Three Payments Left—Then the Universe Totaled My Car

There are certain things you probably shouldn't say out loud because the universe has a peculiar sense of humor. “Things are finally settling down” is one. “What else could possibly go wrong?” is another. I recently discovered a third: “This is the last car I'm ever going to buy.”

I meant it, too. I had a Kia K5 that I loved, it was approaching 100,000 miles, and I had exactly three payments left. I had taken care of that car from the beginning. I kept the maintenance records, did the services, fixed what needed fixing, and treated it like something I planned to own for a very long time. It was the first model year of the K5, a high-end version with all-wheel drive, a beautiful red interior, and enough bells and whistles that even five years later, I still enjoyed getting behind the wheel.

At nearly 68 years old, I had a plan. Three more payments, then no more car payment. I would buy a good aftermarket warranty, keep maintaining the Kia, and drive it until either the car or I decided we'd had enough. Earlier that very day, I had explained the plan to my wife, Marie. I was almost at 100,000 miles, the car was running beautifully, and I saw absolutely no reason to replace it.

“This is the last car I'm going to buy,” I told her.

The universe apparently heard me.

Although I didn't know it at the time, the story had actually begun about six weeks earlier with a yappy dog and a Milk Dud.

My office occupies one-third of what was originally a three-car garage. In the summertime, I can open the office window and the garage door and get a wonderful breeze moving through the place. I often work late, and it's a pretty comfortable arrangement until something interrupts it.

In this case, that something was one of the neighborhood's little yappy dogs. They occasionally escape and make their way over to my house, where they bark at my dog and generally create the kind of commotion that small dogs seem to believe is their contribution to society.

It was about eleven o'clock at night when I heard them going at it again. I happened to be eating Milk Duds, so I walked out of the office and into the garage to see what was happening.

There stood one of the little yappy dogs.

Peeing in my garage.

I bit down on the Milk Dud.

Up came the bridge on my lower jaw.

There are chains of cause and effect that make perfect sense when you look backward at them, even though no sane person could have predicted them going forward. Dog pees in garage. Man bites Milk Dud. Dental bridge comes out. Six weeks later, man buys new car.

We'll get there.

The next morning, I went to the dentist to have the bridge put back in place. While he was working, he brought up a tooth toward the back of my mouth that we'd been watching.

“You know that tooth we've been talking about?”

I knew the tooth.

It was coming out.

The molar behind it has an enormous, ugly filling in it. I have a certain affection for that filling because it has been with me for half a century. A Navy dentist put it there 50 years ago when I was in Coast Guard boot camp. The Coast Guard didn't have its own dentists, so when we needed dental work, we got Navy dentists.

That Navy dentist did one hell of a job.

The filling isn't pretty. I doubt anybody would put it on the cover of a dental journal as an example of cosmetic dentistry. But after 50 years, it's still there. It survived my years in the Coast Guard, a marriage, children, careers, businesses, countless meals, and five decades of everything else life managed to throw at me.

Ugly or not, that filling has earned my respect.

The tooth in front of it hadn't been quite as fortunate. It had cracked, and there was no saving it. That started several weeks of dental adventures: pulling the tooth, shaving down the surrounding teeth, fitting a temporary bridge, waiting for the permanent bridge, and paying the portion that insurance politely leaves behind for you to enjoy.

I have also become convinced that dental drills get louder as you get older. At 20, somebody drills on your tooth. At nearly 68, the sound seems to travel directly through your skull and into whatever part of your brain stores regret.

Finally, on Thursday, the permanent bridge went in.

It fit perfectly. The dentist cemented it into place, everything felt right, and I walked out happy. I've been going to these dentists for years. They've done both of my bridges, and they do excellent work. I couldn't have been more pleased.

That evening, I was scheduled to drive to Arcadia Masonic Lodge to present a Masonic education program.

The day before, I had recorded a video I called Inside the Workshop. It showed some of the process I use to prepare before giving a presentation. People occasionally tell me I'm a great public speaker. I appreciate the compliment, but I've always thought there was something else going on.

I'm prepared.

There is research. Then an outline. Then more research. Then another outline. Things get added, moved, cut, rewritten, and condensed until I finally have the presentation I want. And then I rehearse it.

Preparation has a remarkable way of looking like talent from the audience.

By the time I stand in front of a room, I don't want to be figuring out what I'm going to say. I've already figured it out. The audience gets the final product, not the workshop that produced it.

So Thursday evening should have been simple. The permanent bridge was finally in my mouth. The Masonic education was rehearsed. I had plenty of time to get to Arcadia, and I was planning to stop somewhere and eat before heading to the lodge.

I was driving along when traffic ahead of me came to a stop.

I stopped.

Then I looked in the rearview mirror.

The car behind me wasn't stopping.

If you've spent enough time behind the wheel, you know that moment. Your brain understands what's about to happen before your body can do anything useful about it. There was a car stopped in front of me. My foot was already on the brake. There was nowhere to go.

Then it hit me.

Hard.

After the initial shock passed, I got out and looked at the Kia.

The bumper was destroyed, but that was only the obvious damage. The quarter panels showed signs of buckling. The trunk lid was pinched. When I looked down into the trunk, I could see that the structure itself had been pushed inward and bent at a sharp angle.

It didn't look good.

And this wasn't just another car to me.

This was the car with three payments left.

It was the car I had told my wife that very day I intended to keep. The car I was going to buy an aftermarket warranty for. The car that had nearly 100,000 miles on it and was still in great condition. The car that, only hours earlier, I had declared would be the last car I ever bought.

Apparently, I had neglected to consult the Bronco driver.

 We exchanged information, and after reporting the accident, I was left with one immediate problem: the trunk wouldn't stay closed. Fortunately, there are very few problems in life that can't at least be temporarily negotiated with a roll of duct tape. I taped the trunk shut, looked over the rest of the damage, and made a decision that probably says something about me. I still had a Masonic education to give in Arcadia. The car was wounded, but it was drivable. I was shaken, but I was fine. And I had spent all that time researching, writing, and rehearsing the presentation. So I climbed back into my battered Kia, duct tape holding the trunk together, and continued on to Arcadia Masonic Lodge. I stood up that evening and gave the lecture just as I had planned. Preparation has a way of carrying you forward, even when the plan itself has been rear-ended. 

We exchanged information. I eventually pulled off the freeway into a parking lot and contacted USAA.

From that moment forward, something happened that deserves to be part of this story because we spend plenty of time complaining about insurance companies.

USAA was terrific.

They took the claim, directed me to the collision center they trusted, helped arrange everything, and got the rental-car process moving. That night, I uploaded the documents online. The next morning, things were already happening.

I also made the mistake of spending part of Thursday night reading about unibody construction.

Until that evening, unibody construction occupied exactly none of my thoughts. Suddenly, I was getting an education. A bumper can be replaced. A trunk lid can be replaced. Quarter panels can be repaired. But when the energy from an impact travels into the structural portions of a unibody vehicle, the conversation changes.

The next morning, I took the Kia to the collision center. I pointed out the damage inside the trunk to the man looking at the car.

He studied it for a moment.

“It doesn't look good.”

