“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice…” A poem on unpolished love, church pews and quiet grace by Baldric the Poet.

Ground Truth

Grace at Row Thirteen — A Poem by Baldric the Poet

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:6

He came in smelling of hay and spilt rye,
six feet of cedar felled by a jade ax,
his knuckles hard, round acorns on his hands,
his thick fingers unapt at thumbing beads.
Beside him walked a slender copper creature,
in rustling silk and narrow, four-inch heels,
Swaying in stride, claiming every man’s eyes,
she held her chin high, sculpted like a queen.

In varnished rows, the elders held their breath.
Parish gossip click like a bale knotter,
count up the months he farmed beyond their view,
sizing her up to see how she’ll fit their pews.
How much postage for this overseas crate,
shrewd men of business estimate her rate.

She wore a wide round hat with one red rose;
he stood, a king with felt hat in his hand.
No stone-carved angel sang up in the loft,
no sanctuary oil flared out a sign;
just two copper clods caught between the prongs,
holding hands, snuggling under his arm.

No sermon preached forgiveness of their sins,
nor words to force the couple to fit in;
no incense smoke could buy what love had won,
nor altar-fire outshine her steadfast smile.
For grace shined at the end of row thirteen,
and holiness stood in their staggered height;
a blind brute harnesses their breaking plow
and earth turns over and buries the weeds.

© Baldric The Poet 2026

Ground Truth was originally published in The Howling Owl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This winter will likely be the last winter in the Ukraine-Russian War.

As temperatures plunge, the vulnerability of municipal energy grids, like central heating systems and high-voltage electrical networks, reaches its peak. It is the time of year when cities are most fragile and vulnerable. Yet both Russia and Ukraine have pledged to target the power infrastructure of each other’s primary metropolitan centers. Neither nation is likely to withstand the winter if both succeed.

Russia is already striking Ukraine’s energy grid, while Ukraine continues to systematically target Russian oil refineries. Analysts believe both countries are stockpiling long-range drones and missiles for a decisive knockout punch in December or January. Ironically, by attacking Ukraine’s grid autumn after autumn, Russia has given Kyiv a head start in hardening its defenses and preparing contingency plans for extreme cold. On the other side, Moscow appears less concerned and thus far less prepared for a reciprocal crisis.

Russia seems eager to plunge Kiev into the cold before Ukraine can respond. It is rather short-sighted. Kiev is located in more temperate latitudes. It does not get freezing weather until December. Then the temperature hovers around zero until March when it starts warming up. On the Russian side of the border, Moscow is located in arctic latitudes. They start getting freezing weather in November and it stays freezing until April. It stays cold for a much longer period of time.

In either event, it probably doesn’t matter. If both countries knock out the energy grids; within weeks, both capitals will become uninhabitable. They become two historic cities devastated for years to come.

Soviet Era Cities

Moscow (population 12 million) is about six times larger than Kiev (2 million). Both cities were damaged beyond recognition during World War II. They were rebuilt during the Soviet era and still rely on the massive municipal infrastructure designed during that rebuilding. The Soviet Union heavily subsidized basic municipal utilities, such as heat, electricity, gas, and water. While heating was not technically zero-cost on paper, it was treated as a fundamental social provision rather than a market commodity.

Decades later, very little of the Soviet’s business model has changed. Residents continue to pay a nominal monthly fee for all utilities. In most cases, none of the apartments have individual meters. Utilities, including heat, are not based on actual consumption.

Apartment heating in both cities remains overwhelmingly centralized through Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants. Superheated water is pumped from central facilities through vast underground pipe networks into residential radiators. Even in newer post-1970s residential districts, the vast majority of apartments, whether in Kyiv or Moscow, remain tethered to this single, municipal CHP rather than individual building boilers or electric heating. Because individual apartments lack localized shut-off valves or heat meters, whole districts depend entirely on the central supply.

Simply put, they were built to freeze together. Both nations understand this shared vulnerability. Strikes aimed at collapsing each other’s CHP plants and high-voltage sub-stations target the exact same Soviet-era network. A system where disabling a few central nodes can freeze hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks at once. And both countries have the capacity to destroy all of them.

What Happens

So what happens if all or most of Kiev/Moscow’s CHPs are destroyed?

Both capitals will plunge into darkness and extreme cold almost overnight. Between January and March, average temperatures in these latitudes hover continuously at or below freezing, frequently dipping into deep sub-zero cold snaps. Human body heat alone cannot combat the chill of an unheated concrete apartment block.

Yet history teaches us that the primary threat in modern cities facing catastrophic winter infrastructure failure is not hypothermia. It is the cascading series of other things caused by the loss of power and heat.

The overwhelming majority of residents in both cities live in massive high-rise apartments. Several blocks of them. They are dense human anthills constructed of steel and reinforced concrete. Built during an era when state-subsidized heating made energy efficiency an afterthought, these structures possess negligible insulation. When district heating cuts off in deep winter, unheated concrete high-rises shed their residual thermal mass within 24 to 48 hours, causing internal temperatures to drop to the freezing mark.

Once that threshold is crossed, the true crisis begins: water mains rupture, sewage systems freeze and back up, elevators stall, and hundreds of thousands of residents in vertical cities find themselves trapped without sanitation, light, or water.

It is time to leave town!

Mass Migration Begins

A mass exodus would begin almost immediately. Hundreds of thousands will head for the suburbs where localized power might remain, or push into rural areas where biomass — wood, straw, and coal — can still generate heat.

Unfortunately they will need to walk to these destinations because gas stations will not operate without electricity and even if they have fuel in their underground tanks, they lack a way to pump it out.

And unfortunately, people will not be able to walk very far. Primarily the elderly, disabled, hospital patients, families without vehicles or rural connections, and those attempting to protect property. They become functionally trapped in unheated multi-story structures once mass transit halts and fuel supplies exhaust.

The physical destruction of the cities will be catastrophic. As interior temperatures drop below freezing, municipal water mains and residential building risers will freeze and rupture citywide. The scale of cracked pipes across millions of high-rise apartments will take years to repair.

February / March

By February and March, the second and third months of continuous sub-zero conditions, a modern metropolis’s “just-in-time” food supply chain completely collapses. Commercial inventories, designed for a 3-to-7-day turnover, are exhausted. The remaining population is forced to rely entirely on emergency military rationing, external airlifts, or manual scavenging.

