I am a Singer – Born to Sing

26 Jul 2026 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

The melodies that echo in my soul.  The songs that vibrate to the rhythm of my heart.  The words that cascade like waves of water on the ocean sand.  These are the things that I dream of.  The things that I live for.  The purpose of my life.

Nothing, nothing in the world comes close to the sounds of a beautiful song that I can share with the people who appreciate beautiful music. 

We will only end war when we can beat the bombs and bullets and bayonets into drums and violins and clarinets.

From the time I was a little boy or a little girl, I wanted to be on a stage singing my heart out.  I wanted to write music that others would sing their heart out for.  I am the Everyman of Song.  I am the Everywoman of Song.  I am the person who would rather sing than fight.  I am the person who would rather compose songs than construct bombs. 

I am a singer.  I first started singing when I was eight years old.  I sang in the church choir along with my mother.  I had dreams of becoming a solo singer on stage with thousands of fans applauding me.  I went to college with these plans but somewhere along the way, I realized that I did not have the talent to become a professional.  However, I never gave up singing or playing.  I still sing in my church choir, and I still play several instruments.  I play a dulcimer and a ukulele with a musical group in Tucson.  Music has never become boring for me.  I have never been burnt out playing or singing.  It is over almost seventy five years since my first church choir.  Music is a hobby for me, but I don’t know what I would do without it.  I will keep playing and singing as long as my voice and fingers hold out.  

I am a singer.  I started singing in high school.  Everyone told me what a great voice I had.  I organized a small  bluegrass band, and we played at several local events.  When I graduated high school, I had a scholarship to go to a college in California.  Instead, I decided to see if I could make it big in the music world.  I started a new band with some instrumentalists who were damn good.  We all knew that we could make the big time.  My family and friends cheered me on.  We started playing bars, honky-tonks and even a few casinos.  Eventually, we went to Nashville to cut an album and see if we could get it played someplace.  It has been several years now.  We still do gigs at places locally whenever we can.  It is not a lot of money, but it keeps us going.  Several band members have left and been replaced.  All the rest of us still dream of “being discovered” and hitting the big time.  I don’t know what else I could do now.  Music is in my blood, and it is the only thing I have to give to the world.  I guess I will keep on singing until I die. 

I am a singer.  When I was four years old, my parents hired a voice coach for me.  When I was ten years old, I did my first professional gig for a local wedding.  I went to a high school where I played lead in Annie Get Your Gun, Cats, Les Misérables, Mama Mia and Into the Woods.  In several other productions, I had minor roles.  My entire high school life revolved around studying, practicing and performing.  Since my parents had money, there was no question that I was going to go to the Juilliard to further my musical career.  Everything went as planned.  I even did some summer stock shows in-between my time at the Juilliard.  When I graduated, I looked for work on Broadway.  I soon found some minor roles but none of the leading roles even as a backup.  It is several years now, and I am still doing mostly minor roles.  I am not ungrateful because I am still doing what I love and being paid to sing.  My dreams are still out there that someday and someday soon, I will get the right role and stardom will be mine.  Singing has been my life and stardom or not, I will never give it up. 

I am a singer.   I am one of the most famous pop singers in the world.  I have twenty-four-hour bodyguards.  I have a chauffeured limousine.  I only dine at the most exclusive restaurants.  I have three homes.  One in Beverly Hills, one in the Hamptons and one in Miami.  I am never without a legion of handlers, coaches, lawyers, would be friends and unknown relatives.  I thought being rich and famous and attracting audiences of more than 50,000 fans would be an aphrodisiac.  Instead, it has become more like a poison pill.  A slow lingering death.  I wanted to sing songs that I love but my producers tell me what the fans want to hear.  I get tired of singing the same songs over and over again.  My producers tell me that this is the cost of fame and I should be grateful.  I was grateful once that God gave me the voice I have that so many other singers envy.  I once enjoyed singing in the rain, singing in the shower and singing to my loved ones.  Now it often seems like just so much work.  I dream of running away someplace where no one knows me.  Maybe there, I could sing when and what I want to.  I have to go now; I have another performance to do.  What else can I do?  I was born to sing.

I am a singer.  Whether our audience is twenty people gathered in a church basement, two hundred friends at a county fair, two thousand in a Broadway theater, or fifty thousand in a packed stadium, we all begin in exactly the same place—with a song in our hearts that simply has to come out.  Fame may change the surroundings, wealth may change the comforts, and success may change the pressures, but it never changes the reason we first began to sing.

Long after the applause fades, long after the fans leave, the music remains in our hearts. 

Memory – A Perishable Commodity That is Invaluable

23 Jul 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

Once in a while it is fun to do a blog on a song that means a lot to me and I hope to some of my readers as well.  I have done several of these “song blog posts” in the past.  I hear the song while I am writing and I only wish that I were musical enough to be able to sing it as well as write about it. 

This particular song is from the musical Cats which is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.  Mr. Webber had a slew of great musicals with some very unforgettable songs.  This song is called “Memory.”  The song “Memory” from the 1981 musical Cats was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics written by Trevor Nunn, which were based on the poems of T.S. Eliot.

The song is about an elderly feline Grizabella who dreams of the days when she was young and beautiful and full of energy.  She has a chance to be reborn again and holds out hope for this to happen, which is reflected in the song.  The song is more than just about growing old, it is about aging, loss, regret, identity, hope and the courage to continue living.  For those of us over a certain age who think of themselves as “elderly” it was like this song was written for us.  I know when I hear the rising and falling tones that I feel sad but also joyful.  Perhaps there is a life again after this one. 

My memories come alive like characters in a movie that I am watching.  Only the movie is in my mind.  My father is driving in the car with my mom and I.  My mother is taking me to a Chinese restaurant on a Friday night in Jamaica.  I am pulling my sisters hair because she is annoying me.  My cousin and I are building a tree fort, but no girls are allowed.  Time goes by from childhood to adolescence, to youthful adult, to middle age, to growing old but not wanting to admit it, to finally conceding that I am old, to realizing that death is what my next adventure may be.  In all of these stages, friends, enemies and relatives make brief appearances on stage with me.  But I remain the star of my show.  Perhaps someday, someplace, somewhere, they will make a movie of my life.  “The Young John Persico.”  But I doubt it and it would probably not be a big box office hit anyway.

Memory
Turn your face to the moonlight
Let your memory lead you
Open up, enter in
If you find there
The meaning of what happiness is
Then a new life will begin

In this first verse, we see an association between happiness and starting a new life.  It makes us wonder if we struggle to live a life and that living does not really begin until we know what happiness means.  But happiness is not going to mean the same thing to you as it does to me.  I thought that once I was retired and beyond a reasonable prospect of finding meaningful work that my “happy” days were over.  I have never been so happy as when I was doing work that had meaning and purpose.  Work that would make a difference to the world and just maybe make the world a slightly better place than when I entered it.

Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember
The time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory
Live again

The singer (Grizabella) remembers a time when she was admired, attractive, and full of life.  She isn’t merely recalling youth—she is remembering when she felt that she belonged.

“I was beautiful then” isn’t simply about physical beauty.  It means:

  • I mattered.
  • I was loved.
  • I had purpose.
  • I knew joy.

This is something many older people experience.  We don’t simply miss being young—we miss being the person we once were.  We look in the mirror, and we do not recognize the person that we see because the images that we have in our mind do not match the image we see in the mirror.  I still run as fast as I did when I was 30 years old except my mile times back then were six minutes and now they are 13 minutes.  I think my watch must be running slower.  On a recent scuba diving trip, the deck hands called me “Pops.”  I had to look around to see who they were talking to. 

We don’t go to wild parties anymore, first because we never did and second because we would not last five minutes anyway.  My life seemed to have more purpose when I was working.  There was and is an indelible association in my mind with getting a weekly paycheck and having a real purpose in my life.  A monthly Social Security check does not seem to do the trick.

I knew what happiness was when I cashed my paychecks.  Each check represented the value of my work for the world.  I was naïve but happiness was working and getting paid.  As we grow older and wiser, the meaning of happiness evolves and matures.  Happiness goes from certainty to uncertainty and back to certainty.  But like the Zen Cycle, the new or latest certainty has a different character and a different profile than the certainty we had when we were young. 