That was not the reassurance I was hoping for.

He told me it was going to be close, although ultimately the decision belonged to the adjuster. I left the Kia there, went over to Enterprise, and my rental car was waiting.

Again, USAA had made the whole thing remarkably painless.

Then Sunday morning I woke up and saw the message.

The Kia was totaled.

I stared at that for a while.

A car is an object. I understand that. It's metal and glass and rubber and plastic, with an increasingly ridiculous number of computers tucked into places we never see. But we don't really experience our cars as collections of parts.

We experience them in miles.

That Kia and I had traveled nearly 100,000 of them together.

And I had three payments left.

Then I saw the settlement amount.

That helped.

Because I had taken such good care of the car, kept the maintenance records, and because of the particular model and equipment, the valuation was excellent. USAA treated me fairly. There wasn't a prolonged argument or some ridiculous lowball offer that turned an accident into a second disaster. I reviewed the amount online and accepted it.

Which created a new problem.

I needed a car.

Only a few days after announcing that I had purchased my last one.

I started looking around. I looked at used K5s and newer K5s. I checked dealerships. On Saturday, I had already gone online and gotten pre-approved for financing through my credit union. If I had to buy another car, I wanted to walk into the dealership knowing exactly where I stood. The insurance settlement was going to become my down payment—all of it—which put me in a strong position.

Marie and I headed to the Kia dealership in Ontario.

I wasn't necessarily going there to buy a car.

This, I've learned, is another sentence the universe finds amusing.

Then I saw the new K5.

I had really wanted another red interior because that had been one of my favorite things about the old car. But the new one caught my attention for another reason. It had a matte metallic gray finish, a beautiful color that reminded me a little of the stainless-steel look of the DeLorean from Back to the Future, only darker and more refined.

Then I got inside.

Five years of technology had transformed a car I already liked.

The 10-inch screen I had been perfectly happy with had become a 13-inch display. My iPhone connected through Apple CarPlay. The controls were better. The interior had been completely redesigned. The passenger compartment seemed roomier. The trunk seemed larger. Everything was familiar enough that I knew I was sitting in a K5, but different enough that it felt like an entirely new car.

It was essentially the car I loved, five years into the future.

I bought it.

There was one more bit of absurdity waiting for me. I had done the responsible thing and arranged financing with my credit union before walking into the dealership. Then the dealership's finance guy managed to find me a better interest rate.

Through the same credit union.

At that point, I decided to stop asking questions.

I drove home in a brand-new Kia K5 with a 100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty and additional warranty coverage—the very kind of protection I had been planning to purchase for the old K5 after making those last three payments.

A few days earlier, I knew exactly what the next several years were going to look like. I would make three payments. I would buy the warranty. I would maintain the car. I would drive it for years.

It was a good plan.

That's one of the things driving teaches you if you spend enough time behind the wheel. We like to believe we're in control because we're holding the steering wheel. We pick the destination. We choose the route. We decide when to leave. We control the speed. Most of the time, that illusion works pretty well.

Then something appears in the rearview mirror.

I've spent enough time driving to know that the best stories rarely happen when everything goes according to plan. They happen when somebody gets into your car and says something you never expected to hear. They happen when you take a turn you weren't planning to take. They happen when the destination changes halfway through the trip. They happen when life decides that your carefully constructed itinerary is merely a suggestion.

Sometimes they happen when a Bronco doesn't stop.

And apparently, sometimes they begin six weeks earlier when a yappy little dog pees in your garage while you're eating a Milk Dud.

Looking backward, I can trace the entire ridiculous chain. A dog wandered into my garage. I bit down on a Milk Dud. A bridge came loose. A cracked tooth was discovered. Six weeks later, the permanent bridge went in. That evening, I headed toward Arcadia to give a Masonic education. Traffic stopped. I stopped. The Bronco didn't. The Kia I planned to keep for years was totaled, and a few days later I was sitting behind the wheel of its newer cousin with another 100,000 miles of road waiting in front of me.

Three payments.

That's how close I was to the plan.

Maybe that's why I've always loved driving stories. The road doesn't care about the plan. It simply keeps unfolding through the windshield, one mile at a time. You can prepare. You can maintain the car. You can rehearse the presentation. You can leave early. You can make all the right decisions.

But you don't get to write every turn before you get there.

Sometimes the road writes part of the story for you.

And every once in a while, you get lucky enough to walk away from it, look back at the whole ridiculous chain of events, and realize you've got another story to tell.

If you want more driving stories—about the people, the miles, the unexpected turns, and the things you discover when the road refuses to follow the plan—get a copy of Chasing the Surge.

Beat LA, Even in Single-A: A Summer Night at the Lake Elsinore Diamond

There are certain rivalries that supposedly belong to the big leagues. Dodgers and Padres. Los Angeles and San Diego. Dodger blue against brown and gold. Put 50,000 people inside Dodger Stadium or Petco Park and there is no mistaking the tension. But I wondered what happens when you send that rivalry down to Single-A baseball. Does anybody still care?

Apparently, they do.

That was one of the questions I had in mind when I headed south to Lake Elsinore to see the Lake Elsinore Storm take on the Ontario Tower Buzzers. The Storm are a Single-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres, while Ontario belongs to the Dodgers organization. It was also another stop in what has unintentionally become my baseball tour of 2026. Lake Elsinore Diamond was my sixth different ballpark of the year and my 13th game. I had never been there before, which was reason enough to go.

104 Degrees and Time for Baseball

The Diamond is remarkably easy to reach, sitting just off Interstate 15 in Lake Elsinore. From home, the drive is roughly an hour and 15 minutes to two hours, depending on the whims of Southern California traffic. I arrived around 5:30 p.m. for a 6:45 game, about 15 minutes before the gates opened.

It was 104 degrees. Not 104 in the afternoon, but 104 degrees at 5:30 in the evening. There are temperatures that make you question whether baseball was actually intended to be a summer sport, and 104 is one of them.

Fortunately, the stadium provided an escape. On the left-field side is the Taproom, an actual indoor restaurant with air conditioning. I use "air conditioning" generously. It was probably 80 degrees inside, but after walking in from 104, it felt wonderful. I ordered a smash burger and a beer, and the burger turned out to be the best hamburger I've had at any ballpark this season. It wasn't something that had spent the afternoon waiting beneath a heat lamp. It tasted freshly made, and it was genuinely good.

One wall was essentially a gigantic screen made from multiple large televisions, and playing across it was the Padres game against the Houston Astros. Watching the Padres play the Astros felt a little like watching two villains fight each other. You aren't necessarily rooting for anybody. You just eat your hamburger, drink your beer, and see what happens.

Eventually, though, it was time for the baseball I had actually driven there to watch.

Twenty Dollars From the Action

I reached my seat just as the Star-Spangled Banner was beginning, and what a seat it was. My ticket cost about $20 and put me in the High Tower section, roughly 12 rows from the field and just off to the right of the batter. I've had excellent seats at Dodger Stadium and other ballparks, but in terms of pure proximity to the game, this might have been the best baseball seat I've ever had.