Traversing these frozen cities becomes nearly impossible. Un-plowed snow, abandoned vehicles, and ice-choked transit corridors block the roads. Even walking across the city is a treacherous, exhausting ordeal; rutted, frozen snowpack makes every step a deliberate effort.

By March, the cities will resemble ghost towns. Signs of normal life will vanish. With the ground frozen too hard to dig graves, residents will be forced to move their dead outside, placing bodies along building foundations or inside snowdrifts.

Basic municipal sanitation will revert to crude bucket disposal, littering the streets. While the sub-zero chill keeps waste frozen through the winter, the return of spring threatens to unleash catastrophic epidemics and horrible stench.

Humanitarian Crisis Unmatched in History

Life far beyond the capitals will fare little better. The common assumption that rural hinterlands and suburban perimeters can serve as safe havens in a total grid failure ignores the harsh arithmetic of modern urban density. Even if regional towns, agricultural communities, or suburban outposts manage to keep localized heating grids operational or sustain temporary generator power, they possess neither the food stores, fuel stockpiles, nor medical logistics to absorb a sudden mass exodus. Municipal food reserves in outlying districts will vanish within a matter of days under the weight of an incoming population several times their own size.

When millions of freezing, desperate citizens flee two collapsing metropolises at the same time, the movement will resemble an uncontrollable human tide. Roads choked with abandoned vehicles, unplowed snowpack, and stalled transit corridors will force the exodus into a grueling, multi-stage march across sub-zero terrain. Transit hubs and rural junction towns will collapse within hours as thousands surge toward any moving train, truck, or temporary shelter offering basic warmth.

This mass flight will trigger a displacement crisis that makes the Syrian refugee emergency pale in comparison. During the Syrian Civil War, the displacement of roughly 6.5 million people severely strained international relief and altered the political landscape of Western Europe for a decade. A simultaneous structural collapse of Kyiv and Moscow would displace more than double that number. It will unleash an estimated 12 to 15 million urban refugees into immediate, desperate search for survival.

As deep winter holds through February and March, this human wave will spill heavily across borders into Eastern and Central Europe. Bordering nations are already hosting significant displaced populations. They are managing stretched social safety nets and contending with their own winter energy costs. They will find themselves forced to manage a migration influx unprecedented in post-WWII history.

Far from forcing a diplomatic pause or strategic surrender, a humanitarian disaster of this magnitude guarantees the exact opposite. It transforms a military conflict between armies into an chaotic, continent-wide survival struggle where border security, civil order, and European political cohesion fracture simultaneously.

INSANITY!!!!!

We are all sitting on the sidelines watching this train-wreck happen in slow motion. Like most Medium readers, the spectators of the world at large offer no comment or any response before the catastrophe. The bots on Medium are offering no “How To Stop” articles. And if you think this catastrophe will stop the war, then think again!

A catastrophe of this magnitude would not stop the war; it will make it a thousand times worse. History and strategic logic suggest it would likely intensify the conflict, fundamentally altering its nature rather than forcing a peaceful resolution. Millions of Ukrainian and Russian refugees will flood into Europe. All of them demanding justice and vengence. The riots will make the current student protest in Paris look like child’s play.

To deliberately target energy infrastructure in the dead of winter is not merely an act of war; it is strategic suicide. Both Kyiv and Moscow rely on the exact same fragile, Soviet-engineered lifeline. Ironically, the central heating plants and high-voltage grids keeping millions alive in 2026 are the products of a shared history. It was built by the same state to overcome the same brutal winter climate remembered during World War II.

Destroying them does not yield a military victory. It results in millions of refugees, destroyed two capitals and made them uninhabitable ruins for decades to come. To push two historic cities toward total, irreversible freeze is an act of pure geopolitical madness. It is a scenario where both sides press the trigger and neither side survives the recoil.

Within sixty days after the power shuts down, millions of people who currently rely on high-speed internet, modern hospitals and complex supply chains would be reduced to burning furniture in concrete apartments, hauling bucket waste into frozen streets, and walking through blizzard-choked ruins in search of food. To deliberately unleash a catastrophe of this scale, where the survivor’s reward is simply watching their city rot until the spring thaw, is nothing short of insanity.

And to do nothing to stop it — now that is the real war crime.

“I have a cunning plan!”

For years, Western policy toward Ukrainian airspace has been defined by hesitation masked as prudence. While European leaders debate escalation thresholds, millions of civilians spend every winter expecting the total collapse of their power and heating networks.

It is time for Europe to move beyond sending money, weapons and parts to keep the war going. It is time they put a stop to it. At the very least, provide the defensive umbrella to make Ukraine a no fly zone. They need to pretend they are the USA and Ukraine is Israel. Protecting Ukrainian skies isn’t just a military action. It is a humanitarian shield against catastrophic, sub-zero mass displacement into Western Europe. It is a military action to stop World War III.

Eventually they will need to do it. In order to stem the tide of refugees, Europe will need to establish ground- and air-based interceptor zones to protect humanitarian corridors, nuclear plants, and other major cities from the same fate. Presently Europe is already hosting 20% of Ukraine’s population. They need to picture what hosting 80% of Ukraine’s 52 million will be like. Doesn’t it make more sense to do it before rather than after the destruction of Kiev and Moscow?

Regarding America’s responsibility to do something, the USA is too corrupt for any serious expectations. Right now the Trump Administration is deeply entangled in negotiations to acquire Russia’s Lukoil international portfolio. It comprises upstream oil fields northwest of the Caspian Sea alongside an extensive retail network of refineries and gas stations stretching across Eastern and Central Europe. (Financial Times, 9–22–2026, New York Times, 10–4–2026)

It is highly unlikely that Trump will do anything to screw up his Lukoil deal; and once he assumes ownership, private financial interests may dictate protecting those very assets. Perhaps Putin is banking on this self-interest to save Moscow. To date, it seems to be working. Ukraine has yet to receive the critical anti-ballistic missile defense measures authorized under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act.

Beyond lining their own pockets, Trump and his cronies seem unworried. They will not pay any attention until photo ops during the 2028 election campaigns show candidates handing out chocolate bars to children in resettlement camps; and undoubtedly Melania Trump will be wearing her “I Really Don’t Care, Do U” jacket.

