Okay…so I’m 70 years old!  Woohoo! My birthday was July 18, 2019.  In case you can’t read, that’s 70 years, 840 months, 25,567 days, 613,608 hours, 36,816,480 minutes, 1,208,988,800 seconds…OF BEING AWESOME.  After I blew out the candles with Collin, the youngest person in the room, we ate chocolate cake and watermelon.  In Pitney tradition one is required to eat with melon in one hand and cake in the other, alternating bites so as to co-mingle in the mouth.

As we began to eat, our niece Meghan (Collin’s mom) asked me to reflect on 70 years, what I’ve learned…you know…whatever.  I wasn’t really prepared for the summons, nor were the party guests.  Of course there’s the basic wisdom, things like: pick up after yourself, take only what you need, pass your Planet on to the kids in better shape than when you got it.  Don’t eat yellow snow.  Any fool oughta know these things by the end of their 70th orbit, right?  God knows our generation has pretty much nailed all that stuff!  So what else is there to know, really?  What else to pass on?  I mean, there are those truths no one really believes.  Like, what goes around comes around.  Growing up on the farm we learned if you step in shit you get shit on your shoe (unless you’re barefoot).  I used to hear: Sticks and stones may break my bones…!  By now we oughta know words really matter.  Hate speech makes hate speech.  Bigotry and greed beget bigotry and greed. Love and justice are worth two in the bush.   What I know for sure is, by the luck of the draw, I was born into privilege:  American, white, male, undeniable privilege.   The morning of 7/18/49 Mom and Dad were dismantling the chimney of their starter farm house to make room to build on.  As he handed her another brick from up the ladder, something moved and she told him it was time for me to be delivered.  I was born that day in Corvallis, 3 weeks early.  My family tells me it was the last time I was early to anything! 

When I finally arrived home I arrived in privilege.  Over the course of 70 birthdays, I’ve often looked back on my story.   As you can see, I am now celebrated as BEING AWESOME in print on a tee-shirt.  Never mind it’s a mass produced piece of cloth, possibly manufactured in a sweat shop somewhere and not really personally about me.  But, for the time being, let’s say I am both incredibly privileged and awesomely awesome.  Today it feels like I have a responsibility, maybe the greatest opportunity ever: the power to live, work, act and speak that all persons are awesome and have the same right to awesomeness and the same privilege and power as I.  

And now, since it would take at least another 1,208,988,800 awesome seconds to tell you all the wonders of my precious life to this point,  let me just identify a few moments of just the last 30 days of my 70th year.  Let this suffice to give you a glimpse of the gift I’m given as these 7 decades come to a close and the next 7 begin.  Here are just a few of the real privileges of my 840th month and the wisdom I’ve received:

 Seventy and One—As I complete my 840th month, our Grandson Jackson is finishing his 12th.  It was simply a moment of pure I-can’t-even-tell-you-what, to hold our newest one-year-old on my knee and introduce him to black caps, my own mother’s all time favorite berry and watch his small fingers negotiate each single luscious fruit from among the stickers to his mouth!  And I got to witness the same as his agile little hand reached out for blueberries, marionberries and red raspberries!  The wisdom: the best things in life come with purple lips.

Cancer Free—In my 840th, Debbie graduated from 6 months of Chemo and Radiation and the Doc gave her permission to say she’s cancer free!  I have no way of really getting what she experienced as unbecoming, toxic guests invaded her body and claimed their rewards.  I was in charge of celebrations, so, as we returned home minutes after her last radiation, the garage door automatically opened to Debbie’s surprise and she was cheered on by guests of a different kind.  The wisdom:  Debbie has always been my biggest surprise.  This is what love looks like.

Net Zero Home and Car—As I turn 70 we are very close to generating enough electricity to power our home and our electric car year by year.  The graph shows our power use (blue) and solar production (green) for my birthday week.  155% of our power is coming from solar.  We have used 154 kWh of electricity to run our home and charge the Chevy Bolt EV so far this week.  239 kWh have be generated by our 24 solar panels.  The wisdom: It is a wondrous privilege to be healers of humanity and Earth.

• 

• 

Navajo Solar Lights Project—In June, a 10-member team from our church (McMinnville  Cooperative Ministries) traveled to Navajo Nation, near Shiprock NM, to install solar lighting systems in the homes of Navajo families who have no power or running water.  One very small panel charges 3 battery powered lights inside.  Each LED fixture can be detached to use as a flashlight.  I am pictured with Shorty, who, with his new lights will be able to do his silversmithing after dark to help him make a living.  Jennifer and her sister Natalie in the other picture, will now be able to study at night for high school and college.  Light  is their future.  The wisdom: solar is for everyone, not just those of wealth and privilege.

• 

• 

The Politics of Our Children’s Future—If our economies are to become true blessings to the Planet, dodging some of the curse our scientists warn we have 10-12 years to avoid, we must put a price on all greenhouse gas emissions so those most responsible for climate chaos will bear the largest burden for mitigating the impacts and helping fund a just transition to a future where our children and children’s children may thrive.  While we were in New Mexico,  Republican Senators from Oregon’s Legislative Assembly walked out and hid in Idaho so there wouldn’t be a quorum and a Cap and Invest program for our State couldn’t come to a vote.  In the process, our Senator, Brian Boquist, threatened the lives of some of his legislative colleagues.  I wrote a letter to the editor of our local News-Register, entitled “Time for Some Explaining,” to publicly register my opinion, and they published it. You can read it here, among the many other letters to the editor. Scroll down the page until you see mine.  The wisdom:  I must use my privileged voice for those without voice or privilege.

My Final Joke!—The last excellent piece of humor in my 70th year is based on a certain meal I have grown to love as a 69-year-old.  It happens to be a combo of dinner food and a more traditional breakfast recipe.  On the food channels it’s often touted as a Southern delight.    In my last month, in order to maintain my standing as one of the funniest people on earth,  I texted the fam this photo below, taken recently at the door of our poultry Coop.  I simply wrote “You know what this is, right?”  The wisdom:  Only my daughter replied to my ingenious text.  All others will be cut out of the will!

Scavenger Hunts Are Underrated—Our children are amazing.  Since they were little poopers they have put up with extravagant treasure hunts around the house and yard,  even all around the town to find their birthday presents…You know the gig, right?  We sing “The Organ Grinder Man” song and when the birthday person heads toward where the presents are hidden we sing louder and when they’re going in the wrong direction,  we sing real soft.  Most people are capable of being so led.  Anyway, in a couple of days, the children are leading me on a secret destination 70th Birthday scavenger hunt, apparently across multiple states or provinces.  You might notice, in the lead photo above, I’m holding the second clue, which I discovered on the neighbor’s porch.  The wisdom:  I have often been reminded by my family, un-named colleagues and members of another political party that I don’t have a clue!  They lie.

Joel and Erin—Our children, my son and daughter Joel and Erin, are simply the best and now they both have life partners who are simply the best.  I could say I don’t know what I’d do or who I’d be without them, but that would be a lie.  The scene wouldn’t be pretty.  They are geniuses in the art of] being themselves and helping others be theirs.  Most important, they do stuff like swim in the ocean the day after Christmas with their old man.  They humor him when he’s lost his humor.  When I’ve lost my mind, they take me on scavenger hunts to find it.  They say you don’t choose your family.  I suspect it’s true.

 But you can choose to love them and accept their love.