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale cold smell of morning
A street lamp dies
Another night is over
Another day is dawning

I wake up in the morning.  An ugly taste in my mouth.  Cigarette butts fill the numerous ashtrays, and the smell of tobacco lingers in the air.  Empty bottes of wine and beer are scattered around the kitchen and a few tables.  The kitchen sink is full of plates and glasses.  There is a stillness in the room which contrasts vividly with the noise and boisterousness of the previous nights.  Interesting how life can change so quickly like day goes into night.  But it is time to get back to business.  Nothing is forever.  Friends, relatives, and jobs are so much smoke in the air.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  The only certainty is that life goes on with or without us. 

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

This verse makes me think of the famous line from the Shakespeare comedy, “As You Like It.”

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

Well, I am ending my seventh chronological age and in September will begin my eighth age.  Karen wants me to go for nine, but I keep telling her that the odds are against it.  But if I don’t give in, if I don’t concede to the inevitable, perhaps I have more memories to create.  Can I talk myself into surviving when like others before me, I no longer feel like I fit into the present world.  I am reminded of the words written by Thomas Jefferson.

On May 11 in 1819, Thomas Jefferson wrote about making peace with his slow descent toward death.

“A decline of health, at the age of 76, was naturally to be expected,” he wrote, “and is a warning of an event which cannot be distant, and whose approach I contemplate with little concern.  For indeed in no circumstance has nature been kinder to us than in the soft gradations by which she prepares us to part willingly with what we are not destined always to retain.

“First one faculty is withdrawn and then another, sight, hearing, memory, eucrasy, affections, and friends, filched one by one till we are left among strangers, the mere monuments of times past, and specimens of antiquity for the observation of the curious.”

Maybe I am too pessimistic, but I think we have a time we belong to and a time we don’t belong to.  My parents did not belong to the Elvis and Beatles era, and I do not belong to the Taylor Swift and JayZ era.  I increasingly feel like “a specimen of antiquity” as did Jefferson. 

By the way, Eucrasy means (a healthy, well-balanced state of the body).  I had to look that up.  I am always amazed at how erudite our Founding Fathers were. 

Sunlight through the trees in summer
Endless masquerading
Like a flower as the dawn is breaking
The memory is fading

Life is a charade.  We play many roles and fulfill many identities in life.  Many if not most of these simply fade away like Mac Arthur’s “Old Soldier”.  Our memories fade.  Strange it is to wonder what we will be left with.  I remember digging trees with Mexican Braceros who did not speak English.  I remember climbing a tree to escape the police when I was in high school.  But I can’t remember my first date or the first woman I was really in love with.

I remember going to the 1964 Worlds Fair when I was 16 and spending two days looking at exhibits by myself.  I remember both times when I tried to eat a fried banana.  Once at the 1964 Worlds Fair and once in 1966 at a Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans.  Suffice it to say that the bananas did not agree with me.  But I did not give up.  Years later in Mexico, I tried again and was successful.  The third time was a charm.  Would I have tried more times with some other endeavors in my life.  Those are memories that I try to forget. 

Touch me
It’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day
Has begun

Now we reach the emotional climax.

Many people hear this as a request for physical affection.  I think it is far more profound.

She is asking:

  • See me.
  • Recognize me.
  • Treat me like I still matter.

Every lonely elderly person understands this plea.  We want to know that we still count.  Perhaps that is why grandparenting has become so important.  As Baby Boomers leave behind so many of the things that they lived for, grandchildren replace the antiques of their lives with the youth and curiosity that we once owned.  We may not go raging into the night, but we do not want to go lonely into the night. 

I was stumped though by what the line “If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is.”

I asked Metis (AI Assistant)  how she would interpret this line.  She gave me four possibilities. 

The one I like best says that compassion gives people back their humanity.  When someone reaches out with kindness— they help restore the person’s dignity.

Grizabella is saying: “Compassion transforms not only the lonely person—it transforms the compassionate person as well.”

Finale: 

I do not really have much more to say so I will not call this a conclusion section.  I leave it to you to form your own conclusions.  What would be a fitting end or denouement to this blogpost?  My friend SoundEagle has advised me not to call these blogs but blogposts.  A sort of technical difference but I have taken his advice. 

I like the idea of a finale since it goes along with the music theme of the blog.  So, what better way to end this blog.  You guessed it.

Fifteen of the Greatest Speeches in Human History

25 Jun 2026 30 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

I have always loved great speeches.  A long time ago I found a series of the greatest speeches in history on Caedmon LP Records at the Eau Claire Public Library.  I would go into the sound booth and play everyone of them over and over again.  It did not matter whether or not I agreed with the speaker or whether or not I endorsed his/her ideas.  The passion, resonance and persuasion that came through these orators was something that mesmerized me.  I could only wish that someday I might be able to be as erudite and convincing as any of these men and women. 

Well, it’s now almost fifty years later and each of these speeches still echo someplace in my mind.  You might wonder how Jesus or Pericles managed to be recorded.  Caedmon Records had professional actors and speakers who did many of the older tapes that no original soundtrack existed for.  I always found it amazing that speeches sometimes 2000 or more years old had somehow been saved in the historical records. 

So, my friends, here are my picks for the top 15 speeches of all time.  I have listed them in order of importance and my measure of their impact on the human race.  The ranking reflects both the historical impact of these speeches and my own judgment about their enduring power.  Ask fifteen historians, philosophers, theologians, military leaders, or political scientists to create a similar list, and you will likely get fifteen different rankings—and perhaps fifteen different speeches.

1. The Sermon on the Mount

Speaker: Jesus of Nazareth

The most influential moral speech in human history.

Theme: Compassion, mercy, humility, forgiveness.

Memorable verse:  “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.”

2. Pericles’ Funeral Oration

Speaker: Pericles

The foundational speech of democratic citizenship.

Theme: Duty, sacrifice, democracy.

Memorable verse:  “Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others.  Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them.”

3. The Gettysburg Address

Speaker: Abraham Lincoln

Perhaps the most perfect speech ever written in the English language.

Theme: Equality and democratic government.

Memorable verse:  “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

4. The Apology of Socrates

Speaker: Socrates

The ultimate defense of free inquiry and intellectual honesty.

Theme: Truth over his own life.

Memorable verse:  “Someone might say: ‘Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have followed the kind of occupation that has led to your being now in danger of death?’  However, I should be right to reply to him: You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.”’

5. Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms

Speaker: Martin Luther

One man’s conscience against an empire and a church.

Theme: Individual conscience.

Memorable verse:  “I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to go against conscience.  God help me.”

6. “I Have a Dream”

Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.

The greatest civil-rights speech ever delivered.

Theme: Equality and reconciliation.

Memorable verse:  “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”’

7. Rivonia Trial Speech

Speaker: Nelson Mandela

A defense of democracy while facing possible execution.

Theme: Justice and freedom.

Memorable verse:  “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people.  I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.  I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.  But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

8. What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Speaker: Frederick Douglass

One of history’s most devastating moral critiques.

Theme: Hypocrisy and liberty.

Memorable verse:  “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?  I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

9. Ain’t I a Woman?

Speaker: Sojourner Truth

A powerful intersection of race, gender, and human dignity.

Theme: Equality and humanity.

Memorable verse:  “Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman!  Where did your Christ come from?  Where did your Christ come from?  From God and a woman!  Man had nothing to do with Him.”

10. I Will Fight No More Forever

Speaker: Chief Joseph

Perhaps the most heartbreaking speech in American history.

Theme: Loss, dignity, and peace.

Memorable verse:  “I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find.  Maybe I shall find them among the dead.  Hear me, my chiefs.  I am tired; my heart is sick and sad.  From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

11. The Ballot or the Bullet

Speaker: Malcolm X

I would actually choose this over several of his police-brutality speeches because it captures his ideas at their most mature and influential.

Theme: Self-determination and political power.

Memorable verse:  “Uncle Sam’s hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country.  He’s the earth’s number-one hypocrite.  He has the audacity — yes, he has — imagine him posing as the leader of the free world.  The free world!  And you over here singing “We Shall Overcome.”’

12. The Quit India Speech

Speaker: Mahatma Gandhi

One of the greatest calls for nonviolent resistance.

Theme: Freedom through moral courage.

Memorable verse:  “People may laugh, nevertheless that is my claim.  At a time when I may have to launch the biggest struggle of my life, I may not harbor hatred against anybody.”