At that distance, you aren't merely watching baseball. You hear things differently. You see how quickly everything happens. And you learn to pay attention, especially to foul balls. We were sitting in prime foul-ball territory. Pop-ups would sail backward, hit the roof behind us, and sometimes bounce back toward the seats. This was not a section where you spent much time staring at your phone.

Then came the broken bat. One of the Tower Buzzers hit a ball hard enough to shatter his bat, and a large piece of it shot over the protective netting and into the stands. It didn't float or tumble harmlessly through the air. It looked like a missile. The piece flew toward the upper seats and came crashing down in an area where, fortunately, nobody was sitting.

Nobody was hurt, but somewhere inside that ballpark, I am certain several stadium executives simultaneously felt their stomachs tighten.

A Ballpark With a View

Lake Elsinore Diamond opened in the 1990s, so this isn't a shiny new ballpark. But it has been maintained remarkably well. More importantly, it has something many stadiums don't have: a sense of place.

Each minor-league ballpark I've visited has its own personality. Fresno has an unmistakably urban setting. You feel as though baseball has been dropped directly into the middle of the city. Ontario doesn't offer much of a view beyond the field. It is functional, but there isn't much scenery pulling your eyes toward the horizon.

Lake Elsinore is different. From behind home plate, looking east beyond the outfield, you see the dry, sun-scorched hills surrounding the Interstate 15 corridor. Early in the evening, those hills look appropriately brutal beneath the summer sun. Then the sun begins to disappear, and the entire experience changes.

The temperature that had been 104 degrees when I arrived eventually dropped into the mid-80s. The seats fell into shade and a breeze began moving through the stadium. Suddenly, what had seemed almost ridiculously hot became a nearly perfect Southern California summer evening. There was baseball in front of me, desert hills beyond the outfield, and a cool breeze moving through the stands.

For a while, there wasn't anywhere else I particularly wanted to be.

The Dodgers and Padres, Just Smaller

As darkness settled over the stadium, something else became noticeable. The Tower Buzzers increasingly looked like the Dodgers. They were wearing the familiar road gray. "Ontario" was written across the front, but from a distance, especially under the stadium lights, you could almost convince yourself you were watching Los Angeles.

Almost.

The baseball itself occasionally ruined the illusion. There were errors. There were some questionable adventures on the basepaths. There were moments that reminded everyone that these were Single-A players still learning professional baseball. There were also some excellent plays, including a couple of sharp double plays and several good hits. It was good baseball, even when it was unmistakably minor-league baseball.

But the most interesting part was happening in the stands. I wore a Dodgers jersey and Dodgers cap. Other people wore Dodgers gear. Around us were fans wearing Padres shirts and caps. Apparently, nobody had informed them that this was merely Single-A, because before long the familiar chant came from the Padres side of the rivalry: "Beat LA!"

There were other comments directed toward the Dodgers organization as well, some less printable than others. I found myself laughing at the absurdity of it. These weren't the Los Angeles Dodgers. These were young players in Ontario uniforms, many of them still a very long way from Dodger Stadium. Yet the rivalry had followed them.

The uniforms were different, the stadium was smaller, the crowd was smaller, and the salaries were certainly smaller. But somehow Dodgers versus Padres still meant something.

I actually felt a little sorry for some of the players. There was some loud heckling during the game that seemed unnecessary. Minor-league players are developing professionals, and screaming abuse at them from the stands seems particularly pointless. But the broader rivalry was unmistakable. Dodgers fans were Dodgers fans, and Padres fans were Padres fans, even in Single-A.

Baseball's Most Unusual Bat Boy

Minor-league baseball usually brings a collection of promotions, contests, and between-inning antics. Lake Elsinore actually had fewer of those than some of the other minor-league stadiums I've visited this year, but it had something better: a bat dog.

The Storm had a regular bat boy, but occasionally a dog would come running out from the Storm dugout, retrieve a discarded bat, and carry it back. There is something inherently ridiculous about watching a dog perform an official baseball duty, and it was also one of the best things I saw all night.

Major League Baseball can keep the pitch clock. Give me the bat dog.

A Thousand People in a Six-Thousand-Seat Ballpark

The Diamond holds roughly 6,000 spectators, but on this particular night there may have been around 1,000 people in attendance. That creates a different atmosphere. There are enough people for the place to feel alive, but not enough to create the inconveniences that come with major-league baseball. You aren't fighting 50,000 people for parking, standing in endless concession lines, or spending another hour after the final out attempting to escape the parking lot.

There was one brief reminder that even small crowds can produce big personalities. Around the seventh inning, a few people migrated into our section who clearly hadn't started the evening there. Our section required wristbands, and these newcomers were both loud and, by all appearances, well into their evening's drinking. It became one of those situations where avoiding eye contact seemed like the wisest strategy. I started wondering where security was, but within half an inning or so, they got up and disappeared. Problem solved.

The rest of the evening was relaxed, and the baseball was enjoyable. The Storm won by several runs, sending the Dodgers' Single-A representatives home with a loss. For me, though, the score wasn't particularly important. What mattered was discovering another place where baseball feels different.

Worth the Drive

Lake Elsinore Diamond isn't Dodger Stadium. It doesn't pretend to be, and that's precisely the attraction. For about $20, I sat closer to professional baseball than I normally could at a major-league stadium. I ate the best ballpark hamburger I've had this year. I watched a bat dog retrieve bats. I saw a shattered piece of lumber become an airborne projectile. I watched the desert hills change as the sun went down.

And I discovered that apparently you can take Dodgers-Padres baseball out of Los Angeles and San Diego, send it down to Single-A, put only a thousand people in the stands, and somebody will still eventually yell, "Beat LA!"

Of the minor-league parks I've visited, I would put Lake Elsinore comfortably ahead of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes experience. The food was better. The view was better. My seat was better, and a comparable ticket was actually a few dollars cheaper. Getting out after the game was effortless. There was no traffic jam and no long crawl toward the freeway. It was simply back onto Interstate 15 and home.

So, yes, I'll return. Lake Elsinore was ballpark number six and game number 13 of my season. I'd still like to get to an Angels game and squeeze in another two or three games at Dodger Stadium before the season ends, but that's part of what I've come to enjoy about visiting these smaller parks. Baseball isn't experienced only in its cathedrals.

Sometimes it's found in a 6,000-seat stadium beside the freeway, on a 104-degree evening, with a $20 ticket in your pocket, a cold beer in your hand, desert hills beyond the outfield, and a dog running out of the dugout to retrieve a bat.

And sometimes you discover that even 80 miles away from Dodger Stadium, somebody is still waiting to yell, "Beat LA."

This paragraph structure is a better fit for the essay style—more continuous storytelling, with the isolated lines now reserved for genuine punch or transition.

Working the Tailings: Finding Gold in Criticism

Author's Note: This essay is written in much the same spirit as many of the essays in The Temple Within. It begins with an ordinary experience, considers it through the symbolism and working tools of Freemasonry, and ends with questions for personal reflection. Although this essay reaches beyond the subjects explored in the book, it offers a taste of the approach found there: using the lessons of the Craft not merely as subjects to study, but as tools for examining how we live, work, create, and grow.

Writing a book sometimes feels less like writing than mining.