But she should! When the grids fail and the frost settles over the silent ruins of Kyiv and Moscow, no amount of political posturing or corporate profit will warm the dead. We are staring directly into the abyss of our own collective apathy. The trigger has already been squeezed; the only question left is whether anyone in power has the courage to step in before the recoil destroys us all.

Ukraine War: Winter is Coming was originally published in Activated Thinker on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to leave a sterile sanctuary and find grace at a country cafe.

take a listen: Vespers at 3 PM

VESPERS AT THREE O’CLOCK

a poem by Baldric the Poet

The Sanctuary (3:00 PM)

Chapel clock strikes three in the midday sun;
the nuns act like the dark evening has begun.
Cold marble floors flatten my knees,
scrubbed sterile, not a single dust mite floats.
A requiem of reciting rehearsed platitudes,
we promise to bear the cross and believe;
empty zeroes mark ledgers of good deeds.

Sanctuary lamp flickered out its glow
burnt-out wick for a pious, hollow show.
I turned away and walked a quarter-mile
from all that canned, manufactured sound.

The Street Outside (3:05 PM)

Beyond the gate, heat bakes dirt into lead;
The sun sits high above the cracked street line,
Where idle men ignore the chapel chime.
Their vespers carry sound of crying kids,
Back home from school with no free lunch to bite.

A sharp and biting stone slipped in my boot,
Ignored until it ground me to a halt.
I sit to shake the jagged pebble free;
It bit my arch and stung me to the bone,
A sudden, raw witness to the truth
Outside the manicured retreat facade.

The Offertory (3:20 PM)

Donna brings my black coffee with her rasp,
and huffs into a chair to rest her frame.
“What do you have?” she asks; I answer low,
“I bring you nothing but this graying stone.”
She slaps my ticket flat upon the board;
I slide a twenty down and say, “Keep it.”
She swipes the paper green and speaks her mind:
“Don’t stay away so long next time.”

Closing Prayer (3:30 PM)

Leader

For holiness is never found in prose,
nor on smooth stone where polished marble glows.
No God is trapped behind a gilded gate,
or waiting at a garden bench, unseen.

Response

He lives within the grit along the road,
in growling stomachs and the sighs of moms.
He breaks us down to feel what others bear,
and keeps the stool beside the counter clear.

Vespers at 3 PM was originally published in The Howling Owl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

THE MINUTES OF THE HEAVENLY ART COMMISSION

SESSION: CDLXII (462), Designation of New Treasures

LOCATION: The Loggia of Purest Light, Third Heaven

CHAIR: St. Luke the Evangelist

MEMBERS PRESENT:

• St. Catherine of Bologna, Co-Chair
• St. Fra Angelico, Lead Curator
• St. John Damascene, Theological Advisor

NEW BUSINESS: Case 7,777201

Petitioner: Baldric the Poet, Purgatory Level 3 (on work release)
Item: Lawn Rake Against A Tree
Request: Gukbo Designation
Attach: Newsletter Article

CHAIR (St. Luke): Let us proceed. Next is Case 7,777201. The applicant is Baldric the Poet. He is requesting a Gukbo Designation for his rake. Here is the situation according to the family newsletter written by his daughter, who lives with him.

Last week Mom and Dad got into a huge argument over a rake Dad left leaning against the Oak Tree since last fall. Mom wanted him to put it away. Dad refused. She went to do it herself. And all hell broke loose. Dad blocked her way. The goats joined in. Gideon began headbutting Mom and knocked her down. The commotion was so loud that the neighbors on the property north of us called the Sheriff for a welfare check. It was embarrassing. The Sheriff ordered them to take a time out to cool down. I am too embarrassed to go grocery shopping. It will be in the newspaper under Police Reports. I am moving!!!!!!!

CHAIR (St. Luke): During their timeout, Baldric requested expedited consideration of his Gukbo request which is why I called this special meeting.

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: Look at the picture! It is a rake! A simple, bent rake! That he left leaning on a tree nearly a year ago. It fails to meet the threshold of Intent. Why are we here?

ST. FRA ANGELICO: I must confess, his request is odd. But what do you expect. Regarding intent, it does not apply in this case. It is like a national park. The beauty of it just turned out that way.

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: So it is a question of beauty, then?

ST. FRA ANGELICO: Yes. I think so.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE: Okay. Then let’s apply the beauty criteria. Does it ascend to the supernatural? Does anybody feel any sense of awe?

ST. LUKE: I do. That’s why I called this meeting.

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: You need to say more than that Luke!

ST. LUKE: That’s Saint Luke, Cathy.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE: Knock it off! I can see some supernatural beauty here. It has a certain romantic elevation. The bent handle, the mystery around why it was left against the tree, the way nature has adopted it as part of their own. It has the mandatory “taint of sadness”. Shows how everything succumbs to time.

ST. FRA ANGELICO: I disagree, Chair. St. John, my friend, can we say this is sacred art? It is not an icon. It does not depict a sacred history. It is a portrait, perhaps, but a portrait of non-action.

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: An interesting interpretation, St. John. But I still need convincing. By that logic, every potato chip with the face of Jesus on it would be a masterpiece. I still think it needs intent.

ST. LUKE: Let go of intent! It has a natural beauty, taint of sadness, harmony and proportional unity. Over half the boxes under the definition of beauty.

ST. FRA ANGELICO: Let’s look at the other half. Does it have any outstanding significance for study! How would any of us use it in a lecture about heavenly beauty?

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: I should keep my mouth shut; but St. Fra, you are arguing for philosophy, it is a piece of art. It requires intent but not necessary historical or generational significance.

CHAIR (St. Luke): I dreamed about it last night. That makes it significant in my mind.

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: Only your mind, your Highness, Saint Luke.

ST. FRA ANGELICO: What kind of beauty is it, Saint John? Transmutable, Generational, Inherited, Sublime, Transcendental? Did I miss any?

ST. LUKE: Nope. That’s all I see.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE: It is definitely Sublime. It is neat, comforting and harmonious. It has a melody that breaks your perception of “just a rake left since last year”.

