had been spotted by some die hard fisherman, and they lusted after it. This kid (me), probably eleven by now, just stuck his line in the water and bang!, had the coveted fish on his line. A small tug and it was landed on the wooden slats. To me, what was the big deal about fishing? I remember the adults cussing, someone made a comment about "checking the kid's license", but I took the fish back to the pop up camper we had rented, it was put in a cooler, and later filleted and eaten back home in Chicago at my grandparent's home. I was never arrested. I am sure I had no license, though I think a kid that age might not have needed one.

My third fish was called a needle fish. I was reluctantly fishing with relatives near Jensen Beach, Florida on a fishing pier under a concrete bridge which spanned the inter coastal waterway. They gave me a pole and tried to teach me how to bait a hook with a live shrimp so as to not kill the shrimp, at least not right away. Perhaps, having a live shrimp, one would have an opportunity to catch some big ocean species, the greatest of which would be the coveted snook. After killing about six shrimp attempting to put them on the hook,I finally got one right and was ready to cast into the waterway. I cast the bait only to have it smack into the concrete bridge above me and die. Another shrimp or two later I finally got one in the water alive. Sure enough I caught this needle fish. It was flopping on the concrete walkway when a familiar thought came to me but this time a sentence came out of my mouth, "What should I do with this fish?" My relatives laughed at me, unhooked the needle fish, made a comment that it was a worthless creation, and immediately threw it back in the water. The thought crossed my mind that it was better to be worthless than valued. If you have value, I guess, at least as a fish, you die, beaten to death on rocky ground or placed in a cooler to be cut to pieces and consumed.

The last fish I caught was intentional. I won a trip to Tampa, Florida to go deep sea fishing. It would not have been a good career move for this up and coming executive to refuse this prize. We went out on a commercial fishing trawler about three and a half hours. We anchored above an area that was known to have grouper, amberjack, red snapper, and cobia living near by. My hook was baited by a professional with a bait fish which was bigger than the bass I have mentioned before. This caught my attention as I began to wonder what the object fish would be like. As my line swam along the surface I could sense the pull of the bait and also its excitement as its targeted predator approached. Not much fun being bait. Well, some living monster hit that hook, a hook big enough it seemed to support the weight of a baby grand piano, and the battle was joined. That fish, due to the heavy weight tackle, was coming aboard whether I, or it for that matter, wanted it to or not. After about 30 minutes I brought over the stern of the trawler an amberjack (member of the tuna family) that weighed in excess of sixty pounds. I took a short look at it as it came on board then proceeded to vomit over the railing of the boat for the next four hours in a never ending cold sweat, never again to set a hook. I wanted to die desperately seeking a straight line I could look at to gain my equilibrium. Alas, there was no such line and suicide crossed my mind as other members of our fishing party laughed and me and slammed down sub sandwiches provided for us by the fishing sponsor. This, I assumed, was the punishment dealt me for bringing a child of Poseidon out of its natural habitat. Never again! Never again will I go to sea. Well, if it was for war or to save my family or all of human kind, perhaps I would. But, I think I'd come up with some conditions of my own. That, my friends, was my last fish and that amberjack has been dead for over thirty years.

So, why "My Three Poles." I've been invited by close friends from Indiana to go fishing with them at Lake of the Woods in June. Since I love these guys, being asked was such an honor. Fellowship with them would be so sweet. I could not turn down the invitation. Truth be told they are so valuable to me I actually asked if I could come along. When they said that they would be excited to have me my heart leaped for joy. Yet, the joy was not in the upcoming fishing. The joy was in the thought of "being with them." Brothers in Christ fellowshipping together, experiencing community. There was this requirement though. I had to have at least two fishing poles. What to do? Why, call my out of doors guru here in Minnesota and have him take me shopping at Cabela's!

We met there at five in the afternoon on a Wednesday. We spent the first ninety minutes fondling and caressing every item in the store other than fishing poles and reels. We talked about what we liked, wanted, lusted after, told tales of wilderness experiences, stood on pontoon boats, leaned over bass fishing boats, checked out the 225 horsepower outboard motors that would get us to the fishing grounds in a hurry, and much more. After exhausting the store's other non-fishing inventory items we finally went over to the hundreds of rods and reels they had on display. We touched and talked about each and everyone, their benefits, their potential limitations, their appropriate applications. Finally we settled on a Shimano reel and a Cabela's super duper carbon fibre rod, matched up some mono filament to it, some sinkers, clips, and bait. We swapped stories with the sales representative. After a full hour of rod and reel research we finally left the store to have dinner at Red Lobster in celebration of our purchase. Later I went to Gander Mountain and purchased two other cheaper rod and reel sets, one to fill my two pole minimum and the other "just because." Two spinning reels and one bait caster reel. A Papa pole, a Mama pole, and a Baby pole...everything I will need to "hopefully not catch a thing!"