More than a few of my friends have suggested I write a book. I am not so sure. However, while I may be skeptical, I am not so quick to be dismissive. There may be a book in me and there may not. What I do know is I nearly always bite off more than I can chew and I spend the next moments doing everything I can to not let other down and in the same breath not let myself down. It’s what has let me do so many different things but it is also what leaves me with a constant sense that I have not done a good enough job.

So, could I possess the great American novel – who knows. Perhaps the answer is yes. Perhaps the answer is that I will find that great American novel in someone else and my role is like “boiling chips” – to provide the proper environment for water to take on energy, boil, and escape as steam.

Did you know that the fundamental tenant of mass – that it can be neither created nor destroyed – also might apply to green thumbs, creativity, trust, humility, and perseverance. If you add all of any one of these together from every person on earth, you get a fixed quantity. If someone stops trusting, then somewhere else, someone will have started to trust. If someone gives up hope, there will be a reciprocal increase in hope in someone else. There are documented rare cases where the two bodies transferring one of these properties actually come in contact with one another. But, unlike nuclear material, when hope and no-hope collide, there is the a moment of energy that is converting in hope rather than the other way around. … Perhaps that is all to metaphysical. Lets try something else – OLIVES.

Olives are a very flexible fruit. Yes, fruit. They complete a martini, soften bread, and, with sufficient quantity, can run your automobile – the result of which would make most Italians swoon. Olives, like people, come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and originate from many regions. Unlike, people – at least throughout most of the modern world – olives are food. The olive is referenced in the old testament and in Homer’s Iliad. It is hard to say just how old it is. The real question is when did it go from being just a plant, to being a crop. I guess the same could be asked of coffee. Personally, I would never have thought to take a bitter bean and heat it up, crush it, and then soak it in hot water. But then if people did not experiment, no one would have found the results of water, barley, hops, and yeast. So, back to olives. Someone found it growing wild and was lucky enough to encounter the tree when the olives were ripe. It was centuries later that someone experimented with olives and Gin.

I suspect that wealth is another one of those things that is neither created nor destroyed. What I can’t figure out is how, like the swirling mass surrounding a star just before it goes super nova, wealth can implode like it does. And it does it on a fairly regular basis. Fortunately, people still know how to get their hands dirty. Unfortunately, some people can’t actually produce anything but more dirt. If there were some way to convert filth (aka pollution) to dirt (aka a medium for growing plants)  we might be able to turn things around. At the very least, we could grown more olives. One can hope.