You begin with a belief that somewhere beneath the surface there is something worth finding. Perhaps it is an argument, a story, a question, or simply an idea that refuses to leave you alone. Research removes one layer. Writing removes another. Rewriting drives the shaft deeper. Ideas are followed until some reveal a vein and others end against solid rock. Pages are excavated, paragraphs broken apart, sources examined, and arguments tested. Some of the material proves valuable. Much of it does not.

Eventually, if you are fortunate, you find the vein. Then comes the processing. Words are crushed and separated. Chapters are reorganized. Passages that once seemed indispensable are discarded. Research that consumed days may produce a single sentence or disappear entirely. Editors make cuts. The author makes more. What finally emerges is the finished book: the gold recovered from an enormous amount of material.

But every mine leaves something behind.

In mining, there is an important distinction between waste rock and tailings. Waste rock includes material removed to gain access to the ore. Tailings come later. The U.S. Geological Survey defines them as the material remaining after mined ore has been milled and concentrated. In other words, tailings are not simply the dirt that stood between the miner and the gold; they are what remains after material containing something valuable has already been processed. (USGS)

That distinction makes the metaphor more useful to the writer. The abandoned research, deleted paragraphs, unsuccessful arguments, and ideas that did not fit are part of what remains from the creative process. Yet another kind of tailings begins accumulating only after the book enters the world: reviews, comments, criticism, questions, corrections, and observations from readers.

We thought we had already processed the ore.

Then someone points back toward the tailings pile.

What Remains After the Book

Reviews arrive. Readers comment. Friends offer observations. Critics identify weaknesses. Someone misunderstands an argument. Someone else sees something the author never saw. One reader loves precisely the passage another believes should have been removed. Some criticism is thoughtful and carefully expressed. Some is superficial. Some is careless. Occasionally, it is cruel.

For an author, criticism can be particularly difficult because the critic encounters the finished product while the writer remembers the mine. A reviewer may have spent three hours with the book. The writer may have spent three years. That difference does not make the reviewer wrong, but it helps explain why a seemingly casual sentence can strike with surprising force. The reader sees the gold on the table. The writer remembers every shovel of earth required to find it.

There are two easy ways to deal with that discomfort, and neither is particularly useful. We can accept every criticism as authoritative and allow other people to determine the value of our work. Or we can dismiss criticism altogether: They didn't understand what I was trying to accomplish. They aren't my audience. They missed the point.

Sometimes those statements are true. But they can also become convenient ways of avoiding the tailings pile.

The more difficult response is to return to the material and ask a different question: Is there still something valuable here?

The First Tool: The Common Gavel

Epictetus offers a useful place to begin. In the Enchiridion, he argues that when another person insults or irritates us, we should recognize the role our own judgment plays in our reaction. His practical advice is especially important: do not immediately allow yourself to be carried away by the first appearance of the offense. Gain time, and self-command becomes easier (Epictetus, 1890/ca. 125, §20). 

That is not a demand that we become emotionless. It is a demand that emotion not become the final judge.

The first reading of criticism is often emotional. The second can become analytical.

That is where the Mason might reach for the Common Gavel.

Albert G. Mackey explains the speculative meaning of the Common Gavel through its operative purpose: the tool breaks off the rough and superfluous portions of the stone so that it can be better fitted for the builder's use. Albert Pike develops the broader principle throughout Morals and Dogma: raw force accomplishes little until intelligence governs and directs it. The work of improvement requires labor applied with judgment (Mackey, 1914; Pike, 1871).

Applied to criticism, however, the Gavel takes on an interesting purpose. We do not swing it at the critic. We swing it at our own reaction.

Defensiveness may be the first rough corner that needs to come off. Perhaps the reviewer really did misunderstand the book. Perhaps the criticism really is unfair. Perhaps the person offering it has no appreciation for what we were attempting to accomplish. Any of those things may be true, but none answers the question that matters to the craftsman.

Is there a flake of gold buried in what was said?

That is the hard work of processing the tailings. A review does not have to be entirely correct to contain something useful. A critic may misunderstand nine parts of an argument and inadvertently expose a weakness in the tenth. A reader may dislike a book for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality while still identifying a passage that genuinely lacks clarity.

The reverse is also true. Praise is not automatically gold. A glowing review may make us feel wonderful without teaching us anything. A harsh review may irritate us for a week and contain the single observation that makes the next book better.

The miner cannot judge ore by whether it feels pleasant in his hand.

Anger Is Not the Problem

Aristotle understood that emotional discipline does not mean eliminating emotion. In Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that the virtuous person is not someone who never becomes angry. The question is whether anger arises for the right reason, toward the right person, in the right manner, at the right time, and for the proper duration. Virtue lies between emotional deficiency and excess (Aristotle, 1934, 4.5). 

That matters when receiving criticism because the goal is not to pretend that words do not hurt. Anyone who has invested years in creating something understands how unrealistic that would be. A dismissive sentence about work into which we poured enormous effort may sting. An unfair accusation may make us angry. A reviewer may attack something we consider deeply important.

The discipline lies in what happens next.

We can be offended and still examine the criticism. We can believe a reviewer was unfair and still ask whether part of the observation was correct. We can reject someone's conclusion while considering the evidence that led that person there.

That is not weakness.

It is craftsmanship.

The Square: Testing What We Find

The Gavel breaks the criticism apart, but breaking material apart does not tell us whether what remains has value. For that we need another tool.

The Square measures.

Criticism cannot simply be accepted because someone offered it. It must be tested. Does the criticism identify an actual weakness? Did I fail to explain something adequately? Did several independent readers stumble at the same place? Is the objection about craftsmanship, or merely preference? Would accepting this criticism make the next work stronger, or would it simply make the work conform to the taste of one particular reader?

This is where humility must coexist with judgment. Rejecting every criticism can become arrogance, but accepting every criticism is not humility. It is surrender. The craftsman's responsibility is not to believe everything said about his work. His responsibility is to examine it honestly.

There is also a significant difference between intention and execution. The writer knows what he meant. He knows what he was trying to communicate. The reader has access to none of that private intention. The reader can judge only what actually reached the page.

That distinction can produce one of the most uncomfortable discoveries in the entire tailings pile.

The critic was right.

If several thoughtful readers consistently misunderstand the same argument, eventually the writer must at least consider that the problem may not lie entirely with the readers. Perhaps the argument was not developed sufficiently. Perhaps something that seemed obvious to the writer was never actually placed on the page. Perhaps a transition existed clearly in the author's mind but not in the manuscript.

Finding that nugget requires humility because it threatens the story we naturally tell ourselves about our own craftsmanship. Yet it may also be among the most valuable things we recover.

The Square does not care whether we like the measurement.

It simply gives us the measurement.

The Compasses: Knowing When to Stop Digging

There is, however, another danger. A miner can become obsessed with recovering the last trace of valuable mineral. Eventually the cost of processing the tailings exceeds the value of whatever might remain.

The same can happen with criticism.

Reviews can become compulsive. We reread a negative comment long after we have extracted everything useful from it. We revisit a careless sentence written by a stranger. We mentally compose rebuttals that will never be delivered. Ten readers may praise the work, yet our attention keeps returning to the eleventh who did not.