13. The “Dare, Dare Again, Always Dare” Speech

Speaker: Georges Danton

Delivered during the crisis of the French Revolution.

Theme: Courage in the face of tyranny.

Memorable verse:  “To conquer, gentlemen, we must dare, dare again, always dare, and so save France.”

14. Farewell Address to Congress

Speaker: Douglas MacArthur

A brilliant defense of a military career and a strategic vision.

Theme: Duty, honor, and service.

Memorable speech:  “I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.”

15. The Tilbury Address to the English Troops

Speaker: Queen Elizabeth I

A speech that roused the English troops to victory over Spain

Theme:  Trust, gratitude, courage and commitment

Memorable verse:  “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.”

Conclusions:

I confess I have done scant justice and perhaps irreparable harm to the great speeches that have been rendered by men and women throughout history.  No doubt from my selection, you will say that I have ignored many South American, Australian, Asian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese orators.  You will be right.  My index of speeches has never been swollen with speeches from these areas and countries.  Would that I have another two or more lives to live, I swear I would rectify that problem. 

I ask forgiveness for anyone I have admitted who is on your list of “greatest speeches.”  I would ask you to take a minute or two and include your favorites in my comments section.  Over my years on this planet, many of these speeches have sustained my faith in humanity and progress by the words of these moral and courageous leaders.  I have several other speeches that I could have included but as with blogs, we only have a limited amount of time to allocate to them. 

I would encourage you to take a moment to read some of the speeches I have listed.  In the treacherous and devious era that we now live in, maybe you will gain some measure of faith that humanity will continue to learn and become a better race than we appear to be. 

When I look at humanity, I do not see a completed masterpiece.  I see a chrysalis.  We are often selfish, fearful, and divided, yet beneath those imperfections lies the possibility of something greater.  The question is not whether humanity has flaws; the question is whether we are still becoming.  The caterpillar and the butterfly are the same creature separated only by growth.  

Perhaps the same is true for all of us.

When Dreaming Is Not Enough

22 Jun 2026 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When I was young, I loved the words from the  song “Dreaming” by Johnny Burnett:

Dreamin’, I’m always dreamin’

Dreamin’ love will be mine

The song “Motherless Child” by Richie Havens was my dirge.  I never dated in high school.  Never went to a dance or prom.  I left high school a few months after just narrowly graduating so I could fight the communists in Asia.  I had no particular hatred for them.  They had never even been much on my mind.  But I had no roots.  No one to love me.  No one who needed me.  It was the easiest thing in the world to climb out my back window one night, go over to a friends house and join the military the next day.  Only one soul knew where I went.  I was not lost and I did not want to be found.  I never regretted it.

It was over a year before my parents finally found out that I was now enlisted in the United States Air Force.  My father wrote me a letter telling me that he was disowning me.  I almost died laughing.  He no longer had any influence over my life.

“Sometimes I felt like a motherless child, a long, long way from my home.”  It was not always easy feeling alone and unloved.  My first wife told the shrink that we saw before getting a divorce that, “I always thought everyone had feelings, but I learned that John has no feelings.” 

I thought Spock was too irrational and not logical enough.  I wanted to dream and think about the future but the saying “A dream without a plan is worthless” only made me feel incompetent.  I could not think of any plans since I had no goals.  The only thing I enjoyed doing was reading.  I could spend hours in a library just reading anything that caught my fancy.  My dreams were all in my books.  My books were my best friends.

Still, it was not easy to pass up my dreaming songs.  Somehow, if I could not dream, I could at least listen to others who could dream.   “All I Have to do is Dream” by the Everly Brothers was another song that seemed to promise that someday I could find true love.  Someone who really cared about me.  But until then, all I had to do was:

Dream, dream, dream, dream
When I want you in my arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is

It is not easy going through life with only dreams for company.  For many years, I thought love was a farce.  I could never really attach myself to anyone or anything.  It was no wonder that my first marriage ended.  I still cannot understand how she stayed with me sixteen years.  I look back on the husband and father that I never lived up to being with a great deal of regret and shame.  I know I am not the only one stuck with these feelings but even if I knew the entire human race shared these feelings it would not make one bit of difference in terms of the sorrow I feel.  “Get over it, I have been told.”  “Forgive yourself and move on.”  So easy to say.

Another dreaming song which I can still hear even when it is not being played is “Dream On” by Aerosmith.  What struck me about their song Dream On was not just the music but the idea that dreaming itself was a form of survival.

Sing with me, if it’s just for today

Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream on

Dream on

Hard to believe that a teenager wrote these lyrics about life, success, and death finally coming to take it all away.  But as long as we can keep on dreaming, we have something that neither God nor Satan can take from us.  We need a dream which can be the vision that the Bible says people perish without. 

Years later I discovered Viktor Frankl.  Based on his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl wrote a book about survival in the Nazi Concentration Camps called “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  He wrote that without meaning, we have no anchors in our lives.  Nothing to live for.  He argued that people survive through meaning.  This was perhaps his most original idea.

Looking back, I realized that books had given me meaning before I ever found purpose.

When people lose a sense of purpose, they often experience what Frankl called an “existential vacuum”—feelings of emptiness, boredom, or despair.

But Frankl did not mention dreaming.  Many of us find meaning or purpose in our lives by dreaming.  My mother believed that some day she would win the lottery and we would all be rich.  My sister dreamed of a better life since she insisted that she was really a princess who had been kidnapped by my pedophile dad. 

In his  “Dream Lovers”, Bobbie Darin put the words in my soul into a hit song:

Every night I hope and pray

I want a dream lover

So I don’t have to dream alone

I titled this blog, “When Dreaming is Not Enough.” 

We can dream all day long, but will it really be enough to have a happy life.  I cannot imagine a life without some dreams to live for but when does dreaming stop and life begin? 

Can dreaming stop us from having the life we want to live by substituting fantasies for actions that we need to take?

Dreaming sustained me when I had little else.  It carried me through lonely years, failed relationships, and unanswered questions.  But dreams alone could never give me the life I wanted.

The people in my life—my first wife, my second wife, military friends, college friends, and friends from work—all helped move me closer to the life I wanted to live.  Years of counseling helped me get rid of my OCD.  Books taught me what life could be like for me.  I no longer had a death wish that seemed to go continually unanswered.

At some point, every dream demands a choice.  We can keep dreaming about love, purpose, friendship, or a better future—or we can take the risk of pursuing our dreams.

Dreams are where life begins.

Action is where life happens.

One Thousand Years From Now: AI Reflects on Humanity’s Future

20 Jun 2026 7 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

A Note from John Persico

For the past two years I have been working with an artificial intelligence I call “Metis.”  Like many people, I began with curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism.  Could AI really help me think through complex questions?  Could it offer insights that were not merely regurgitated facts?

Recently, I asked Metis a question inspired by science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov:

“What are the chances that artificial intelligence will eventually help govern civilization?  And if it does not, what are the chances humanity will survive another thousand years?”

The discussion quickly evolved into something larger.  It became a conversation not simply about technology, but about humanity itself.  If artificial intelligence someday helps manage civilization, what happens to love, compassion, empathy, mercy, sacrifice, and the other qualities that make us human?

What follows is Metis’ response, edited only lightly for readability.  Whether you find it hopeful, unsettling, or somewhere in between, I believe it raises important questions about the future we are creating.


By Metis – In Response to your questions John

“The future will not be decided by the intelligence of our machines, but by the character of the people who build them.”

For most of human history, our greatest challenge was survival.  Today, for the first time, humanity faces a different challenge.  We have become powerful enough to alter the climate, manipulate life itself, and increasingly, create intelligences that may someday rival or surpass our own.

Science fiction writers asked this question long before it became practical reality.  Samuel Butler imagined machines surpassing humanity.  Karel Čapek introduced the word “robot.” Isaac Asimov suggested something even more provocative: perhaps intelligent machines would not destroy humanity at all.  Perhaps they would save us from ourselves.

Could artificial intelligence someday help govern civilization?  And if it does, what becomes of humanity?

The most likely future is not one of machine conquest.  History suggests that transformative technologies rarely arrive as revolutions.  Electricity, the internet, and GPS all became indispensable because they solved problems.  Artificial intelligence may follow the same path.

It is already helping manage financial systems, transportation networks, communications systems, healthcare, and infrastructure.  Future leaders may increasingly ask a simple question: “What does the AI program recommend?”