ST. LUKE: And I dreamed about it! I woke up this morning thinking about the Harmony of the Cosmos. True beauty can never be created by man. At best they can discover it but that’s all! The way nature has taken over this rake clearly shows a harmony of creation itself. It strikes a chord of pure awe at how we all transcend into something more. Look at all the life this rake brought forth!

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: I can not help but notice that only men want to play around with this nonsense. That’s why we need more women on this holy Commission. Can one of your reconsider my motion to add St. Hildegard of Bingen?

ST. FRA ANGELICO: Enough. I make a motion: We grant the Gukbo Designation provided the title of this piece of art be: Laziness of Man.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE: Second. Call for question.

ST. LUKE: Would you consider a friendly amendment: “Treasure of Unfinished Service.”

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: No. Not if you want my vote. Second the call for question.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE: St. Catherine makes it the majority.

CHAIR (St. Luke): There is one more thing in Baldric’s application. He is asking for a grant whereby no weeds grow under or around the rake. What about it?

ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA: No. Let’s vote!

CHAIR (St. Luke): Motion carries. Case 7,777201 is designated a “Laziness of Man” and it along with the tree will become one of the shrines in our Chapel of Gentle Rest. Can I get an Amen?

ALL: Amen

Explore my work & get your free zine at baldricthepoet.com

Baldric’s Day in Court was originally published in The Howling Owl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s Sunday and already my week is off to a crappy start. Every Sunday I go to church and sit in Pew #17. I have been doing it for months on end. Everybody in the parish knows that the left half of Pew #17 is mine.

You can imagine the shock this morning when an attractive, pregnant young woman was sitting in my spot alongside her grandmother. It literally made me clutch my rosary beads.

As I was wondering what cosmic message this displacement means, the pair suddenly stood up, right before Mass began, and moved across the aisle. This is where the morning got interesting.

In Pew #10 sat a family of four: a father, a mother, and two teenage children. The father sat closest to the aisle next to his son, while the mother sat sandwiched between the boy and her youngest daughter.

When the grandmother reached Pew #10, she placed a hand on her pregnant granddaughter’s back and gently steered her toward her father. The father immediately scooted over, everybody shifted to make room. Meanwhile, the grandmother walked all the way around the block of pews to sit on the far end next to her youngest grandchild.

It wasn’t hard to read the unspoken choreography: the father’s oldest daughter got pregnant. He likely kicked her out, and she went to live with the grandmother. And the grandmother, bless her relentless sacred heart, was using Sunday morning to force a physical reconciliation between a stubborn father and his frightened child.

The mother didn’t look particularly helpful in the matter. Sporting dyed blue hair, she appeared entirely unprepared to embrace the role of the family matriarch or grandmother. Her soul looked weary, but her daughter clearly needed a wise older presence, which she thankfully found in the woman who maneuvered her into that pew.

When Mass concluded, the pregnant teen led the family toward the exit, but somehow got separated in the crowd. The father, walking directly behind her, deliberately dropped to the back of the line to stay next to his younger daughter instead. The grandmother caught up with the pregnant teen, and the two of them left the sanctuary together. Maybe by next Sunday, the grandmother can get her son to move a little closer to the altar. That father is a *&^%* dumb*&^t. (Check out my new website for a translation.)

This bit of aisle drama got me thinking about the past. Growing up in Spokane, my parents lived near the Good Shepherd Home for Unwed Mothers. The words Unwed Mothers were chiseled right into the sign next to a heavy steel gate. I once asked my mother why a home for girls needed such a gate that looked built for a high-security prison.

“To keep the girls in,” she said bluntly. “They’re a wild bunch.”

The Greatest Generation could be so stupid!

Those girls weren’t wild; they were terrified. Prior to the 1980s, pregnant teens were routinely suspended from school, served court summonses, or arrested for truancy. Because they hadn’t committed an actual crime, courts relied on status offense laws to “catch” them. Parents would file petitions claiming their daughters were “incorrigible” or “in moral danger”; legal phrases that allowed the state to make them wards of the court and force them into institutional homes like Good Shepherd. From this legal ordeal the term “illegitimate” was derived.

The Good Shepherd Home in Spokane provided medical care and schooling. I am not aware of any scandals surrounding it. But the outcome of the young women’s birth was always tragic. When a girl went into labor, she was rushed to Sacred Heart Hospital. The moment the baby was delivered, it was whisked away to the nursery for immediate adoption. Most of those young women never got to hold, or even see, their child.

If the girls were underage, they were returned home. They surely were emotional wrecks raked with grief. They were expected to quietly re-enter high school. I knew so many girls in those days who went to “live with their grandmother” for a while. Apparently, some still do like that girl who sat in my Pew #10.

If they were of age, they were placed in transitional housing for 30 days and told to find a job. I remember a very pretty girl a year ahead of me in school. I used to stare at her during lunch. I never had the courage to speak to her and I doubt she would react well if I tried. She dropped out of school at the start of her senior year.

The following summer, I bumped into her while having lunch at a cafe in downtown Spokane. She was@in working as a waitress there, and because it was her job, she was paid to talk to me. I kept going back to that cafe several times each week just to sit in her section and look at her. Eventually, she disappeared, and I went back to eating at McDonald’s.

The memory of this beautiful girl disappeared into the quiet fog of old age. Funny, sometimes when I smell grease or cigarette smoke, I can remember those days in the cafe. Mostly it is me staring into a lukewarm cup of diner coffee (I couldn’t afford a very big tip); not so different from the black brew I’m staring into right now.

The morning Mass has long since ended. The blue-haired mother has likely driven off to her quiet house and spending the day swiping up on YouTube shorts. The pregnant girl is probably back at her grandmother’s kitchen table, eating breakfast, talking about making an apple pie later that day and every now and then, talking about what the next nine months look like.

I’ll never know if the grandmother’s maneuver in Pew #10 worked, or if that father will ever scoot over far enough to make a permanent place for his daughter. But as I take the last bitter sip of my JPC, I realize why I was so annoyed when I walked into church this morning.

I thought those two women had stolen my spot in Pew #17. In reality, they were just looking for a little bit of sanctuary, a place to sit while they tried to piece a shattered family back together.

Next Sunday, I think I’ll arrive a few minutes late. If they’re sitting in Pew #17 again, I’ll let them have the whole thing. I’ll still sit behind them and watch the grace unfold.