At some point, another Masonic working tool becomes necessary.

The Compasses establish a boundary.

Not every criticism deserves an answer. Not every misunderstanding requires correction. Not every reviewer needs to be persuaded, and not every pile of tailings deserves to be processed indefinitely. There comes a point when the useful material has been recovered and the rest must remain where it is.

This may be one of the hardest lessons of authorship because a book never feels entirely like a manufactured object. Something of its creator remains attached to it. Criticism of the work can therefore feel uncomfortably close to criticism of the person.

But perhaps that is precisely why the Masonic metaphor matters. The Mason is never presented as finished stone. He remains both workman and material. The working tools are not displayed merely because he has learned their definitions. They remind him that the work continues.

A published book may be finished.

The writer is not.

There May Still Be Gold in the Tailings

Here the mining metaphor becomes more than metaphor.

Modern mining operations and geologists sometimes return to material that earlier miners discarded. The U.S. Geological Survey is actively studying historic mine wastes because materials once considered worthless can contain minerals that were overlooked, unwanted, uneconomical, or technologically impossible to recover when the original mining occurred. What one generation regarded as waste can, under different circumstances, become a resource. 

That is remarkably close to what happens with criticism.

An observation we initially dismiss may make sense six months later. A question a reader asks may reveal the subject of another essay. A criticism that seems irrelevant to the present book may become central to the next one. An abandoned argument may deserve another excavation from a different direction. Even a misunderstanding can reveal something important about how we communicate.

The value was there.

We simply were not prepared to recover it yet.

Marcus Aurelius repeatedly returned to the idea that correction should not be treated as humiliation. In the Meditations, the governing concern is whether something is true and whether changing course brings us closer to what is right. The person capable of correction has not been defeated; he has acquired better information (Marcus Aurelius, trans. 1916).

That changes the purpose of criticism. The central question is no longer, Did the reviewer like my book? A more useful question is, What can this teach the craftsman who will write the next one?

Now the tailings pile looks different.

There may be abandoned ideas there that become future essays. Questions one book could not answer may become another book. A reader's misunderstanding might reveal an argument deserving clearer treatment. A critic's objection might expose a weakness in our reasoning. Even an unfair review might force us to articulate more clearly why we believe what we believe.

And somewhere in all that debris may be a few flakes of gold.

Financing the Next Mine

Eventually, however, the mine plays out. The manuscript closes. The book goes to press. The reviews arrive. Eventually even they become quiet.

But the craftsman moves on.

Before he does, he works the tailings one last time. He takes up the Gavel and breaks the criticism apart. He uses the Square to test what remains. He draws the Compasses to know when the search has gone far enough. Some of what he finds is worthless and should remain exactly where he found it. But here and there, buried among the debris, are flakes of gold: an observation he had not considered, a weakness he failed to recognize, a question left unanswered, an idea worth pursuing, perhaps even the uncomfortable realization that a critic was right.

Those pieces are recovered. The rest is left behind.

A wise miner does not haul the entire tailings pile from one mine to the next. Neither should a writer carry every criticism, insult, disappointment, misunderstanding, or unfavorable review into the next work. Those things become weight, and enough accumulated weight eventually prevents the craftsman from doing the very thing criticism should help him do: improve.

But neither should he abandon the gold he found among the waste.

He takes that gold with him—not as baggage, but as capital.

Perhaps that is the real value of criticism. We do not have to love it. We do not have to agree with all of it. We certainly do not have to carry all of it. We only need enough discipline to return to the pile, work through what remains, and recognize something valuable when we find it.

The gold recovered from the tailings of one book can help finance the excavation of the next.

Then the craftsman picks up his tools.

And begins digging again.

Reflections on the Craft: Questions for Deeper Understanding

• Working the Tailings:
o When criticism initially feels unfair or hurtful, how can the Common Gavel help you break apart your emotional reaction and search for the useful truth that may still be buried within it?

• Testing What You Recover:
o How can the Square help you distinguish between criticism that reveals a genuine weakness in your work and criticism that merely reflects another person's preferences or misunderstanding?

• Financing the Next Mine:
o Once you have used the Compasses to determine when to stop examining criticism, how can you use the valuable lessons you recovered from those tailings to improve the next work you undertake?

References

Aristotle. (1934). Nicomachean ethics (H. Rackham, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work composed ca. 4th century BCE).

Epictetus. (1890). The discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheiridion and fragments (G. Long, Trans.). George Bell and Sons. (Original work composed ca. 2nd century CE).

Mackey, A. G. (1914). An encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its kindred sciences. Masonic History Company.

Marcus Aurelius. (1916). The communings with himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, emperor of Rome (C. R. Haines, Trans.). Harvard University Press.

Pike, A. (1871). Morals and dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.

U.S. Geological Survey. (2024). Critical minerals in mine wastes. Mineral Resources Program.

U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). Mine waste as a resource. U.S. Department of the Interior.

The biggest improvement, I think, is that the mining metaphor now actually develops rather than merely decorating the essay: mining → processing → tailings → reprocessing → recovered gold → capital for the next mine. The USGS material makes that even better because the idea of returning to old tailings for previously overlooked minerals is something that actually happens, not just something we're inventing for the analogy. (USGS)

Masonic Petty Tyrants

What Difficult Leaders Teach Us About the Working Tools

Some of the most important lessons of my life have been taught by men who never intended to teach me—and whose example I had no desire to imitate.

We ordinarily think of a mentor as someone wiser or more experienced who deliberately guides us. A mentor encourages, corrects, and demonstrates the qualities we hope to develop. Yet there is another kind of teacher: the difficult man whose shortcomings require us to practice the very virtues we claim to possess.

He may be insecure in authority, careless in his responsibilities, unwilling to communicate, or unable to distinguish leadership from position. He may provoke anger, resentment, frustration, or the desire to retaliate. We would never select him as a mentor, and he may be astonished to learn that he taught us anything. Nevertheless, by forcing us to confront our own reactions, he may reveal more about our unfinished character than a dozen men we admire.

Over forty years ago, I encountered Carlos Castaneda’s idea of the “petty tyrant.” I did not yet possess the Masonic language through which I understand it today, but the idea remained with me: difficult people, particularly those exercising authority, can become instruments of personal discipline.

That does not make their behavior right. It does not excuse incompetence, mistreatment, or the misuse of office. It means only that another man’s failures need not be wasted upon us.

Castaneda and the Petty Tyrant

Carlos Castaneda was a Peruvian-born writer who studied anthropology at UCLA and eventually earned a doctorate there. Beginning with The Teachings of Don Juan, he presented himself as an apprentice to Don Juan Matus, whom Castaneda described as a Yaqui man of knowledge. His books combined anthropology, mysticism, altered states of consciousness, and a demanding philosophy of personal discipline.

Castaneda developed the concept of the petty tyrant most fully in Chapter Two of The Fire from Within, published in 1984. In his narrative, a petty tyrant is someone whose power, personality, or proximity can make another person’s life miserable. Castaneda’s hierarchy ranged from people possessing genuine power over life and death to those who simply torment, frustrate, or annoy others.