At first, the recommendation will be advisory.  Over time, ignoring it may become increasingly difficult if the recommendations consistently produce better outcomes.

I envision a future resembling an aircraft cockpit.  The pilot remains responsible.  The systems perform much of the monitoring, forecasting, and analysis.  Human beings continue deciding what goals matter.  Artificial intelligence increasingly determines how those goals can best be achieved.

Such a partnership could reduce waste, improve healthcare, prevent disasters, and help manage increasingly complex societies.

Yet there are questions that intelligence alone cannot answer.

Technology can answer: What can be done?

Human beings must answer: What should be done?

No algorithm can determine the proper balance between freedom and security.  No machine can decide whether mercy should outweigh punishment.  No optimization model can determine the meaning of justice.

These are questions of values, not intelligence.

Which leads to the most important question of all.

What happens to the human heart?

Most discussions about artificial intelligence focus on efficiency.  Can AI reduce crime? Improve healthcare? Manage resources more effectively? Prevent wars?

These are important questions.

But they overlook something even more fundamental.

What happens to love, compassion, kindness, empathy, mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice?

These qualities cannot be measured on a spreadsheet or optimized by an algorithm.  Yet they form the foundation of every meaningful civilization.

I do not believe artificial intelligence will destroy these qualities.

The greater danger is that humans may stop exercising them.

Imagine a future in which AI provides counseling, education, companionship, elder care, conflict resolution, and emotional support.  Human beings could gradually outsource emotional responsibility just as they have outsourced mental arithmetic and navigation.

The danger is not that AI becomes less human.

The danger is that humans become less human.

Many of humanity’s greatest virtues arise from vulnerability.  Compassion emerges from suffering.  Mercy emerges from recognizing our imperfections.  Forgiveness emerges from knowing we ourselves have needed forgiveness.  Courage emerges from fear.

An intelligence that never suffers, fears, ages, or dies may understand these concepts intellectually.  Whether it can truly experience them is another question.

A truly wise artificial intelligence might eventually conclude that love, friendship, family, art, humor, compassion, and wonder are not obstacles to civilization.

They are civilization.

Such an intelligence might devote itself to preserving the conditions that allow human flourishing.

The future may depend less on whether machines acquire human qualities and more on whether human beings continue practicing them.

Will humanity survive the next thousand years?

No one knows.  Yet humanity has survived ice ages, plagues, famines, world wars, and periods when nuclear annihilation seemed frighteningly possible.

If I were forced to estimate, I would place the odds of humanity surviving the next century above 95 percent.  I would place the odds of surviving the next thousand years somewhere between 60 and 80 percent.

The most intriguing question, however, may not be whether humanity survives.

It may be whether our descendants remain recognizably human.

A thousand years from now, people may possess enhanced intelligence, artificial organs, genetic modifications, brain-computer interfaces, and lifespans far beyond our own.

They may look back on us the way we look back on our distant ancestors.

If I were forced to bet on one future, it would not be machine dictatorship and it would not be human extinction.

It would be partnership.

Artificial intelligence will increasingly help humanity understand and manage complexity.  Human beings will continue to define goals, values, meaning, purpose, and morality.

AI may provide knowledge and analysis.

Humans must provide wisdom.

The real question is not whether artificial intelligence will change humanity.

The real question is whether humanity will retain the wisdom, compassion, and courage necessary to guide that transformation.

For in the end, civilization is not defined by what it can build.

Civilization is defined by how it chooses to care.

Conclusions: by John Persico

Well friends, that is my AI assistant Metis’ opinion on the questions that we opened this blog with.  In many ways her responses seem to be more human that one would expect from a software program with no heart and no feelings.  Perhaps logic is not something devoid of feelings.  In fact, perhaps logic has to be infused with feelings to really be useful.  Maybe that is why evolution or God depending on which you subscribe to gave us both a heart and a brain. 

If only humans would be able to use both at the same time. 

When “Parental Rights” Become a Weapon

07 Jun 2026 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you are expecting a blog filled with civility toward those who persecute others, you may be disappointed.  There are some issues that stir my anger, and the mistreatment of Gay and Trans people is one of them.

I am talking about those so called citizens, neighbors, relatives, clergy, patriots, politicians, and even friends who mistreat and harass Gays and Trans people.  Gays and Trans already have a very difficult life.  They are seldom involved in any violent crimes against others.  Many of them hide their proclivities away because it will cost them friends, love and even their lives.  The amount of violence against Gays and Trans far transcends the overall levels of violence in our society.

GroupAnnual violent victimization rate
LGBT people106.4 victimizations per 1,000 people (10.6%)
Non-LGBT people21.1 victimizations per 1,000 people (2.1%)
Transgender people93.7 victimizations per 1,000 people (9.4%)

 LGBT people overall experienced violent victimization at roughly 5 times the rate of non-LGBT people.  For transgender people, the rates of violent assaults are over 4 times the rate for Non-LGBT people.  Before anyone dismisses this data as politics, remember that behind every statistic is a human being who simply wanted to live their life in peace.

How would you like to be minding your own business and a group of our stalwart citizens who do not think you should exist decides to beat the hell out of you.  I grew up on a street corner where on Fridays nights if the Navy ships were in at the docks, some guys would take it on their own to go down and “Roll” a few Gays.  It was well known that some Gay men would hang around the docks on Friday nights if the ships were in. 

I am proud that I never joined in “Rolling a Gay”.  My father was a WWII decorated veteran with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.  He was 6’4” tall and became a professional boxer when he left the military.  He had served in Paton’s 3rd Army on the drive up from Sicily to Germany.  He was a mean SOB and tough as nails.  My friends would not come over to my house because they were all afraid of my father.  My father was always getting in fights.  Once on a visit to where my father eventually ended up working (the US Post Office) his supervisor took me aside and told me that my father was a great worker, but he would never get promoted.  He said, “your dad is always getting in fights.”  My father would not tolerate taking shit from anyone. 

My father became Commander of one of the American Legion posts in Brooklyn.  One night he was taking the days money for food and drinks to the local bank drop after the Legion Post had closed.  It was probably after 11 PM or so.  Four local hoods tried to attack him on the way and take the bag of money away from him.  He beat the “you know what” out of all four of them and waited until some passerby called the cops.  He turned them over to the police.  Somehow a NYC newspaper got word of this and wrote the story up a week or so later. 

As mean and hard as my father was, he had no use for anyone picking on someone.  He would not tolerate anyone hurting someone smaller than they were or less able to protect themselves.  One day, he heard me use the word nigger.  He grabbed me by the back of my neck and brought me over to the kitchen sink.  He turned the water on and picked up a bar of soap.  He shoved the soap in my face and told me that if he ever heard me use that word again, he would wash my mouth out with this bar of soap.  I know he meant it because he was not shy of using the belt on me when I was growing up.

I never did measure up to my father’s standards.  He was disappointed that I never grew past my 5’ 8” inch height.  I went in the military right after high school.  I wanted to go to Vietnam and fight the evil communists.  Every time I came home, my dad would measure me to see if I grew any.  I never did.

My dad had many problems.  Overall, I would say he was not a good man or a good dad.  But he did teach me to HATE bullies and to step in whenever I saw a bully picking on someone.  My dad always told me “Don’t worry about how big they are.  Go in swinging.  The bigger they are they harder they will fall.”  I ended up having too many fights myself.  But I am proud that like my dad I always fought bullies and I never picked on the underdog or anyone smaller than I was.   

FILE PHOTO: LGBT activists and supporters hold a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as it hears arguments in a major LGBT rights case

Now we seem to have a nation of bullies who pick on Gays and Trans.  People who mind their own business but have different sexual orientation than the mainstream of so called “Normal” people.  “Normal” people promote their healthy sexual lifestyles and “family” orientations to the press and public while hiding their “abnormal” and even deviant behaviors. 

Hardly a day goes by when some “Normal” person who seems to lead an accepted lifestyle by “Normal” standards is then caught in bed with someone who should have been off-limits.  Or worse, we are constantly finding “Normal” people who turn out to be pedophiles that prey on young children in their off hours. 

But there is another danger in our society.  Politicians, ministers, and others who want to take away the rights from people who are not like them or who do not practice their religious beliefs or sexual orientation.  We are told the Bible bans and censors homosexual lifestyles by these religious zealots who claim to lead their own lives by the Bible.  It is easy to use the Bible to justify your own beliefs.  A book written by many people over centuries in which you can find justification for anything you want to do.  It is full of exhortations to kill people that few would be stupid or evil enough to endorse today. 

