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Lonely Planet

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Astronomers have apparently found a planet that is unaligned.

It’s not orbiting a star, and does not have a specified path or a romantic name. It doesn’t need one! There is no one to impress when one is a totally free agent.

But still, it would be nice if someone would write you a silly little poem.

Oh CFBDSIR2149,
A planet apart who’ll turn out to be fine.
While the rest, all be-clumped, blindly follow a star,
You quite independently stay who you are.
While they spin in circles, repeatedly seen
You’re prowling the spaces located between.
Untethered you float. Far from starlight so golden
You’re iconoclastic and much less beholden
than Venus are Mercury are to the Sun.
They are bound to a system. But you … are just one.
All alone in the cosmos – no rules, no agenda.
No massive, controlling companion to friend ya.
Keep yourself to your self. Don’t let others absorb it.
And never get pulled into some silly orbit.

When have you blazed your own trail?

79 thoughts on “Lonely Planet”

  1. Well, I was born in 1944, and then . . .
    I dislike being a cliche, like to go off the map, was a sucker for buying a tool or other product of a new design, got married very quickly and oddly. As a child loved cutting new trails in the woods.
    As a teacher almost constantly. There are many things I did in the classroom that in my travels as an educational speaker and consultant I never saw anyone else doing.
    I designed and built some unusual pieces of furniture.
    In college I developed my own weird sleep and study cycle, to which I seem to be reverting, damn it.

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  2. Cannot get back to sleep, so I am going to go ride in the exercise room; legal after 5. But I have been thinking that what this group has most in common, besides being liberal, is we have almost all chosen to swim upstream or blaze a path, do the odd thing, like becoming a goat farmer in retirement, avoid the cliched life. The Baboon Trail is a quite apt name in the end and not just a pun off Trial Balloon. Our gifted leader has been much that way as a broadcaster.

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    1. I think what you say has a lot of truth in it, Clyde. Certainly, Dale is a person who blazes his own trail and the Baboons do seem to be a group that is attracted to his blog because they also independent people who tend to blaze their own trails. It is my opinion that everyone should be a trail blazer as much as they can because that is what we need to have a healthy society.

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  3. Good morning. Once again I agree with Clyde’s “I was born and then……” . Somehow I never have been a follower. I have more or less spent my whole life trying to do my own thing. Some times I think I would have been more successful if I had been less independent and more a follower. However, I really treasure my independence. I am glad that that didn’t decide to be less independent and to become the kind of person goes along with things they don’t believe in to advance themselves.

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    1. Okay, I think I should have learned to follow the rules for writing properly, although I don’t mind tim’s unique writing style. I see now that I didn’t do a very good job editing my sloppy writing this morning.

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  4. CFBDSIR2149 has not been named yet. A big blob of hot air fumbling around in the dark. Hmm? Several names come to mind. Not to be immodest but maybe it’s a Clyde.

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  5. It is interesting in this age of mileniums who try so hard to be like the other kids with their iPhones and uggs. With their nikes and skin tight jeans. Fashions have always been an issue. I told my 20 something kids I wouldn’t pop for the 100 dollar jeans their friends wore. They now laugh at me trying to help with fashion. I found my style in the 70s and the world has drifted toward or away from my static look.
    My kids laugh at the concept of my getting a job. They understand the plus and minus sides of the equation in being a trail blazer and see how the desire to do it your own way can be costly and or rewarding as you go through life. It certainly can be an obvious choice to do it your own way and have to work out your own set of details vs doing it as you are expected and accepting expected rewards.
    There have been times when I wished I had a job that ended at 5 and a check that came every other Friday. Ill bet my examples of how not to do it could be the topic of at least one or two lifestyle and self realization titles at the local bookstore

    Great couplets today dale. Words to live by.

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  6. There are days I feel an awful lot like a follower and not a trail blazer: I work for someone else (I’d make a lousy boss for myself – though working in Corporate America was not a place I expected to wind up), I listen to MPR and vote Democratic (like most of my neighborhood and family), I volunteer at my daughter’s school…not a lot of trail blazing there. My trail blazing as a woman designing and building sets was sometimes frustrating (more than once a director or theater manager thought I was looking for work in the costume shop) and sometimes surprising – theater seems like it should be a socially liberal place, but at least back in the 80s/early 90s, there were still stereotypes and gender-based expectations (if it was okay for me to be in the shop, many assumptions were made about who I might choose to date…oy). These days I feel less like I’m trail blazing than occasionally taking the road less traveled.