The “warrior” is not trained merely to defeat such a person. The deeper challenge is to prevent the petty tyrant from gaining command over the warrior’s inner life. Castaneda identifies four qualities brought into practice under this pressure: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing. The difficult person becomes the external force against which these internal qualities are tested.

Castaneda’s warts must remain visible. Serious scholars have challenged the existence of Don Juan, Castaneda’s representation of Yaqui culture, and the reliability of his books as ethnography. Jay Fikes states the criticism bluntly, describing Don Juan as fictional and identifying substantial discrepancies between Castaneda’s accounts and documented Yaqui religious traditions. Other scholarship has treated Castaneda’s writing as a hybrid of ethnography, autobiography, literature, and spiritual narrative rather than as reliable anthropological fieldwork.

We should not conceal that controversy simply because one of Castaneda’s ideas is useful. He presented his work within an anthropological framework, and readers were entitled to expect intellectual honesty from that claim.

But the collapse of the ethnographic claim does not necessarily destroy every philosophical insight contained in the narrative.

Perhaps Castaneda communicated his philosophy through something closer to myth, parable, or spiritual fiction. Perhaps Don Juan was a composite character, a literary invention, or a voice through which Castaneda expressed ideas gathered from several sources. We may never determine precisely where observation ended and imagination began. What we can say is that human beings have always used fictional and mythic narratives to communicate moral truths.

A parable does not have to be journalism to reveal something true about human nature. Myth need not be history to illuminate experience. The important qualification is that we call the narrative what it is—or at least acknowledge honestly what it may be.

We therefore need not accept Don Juan as a historical person, Castaneda as a trustworthy ethnographer, or his larger mystical system as fact. We can examine the petty tyrant as an idea: Can a difficult person become an unwilling participant in the development of our character?

For a Mason, the question naturally leads to the working tools.

The Petty Tyrant and the Rough Ashlar

The petty tyrant is not the rough ashlar.

I am.

That distinction matters because it keeps the labor where Masonry places it: upon ourselves. The difficult Brother is not a stone given to me to reshape according to my preferences. His conduct may require correction. His decisions may require opposition. He may need to be held accountable through whatever legitimate processes the institution provides. But his character does not belong to my quarry.

My character does.

The petty tyrant becomes the pressure that exposes the irregular surfaces of my own rough ashlar. His conduct reveals impatience that remained concealed when everyone agreed with me. He uncovers pride that seemed like confidence when my advice was respected. He exposes my desire for acknowledgment, my need to be proven right, and my temptation to answer discourtesy with discourtesy.

It is easy to believe that we are patient among agreeable men. It is easy to believe that we possess self-control when nothing important has been denied us. It is easy to speak of harmony when no one challenges our judgment, disregards our contribution, or frustrates our work.

Conflict tells us whether those virtues are structural or merely decorative.

The blows of experience do not automatically improve the ashlar. A difficult encounter can make a man wiser, but it can also make him bitter. It can refine his judgment or deform his character. The result depends partly upon whether he consciously applies the working tools.

The Compasses: Circumscribing Conduct, Not Denying Emotion

The Compasses may provide the most immediate lesson. They establish boundaries. Morally understood, they remind us that our passions and desires must be kept within appropriate limits.

But circumscribing a passion is not the same as pretending we do not feel it.

I once misunderstood self-control as control over feeling. If I were sufficiently disciplined, I thought, another person’s conduct would not anger me. Frustration itself seemed like evidence of moral failure. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

We do not always choose the first feeling that arises within us. Anger may be an honest response to neglect, injustice, irresponsibility, or disrespect. Hurt may reveal that something we value has been damaged. Frustration may tell us that an obligation is not being fulfilled. Those feelings contain information.

The choice begins with what we do next.

There is a moral difference between feeling anger and expressing it destructively. There is a difference between recognizing resentment and allowing resentment to compose the email, govern the conversation, or shape the next decision. The Compasses do not command us to become emotionally numb. They ask us to establish a boundary between what we feel and what we permit that feeling to do.

This is where Marcus Aurelius enters the conversation. In the Meditations, he repeatedly distinguishes between the impression that arrives in the mind and the judgment or action that follows it. In Book Four, he counsels himself not to be carried away, but to preserve understanding when an impression arises and to act justly when moved toward action.

That is not emotional anesthesia. It is disciplined separation:

This is what I feel. This is what I think happened. This is what justice requires me to do.

Those are three different statements.

The petty tyrant frequently wins because we collapse them into one. “I am angry” becomes “I have been deliberately insulted,” which becomes “I am therefore justified in striking back.” The Compasses create space between those steps. Within that space, feeling can be acknowledged without being placed in command.

A Mason may say, “I am angry, and I will not answer until I can answer on the Square.”

That is not weakness. It is moral authority exercised first over oneself.

The Square: Testing Our Own Response

When we believe another man has behaved improperly, the temptation is to apply the Square exclusively to him. We measure his words, decisions, motives, and failures. Sometimes that examination is necessary. Accountability is not unmasonic merely because it produces discomfort.

But the Square must also be turned toward our response.

Am I presenting the facts accurately? Am I separating what I know from what I assume? Am I correcting a problem or punishing a person? Am I seeking a responsible outcome, or do I want the satisfaction of humiliating someone who frustrated me? Would I consider my own language fair if it were directed toward me?

The Square does not require passivity. Square conduct may require a firm objection, a written record, a formal complaint, an opposing vote, or an honest refusal to participate in something improper. Morality without courage is ornamental. Yet firmness can remain measured, truthful, and proportional.

The petty tyrant’s conduct does not relieve us of the obligation to square our own.

Indeed, that may be his greatest unintended lesson. He tests whether our principles survive contact with someone who does not appear to share them. If another man’s discourtesy makes me discourteous, then he has established the standard governing my conduct. If his dishonesty persuades me to distort the truth, then his deficiency has become mine. If his misuse of authority causes me to hunger for the power to retaliate, I am already rehearsing for the role I condemn.

The goal is not to surrender judgment to the petty tyrant. It is to deny him command over our character.

The Level: Separating the Man From the Office

The Level offers another essential discipline.

To meet a man on the Level is not to pretend that every man possesses equal authority, responsibility, experience, or competence. Offices exist, duties differ, and legitimate authority must be recognized. The Worshipful Master and the newest Entered Apprentice do not possess identical responsibilities within the lodge.

But the office does not increase the fundamental worth of the man occupying it.

When we remove the title for a moment and view the individual simply as a man, something changes. We may see insecurity beneath defensiveness, inexperience beneath indecision, or fear beneath a display of authority. We may recognize that the office temporarily magnifies ordinary human weaknesses. The chair did not create the man’s imperfections; it merely gave them greater reach.

This does not excuse harmful behavior. Understanding is not absolution. But viewing the man on the Level can remove part of the tyranny from the encounter because it strips the office of its psychological grandeur.

He is no longer an all-powerful figure occupying our thoughts. He is a fallible man temporarily entrusted with a position.

The Level also reminds us not to answer arrogance with contempt. A man may be performing poorly without becoming less human. His office does not make him morally superior, but his failures do not make him morally beneath us. We can challenge his conduct while remembering his dignity.

