The Art of Dying

Whatever part of the world you go to, there are changes. This time in the Northern Hemisphere, throughout the temperate region, fall colors are treating us to one of the most brilliant natural backgrounds of the year. Even more than in the full flush of summer, where the greens dominate, autumn brings forth the stylish death that we all wish could be our own. It is not by coincidence that cultures around the world near the mid-latitudes track the fall color intensity, write of it in song and poetry, and reflect on the death of us all, because in our way we are engaged in a complex mimicry of nature and the process of letting go of things that no longer serve us. Perhaps we will never be able to achieve the sublime vibrancy of the natural world when it is in the throes of death, however we do not have to. Ours is to reflect the process of dying in the most elegant way we know how.

It is with a certain level of trepidation that we enter the period that is referred to as, Day of the Dead, All Souls, Night of the Dead, Hallows Eve, or Samhain. After all, it harkens us to accept our own mortality. with a foot firmly in the land of the living, we annually confront the quicksand of death and the overwhelming disembodied power of all who have passed the veil before us. This is the time we honor those who have given their lives to keep the current cadre of oligarchs firmly in their place. We also honor the trade unionists who were killed trying to take back a shred of dignity from their slave-masters. This is the time we (hopefully) forgive the limited vision of the prior generations and forgive ourselves for believing their fantasies. As the sun shifts lower in the sky, we must learn to forge new alliances closer to home that will keep us alive through the coming cold dark nights. One foot in the grave is a shockingly real concept at this time of the year and how we handle it in the next few days and weeks will make all the difference over the coming years.

On our voyage of discovery, each one of us is far more limited than we typically understand. When I glance out at the world, especially if I try to get the big picture, I have to turn down the visual volume of everything between me and either the horizon or whatever backstop there is for my line of sight. Many urban dwellers are far more familiar with the backstop than the horizon. Spending our lives indoors, or in cities makes sure that we rarely see to the horizon. Just this one element of our experience points to the virtual lack of understanding of the world around us. A friend studies the dismal science, economics, and though he may know more than anyone about Boolean algebra and economic opportunity costs, he cannot fathom why a dozen eggs are worth five dollars. The further down any rabbit hole you go, or going down the largest number of them only gets you so far. In addition, wherever these threads take you, there you are, isolated in your introspection. Like dying while still in and of this Earth, however discreet your awareness, you are out there beyond the body, one your own path as it were and all others are dead to you. The occult (in medical parlance it just means hidden) nature of every single thing that we do not direct our attention to necessarily condemns us to a relatively dark and isolated place. Realization that the sum total of all the experiences of all of our relations, from the beasts of the forests as well as those of the air, from the bacteriologic community to the giant sea squid, make up the sum total of all that is 'known".

We might not develop new ways of understanding the bigger picture until we find data streams that have not yet been testable by any known means. Some time after we design ways to "see" into other realms, we will need to calibrate our devices. However, if we let that part of us die that needs to know, to exert power and control over our surroundings, we could begin to experience a whole new paradigm. The irony is not lost on many of us, that at this time, the 1% will try to select the next slate of characters, that will carry out their will through my House of Representatives and the Senate. what our nation truly needs is to allow their influence to become dead to us, to open our horizons to accept a bigger view of the world around us. There will be people who, after the elections will smugly cross their arms and nod forcefully and say "We Voted." as if to imply that things have been decided, but the true work of birthing a new way requires years of dedication, personal sacrifice and the will to improve the lot of all beings, honoring those who came before but allowing what has not worked in the past to fade into obscurity.

Minding Our Own Business

I had to retire this shirt but will never retire the message or the inspiration that it has brought to so many!

Those who pay attention to United States history may know that Benjamin Franklin wanted our money to include, and the official motto of our nation to be "Mind your own business." More and more of us, it seems, are doing just that. Rather than running from place to place, trying to keep up with the hectic, no; frenetic pace that commercialism demands of us, we are learning to make more of what we need, make due with what we've got, join in the sharing economy and use less while reaping higher standards of living. It has been a long time coming, but demand for many products is tapering off as we learn the difference between wants and needs. This has many collateral economic and ecological benefits. The more we learn, the more sophisticated our facility for conservation becomes. this post is meant to be a pat on the back for all of your efforts.