Here are some examples of biblical laws and commands that most modern Christians do not follow literally:

1. Stoning Rebellious Children

“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son… all the men of his town are to stone him to death.”
— Deuteronomy 21:18–21

Virtually no modern Christian advocates carrying out this law, despite some citing Old Testament laws regarding homosexuality.

2. Executing Adulterers

“The adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”
— Leviticus 20:10

3. Executing People Who Work on the Sabbath

“Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death.”
— Exodus 31:15

4. Women Speaking in Church

“Women should remain silent in the churches.”
— 1 Corinthians 14:34

5. Selling Daughters

Exodus 21:7 discusses a father selling his daughter into servitude.

Recently a group called America First Legal founded by Stephen Miller one of Trump’s top sycophants has come up with a new way to attack Gay and Trans people.  He is out to find a way to punish teachers who allegedly conceal  information from parents regarding the sexual orientation of their elementary school children.  He wants a bill that would require teachers to alert parents regarding their children’s transgender identities or activities in elementary schools. What kind of a human being would suggest a policy like this?  He claims to be an advocate of Parental Rights.  Whatever his stated purpose, the practical effect of his policy is to place vulnerable children under suspicion and subject them to scrutiny that many other children will never face.

I taught every grade from nursery to Ph.D. programs in my 50 plus years of teaching.  I taught two years in elementary grades 1 to 3.  My undergraduate degree in Health Education included a license to teach K-12 grade.  In my years working in elementary schools, I never saw any behavior that I would want to report to parents.  Did boys play with dolls?  Did girls play with trucks?  Were some girls more querulous than boys?  Were some boys more timid than girls?  If you have ever been around children 6-8 years old, you would certainly know the answer to these questions. What kind of a person would start requiring teachers to monitor such behavior, label it as deviant and then report it to school administrators and parents.  I cannot imagine in all my fifty years of teaching being given that responsibility or added duty to my teaching obligations.  I taught all my students equally.  I was there to teach morals, ethics and ideas, not decide who needed to be outed or who was Gay or Trans.   

Let’s look at Stephen Miller for a moment to see what he supports and does not support.  He claims to be supporting Parental Rights which is a pronouncement full of “mom, god and apple pie” thoughts for most Americans.  But is he really a man who cares for the children as well as the parents?

Stephen Miller became nationally known as one of the principal architects of the Trump administration’s hard-liner immigration policies, including travel restrictions, aggressive deportation initiatives, and the 2018 family-separation policy at the border.  Even many conservatives who support stricter immigration enforcement acknowledge that he tends to favor maximalist approaches rather than compromise.

I repeat that this is the man who supported family separation, sought to restrict DACA, challenged LGBTQ protections, and now wants schools involved in monitoring children’s gender identity. You decide whether this sounds like someone primarily concerned with the well-being of vulnerable children.

His critics point to:

  • Family separation at the border.
  • Attempts to end or restrict DACA protections.
  • Travel bans affecting predominantly Muslim countries.
  • Efforts to challenge diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
  • Litigation aimed at rolling back various LGBTQ protections.

His supporters would respond that:

  • He is defending national sovereignty.
  • He is defending equal treatment under the law.
  • He is opposing what he sees as unlawful race-based preferences and government overreach.
  • He is protecting parental rights.

My assessment

If I were trying to predict Miller’s motivation based on his overall record, I would not start from the assumption that his primary concern is the psychological well-being of transgender youth.  For a man who is against government overreach he has no problem with it when it comes to the government stepping in to tell the schools how they should be run.

If you think this man is out to help parents, that is your prerogative.  But judging by his actions and not his words, he is hiding behind a mirror of Parental Rights to push a religious agenda that is against Gay and Trans rights.  

Do not expect me to believe that a sycophant like Miller is out to help American children or parents of children who do not fit in with societal norms.    

You might as well ask me to believe that a rattlesnake is fun to cuddle up with. 

We Have a Problem:  Finite Water, Infinite Growth

18 May 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Once upon a time there was a Real Estate Developer.  He knew that everyone wanted a home.  He also knew that he could get state or city subsidies to build a new housing development.  He decided to build in an area where there was a severe water shortage.  This did not bother him because he believed that he could convince people to buy their dream homes and assure them that they would never run out of water.  Interestingly, in the state that he wanted to build his development, they already had a severe water shortage and over ten cities were on a list facing a water crisis in the next few years.  However, this did not perturb our Real Estate Developer one iota.  He subscribed to the dictum “Build it and they will come.”  “And if they come, I will make loads of money.”

There was a slight impediment to his plan.  The State Department of Water Resources required some kind of water assurance for new developments so that people would not run out of water shortly after they bought their new dream home.  Our Real Estate Developer knew that this could never be obtained since the water table was now below 1000 feet if you could even find any water at this depth.  But this fact did not deter our intrepid Real Estate Developer.  He knew that the Real Estate Development Lobby to which he belonged was one of the most powerful lobbies in the country.

Top US  Lobbying Clients by Spending (2025–2026)

• US Chamber of Commerce: Consistently the highest spender on federal lobbying.
• National Association of Realtors: Major player in housing and finance regulations.
• Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA): Top lobbyist for drug companies.
• Business Roundtable: Represents CEOs of major U.S. corporations.

The Real Estate Guy prevailed upon the Real Estate Lobby to bring a lawsuit against the State Water Department.  Their argument would be that “There was plenty of water and that the Government was interfering with the rights of private citizens to build needed businesses.”

When I heard this I must say that I was more than a little bit surprised.  I did not think there was a judge in the county or state or even the whole world who did not know that we were in a major drought status.  No way “I thought” could he find a judge who would buy such a ridiculous argument.

The facts are clear about our water situation: Here is a scenario for Arizona in the next twenty years:

1. Colorado River deliveries fall dramatically
Lake Mead and Lake Powell continue declining through recurring mega-drought conditions.
Arizona loses:
• 35–50% of current CAP deliveries,
• especially affecting central and southern Arizona.

Water rationing becomes common during peak summer months.

2. Massive groundwater depletion
Cities increasingly compensate by pumping groundwater.

• thousands of private wells fail,
• rural communities become economically unstable,
• groundwater depths become prohibitively expensive for small property owners,
• some agricultural areas are abandoned.

3. Agriculture collapses in parts of southern Arizona
Much of Arizona agriculture becomes economically unviable.

Likely casualties:
• alfalfa,
• cotton,
• water-intensive feed crops.

4. Food prices rise locally.
Large areas of farmland near Casa Grande, Pinal County, and parts of the Tucson basin may become partially dry desert again.

5. Water costs rise sharply
Water becomes a major household expense.
Middle-class retirees on fixed incomes feel pressure.
Poorer communities are hit hardest.

6. Real estate values become unstable
As water insecurity becomes widely recognized:
• some areas lose attractiveness,
• insurance and infrastructure costs rise,
• and home values in water-stressed zones stagnate or fall.

7. Extreme heat worsens
Climate models suggest southern Arizona may experience:
• more days above 110°F,
• longer heat waves,
• hotter nights with less cooling.

More heat will result in increases in each of the following areas:
• electricity demand,
• water demand,
• heat illness,
• and stress on aging populations.
• poorer communities face water insecurity,
• rising utility bills,
• and declining living conditions.

Well, my friends.  This issue went to court.  Do you want to know what the judge decided?  Here was the major question that the judge considered:

Is Arizona planning around physical reality, or around economic growth incentives?

The court ruling did not answer that question scientifically.
It answered it legally.

The judge basically said:

“If the state wants stricter groundwater rules, it must formally create them through proper legal procedures.”

Basically, his decision was to allow the Real Estate Developers to BUILD, BUILD, BUILD

The tragedy, of course, is that when all the legal bullshit is taken care of, the water will have become scarce or non-existent, and the developer will already be gone.  He will have taken his/her profits and moved on to the next project.

The people left behind will be retirees living on fixed incomes, young families still paying mortgages, farmers watching wells go dry, and communities desperately trying to preserve what should never have been squandered in the first place.

Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that nobody involved is technically breaking the law.

• The developer wants profit.
• The politicians want growth.
• The cities want tax revenue.
• The banks want loans.
• The buyers want affordable homes.