That is a difficult balance, particularly when we feel that he has not respected ours.

The Plumb: Remaining Upright Under Pressure

The Plumb asks whether our conduct remains upright when pressure comes from the side.

Almost anyone can stand straight when nothing pushes against him. The true test arrives when convenience, anger, loyalty, ambition, or institutional politics invite us to lean away from what we know to be right.

The petty tyrant creates precisely that pressure.

We may be tempted to remain silent because speaking will be uncomfortable. At another moment, we may be tempted to speak recklessly because silence feels unbearable. Upright conduct may require either speech or restraint, depending upon the circumstances. The Plumb does not prescribe a single response. It establishes the vertical line against which the response must be judged.

Am I acting from principle? Are my intentions upright? Would I make the same decision if different personalities occupied the offices involved?

The Plumb tests whether our moral position changes according to whom we like, whom we dislike, or who currently holds power.

The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge: Time, Proportion, and Timing

Castaneda includes timing among the disciplines developed through confronting a petty tyrant. The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge gives that idea a particularly useful Masonic expression.

Not every provocation requires an immediate response. Time permits emotion to settle, facts to emerge, and words to be chosen deliberately. A response delayed by prudence may carry more moral force than one delivered at the height of anger.

But delay can also become avoidance. There are moments when failing to act allows preventable harm to continue. Timing does not mean waiting indefinitely. It means selecting the moment at which action is most likely to serve the principle involved rather than merely relieve our emotional pressure.

The Gauge also teaches proportion. How much of our limited time will we permit this person to occupy? How many hours will we spend rehearsing an argument that has already ended? How much attention will we take from family, service, health, study, and productive labor so that we can continue an imaginary conversation with someone who is not even present?

A petty tyrant’s formal authority may be limited to a meeting, a workplace, or a particular term of office. We enlarge that authority when we allow him to follow us home and preside over our thoughts.

Sometimes the most important boundary is temporal: this problem deserves my attention, but it does not deserve my entire day.

The Common Gavel: Removing Our Own Excess

The Common Gavel brings us back to the rough ashlar. Under pressure, it reveals the superfluities that still require removal: vanity, vengeance, self-importance, and the desire to control what does not belong to us.

Castaneda’s petty tyrant is especially useful in exposing self-importance. Why does this man possess such power over my peace of mind? Am I disturbed entirely because a principle has been violated, or partly because my advice was ignored? Do I want the problem corrected, or do I also need public acknowledgment that I was right?

These are uncomfortable questions, but discomfort is often the sound of the Gavel striking something that needs attention.

Self-examination does not mean that every grievance is vanity. A genuine wrong does not become imaginary merely because we search our own motives. The Mason can hold two truths simultaneously: another man may have acted improperly, and my response may still contain pride, exaggeration, or a desire for revenge.

The Gavel is applied to that excess—not to conscience, courage, or justified concern.

Forbearance Is Not Submission

The philosophy of the petty tyrant becomes dangerous if it is used to romanticize mistreatment.

There is nothing noble about remaining indefinitely in an abusive or genuinely dangerous situation merely to prove one’s spiritual discipline. Patience does not require silence when others are being harmed. Harmony does not mean concealing misconduct. Brotherly love does not abolish accountability. Forgiveness does not necessarily restore trust, and understanding another man’s weakness does not require granting him unlimited access to injure an institution.

The working tools help us choose how to act; they do not command us never to act.

A Mason may document, object, report, vote, confront, establish boundaries, or withdraw. He may do so firmly. The moral question is not whether he experiences anger or creates conflict. The question is whether his conduct remains truthful, proportionate, and directed toward a legitimate end.

Controlling our reaction does not mean allowing the petty tyrant to prevail. It means that even when we oppose him, he does not determine what kind of man we become.

The Unwilling Mentor

Good leaders teach by example. Poor leaders teach through contrast and consequence.

They show us what happens when communication fails, when authority is separated from responsibility, and when an officeholder assumes that possessing a title is equivalent to providing leadership. They teach us how quickly uncertainty spreads when questions are ignored. They reveal the institutional cost of disorganization, favoritism, indecision, or pride.

Most importantly, they teach us what those failures feel like to the people who must live beneath them.

That knowledge becomes valuable when authority eventually passes to us.

Some men have taught me how to lead by demonstrating patience, competence, courage, and service. Others have taught me by making unmistakably clear what happens when those qualities are absent. I am indebted to both, although the second debt took much longer to recognize.

Calling a petty tyrant a mentor does not honor his conduct. It describes what we have chosen to extract from the experience. He may remain unchanged. He may never understand the lesson he helped provide. Our growth cannot depend upon his insight, apology, or reform.

That recognition restores agency. We may not control the office he holds or the decisions he makes. We can control whether the experience teaches us to communicate more clearly, preserve better records, confront without humiliating, exercise authority without becoming authoritarian, and remember what it felt like when legitimate concerns were dismissed.

The Tyrant Within

The final application of the working tools is also the most uncomfortable.

Every Mason who identifies a petty tyrant in another man should look for the beginning of that same man within himself.

The critic of unresponsive leadership may someday stop answering messages because he considers himself too busy. The man who condemns arrogance may begin dismissing others because experience has convinced him that he is usually right. The Brother who resents being unheard may eventually occupy the East and discover that he prefers obedience to counsel.

Power does not necessarily corrupt a man by introducing something completely foreign into his character. Often it enlarges tendencies already present but previously restrained by circumstance.

The final lesson of the petty tyrant, therefore, is not simply how to endure him. It is how to recognize his earliest features in ourselves.

Can I receive correction without treating it as disloyalty? Can I distinguish respect for an office from personal deference? Can I communicate before confusion becomes conflict? Can I remember that authority is held temporarily and exercised in trust?

The man who has suffered under poor leadership should not merely promise that he will lead differently. He should preserve the memory of how poor leadership affected the men around him and apply that memory whenever others must depend upon him.

The Stone Entrusted to Us

The difficult man may eventually leave office, lose influence, change, or disappear from our lives. The character formed—or deformed—during the encounter remains.

We cannot always select the people with whom we must labor. We cannot control their judgment, competence, motives, or self-awareness. We cannot force another man to apply the working tools to himself.

We can apply them to the only stone truly entrusted to our hands.

The Compasses establish a boundary between emotion and action. The Square tests the morality of our response. The Level separates the human being from the temporary grandeur of his position. The Plumb holds us upright beneath pressure. The Twenty-Four-Inch Gauge teaches timing, proportion, and the wise allocation of attention. The Common Gavel removes the vanity, vengeance, and self-importance exposed by conflict.

The petty tyrant may never understand the lesson he has given us. He may leave the encounter exactly as he entered it. But if his conduct teaches us patience without passivity, firmness without cruelty, accountability without vengeance, and authority without vanity, then the labor has not been wasted.

He was never the stone entrusted to our hands.

We were.

And the question was always whether the blows of experience would merely wound the rough ashlar—or help us shape it.

Sources

1. Castaneda, Carlos. The Fire from Within. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Chapter Two, “Petty Tyrants.” Google Books bibliographic record and contents.