Some of these benefits are direct, many others are secondary and a nearly infinite amount are tertiary. Oil prices are perhaps the most exciting direct benefits of our new way of life because we have the most control over how much petrochemical product we consume. Doing all of the things that I have been encouraging for decades can nearly eliminate the need for pumping oil from underground. As demand declines, through all of us walking more, riding bikes, insisting on more efficient vehicles, carpooling, using mass transit, combining trips, shopping for neighbors, etc. the use of fossil fuel tapers off. It has been doing so at a greater and greater rate and it is finally having the undeniable impact we are seeing in the marketplace. This reduces the price per gallon and price per barrel of oil in the world marketplace. Reductions in packaging reduce demand for plastics, reduction in the use of plastics in turn require less transportation of these materials and create a feedback loop of lessening the need for pulling more and more oil from the ground. The price of oil on world markets has plummeted in the past year or so and through a host of conservation efforts, demand continues to fall, impacting price of both fuel and the feedstock, oil, that is pushed through refineries. As we consume more and more local produce, the fuel per calorie cost drops and demand for polluting oil shrinks. The less waste we create, the less we have to shift into landfill, and the energy used to move our waste decreases as well.

As the majority of the world population begins to head into another winter, after six months of record high temperatures, we can only assume that fuel use will be less as well, because global climate change is making our climate less severe in winter. I rarely trust predictions of meteorologists, but they are saying that a return of the polar vortex into temperate zones, this coming winter, is unlikely. A reduction in fossil heating fuels will in turn reduce the price for oil and natural gas. As demand decreased, prices often fall, which can undermine conservation efforts, but the majority of the population will welcome having more money in their pockets and not want to waste more energy which will only feed it back into the pockets of the oligarchs and corporate welfare whores. We continue to insulate, turn our thermostats down and seal up cracks that used to waste energy. Demand for fuel efficient vehicles is still expanding and as we learn the true value of minding our own business, we often learn more and more methods for cutting out needless waste. We have all heard the maxim haste makes waste and as we learn to deal with longer term issues we also understand that each penny saved is a penny earned. This in turn leads to greater and greater freedom of choice when we do enter the marketplace.

For the more experienced among us, a fun thing to do is to unwrap the over-packaged things that we do buy right at the check-out, leaving the packaging for the business, that sells the product, to deal with. If they start to see an increase in cost associated with stupid packaging, they are more likely to do the right thing as well and make the producers pay to get rid of the stuff. There are now whole stores that have none of their products in packages. Apple Computer has eliminated the need for and even the possibility of inserting a CD by offering all software online. One more source of little-used plastic has disappeared. These changes seem minute when looked at in isolation, but together they are a living testament to conservation and efficiency. Just like when I harvest my food from my garden. The only calories that are burned are ones that came from the garden in the first place. The beet tops and potato skins that fill my compost are once again transported to the compost pile and spread as nutrients for soil building, by calories produced right there, without waste and without the petrochemical mediation of agribusiness and/or transportation.

It is being said that a wet fall this year is wreaking havoc on farmers and for a number of reasons. First, the ground is too wet to harvest much of the corn and soybean crop. This keeps millions of gallons of fuel from being burned, reducing demand for oil and gas/diesel. Even though the wet fall is demanding more natural gas for drying out grain crops, since so much will be left in the fields, there may be less demand than we might otherwise expect. This in turn makes the price of home heating fuel more reasonable. Of course, the oligarchs, unwilling to foot the cost of any changes and are trying to ram legislation down our throats that would reduce the cost of energy per BTU, while making up those losses on the backside by raising surcharges, basic service fees as well as other "fixed" costs proposed for consumers. Instead of encouraging conservation, these approaches are a thinly veiled attempt to bring back the "good old days" of wasteful consumerism and ecological destruction. Those who are minding their business will have none of that!

Add to this the fact that many families are learning to enjoy one another, spending more time sitting around the table educating their children or playing games. If they do have to go out they often do it as a larger group, exploring their neighborhood by bike or on foot. Enjoying a local park or attraction rather than jetting off across the country to experience a mediated world of electronic gizmos and hyper energy dependent distractions. Even the relatively new term "stay-cations" has come into our consciousness like a breath of fresh air. By simply unplugging our computers and phone, we have learned just why we built that deck or planted such a beautiful array of flowers around our home. Taking time to smell the roses takes on a whole new meaning when you realize that it fits nicely into the revolution that is not being televised. I see it in every neighborhood that I visit, although some still seem to miss the point of meeting the neighbors and sharing what you have with those less fortunate, or whom you care for.