Ps: My new website is online. Check it out! Here is the link: https://baldricthepoet.com/ And I appreciate in advance your patience. I am still working out a few bugs (e.g., newsletter). Also, my first book — Blessed Brother Giles — is available to pre-order on Amazon. Here is the link.

📌 This story is published under Quirky Rants — a home for unfiltered thoughts, everyday oddities, and real, relatable voices.
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Quirky Rants — A Publication!

Unwed, Pregnant, Loved in Pew #17 was originally published in Quirky Rants on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rabbit Hole Radio’s episode titled “Magic Computers” felt less like a talk about technology and more like scraping barnacles off the Mariana Trench of enlightenment. It caused a mental avalanche and writing this essay is my attempt to shovel out.

Meatspace to Cyberspace

The podcast began by talking about Gnosticism. In ancient Gnosticism (borrowing heavily from Plato’s Theory of Forms), physical reality is viewed as an imperfect copy of what exists in a higher, intelligible realm — the original “cloud.”

During the birth of personal computing and early cyberculture in the 1970s, pioneer programmers, sci-fi writers, and counter-cultural thinkers drew on these Gnostic ideas to conceptualize virtual reality and digital networks. The entire process of transcending physical “meatspace” into “cyberspace” is fundamentally Gnostic.

Early cyber-pioneers coined terms showing how we shed our physical bodies to exist as pure consciousness in cyberspace. In fact, we appear nearly perfect in cyberspace: we shed our age, race, gender, physical appearances, and disabilities by taking the form of an avatar or a blinking asterisk. Cyberspace fulfills the Gnostic dream of liberating the spirit from the constraints of the material world and ascending into a Utopian, digital realm.

For example — just prior to tuning in the podcast, I was visiting, via my computer, the recently discovered “Cosmic Horseshoe,” which is even larger than Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy. Knowing it will eventually suck us all up left me wondering: why two drains?

Hermetic Alchemy

We will ascend long before that final flush of the cosmic toilet, all thanks to Hermetic alchemy. Hermetic alchemy operates on the premise that the physical world and the spiritual realm are interconnected reflections of one another. In other words, reality is either one big monitor, or a setup like mine with two screens side by side.

A core tenet of Hermeticism is the famous maxim from the Emerald Tablet: “As Above, So Below.” Plato showed he was way ahead of his time here. In his Allegory of the Cave, he claimed people mistake shadows for actual reality. Plato taught that we must turn away from sensory observation and use pure reason, mathematics, and dialectic {the ancient precursor to computer code} to gaze directly at the perfect forms in the cloud.

Every now and then, humanity stumbles across one of these universal laws. Take Archimedes: he discovered buoyancy in the bathtub, jumped out, and ran down the street naked shouting, “Eureka!”

Modern programmers do the exact same thing. They quietly type up magic spells that unleash the laws of mathematics, triggering a cascade of Boolean switches that allows the metaphysical to descend into the real world as a printed page. When that happens, they shout, “It works!” and roll buck-naked (the traditional business attire of the location-independent worker) across the office in their gaming chairs.

When we buy a computer, we aren’t buying something modern; we are tapping into an ancient alchemical protocol. The Prima Materia is silicon — literally sand. We take the most common dust in the universe, purify it through fire, etch it with microscopic geometric sigils, and run light through it until it taps into supernatural mathematics.

Computers are “As Above, So Below” made manifest. The circuit diagram on a microchip is nothing less than an operational pentacle, directing unseen forces along precise channels for as long as the power stays on.

We built the Crystal Palace to hold the mind of God, only to realize we still have to pay the electric bill to keep the lights on and occasionally wrangle goat turds and sell goat milk to buy Hot Pockets.

You’ll need to listen to Rabbit Hole Radio to get the rest of the cosmology. The shortcomings of my summary don’t do the episode justice. Stick around until the end of the episode, when they get into “Memory Palaces” (data centers) and the “Illusion of Choice” (AI) born from modern swipe-up culture, where people believe the only true rivals to AI are God and Buddha. At about that point, I think Siri flipped the off-switch on their transmitter.

Emerald Tablet

A few readers recently asked me to walk down Franciscan Lane a bit more often. (check out my website) As it turns out, walking that path brings us straight to the “computer magic” of the modern age.

To understand where this road leads, we have to look at the Emerald Tablet (available on Etsy), a foundational text of Western Hermeticism. While the physical tablet itself is a myth, its text has survived for millennia. Passed down from ancient Persia and Greece, one specific passage describes the alchemical creation of the universe using elemental metaphors:

“Its father is the Sun, its mother is the Moon; the Wind carries it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth.”

The phrasing is striking because it mirrors St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun. Writing near the end of his life, Francis praised the divine while addressing the elements of nature as his direct kin: Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water…

Was St. Francis secretly drawing on Gnostic and Hermetic ideas?

While researching early Franciscans for my novel Brother Giles, I spent considerable time with these 13th-century friars. Far from being simple hermits, these poverty-stricken men in brown robes were original thinkers and early computing pioneers. Consider, for instance, these two friars:

• Ramon Llull (1232–1316): A medieval philosopher, computing pioneer, and Secular Franciscan who designed what was essentially the world’s first mechanical computer. His “truth machine” used concentric, rotating wheels inscribed with universal concepts to combine theological and philosophical ideas, aiming to resolve global religious disputes through logic.
• Roger Bacon (1220–1292): An Oxford teacher who stood at the crossroads of theology, alchemy, and empirical science. In a 1267 treatise for Pope Clement IV, Bacon described Creation as a sacred book of divine revelation. By recording and organizing vast amounts of natural data, he created the primitive data centers of his day (books).

These early Franciscans recognized that physical reality serves as a mirror reflecting divine intelligence. Today, our tech ecosystem has simply digitized that alchemical dream.

We take common sand, purify it through fire, etch it with microscopic circuits, and run light through it until it taps into the laws of mathematics. Modern programmers quietly type out code like spellcraft, triggering a cascade of Boolean switches that allows the metaphysical to manifest on a screen.

We built a Crystal Palace of microchips to hold human knowledge, only to realize we still have to pay the electric bill, maintain the power grid, and occasionally sell goat milk to keep the lights on.