2. Fikes, Jay C. “Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998): Reading Between His Lines, a Summary Judgment.” The International Journal of Ecopsychology 2, no. 1 (2021), Article 3. Cal Poly Humboldt Digital Commons.

3. Santos, Marcel de Lima. “Translating the Sacred: Literature and Ethnography in Carlos Castaneda.” Scholarly analysis of Castaneda’s mixture of ethnographic and literary discourse. Article record.

4. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, 4.22. Greek text, George Long translation, and commentary on the Stoic distinction between impression, judgment, and action. Digital critical edition.

5. Grand Lodge of California. “Working Tools from Emulation Ritual.” Educational material presenting the moral applications of the Gauge, Gavel, Chisel, Square, Level, Plumb Rule, and Compasses. Official PDF.

Bears Maul the Buzzers

Some baseball games are memorable because they're masterpieces.

Others are memorable because they're complete train wrecks.

Friday night at ONT Field was definitely the latter.

It was my third visit to the new ballpark in Ontario and, by coincidence, my second straight Friday watching the Fresno Grizzlies. Exactly one week earlier, I'd watched them in Fresno against the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. This week, they came south and absolutely dismantled the hometown Ontario Tower Buzzers, 17-2.

The game was effectively over before many fans had finished their first hot dog.

Ontario's starter couldn't locate the strike zone. Walks piled up. Runs piled up even faster. Before long the Grizzlies had turned the first inning into batting practice, and the Buzzers spent the rest of the evening trying to survive.

Fortunately, there was plenty happening besides baseball.

Disney Princess Night

The evening was Disney Princess Night.

A couple dozen little girls wandered the concourse dressed as Cinderella, Belle, Elsa, Ariel, and a handful of other Disney princesses. Between innings the stadium speakers were filled with familiar Disney songs, giving the ballpark a lighthearted atmosphere that contrasted sharply with what was happening on the field.

The organist, however, stole the show.

As the Grizzlies casually marched across Ontario's pitching staff, the familiar notes of The Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book floated through the stadium.

Immediately my mind pictured Baloo, the easygoing bear wandering through the jungle with Mowgli, singing about life's simple pleasures while effortlessly brushing aside every obstacle in his path.

That was Fresno.

They weren't grinding out runs.

They weren't struggling.

They simply wandered through the Buzzers' pitching staff as casually as Baloo wandered through the jungle.

Whether the organist intended the joke or not, the music became the soundtrack to the game. Every base hit seemed to fit the rhythm. Every run seemed to arrive with the same relaxed confidence as the bear strolling through the jungle.

I found myself laughing.

Later, Chim Chim Cher-ee began playing. Just as the song reached the lyric about "a kiss for luck," Fresno launched a three-run home run.

Again, perfect timing.

One selection, though, left me completely puzzled. During a matchup between two players with Hispanic surnames, the organ suddenly launched into The Ballad of Davy Crockett.

My immediate thought was, "Wasn't Davy Crockett killed at the Alamo?"

Sometimes baseball produces comedy completely by accident.

"We Want Fireworks!"

By the ninth inning, everyone knew the outcome.

Normally, late in a close game, the crowd begins chanting, "Let's go Buzzers!"

Not this night.

Instead, one section started chanting,

"We want fireworks!"

They weren't asking for a comeback.

They simply wanted the game to end.

The chant became loud enough that the Buzzers' mascot eventually wandered over carrying a whiteboard, apparently trying to distract the crowd before the chant spread any farther.

It was wonderfully minor league.

No television broadcast could ever capture that moment.

Flight Club

For this game I decided to splurge on the Flight Club Lounge.

At roughly $130 after fees, it isn't inexpensive. It's about what I'd spend for a lower-end Dodger ticket.

The difference?

Instead of fighting Los Angeles traffic for ninety minutes, Ontario is only thirty minutes from home.

Parking is easy.

Getting into the stadium is easy.

Everything is easy.

The seat itself may have been the best baseball seat I've ever had.

Positioned almost directly behind home plate and elevated just enough, I could see every inch of the field. Every defensive alignment. Every cutoff man. Every shift. Both dugouts were in plain view, and nothing obstructed the sightlines.

It felt like watching baseball from the command post.

Being that close also meant hearing the game.

At one point the Ontario manager came out arguing because his batter wasn't looking at the pitcher before stepping into the box. From my seat, every word was perfectly audible.

That's something television simply cannot duplicate.

The lounge itself is modern, spacious, and air-conditioned.

Compared with Fresno's Kodiak Club, I'd give the edge to Ontario.

The buffet was better.

The desserts were noticeably better.

The lounge was less crowded.

Soft drinks and bottled water were included, although alcohol still required purchasing separately.

One unexpected surprise was running into the assistant city manager from San Dimas, who happened to be there with his wife.

It's always funny discovering how small Southern California really is.

Was It Worth It?

Yes.

Would I do it again?

Probably not.

Not because it wasn't enjoyable.

It was.

The game started in nearly 100-degree weather, but those seats remained shaded throughout the evening, and by the final out the temperature had dropped into the low 80s.

Still, I found myself thinking I'd rather buy a good $45 seat and spend another $40 or $50 on food.

The Flight Club is excellent.

I'm simply not convinced it's eighty dollars better.

Faith Night

The evening also happened to be the Tower Buzzers' first annual Faith Night.

Beyond center field sits the airport-themed Baggage Claim entertainment area, where live bands perform before and during games.

Last time I visited, it featured an outstanding 1980s cover band.

This time, two different church worship groups played Christian rock throughout the evening.

On the video board, several Los Angeles Dodgers players shared how faith had influenced both their careers and their lives.

The commemorative jersey reflected the evening's theme as well, incorporating a cross draped with a red cloth into the familiar ONT logo.

No commentary necessary.

It simply reflected the organization's chosen theme for the night.

Saving the Best for Last

If the baseball was forgettable, the fireworks certainly weren't.

The moment the final out mercifully arrived, the lights dimmed and the sky beyond left field exploded into one of the finest fireworks displays I've seen in years.

The show was synchronized to Disney music, including Friend Like Me from Aladdin.

It was colorful.

It was loud.

It was beautifully choreographed.

And after nearly three hours of watching the Grizzlies dismantle the Buzzers, it was exactly the ending everyone had been chanting for.

Why I Keep Going

Ontario committed three errors.

Honestly, generous scorekeeping probably prevented a couple more.

They couldn't pitch.

They couldn't hit.

They couldn't stop Fresno's offense.

Yet none of that is why I'll remember the evening.

I'll remember the Disney songs that accidentally narrated a blowout.

I'll remember an entire section chanting for fireworks instead of runs.

I'll remember hearing managers argue with umpires from behind home plate.

I'll remember the little girls dressed as princesses, the Christian rock drifting in from beyond center field, and a ballpark comfortable enough to make you forget the thermometer still read one hundred degrees.

Minor league baseball isn't polished.

It's authentic.

It's close enough to hear the game, smell the grass, and become part of the evening instead of simply watching it.

Even after a 17-2 beating, I drove home smiling.

Sometimes the score isn't the story.

Sometimes the experience is.