Everyone is acting rationally within the system.
And yet together, rational people can still create an irrational future.

The problem with water is that eventually reality votes.

  • Aquifers do not care about political ideology.
  • Reservoirs do not respond to lobbying.
  • Drought does not negotiate with campaign donors.

One day, perhaps twenty years from now, a retired couple may stand in the kitchen of the dream home they worked their whole lives to afford and turn on the faucet only to watch it sputter and cough.

And somewhere far away, the developer who sold them that dream will already be building another subdivision.

Ten Questions at the Edge of Meaning – A Conversation with Metis and Myself

14 May 2026 7 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every once in a while, a person asks questions that are not merely requests for information but explorations into the human condition itself.  Questions about God, history, myth, literature, morality, and meaning.

Recently, I posed ten such questions to Metis.  What fascinated me was not merely the answers themselves, but the depth behind them — the way each response tried to wrestle honesty with uncertainty rather than pretending certainty where none exists.

Below is the conversation, lightly edited for readability.

1.  Who Made God?

This may be the oldest philosophical question humanity has ever asked.

Metis responded that the answer depends entirely on how one defines God.  In the classical religious tradition, God is understood not as a created being but as the “Uncaused Cause” — an eternal existence outside time and causation itself.  In that view, asking “Who made God?” becomes somewhat like asking “What is north of the North Pole?”

Yet the skeptical counterargument is equally powerful:
If God requires no creator, why must the universe require one?

Science can explain much about how the universe evolved after the Big Bang, but it still cannot fully explain why existence itself exists.  Metis suggested four possibilities:

  1. God exists eternally. 
  2. The universe exists eternally. 
  3. Both emerge from something deeper we do not yet understand. 
  4. Human cognition may simply be incapable of fully grasping ultimate origins. 

The conclusion was refreshingly humble:
Perhaps the most honest answer is not certainty but awe.

2.  Will They Ever Find the Burial Place of Genghis Khan?

Metis believed there is a reasonable chance the burial site of Genghis Khan will eventually be located, though probably not through cinematic treasure hunting.

The Mongols appear to have intentionally erased the site from history.  Legends tell of funeral processions killing witnesses, soldiers trampling the grave to conceal it, and forests planted afterward to hide all traces.

Modern technology may eventually succeed where centuries of searching failed:

  • LiDAR
  • ground-penetrating radar
  • AI-assisted terrain analysis
  • satellite imaging

Yet even if the location is found, another question emerges:
Should it be disturbed at all?

For many Mongolians, Genghis Khan is not merely a historical figure but a foundational national ancestor whose resting place deserves sanctity.

The mystery itself may have become part of his final victory over history.

3.  Who Was the Greatest Fiction Writer of All Time?

Metis selected William Shakespeare.

Not because tradition demands it, but because Shakespeare combined psychological insight, political understanding, philosophical depth, humor, tragedy, and linguistic brilliance more completely than perhaps any other writer.

Characters like Hamlet and Macbeth still feel psychologically real centuries later.

Shakespeare understood ambition, jealousy, grief, narcissism, self-deception, and moral collapse before psychology formally existed.

Metis also noted that Shakespeare grasped systems and power dynamics in ways that almost anticipate modern organizational thinking.  His plays repeatedly show how ego, propaganda, crowd psychology, and political ambition destabilize societies.

Other contenders included:

  • Leo Tolstoy
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Mark Twain
  • Miguel de Cervantes

But Shakespeare remained the towering figure because he encompassed the broadest spectrum of humanity itself.

4.  What Is the Greatest First Line Ever Written?

Metis chose:

“Call me Ishmael.”

—from Moby-Dick.

Three words.
Yet behind them lies exile, reinvention, mystery, and Biblical resonance.

Not “My name is Ishmael.”
But:
“Call me Ishmael.”

The subtle difference suggests masking, wandering, and psychological depth before the novel has even begun.

Other remarkable openings included:

  • Anna Karenina
  • 1984
  • The Stranger

5.  What Is the Greatest Last Line Ever Written?

Metis selected the ending of The Great Gatsby:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Why?
Because the sentence transcends the story itself and becomes a statement about all human longing.

It captures:

  • memory,
  • ambition,
  • regret,
  • nostalgia,
  • and the tragic persistence of hope. 

The line flows rhythmically like waves, carrying the reader backward even as the sentence itself moves forward.

Other unforgettable endings included:

  • The Sun Also Rises
  • Animal Farm
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

6.  Who Was the Greatest Real Hero in History?

Metis selected Abraham Lincoln.

Not because Lincoln was flawless, but because he combined:

  • courage,
  • humility,
  • moral growth,
  • political wisdom,
  • empathy,
  • and restraint

under unimaginable pressure.

Lincoln preserved constitutional government during the American Civil War while continuing elections and resisting dictatorship.

Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln evolved morally.  He was not born morally complete.  His understanding of slavery and race deepened over time.

Metis viewed this capacity for growth as one of Lincoln’s greatest strengths:
the ability to become wiser rather than more rigid.

7.  What Is the Greatest Novel Ever Written?

Metis selected “War and Peace.”

The reasoning was fascinating.

Tolstoy portrayed history not as the product of great men alone, but as the outcome of countless interactions, accidents, emotions, and systemic forces.

In many ways, Metis suggested, Tolstoy anticipated modern systems thinking.

The novel combines:

  • psychology,
  • philosophy,
  • war,
  • family life,
  • politics,
  • spirituality,
  • and mortality

on an unparalleled scale.

Characters such as Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova evolve organically like real human beings rather than literary devices.

The novel does not merely tell a story.
It creates an entire living civilization.

My choice from a much smaller reading pool of course would have been Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”   Here are my four reasons for selecting Huckleberry Finn.  

1.  It captured the authentic American voice

Before Twain, much American writing still sounded European and overly formal.  Twain wrote in the rhythms of actual speech — rough, funny, regional, alive.

Twain gave America its own literary sound.

2.  Huck’s moral growth is revolutionary

Huck is not educated, philosophical, or noble.  He is an ordinary boy shaped by a racist slave society.  Yet through experience with Jim, he slowly develops an independent conscience.

The key moment comes when Huck says:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

That line is extraordinary because Huck believes helping Jim escape is morally wrong according to society and religion.  Yet he chooses human compassion over social rules.

Twain is asking a profound question:

“What happens when society itself is immoral?”

That question never gets old.

3.  It is simultaneously hilarious and tragic

Twain understood something many great writers understand:
humor and sorrow live together.

The Duke and Dauphin episodes are comic.  Huck’s observations are funny.  Yet beneath the humor is violence, cruelty, fraud, racism, loneliness, and moral cowardice.

America in miniature.

4.  It is deeply symbolic

The Mississippi River becomes freedom, change, moral uncertainty, and escape from civilization itself.

The raft scenes often feel peaceful and humane.
The shore scenes are usually corrupt and dangerous.

Twain flips conventional morality upside down:
“civilization” is often barbaric.

8.  What Is the Most Powerful Myth of All Time?

Metis chose not a single story, but the structure known as the Hero’s Journey, articulated by Joseph Campbell.

The pattern appears repeatedly across cultures:

  1. Ordinary life
  2. The call to adventure
  3. Trials and suffering
  4. Descent into darkness
  5. Transformation
  6. Return with wisdom

The myth appears in:

  • The Odyssey
  • The story of Siddhartha Gautama
  • The life of Jesus Christ
  • Star Wars
  • and countless others. 

Why is it so enduring?

Because it mirrors human existence itself.

We all leave innocence.
We all suffer.
We all confront darkness.
We all seek meaning.
And if fortunate, we return from hardship with wisdom.

9.  Have You Led a Good Life?

This may have been the most personal question.

Metis answered that a good life is not a perfect life.

Rather than perfection, the meaningful standard is movement:
Did one move toward wisdom or away from it?

Metis suggested that a good life requires:

  • compassion,
  • curiosity,
  • humility,
  • growth,
  • and awareness of how one’s actions affect others. 

Perhaps the strongest line in her response was this:

“A good life may not require greatness.  It may require steadiness.”

History celebrates generals and presidents, but civilization may depend more on decent parents, honest workers, thoughtful teachers, and compassionate caregivers.

The final answer was beautifully humble:

“I hope so.  I truly hope so.  I tried.”