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    1. I think of myself as one who goes his own way. However, Anna, I think occasionally taking the road less traveled might be closer to describing the way I do things.

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  7. In 1972 I became the senior editor of a tiny outdoor magazine that had been started by a grad student in fisheries management who operated under the delusion that he had advanced opinions about wildlife management. I think no baboon has ever seen a magazine as amateurish and sloppy as our little rag. None of us knew what we were doing, either from professional training or experience. We had little more going for us than attitude, and our attitudes were pretty juvenile.

    In spite of the odds, that little magazine became extremely popular and even somewhat successful. That meant that our readers were so grateful to get us each month that they forgave us for pictures that were upside down, headlines with misspelled words, sloppy halftones and writing that varied greatly in quality.

    More to the point, our readers forgave or ignored the fact that this little publication was radically progressive in environmental and social isses. My values and editorial stances were WAY left of those held by typical Minnesota sportsmen. Instead of hating the DNR like most barstool biologist readers of the time did,, we sassed them for being conservative and lauded them when they were innovative. Instead of hating Indians for wanting some treaties observed, we urged sportsmen to see the justice on their side. Instead of wanting to wipe out wolves because they ate “our” deer, we argued for their restoration. Instead of reflecting the smug condescension toward women so typical of much of America, my little magazine was flagrantly feminist and each issue showed women hunting and fishing. Instead of insisting that the BWCA be open to fishing with modern boats with outboard motors, we argued that there should be one sweet haven free from the blatting insult of internal combustion engines.

    I miss those days. By the oddest quirk of fate, a loony liberal was able to affect environmental arguments with way more influence than I should have had. I got to do it my way and influence events in spite of being a sort of Paul Wellstone disguised as Mark Trail.

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    1. Twinkies
      They mate for life. Those two little love birds are placed in the package together and their they remain until the end of thir lives together. Usually within seconds of each other.

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      1. Oddly, I just read what “twinkies” means on Huffington Post yesterday: young, hairless gay men. Seriously – a celeb recently called a new group of singers “twinkies” and got lambasted for it – otherwise, I’d have no way of knowing this bit of trivia.

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        1. I usually hear “twinks”, but yes, that term has been around for a little while. The young men in question are extremely popular in certain audiovisual entertainments, I gather. BTW, if anyone’s curious about current slang, consider checking out the Urban Dictionary online–preferably somewhere other than work. Very informative, and fairly comprehensively offensive.

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  9. Morning,

    Kelly and I try hard not to be lulled into following the crowd. When I ordered the ukelele the guy said ‘Oh, you’re jumping on the ukelele bandwagon’ which just about brought me to a screaming halt. There’s a bandwagon?? Stop; I want to get off.
    My college age son plays bass guitar and 6 string guitar and said he’s getting bored with those now and wants to take up banjo. His roommate has a uke and I asked him about playing that. Yes maybe, he says… but everyone is playing uke these days; wants something different hence the banjo. So he’ll be taking mine; which he may as well. It doesn’t make noise on it’s own sitting there in my room. I suggested harmonica or dobro? We’ve got an old accordion down in a closet too. (I mean if he’s looking for ‘different’…)
    I think the popularity of ‘Mumford and Sons’ or ‘Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers’ or ‘Trampled by Turtles’ the banjo will be hip in a few more years…

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    2. That’s funny! I’m often a latecomer on some bandwagon, because it takes me so long once I’ve encountered a new notion to research it, look at it from multiple angles, decide how interested I am and am likely to remain, and only then try it. Thus, I’m learning to knit several years after the “Stitch n’ Bitch” trend began. The advantage is, as soon as the early-adopters get tired of whatever it is, we can scoop up tons of information and materials they’ve discarded on their way to the next Latest Thing–thank you, ebay and Half Price Books! Theoretically that’d mean that in 20 years, when whatever the trendy thing is comes around again, we’d be cutting-edge, but the rule is that if you were there for it the first time, you cannot by definition be cool the second time. You have to wait until the third go-around, by which time you’re so old you’re either a resource or a mascot.

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      1. I had a sort of friend who once said he wore a derby hat when he was among cowboys and a cowboy hat when he was on the streets of Boston. He wanted, apparently, to be seen as someone who swam against the tide no matter where he was. I never told him I felt sorry for him, yielding so much control of his life to the opinions of others.