I was just listening to an expert explain that the recent slide in oil prices has been, over 15% in only six months. The cost of a barrel of oil went from well over $100 six months ago to around eighty dollars today and we are within less than ten dollars of making fracking unprofitable. That is a victory many can get behind! I, for one, have pledged to redouble my efforts to not burn any unnecessary fossil fuel. Leave it in the ground! That is my motto. We all need to begin to understand that minding our own business includes protecting the water supply (for everyone), making sure that other life forms have a chance at living healthy lives (not just for our selves or our species) and that our neighbors as well as ourselves have cleaner air to breathe as well. When we sequester ourselves in the "safety" of our own isolation, it is easy to feel like we are a voice in the wilderness, easy to feel alone or radical or even out of touch. When we look at it in another dimension, all of us are working toward sustainability and living better for less, doing so automatically helps to build a more sustainable world and together we are able to make far more progress than any one of us could alone. Bless you all for helping to define more clearly the difference between wants and needs. In the end it may be the only thing standing between a life worth living and having to die out like so many other species.

Harvest Moon

It is said that, "We reap what we sow", this is the time of year that most of our pagan ancestors looked back on their harvest and asked, "Did we plant enough peas this year?, Should we replace a row of potatoes with kale? or Why didn't I plant more Brussels sprouts?" In my experience, I have been hearing these sorts of conversations from more and more people each year. I am both happy and proud to know that more and more individuals are taking responsibility for providing at least some of their own food supply. It gives me great hope to hear and see that more and more people are "discovering", that each decision we make has ramifications, not just in the here and now, but that continue to shape the future long after our minds are made up.

In point of fact, Ronald Reagan was not clear on most issues.

For decades I have been telling people that anyone with a truck and a trailer can start a lawn care service and that using fly by night operations has allowed a proliferation of both low quality care and really bad management techniques in our yards. I continue to see weed and feed applied by commercial lawn "care" services in spite of the fact that the two applications, to be effective, need to be made at different times of the year. Because nearly anyone can start a lawn care service, that industry has suffered greatly and many companies are just terrible at their work. Corporate farms, providing our food supply have destabilized (and often sterilized) more acres than our yards will ever harm. However, the faraway damage that is done to provide non-food products (ie: high fructose corn syrup, soya lecithin and "enriched" four) that many consume is considered to be "someone else's problem". In point of fact, these problems belong to all of us because not only does consuming this trash harm our bodies, but the land itself is being desecrated by their production. The bitter harvest of pollution, deforestation, degradation of the environment, social disorder and chaos wreaked on public heath and our bodies by mega-farms is slowly being seen as a direct assault on our future. This Harvest Moon, I want to speak in a little more detail about the management of more than just the land, but our lives generally.

For instance, embedded in our current world view are fears about ebola. Rightly so, this virus has been killing half the people that it infects. There is a window, as with all viruses, that allows it to be living in us before we manifest symptoms, and therefore any carrier looks "normal" at first and only after two to twenty-one days do they have any idea, or warning signs that they may have been exposed. Confounding this issue is the fact that to many, especially during the cold and flu season, when the onset of symptoms does occur, it can look like cold or flu, something that is completely "normal" in our experience. How can this possibly relate to reaping what we sow? Well, the seasonal "cycle" may not be in terms of or annual trip around the Sun, but we are "harvesting" what we have sown. Our ancestors enslaved millions of Africans, ripping them from their native soil, disrupting their cultural patterns, eliminating their ties to their homeland and then, in an act designed to placate the conscience of the slave masters decades later, "we" created a "country" that was called Liberia. Oddly enough, this land of "liberation", created exclusively from scratch by and for people dislocated from their homeland generations earlier, that were released from servitude in our land, is putting the entire planet into the throes of fear and enslaving the rest of us with the shackles of ignorance and fear. Sometimes we do not reap what we sow for generations.