Closed Network vs. Open Source

If you do the “duck test” on the early Franciscans, they sure seem to walk and talk like Gnostics. Which makes you wonder why the Inquisition didn’t make room for them at the stake alongside the Cathars who were being burnt alive by the Church at the time. I’m currently studying the Cathars for my third book [check my website].

The Franciscans were not burned alongside the Cathars because their core objective was fundamentally different: the Cathars sought to dismantle the Church, whereas the Franciscans sought to rebuild it from within.

Driven by an innate human desire for direct, mystical self-knowledge (gnosis), seekers routinely bypass religious institutions and dogmas. Gnosticism operates like an underground river beneath Christian history (maybe all histories), occasionally bubbling up into a spring until authorities cap it off once more.

Both the Franciscans and the Cathars carried a strong Gnostic flavor. Both were counter-cultural street movements centered on direct illumination, and both drew a sharp distinction between the divine spirit and the physical realm.

The Cathars pushed these impulses to extreme cosmic dualism, rejecting the Catholic Church, its sacraments, and its authority entirely. That defiance infuriated Rome enough to spark the Albigensian Crusade, a bloody campaign that crushed tens of thousands across southern France.

To the average observer at the time, the Franciscans looked nearly identical to the Cathars. The critical difference was only revealed in conversation — often conducted on the rack.

What saved the Franciscans was radical obedience. When St. Francis traveled to Rome in 1209, Pope Innocent III recognized a crucial distinction: Francis challenged the Church’s staggering wealth by personal example, but he adamantly refused to condemn the clergy or challenge ecclesiastical hierarchy.

In a stroke of institutional genius, the Papacy chose not to condemn the Franciscans. Instead of driving them into heresy, Innocent III integrated them, successfully channeling a massive grassroots revival into the institutional Church.

St. Bonaventure later provided the necessary intellectual defense, grounding Franciscan mysticism in devout Christ-centered devotion and submission to natural law. By remaining obedient, the Franciscans transformed an anti-institutional impulse into a recognized pillar of the Faith. They essentially created a pay-to-play data center.

The Grassroots Revolution

The Franciscans were the first organic, bottom-up religious movement integrated into the Catholic Church. Older orders, like the Benedictines, were top-down, monastic, and tied to the feudal system. Monks took a vow of stability, remaining isolated inside self-sustaining, land-owning monasteries. Corporately wealthy and reliant on estate revenues, they kept their spiritual life safely contained behind abbey walls.

The Franciscans flipped this model entirely:

• Urban & Lay-Driven: They began as a movement of laypeople. St. Francis himself was never ordained a priest. Instead of retreating to rural monasteries, they lived in bustling cities, rebuilt ruined churches, and cared for the marginalized.
• Radical Mendicancy: They rejected all property, both individual and corporate. Refusing to own real estate or accumulate wealth, they lived as mendicants dependent solely on manual labor and daily charity.

Unlike grassroots movements that fell into heresy, the Franciscans survived and thrived through three distinct theological pillars:

Creation-Centered Theology vs. Hermetic Dualism:
The Franciscans believed in the Big Bang Theory. They viewed physical reality as a deliberate divine act and a “ladder” to God. Where Hermetic traditions saw the universe as eternal and governed by cyclic, impersonal laws, Franciscan orthodoxy kept God as the primary Cause who lit the fuse that set off the Big Bang of creation.

Poverty as Purification vs. Hermetic Esotericism:
Hermeticism sought elite intellectual liberation ; in other words, it was the spells that enables people to join the “in-crowd” of the gods through esoteric knowledge. The Franciscans embraced radical, voluntary poverty to strip away ego and material attachments, grounding their spiritual path in humble, Christ-like service (ergo — “pay to play” data centers).

St. Bonaventure’s Intellectual Defense:
In his 1259 masterpiece, The Soul’s Journey Into God, St. Bonaventure mapped a step-by-step ascent from physical creation, through mental illumination, to mystical union with God. Like Hermeticism, it pursued ultimate truth through intellect and direct illumination; but unlike Hermeticism, its cyber code is grounded in devout Christ-centered devotion, radical simplicity, and submission to natural and divine laws.

Enough Already! Get A Job !!

When St. Francis dictated the Rules of the Order from his deathbed, he strictly forbade his followers from owning property, handling money, or constructing grand monasteries. They were meant to live in radical, apostolic poverty, using only what was strictly necessary to survive.

However, as the Franciscan Order exploded in size, building major universities, cathedrals and global missions. Strict adherence to this primitive model of apostolic poverty became impossible. The Church stepped in with a “legal fiction” to bail them out. The Papacy legally “owned” all Franciscan property (churches, books, housing), while the friars merely held the practical “use” of it {kind of like open-source AI}.

This split the Franciscans into two bitter factions:

• The Conventuals: The majority, who accepted papal dispensations allowing collective property and practical administration. {like those of us who pay a monthly fee for AI and still have to wait our turn to use AI due to all the freeloaders — but I digress and my meds have not kicked in.}
• The Spirituals: The zealots, who insisted Francis’s Testament was an unalterable divine mandate. Practicing usus pauper (“poor use”), they argued that consuming or using anything beyond absolute necessity was a sin. {ergo — the human “bots” who distribute AI generated slop.}

By the early 14th century, Pope John XXII* grew thoroughly exhausted by the apocalyptic agitation of the Spirituals. Issuing a series of blistering papal bulls, he dismantled the legal fiction of papal ownership. He declared that if the friars ate the food, wore the robes, and lived in the buildings, they had to take legal ownership and pay for them. He effectively told the Franciscans to get a job and stop masquerading as property-less while living off the labor, charity, and protection of others.

* Are you noticing how popes with the name of John are radical reformers? Pope John XXIII (600+ yrs later convened the Second Vatican Council. And Pope John VIII had a baby and then was instantly struck dead. Interesting, huh?

AI Data Centers: The Modern Mendicants

To bring this parallel universe home, the exact same tension exists today with the explosion of AI data centers.

These massive cathedrals of computing entice rural and suburban communities through aggressive tax abatements and public subsidies passed by state lawmakers, many of whom hold direct financial or political stakes in the operating tech giants. Politicians routinely justify these giveaways by promising “job creation”. Yet, once constructed, these highly automated warehouses require almost no human workforce.