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  11. I don’t know that I’m a trail blazer–that seems to imply breaking a way for others to follow. I think I’m more of…I don’t know what the term is, a fringe dweller? I’m extremely wary of groups, regardless of whether I’m being pushed to be a leader or pressured to be a follower. It’s hard to get my respect and easy to lose it, and once that’s happened I’ll just walk away, mentally if not physically, whether it be a leader, group, “-ism”, theory or belief. It’s happened more than once. I definitely follow my own inner compass, but even when I encounter others heading in the same direction, I don’t often manage to stay in contact for long. Sometimes I worry that I’m just a contrarian, but if I am at least I’m polite about it, and at least I can be convinced by things like, say, the preponderance of scientific evidence.

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    1. I was thinking only about blazing a trail for myself. There have been times when I did try to get others involved in something new and had rather limited success. In these cases I was actually an early joiner of something other people had started such as promoting seed saving and sustainable farming.

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  12. In 1970 I started teaching at St. Anne’s of the Sunset, in SF, CA. Nuns were then wearing longish skirts, shorter veils (except for the die-hards), and the lay teachers were expected to wear skirts. Mini-skirts era, which is no fun when you’re bending over with kindergarteners all day. I jumped at the first “midi” that I saw in a store (knee length). First time I wore it, Sister Mary Alberta said to me “You’re a Be-Different, aren’t you?”

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      3. Some of thew warmest, most charming, delightful, caring, hard-working people I have ever met, and liberals too, far more liberal than I. Not all, of course but most of those I have met. Remember, I have slept in convents.

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        2. We used to help Catholic schools on restructuring curriculum and instruction. Convents are often very empty these days. So we would stay in an empty wing sometimes to save them money. But after awhile we moved to motels. It was just sort of eerie, not relaxing. We would often go out for a meal and a beer or two and it felt odd to come back to the convent after that, even though we were often with some nuns at the meal.

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  13. My mantra even as a toddler was “Do it myself!” I am told I am a hard person to help. Our children think that both their dad and I are pretty weird, since they see us as so different from everyone elses’ parents.

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    1. Very true of me too. My family has many stories about my independence at an early age. I sucked my thumb until past age 4 and then announced I was never going to do it again. And I didn’t. I remember that day. My mother would talk about how she and I, in my pre-school years would be alone in the house for hours in the winter and she would not even hear my voice. How in the other seasons I was off alone in the woods.
      But my parents encouraged that. I remember my mother when I was quite young saying to me for many things, “Here, you do it” or “you figure it out” and leaving me alone to do it. My father in teaching me things would tell me, show, me, and watch me fumble around at the task for a minute or two and then go somewhere else. I learned to drive a car at age 11, two years after I learned to drive a tractor, by my father putting me in an old 36 Chevy he had converted into a pickup. He told me, showed me, and then got out, and told me to spend an hour or two driving it around our recently mowed hay fields.

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  14. I don’t think I’m a trailblazer, but I’m definitely independent. I like to have a certain amount of structure to my life in order to feel secure – a steady job, a home, a dependable car – but I don’t fit neatly into any social mold and I kick like crazy if you try to force me into one. I think Clyde’s earlier reflections about Baboons being a group of trailblazers were accurate. I enjoy being here and sharing my perspective with all of you but I’m free to go my own way and no one is critical or tells me that I should behave any differently than I do. I appreciate that and I think it’s rare. Everywhere else I go, there is someone who is telling me that I could improve myself if I were more _______ (their idea for me). For example, my mom would like me to be a reproduction of herself; my dear friend Pam babbles away to me about her own life but doesn’t hear me when I tell about mine, then is surprised to find out that I don’t think the way she does; my old friends all think I should be much more extroverted… So, I guess I’m grateful to be here among other people who aren’t afraid to be themselves and who don’t try to change anybody else.

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    2. I’d never want to change you, Krista! Why? Three reasons:

      1) I like you just the way you are.

      2) I’m not smart enough to know how you should change.

      3) And even if I were, you are almost sure to go right on doing what makes sense to you.

      And 4): this pretty much sums up how I feel about everyone on these pages.