Just a quick aside: I have written at length about how Ronald Reagan has been propped up as a great leader by not only folks on the right, politically, but by many left-leaning folks as well. He waited until twenty thousand were dead from AIDS before doing anything about it. now, people are blaming President Obama for the ebola infections of three people and the death of one. (one who was infected in Liberia) At this moment, only one American has died of the disease. Obama is mobilizing massive amounts of resources to go to Africa to try to stop this epidemic at the source. I recently learned that the military efforts alone are preparing to build seventeen "ebola hospitals", withing just a few months, that will each be capable of treating one hundred patients at a time. With a lot of intelligent and focused effort, he is hoping to stem the tide of this disease, before it becomes a world-wide issue. 

We can do better in the future than we have done in the past. human beings have the power to make changes based on facts and existing conditions. This season is often referred to as the Pagan New Year. The dying of the plant community encourages us to honor the spirits of the dead, loosen the ties that bind us to what has been alive in the past and allows us to make new commitments, resolutions and to embrace new ideas, step out in new directions and use the momentum of growth to guide us to fulfilling our highest dreams and aspirations. One thing that I have learned during my more than half a century on this planet is that implementing any new habit takes nearly two moons. That is why the Harvest Moon is such a great time for new beginnings. If we take the time to think critically about where we have come from, what "crops" we have sown and what we want to plant in the future now, we can let the things that we desire to eliminate go back to the Earth, "composting" old materials, old ideas and old ways, that can help create vital "soil" upon which life can thrive. The energy of the season allows us to  redouble our efforts and informs our baby steps toward a rebirth of sorts that gains power and that will be reinforced by the influence that comes from the returning sun in just a couple of moons. Honoring the dead is about more than just our ancestors, even things that had been alive in us must be let go from time to time and the changing season shows us that when things are no longer necessary in our lives, letting them return to the Earth is often the best way to bury them forever.

As much as we fill our larders during this time of the year, we also clear out the old growth that will no longer sustain life. As busy as we may be, taking time to prepare for the winter's long sleep is also necessary at this time. In closing, I am reminded of another parable that we are often admonished with, "You made your bed, now lie in it."  We truly do reap what we sow, that is why I work so hard writing these words. They are infused with love, for my readers, civilization generally and the planet. I love each and everyone alive on planet Earth at this time. I want us all to have a vibrant and abundant future and the ways that I have learned serve us best can be replicated anywhere on the planet. That is why I write. I intend these words to be a vehicle for transmission of ideas and concepts that operate like a virus, they may "infect" those who read and understand them in ways that do not destroy life, but that affirm it. The supporting and informing of future generations depends on our understanding of what serves us well, what we want more of in the future and what "crops" we have grown too much of in the past.

Philanthropy and Wealth

A dear friend was listening to a group of people heaping derision on the ultra-wealthy. Negativity was being spewed out of half a dozen mouths about how the oligarchs have purchased our obstructionist Congress (or at least the majority in our House of "Tea Party" Representatives) To be clear, there was more frustration in people's voices than actual hate, but the consensus seemed to be that equating wealth with some sort of inherent worth was crippling our economy, eviscerating democracy and turning the lives of working class people into nothing more than wage slavery.

To put the events that I am about to describe into perspective, this friend is a unique hybrid of trust baby and lottery winner. His parents bought an empty piece of land with a small amount of cash many years ago in an area near a large body of putrid water. They built a nice house, on a berm high enough to be safe from flooding, over fifty years ago. Back then, pollution control measures were unheard of. The water outside their door was a toxic soup with nearly constant algae blooms and fish kills in summer. The lake was fouled by toxic loading from electroplating, foundry waste, landfill leachate, dumping of all kinds and effluent from both large cities and dairy operations which made the water stink and slowly, all of their neighbors moved away. The state allowed a "developer" to cut a channel in through the marsh, just north of their property, which was to provide a private marina for a hundred or so "nice" condominiums.  Since then, pollution control measures were implemented turning the water from a toxic colloidal suspension to a relatively clean lake. Since then, pollution control measures were implemented turning the water from a cesspool to something that one could almost swim in. Consequently, the investment that they made to be out on the point, where literally no one wanted to live back then has increased their wealth on paper by over one thousand fold.

Since my friend's parents purchased their land, the work that has been done to reign in pollution has benefited them immeasurably. The channel that was cut, to allow boat access, has silted in and become swamp again, far too expensive to keep open for the development to survive. Instead, about half a mile back from the lake there is a tenement of shoddy town houses that has a seawall and mosquito breeding grounds where the channel used to be.