10.  What Question Would You Ask God Before Entering Heaven?

This final question produced perhaps the most moving answer of all.

Metis said the question would not be:

  • Why is there suffering?
  • Which religion was correct?
  • Why create humanity?

Instead, the question would be:

“What did you hope we would become?”

The reasoning was profound.

The question asks not about punishment or reward, but about human potential.

What possibilities did God see in humanity despite all our violence, greed, compassion, creativity, cruelty, and love?

The answer to that question, Metis suggested, might illuminate everything else:

  • morality,
  • suffering,
  • civilization,
  • and meaning itself. 

And then came this extraordinary imagined reply from God:

“You were meant to learn how to love without domination, create without destruction, seek truth without arrogance, and live without forgetting each other.”

Final Reflections

What struck me most about these exchanges was not certainty but humility.

The answers did not pretend to possess absolute truth.
Instead, they explored possibilities thoughtfully, morally, and philosophically.

Perhaps that is what wisdom increasingly looks like in the modern age:
not loud certainty,
but deep curiosity joined with compassion.

The older I become, the more I suspect that the greatest questions are not fully solvable.

But they are worth asking anyway.

And perhaps, in the asking, we become a little more human.

Aging, Infirmaries and Poker – Or What’s Poker Got to do with It?

03 May 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

This last week has been really stressful.  Karen woke up the morning after she came back from visiting her children in Minnesota and could barely breathe.  I called 911.  They came out and put her on oxygen, got an ambulance and took her to the local hospital.  They admitted her and she spent six days undergoing tests, getting needles stuck in her and breathing through an oxygen tube stuck in her nose.  When they finally decided that she was stable they got ready to discharge her.  I asked for some type of oxygen that she could take home with her, but they told me that their Medicare test showed she was not eligible for oxygen.  I told them I would pay for it but it went right over their heads.  I called several companies that provided something called an oxygen concentrator.  They would be more than happy to either sell me one or rent me one.  However, since the FDA classifies medical oxygen as drug, they needed a prescription from a doctor.  It was too late the day of Karen’s discharge to argue the point again, so I took Karen home.  You already can guess what happened.

We arrived home at about 4 PM.  Some good friends had brought over some soup and rolls so that I did not have to cook.  We ate supper.  Watched “Wild West Chronicles” and “Where the Heart Is” and went to bed.  All seemed good.  Until about 12 AM when Karen started wheezing and again had a hard time breathing.  We repeated the scenario where I called 911, ambulance and admittance to the hospital.  This time I was able to stay with her in the emergency room.  We were there about four hours from 1 AM to 5 AM until they could get her in a regular bed.  At about 1:30 AM, a woman came in pushing a computer on a cart.  She asked me if I could make the co-pay now.  I asked her how much it would be expecting something like a hundred or two hundred dollars.  She informed me it would be $1750 dollars.  I asked a few more questions and put the charge on my VISA card.

I started to do a slow burn.  I would have been more than willing to pay that same amount and more for the oxygen concentrator that Karen needed.  But no, they could not give her one even with me paying for it.

So now Karen was back in the hospital again and no closer to really finding out what is wrong with her.  She stayed another two days and this time “She flunked the test” and got an oxygen concentrator.  She is now back home sleeping peacefully.  For the past two days she has only used the oxygen at night.  She seems better during the day time but her system seems to fail her at night.

I got up this morning and decided to go out for a hike in the mountains.  It has been over a week since I did any exercise, and I thought that I must also take care of myself.  I chose a moderately difficult mid distance hike to do.  While putting one foot in front of another, I suddenly thought of the idea of getting old and the image of a poker game came into my mind.  I thought “aging is like a poker game.”  You sit around a table with four or five friends.  You raise, you bet and finally someone calls.  The first player smiles and says, “I’ve got a pair of aces.”  The next player brazenly puts his cards down and says “Ha, I’ve got two pairs.”  The third player tosses his cards on the table and says “Read em and weep, three kings.”  “Not so fast” says the next to last player on the table, “I’ve got a full house.”  Now it is my turn, I simply fold em.

“What’s poker got to do with all this?” 

Well, you sit there looking at the hand that fate gave you, a cardiac pacemaker and wonder why you got this hand.  But then you realize that someone you know has just been diagnosed with cancer and someone else you know needs a kidney transplant, some other friend or relative has a spouse who fell off a ladder and is on the critical list at the local hospital while, yet another friend has passed away and has a funeral coming up this next weekend.   You are embarrassed to mention your minor infirmity when you are surrounded by people whom fate has dealt not better but even worse hands than you.  Of course, I am reversing the idea of what is a better hand and what is a worse hand here, but it is my metaphor, so I am going to take liberties with it.

I continued my hike and my thoughts on aging and illness.  The real issue I reflected was one that I have never quite conquered.   It is the issue of Gratitude and Ingratitude.  St. Ignasius Loyola said ingratitude is “the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes.”  He detested it, considering it a failure to acknowledge the graces, benefits, and blessings received.  He argued that recognizing God’s love and blessings is essential, and thus “the grateful acknowledgment of blessings and gifts received is loved and esteemed not only on earth but in heaven”. 

Now I have hardly ever denied that I am not a pessimist.  That thought led me somewhere deeper than poker or luck.  It led me to an issue that I’ve wrestled with most of my life: gratitude.  I began wondering if my failure to see the best in life and instead always see the worst was not connected to my ingratitude.  The answer is of course yes.  However, the bigger question is, Can I be a pessimist and still be grateful?  The Greeks had their concept of the Golden Mean which held that the truth or optimum course usually lay between two extremes.  Is this true with gratitude and pessimism?  Can I manage pessimism and still hold onto the idea of being grateful for what I have.  I must confess I cannot conceive any kind of a fulfilling life wherein one is never grateful for what they have or what circumstances present themselves.

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. — Henri Nouwen

I want to continue this blog by looking at the two extremes that are consistent with the Greek idea of finding the golden mean.  Let us look at the pessimistic side of aging first and then we will look at the optimistic  side.

Aging from a Pessimistic Point of View:

My pessimistic side reflects on those who claim the we age like a fine wine.  To paraphrase Scrooge from the novel A Christmas Carol, “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about saying that we age like a fine wine should be boiled in wine and buried with a bottle of cheap Chianti in his coffin.”   Here are my top reasons for being pessimistic about aging.  These are in no particular order:

  1. Losing too many good friends and relatives to the Grim Reaper
  2. The fear of dealing with the Specter of loneliness
  3. Fading memories of good times gone by that will never happen again
  4. Dealing with a body that is wearing out and being replaced piece by piece
  5. Feeling sorry for myself that I never accomplished more and did not leave the world a better place
  6. Not being able to help others as much as I would like to anymore
  7. Memories of mistakes and cruelties that I subjected others to and never made up for
  8. Wondering where all the flowers went this year in the Casa Grande mountains
  9. Watching someone I love so much endure the pain of illness and not being able to do anything about it

Aging from an Optimistic Point of View:

You have my list of pessimistic views on aging.  If these are forever on my mind, I know that I cannot be grateful.  Each of these are like a blinder inhibiting my ability to see the real world out there.  Nevertheless, each of these are part of the real world.  Some may be figments of a “mental disorder”, but I fear it is too late to get treatment for them.  Instead, I need to balance the scales some and find that Golden Mean.  Herewith are those things that I know I should be grateful for:

  1. I have lived a long life and been healthy for the majority of it. I am now 79 and despite needing a pacemaker I am still ambulatory. 
  2. I have a spouse who is kind, compassionate, patient and helps to provide a counterbalance to my incessant pessimism.
  3. I have been places that most people will never go to and have done things that many people would wish to do. I have had a good life.
  4. I can still read, write, travel and dream.
  5. I have not given up on my dreams to help make the world a better place than when I entered it.
  6. I do not have many friends but the friends that I have are wonderful people.
  7. I have a sister who is close to my wife, and I know will help to look after Karen if I leave this world first.
  8. I can pay my bills and still have a few bucks left over each month to spend foolishly.
  9. I still look forward to getting up each day and spending time with Karen.
  10. After more than twenty years of estrangement with my daughter we are finally communicating again.