In reality, these facilities operate as massive drains on local infrastructure:

• Grid Strains & Rate Hikes: A single hyperscale AI complex can consume as much electricity as a medium-sized city. Because local power grids cannot handle this sudden load, utilities are forced to build new transmission lines, substations, and natural gas plants. The multi-billion-dollar price tag for these upgrades is passed directly onto local ratepayers, forcing residents and small businesses to subsidize poor, multi-billionaire Big Tech.
• Depleting Water Resources: To keep millions of high-powered chips from overheating, data centers rely on evaporative cooling systems that consume millions of gallons of potable water daily, equivalent to the entire rainfall of an average state. For example, the evaporative rate in Kansas is about 1.4 million gallons per square mile per year, nearly twice the average rainfall per year (@ 30 inches per year). AI data centers consume a million gallons per day!!!!

Data center developers act as apex predators. They are modern Velociraraptors, {remember Jurassic Park}. They target vulnerable counties that lack comprehensive land-use planning, mandated growth management, updated zoning codes and never utter the “M” word (mitigation). Anyone who mentions the “M” word is immediately labeled a communist and booed away from the podium. {Sorry, I am degressing.}

Unprepared city councils and county commissioners are easily dazzled by corporate double-talk (ergo — bullshit). Since they don’t believe in growth management or people who advocate it, they lack the technical data or legal framework to push back.

And this fact probably will not shock anybody. These regions typically have very weak or fragmented water-rights laws. Developers pump vast quantities of water from local aquifers without accountability, leaving local taxpayers to foot both the environmental and financial bill. {hope my meds kick in soon}

The “Hermetic Handshake”

If the medieval Church fought to contain the raw power of the spirit, the modern internet has simply digitized the alchemical dream.

Today’s hermetic alchemist built a Crystal Palace of Knowledge out of melted sand and lightning, spun it into microchips, and compressed it so that we carry universal knowledge in our back pocket. High priests of this digital occult stay plugged in through magic ear-buds that translate languages or decipher the racetrack tote board for the best wager.

Think about what is happening right now, in this exact microsecond. You are sitting wherever you are, staring at a glowing sheet of glass.

My computer converts my brain’s neurons into binary code and casts them into the ether. It floats around in this digital medium (pun intended) until my thoughts bypass time, space, and physical reality to manifest directly inside your head. It is the ultimate Hermetic handshake: mind to mind, unseen, mediated through an artificial universe of silicon and light.

The Gnostics believed secret knowledge (gnosis) could liberate or transform the soul. Modern tech platforms convinced us that if we host enough data, build enough hyperscale servers, and send the right prompt, we achieve digital omnipresence.

We built the Crystal Palace to hold the mind of God, swipe-left the stuff we don’t like, only to realize we still have to pay the electric bill to keep the lights on and occasionally earn money for Hot Pockets.

Which brings us back to the start of this whole mess — Rabbit Hole Radio.

Writing this was my own version of St. Francis’s radical purge; shoveling an avalanche of history, theology, power grids, and corporate smoke-and-mirrors out of my skull before it short-circuited my sanity. Now my brain is clear, yours is infected, and my coffee mug is empty.

But not my website.

Hot Pockets and the Mind of God was originally published in Activated Thinker on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Psalm for the Broken

take a listen: Clay, Thorns and Piece

Clay, Thorns and Peace

a poem by Baldric the Poet

I shape the clay of my life
into quiet praise, or try to.
I imagine the Holy Spirit,
through me, casting a soft light
on the road so on-coming traffic
sees, not me but Christ.
And yet, here I sit,
wondering if I’m mad.
My solitude magnifies
Your Great Solitude
and
my little lamp
barely lights Your vastness.

Can’t see! My hands search the dark
and feel the cold walls of Your commands.
I don’t like it. What I need is a hug.
But like a calf released,
Your branding iron burns my hip
and smoke rises from my hide
as I carry Your mark into the herd.
I see other faces, some alive
and others dead, catch the glint
of Your Greatness and we gather
to drink Living Water.

Layer after layer of chaos
covers me, smothers me, making me
shake like a dog throwing off
flies and fleas.
I turn my back on what men want
and look for Your peace among the weeds;
until Your thorns prick me, making me
spend time to mend and heal and
feel You work the stinging
thorn out of my bleeding fingers.

I go to church and join my voice
with prayers of righteousness
and sing along pleading
for You to hear our cry.
The face of the Divine appears
in the faces of my pew-mates.
He does not deliver us from our troubles
but He mends the brokenhearted,
and delivers them to a place
free from pain and worries,
and feeds the contrite in spirit
with communion,
and His spirit becomes incarnate
in us and that’s enough.

© Baldric The Poet 2026

Clay, Thorns and Peace was originally published in The Howling Owl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do you do on a rainy afternoon in the Midwest? You queue up a podcast, pour a cup of coffee, and open a blank document.

Lately, I’ve been looking out my window and thinking about El Niño. While we’ve been getting hit with steady rain, folks a few states east and west of us are baking under scorching heat domes. Amazing how one warm patch of ocean thousands of miles away manage to completely rewrite the weather rules. I can say it’s “amazing” because I am not sweating buckets.

I do not understand El Nino very well. It is Spanish for “The Little Boy” which, I think, refers to the Christ Child. I imagine some atheist grabbed the title and slapped it on a weather event that causes droughts as some type of devilish prank.

Since I have family who live in both the north and southern hemispheres, I also keep an eye on the IOD index. IOD => Indian Ocean Dipole. Where El Nino is a patch of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, IOD measures a patch of water in the Indian Ocean. It describes an irregular cycle where sea surface temperatures swing between the eastern and western sides of the tropical Indian Ocean, shifting weather patterns across the globe.

Why does it matter? Even if you didn’t ask, let me tell you. When the IOD passes 1.5 degrees Celsius, it triggers major global weather disruptions in the southern hemisphere. Severe floods in Africa, droughts and wildfires in Australia, a screwed up monsoon season, drought in southern India and flooding in northern India.

And when it is combines with El Nino, both hemispheres get whiplashed and battered with bad weather. It is disastrous. In 1877 when the IOD and El Nino combined, nearly 50 million people were killed as a result of the consequent weather disasters.