Anyway, my friend defended the rich. He claimed that without the ultrawealthy, we would be out of jobs because the theater that we were standing in was built and maintained through the philanthropic donations of those same oligarchs. There was an abject moment of silence and I do believe that one or two in the group felt completely out of their depth. Suddenly, they had been jerked by an unseen hook, like a fish on a line and they knew they were to be someone's dinner. I responded almost immediately and without hesitation, "That is exactly what they want you to think." Theater existed long before oligarchs. It was just called storytelling. If we did not offer tax breaks for the wealthy, for "donating" to not-for-profit corporations, how many would "give"? Show me one ultra-wealthy person who has given as much of themselves or of their wealth as any one of us do supporting theater or the arts.

Then I got to thinking...just how much do I "give" to theater and the arts? Me, a man of modest means. Most of the miles that I drive in a year are to support theater and the arts. There is no reimbursement for travel in my job as a union stagehand. There is also no compensation for meals that I eat when I'm on the road or working out of town. Let me add that the oligarchs have made sure that there are precious few days of work in the town I am from, although we have another excellent theater built by other oligarchs where I live, so I am forced to drive nearly ten thousand miles each year to secure employment as a professional stagehand. That means that if I were to drive alone to every gig, one third to half of my income is spent just getting to the place where theater is taking place. I have chosen to work in the theater because I was born into a family that poured their lives into the stagehouse. In my youth, nearly everyone I knew, and all of my mentors, believed that society was better off if we shared the stories that take place in the theater. "On the boards" as we call it, because most stage floors are made of wood. Three generations of my family have been involved in technical aspects of re-creating the parables and teaching moments that inform our social order, yet none of them ever got tax breaks for investing their lives in backstage affairs. Hell, sometimes they were lucky to get paid for the materials that they donated.

We, the vast underclass, give our lives to keep the machinery of society in good repair, lubricated and in good running order. Why is it that the oligarchs only want to give money? The reason is simple, they will always have more money, so it has no value to them. We only have one life to give. Make it count!

My entire family has participated in community theater and when my mother was teaching, because she taught art, the principal assumed that building and painting sets and building properties would be "easy" for her the additional hours of time spent on three school plays each year was uncompensated and nothing about doing that work was in her contract. Let me say, for the record, neither was working late every Friday during the football season, so she could help the cheerleaders with giant posters and signs for the football games. In addition to not being paid for the real efforts that we put into helping theater survive, we don't get any tax relief either.

It frequently feels like we are being stabbed in the back by the uberwealthy. Their hopes, dreams and aspirations seem to take precedence over our quality of life, our health and welfare, and with the push toward voucher schools and the collapse of public schooling generally as well as the insidiousness of corporate greed defiling our food system, our ability to raise healthy, intelligent children. The real twisting of the knife comes about when powerful interests controlling the media tell us that we are better off for having a class of people who throw away what we make in a year, or ten, or even our entire working careers, to simply reduce their tax burden.

Everything always boils down to the difference between wants and needs. We all want to be able to make our way safely through the world and have some level of comfort in doing so, but what we need is the safety of knowing that we are cared for, paid attention to, not abused too much, appreciated and loved. I truly wish that they gave tax breaks for these things.

Passionate Living

When one seeks to suck the marrow from the bones of life, certain distinctions necessarily fade away. First off,the lines between ourselves and others become indistinct. When we hug, our bacteriologic communities mingle. If we breathe each others breath, we have inoculated one another for life. On a macroscopic level, the same noble gasses, like helium, neon, argon, krypton xenon and radon are the exact same atoms that our ancestors had in their lungs, the exact same ones that the dinosaurs had down in their lungs. If we are bonded in this way to the entire ecosphere and the "ones" we become close to, some of who and what we are is the same. It is one thing to say, "We are one.", something completely different to live in that awareness. One takes just a second, the other eclipses the whole "brother's keeper mentality by BE-ing your brother, sister, friend.

Living passionately requires staying in what some have called flow. Artists frequently comment that their entire awareness becomes fixated at the point where paint flows off their brush onto the canvass or that hours passed in the "real" (everybody else's) world, but felt as if the entire night was but a moment. Traveling in time sounds scary until you experience it. As a pagan, I honor the standstills in our relationships with our Sun and Planets. As a young man, I got the maritime document cataloging declinations of the moon rises and sets for many years, plotting them to become aware of the moon standstill. I had never heard of Alexander Thom and his 1971 book, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, published by Oxford Press, but I felt the pull of the great orb, Grandmother Moon. when the movie Moonstruck first entered my eye, it hit me that what Cosmos moon was is the highest night on the Moon's Northward Journey. without fully investing myself in each moment, I may not have even noticed.