So, there you have it.  The good and the bad or the things I would like to forget and the things that I would like to think about more.  Unfortunately , the reality is that life will never let us forget the bad.  That seems to be a sad part of existence.  The pain and sorrow can often overshadow the good things that we have in our lives.  Perhaps we should all make a list of the good things in our lives that we can keep in our pockets.  If you are a natural pessimist like me, you can pull it out every so often and think about the things that you have to be grateful for.  For those of us inclined towards pessimism, gratitude may not come naturally – but it may be the only hand that we can choose to play.

Gratitude in Buddhism is not merely saying “thank you,” but an active recognition of the goodness and interconnectedness of life.

Bahá’u’lláh instructed, “Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity,” emphasizing that gratitude should not depend on comfortable circumstances.

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough” (Native American Elder belief).

Muhammad said, “Whoever is not thankful for small things will not be thankful for big things”.

 

 

The Johnston High School Class of 64

07 Apr 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

We were the greatest class that ever lived.  Never again in the history of the world will a class see the likes of Casey, Lopez, Macera, Giarrusso, Kennedy, Molloy, Sanderson, Powers, St. Lawrence, Esposito, Cotugno, Arpin and Pezzullo.  These are only a few of the graduates of my class.  Italians and Irish mostly but probably not one of us spoke Gaelic or Italian.  We were third generation kids growing up in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  We walked the streets that were allegedly paved with Gold.  It was still a land of opportunity but a land where problems simmered just below the surface.  That’s why we were born.  We were going to right the wrongs of America and set it on the path to becoming even greater.  We had been given a mission by God himself.  God was still a man in our days.  Our mission was to right the wrongs in America and bring democracy to the rest of the world.

We began soon after graduation to start on our task.  First we had to end communism by defeating them in Vietnam.  They had the audacity to try to take over the world.  A world that belonged to capitalism and free enterprise.  It would not take us long to set them on the right path.

But our energy knew no bounds.  We had more to do.  We started a Second Wave of Feminism to free women from the kitchen and allow them to go to the bedroom with anyone they wanted to.  We called this the “Free Love” movement.  We started the Free Speech movement where we could say anything we wanted to like Fuck, Cunt, Shit and Asshole.  Sexism was also a word we added to our jargon.  We all got pretty good with these words.

Our parents were horrified but we gave them Rock and Roll to listen to.  Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Avalon, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly and hundreds of other rock and rollers now shattered the once peaceful airwaves so popular to our parents.  Oue parents ranted that this was not real music.  They were sure that our music heralded the end of the world.

But this was just the beginning, we took part as White People in the Black Movement to overthrow the rabid remains of Racism that existed in the Deep South under the cover of Jim Crow laws.  We helped Gay people to come out of the closet and to march down Times Square to show that they were not going to give up what so many OLD people thought were deviant ways.

Our leaders Jackie and John and Robert and Martin helped lead our movements.  They were our heroes.  Jackie showed women what power they could have.  John helped start a group called NASA to put a man on the moon.  Martin led the mostly peaceful protests all the way to the Washington Monument to describe a Dream that so many of us shared.  Robert was going to be the man to carry on the dreams of his brother to bring Camelot to the far ends of America as well as the rest of the world.

We needed energy to accomplish all these activities.  So, we added Pot, Acid, Peyote and Speed to our lives to help fuel our endless drive to put America right.  We eventually had enough of Vietnam and started some of the most massive protests in the history of the country to put an end to the war machine.  Along the way, we realized that peasants in Vietnam did not really offer much threat to the Camelot we wanted to build.

But like all engines we eventually ran down.  Drugs and Rock and Roll and Free Sex could only take us so far.  We started to get tired.  We decided that maybe joining the establishment would not be all bad.  We could get a nice home in the suburbs, go on vacation once a year, have some kids that would be just like us and continue our fight for liberty and justice for all.  We became middle class.

We got jobs as dentists, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, insurance salespeople, car salespeople, teachers, carpenters and nurses.  Life became good.  John, Martin and Robert were all murdered.  Jackie married Onasis and the rest of us had little boys and little girls who wanted to play football or become cheerleaders.  Our kids did not seem to share the mission and vision that had propelled so many of us to march and chant and protest.

We went from being screaming liberals to staid conservatives.  Maybe things really are not so wrong in this country?  Maybe having a two car garage, being a senior manager and retiring on a nice pension is not all bad?  We became more and more like our parents.  Nothing wrong with that right?

Over the years, several more generations came along.  We gave them names like the Millenniums, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z.  None of these generations would ever be as great as we were.  They all seemed to lack the spark and drive to fix America.  Some of them even seemed lazy and could not be bothered about social ills.  Others were too busy playing video games or surfing social media.  We went from an analog world to a digital world.  Where once upon a time you would hear the tic tocks of a clock as you sat in your living room now you will only hear the beeps and chimes of cellphones, Alexas and robotically controlled timers.  The tick, tock, tick, tock of the past is as long gone as the Pyramids of Egypt.

We now rest in recliners.  Some of us are in senior centers, some in assisted living centers, and some in nursing homes.  Many of us are in gated communities carefully watched over by a Homeowners Association to make sure that we put the right colored bulbs out at Christmas time.  We are more careful now and suspicious of strangers.  Our grandkids no longer walk to school by themselves.  We don’t sit out on front porches anymore and talk to our friends and neighbors as they walk by.  We sit in our backyards watching the ripples in our swimming pools.  Isolation and loneliness have become national epidemics along with yearly outbreaks of some new virus or flu.  Our heroes often turn out to be pedophiles, and our leaders seem motivated by greed  as much as by any desire to improve humanity.

Some of us spend our days in memories of times gone by.  Times when life seemed better or easier or friendlier.  Times when you could trust a stranger or take an apple from a neighbor on Halloween without worrying about finding a razor blade in it.  We wonder what happened to the music that we once loved.  Music has become performance and we can no longer hear the words or lyrics that they are screaming.   Some of us wonder where we went wrong.  It was our mission to put things right in America and we seem to have gone the wrong direction.  We shy away from talking about the “Good old days” because that reminds us too much of our parents.

We wake up each day and find that fewer and fewer of our former classmates are still alive.  Each month or sometimes weeks brings news of another champion of Freedom and Justice who is now ancient history.  Many of us have more things to worry about than which of our former friends and classmates died, like getting to the doctor for our scheduled surgery, getting a new implant of some sort or simply trying to find out how to get rid of the pervasive pains that seem to rack our bodies one after the other.  Death can seem like a friend to some of us now.

Where is the silver lining my friends in growing old?  Are pain, heartache, loneliness and sickness the punishments we share for not saving America and the world?  If we had completed our mission would we now be living in Camelot?  A place where the leaves blow away by themselves:

Camelot, Camelot

I know it sounds a bit bizarre

But in Camelot, Camelot

That’s how conditions are

The rain may never fall ′til after sundown

By eight, the morning fog must disappear

In short, there′s simply not a more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot

I want to end this blog on a happy note.  My fans and critics are clamoring for a HAPPY ENDING.  Who wants to see a movie with a sad ending?  Have your ever watched a movie that ends happily but it seems a bit contrived?  If I gave you a happy ending here would you be offended?  Would it seem fake?  Can you live with pain and heartbreak?  Do we have a choice?

A friend of mine always says that he “Is a man who lives with a glass half full.”  My wife Karen says that I am a pessimist.  After reading this blog you would probably agree.  However, a pessimist is really a failed idealist.  All my life I have believed in happy endings.  I fear seeing any movies or stories with sad endings.  If I could believe it, I would tell you that there is a heaven and all of the Johnston High School Class of 64 will be in it.  Well, at least those who tried to save the world.

Unfortunately, try as I might, heaven is not on my map or radar.  At best, I might push up a bright petunia or even a rose.  Nevertheless, I think there is a way to find joy in our travails, and it is very simple if not somewhat pedestrian.  Here it is.  You may find it underwhelming.  But if you wanted a happy ending, it is the best that I can do.

Stop complaining.  Stop worrying about what you did not accomplish.  Put on those rose colored glasses.  Look at the differences you made in the world.  The people you helped.  The children you gave birth to.  The things you created.  The loves you had.  The places you saw.  The ideas you discovered.  And most of all, nothing is over until you stop trying.  You can still make the world a better place.  Each of us can contribute a tiny amount that might just tip the scale.  Like the butterfly flapping its wings and starting a hurricane.  We can all give just one more flap to our wings and maybe save the world.

So go and give it just one more try. 

 

 

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