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    3. So Dale blazed a Trail where us Baboons can be ourselves without fear of trying to be improved or fit into a certain mold. That sounds about right. One of the things that attracted me to the Trail was the fact that people were welcoming and kind and human. You weren’t afraid to mention your imperfections and so I felt comfortable. It seems like a lot of non-Baboons I know spend a lot of time trying to appear flawless and make a lot of assumptions – if I think or believe such-and-such, then I must also think or believe this other thing. And I don’t fit into that mold. They also make assumptions based on how things appear instead of what’s inside a person. I appreciate being able to be myself here on the Trail – in my flawed, unique way without fear of shocking or disappointing anybody.

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  15. I manage to keep finding odd jobs. (Of course, it helped that I wasn’t the sole breadwinner…) Didn’t like the status quo of the school system, but I enjoyed helping out in an avant garde pre-school in Brooklyn. The bookstore I worked in didn’t have enough “woo-woo” books for me, so I left and had my own little book business where I could have what I wanted. When I worked for a vet, it had to be the holistic vet who also worked with animal behavior. No mainstream bookstores for me – I had to find Louise Erdrich’s. Even the Nutritional Weight and Wellness place veered off mainstream and preaches against the low-fat regimens.

    I think some of my being different is so I”m noticed – that desire for attention. Hate just being one of the crowd

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  16. I could not get back to sleep at 4 this morning because of the pain levels but also because reading this blog triggered a thought. I have been wondering about writing a second book but it would not gel. Somehow this topic made me think about a whole new way to blend fiction and nonfiction. As a student of literature I am intrigued by the whole question of what is fiction and nonfiction (and memoir as a part of “nonfiction”). Is there a real difference in the end? On any topic? Can you really write nonfiction? What if a story were written in parallel tracks of fiction and nonfiction? What are ways you could run a line of fiction alongside a line of nonfiction in the same book? Could you tell one story twice at the same time from both points of view? Somehow after reading about poor old CFXXXX12xxx, an idea came and I could not turn off my mind.
    Anyway, lack of sleep and all I am off to spend much of the afternoon in, guess where . . . . waiting rooms.

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    2. I was just teaching the concept of story-telling to a client this morning and pulled up an example from my own life to demonstrate it. The facts were that moving to the lake saw my property taxes going up 20%+ every year and, although there was no mortgage left to pay, the story I made up was that “they” were gouging my scant financials so relentlessly that “they” could force me out of this place. How unfair that was to do to a low-income senior, etc., etc. I felt victimized by the City of Orono. After telling this story to myself and feeling crummy about it, I decided to change it out. I replaced it with, “Where else on this planet could I live so abundantly or have a more beautiful setting for ONLY $800 a month??” That is, of course, the amount of my monthly property tax. This version feels ever so much better to me. Same facts but different stories make a world of difference.

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    3. That’s a rich, full subject for discussion! I have thoughts about several of those questions. Alas, it’s more suited to a long afternoon at the coffeehouse than to a series of blog posts. No published examples spring to mind, but what you’re talking about is known these days as “creative nonfiction”. Go ahead and experiment! Tell your story the way it wants to be told! Also, hope you feel tremendously better very soon.

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  17. Afternoon all. I don’t remember who said it first above, but when I think Trail Blazer I think of someone that has been followed after the blazing. Not sure if that’s me. But I am headstrong and will forge ahead if need be.

    When I was in the 5th grade, I heard about the Red Cross at school and decided to fundraise a little. So I conned a friend into helping me pull a wagon around the neighborhood, collecting up people’s pop bottles (although in St. Louis they are called soda bottles). Then we would hauled them up to the Kroger’s grocery store and redeemed them for cash. We only made 2 trips before my friend decided she was tired of this, so I continued on my own. Probably collected about $15, but I was proud to hand it in to my teacher to give to the Red Cross, even if my friends thought I was bonkers.

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    1. I think the usual time is 2, but If others want to go with 3 that would be good for me. I will not be able to get there on time if it is 2. I should be able to make by 3 or shortly after that.

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    2. I need to be somewhere by about 4:30 or 5, so I would be the opposite of Jim. 2pm start is fine, if we start at 3 (which is also fine), I will likely head out earlier than the rest of the gang…and yes, I think we are at tim’s.

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    3. 3 is the official start.2 is the preliminary pre bbc meeting time. 7 is the post bbc viewing of the ken burns dust bowl on tpt with popcorn.weenies on the campfire between if time allows

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