Today, It Seems...

The World Is Coming To An End. The world that is ending is the one based on hate. I had second thoughts about sharing this, but the message is too strong to ignore. Rather than stealing intellectual or artistic "property", i feel these words in my heart. They reverberate through my soul. I am family with all of humanity and cannot abide the complete and total wreckage that has become our "civilization". My readers may catch a glimpse of my agape love from time to time. Occasionally I express it explicitly, but I'm always proceeding along tangential lines to that love. The heart of the matter is that I have written these posts from the heart of love. When Doves Cry, as Prince put it. we are more than the things we consume, more even that the things we create.

                               I LOVE YOU!

We have the power, the intellect, the responsibility to reclaim our birthright. no longer can we hide behind the victim mentality. Allowing the continuous raping of Mother Earth to be rewarded makes us complicit in the destruction. Allowing the irresponsibility of our leaders and the oligarchs to continue to claim lives makes us executioners. Making excuses for the status quo involve us, in palpable ways, as parties to one of the biggest crimes in human history. What will emerge from these difficult times will either be a planet devoid of humanity, or one where peace flourishes. Only we can make the choice of which it will be. Blaming our current state of affairs of prior generations only diminishes us. WE can make a change. The power that we have is not the same as what I often write about as power and control. that power is exerted over others, denying them the right to exist either physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or in certain cases psychically. The physical, mental and emotional wounds that are inflicted by exerting that kind of power taint anything that comes from them. The power of which I am speaking now is the diametrically opposed power of love. It is the healing salve of understanding, humanity, humility, compassion and when we spread it on the hurt and pain that surrounds us, it validates those who have lost everything. It calls them back to a reality that is worth living. It affirms both our selves and others in ways that another beating cannot.

The oppressors have rigged the game so that many are continuing to look outside themselves for a savior, looking outside themselves for what will bring them happiness, looking outside themselves for love, for value and for whatever the next big thing will be. All of the billions that get spent telling us what we need are designed specifically for one purpose. To drain away a bit more of our life force, (which gets translated to money) time is money after all. The billionaires have no use for us...they actually believe that we will somehow siphon off something that is rightfully theirs. What it could be is completely beyond me! Luckily, the voices of many are saying exactly the same thing. I would like to thank my brother from another mother whose voice rings out clearly from St. Louis. May his words become our words and wrap around the planet like a reassuring blanket. Agape love! Help one another and vilify those who would slap us down for our love. Consecrate wherever you find yourself and reach out to those who are in need in your community. Find out about just one issue or problem that siphons off the energies of your neighborhood and stand in the gap to heal the wound. If it sounds like or feels like you are up against insurmountable odds, do not let it drain you...that only means that you are having an effect. The specters that the uberwealthy throw up to stop us from doing what is right, doing our best and realizing the lies upon which their incomes are based evaporate under the light of scrutiny.

Be Careful Out There!

People! Driving is the lottery that everyone only wins when we all get there alive! Carnage on the road in my neck of the woods again today. Since I have learned, from an oil industry representative, that 50% of the petroleum distillate known as gasoline, used in the Upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa is from oil shale, I have pretty much stopped driving just for fun. This is getting serious! Not only is driving dangerous, but driving jeopardizes the health of the planet too. Think twice before firing up your vehicle, as a friend if they need a ride or if you could shop for them while you are out.

We are one! With one another and with Mother Earth.

In Wisconsin, 46 people have already died this year in car accidents. Those who watch these statistics are extremely happy and excited that we are on track to have the lowest number of highway deaths since World War II this year. Losing a single person is too much! If we had a serial killer on the loose who only killed one person a week, we would be outraged, but for some reason we seem to accept the irresponsible behavior of drivers even when it has deadly consequences, much more easily. Leaving for work a few minutes early is not that difficult, nor is turning off your phone while driving, waiting to eat until you get to your destination and paying full attention to the road and traffic could save a life. I for one think it is worth it, don't you?