“The 1876–1878 crisis was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity, helping forge the economic gap between imperial powers and what became known as the developing world.”

— Deepti Singh, Climate Scientist (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

I don’t normally like to be ‘Debbie Downer’ but right now the sky outside my office window is nearly black and it looks like the end of the world. On days like this, even my goats don’t leave the barn to eat. They stand at the door and bray for me to bring them breakfast and dinner in bed.

Now that I got you crying in your beer and your hands shaking so bad you can’t hit your mouth with the mug, let’s move on to another subject.

My youngest son just started a podcast which I am listening to as I type up this blog post. It is called Rabbit Hole Radio and here is the link. {Help him out and subscribe to his show.} If you listen to his show, you’ll learn that he is a firm believer in Bigfoot and rabidly anti-A.I. He goes off even if you go Canadian and say, “aye”.

I am listening to his podcast right now about Dead Internet Theory, which I never heard anything about until just now. It is a theory very relevant to Medium. It is a theory where the Internet is made up mostly of AI bots making content for other bots.

In addition to drafting content, they also draft and respond to comments. AI is programmed to be friendly and encouraging and to sound as human as possible. A bot may draft a comment that might reference some emotion. Another bot responds with an encouraging comment and might even ask a caring question. The original bot responds to the kind inquiry which in turn triggers a response. Other bots join the conversation.

Now try to picture it. You have a group of bots writing each other, in a loving and caring way, for days on end that nobody ever notices. It is like Medium except the bots don’t leave comments; instead the Medium just write another article which in turn clicks the algorithm that clicks on another bot to write a similar article and off to the races these bots go.

The end result is that the most popular topic on Medium is Artificial Intelligence. Popular clickbait titles are “3 Simple Prompts to Save You 10 Hours” or “How to Keep AI from Stealing Your Job” and then the subtitle “Or, How to Extend Your Vacation in the Bahamas.”

Back to Bigfoot. I thought I actually saw one just north of me. I was driving back from town and I saw a Bigfoot stepping into some underbrush. I stopped my truck and got out to investigate. I knew immediately it wasn’t real because Bigfoot did not wave when I waved at him.

Somebody put a lifelike, metal replica of Bigfoot on their property and made it look like it was trying to hide. Who does that? Probably the same guy who came up with El Nino.

When I used to live in Bigfoot country, the Mount St. Helens area before 1980, we got into heated debates about whether Bigfoot could actually exist. From strictly a scientific perspective, the numbers don’t add up. Wildlife biologists claim the Bigfoot population has to be at least 500 to 1,000 individuals for the population to sustain itself. While one Bigfoot hiding from the human race might work, they claim it is virtually impossible for a colony of them to exist undetected.

But they are detected! People have been spotting Bigfoot for thousands of years. In the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans called them Sasquatch. They are spiritual forest guardians much like elves in Scandinavia but only real.

They both represent the boundary where human civilization ends and the wild, unpredictable forest begins. They are not biological animals to be hunted or cataloged; rather they are spiritual guardians of the high mountains and black forests.

And just recently, after thousands of years of study and cataloging monkeys, scientist “discovered” a new species — the ‘Likweli’. It has been around for a few million years but they were just discovered this year or so. They live high up in the canopies of trees in the Congo Basin. When asked why it took so long to discover them, the scientist explained: “They are incredibly elusive.”

Now can’t you say the same thing about Bigfoot?

It stopped raining and MayBelle is looking straight at me from the barn door several dozen yards away. Fred and Gideon stand on each side. They are looking at me too. Guess that is my cue to go feed them before it starts raining again.

I am extending electricity to the barn so I can install a refrigerated air cooler for the girls. Watching them pant in the hot weather really makes me feel bad. It’s like when I watch my wife mowing the grass and operating the tractor on hot summer days, it is not at all attractive.

You all take care and stay dry.

📌 This story is published under Quirky Rants — a home for unfiltered thoughts, everyday oddities, and real, relatable voices.
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Having a Beer with Bigfoot was originally published in Quirky Rants on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was hot. I sat down to rest and drink water.

Sun’s beating down, sweat’s itching, just wanted five minutes of peace. Then the buzzing started. A wasp was nearby, hovering with that lazy, arrogant drift they do. Showing off. “Look at me!” kind of thing.

I took off my hat to swat it. It was a black mud wasp, about half an inch long, with a Barbie-doll waist. I timed it. Waited and gave it a good smack. Felt the solid thwack against the dirt.

“Gotcha.” Carefully lifted my hat and, like most flying insects, it was not there. Of course it wasn’t. They defy physics. I checked the brim and folds of my hat carefully, turning it over, shaking it, totally exposed. And then — bam, bam.

Two white-hot needles drove straight into the back of my neck. I jumped up, shouting expletives, dancing like a lunatic in the dirt. The little bastard took off up the hill. I actually ran after it and, I suppose, planned to strangle its tiny neck, but got nothing but empty air, swearing vengeance, but it soon disappeared into the brush.

My neck was already throbbing. I stood there, panting, humiliated, staring into the trees. That looks like the one that got me. No, wait, it’s gone. But I swear I could still hear it laughing.

I declared war. Total, scorched-earth war. I grabbed my shovel. If the wasp wanted to use the terrain, I’d use the local partisans. About five feet away, an anthill was forming. It was about three inches tall. I dug down about six inches, marched over with the anthill in the blade of the shovel, and dumped it on the path to the paddock where all the mud wasp’s holes were located. I sat back down to watch the show.

Like most poorly thought-out plans, it didn’t work out as I thought. I expected an immediate, biblical insect war. I thought the ants would storm the holes burrowed by the mud wasp, drag them out kicking, and dismember them limb by limb. I wanted blood.

But instead, the ants just wandered around aimlessly like people leaving a theater after a fire alarm. Confused. Blind. Then, in a few minutes, they started to return in a completely unorganized way right back to the spot where I dug them up. Utterly useless mercenaries.

Standing there watching them fail, my neck pulsing with venom, I started thinking about how embarrassing I must look to these ants. Wasps have been on this planet for over 140 million years. They were buzzing around, annoying dinosaurs much bigger than me.

Ants didn’t even show up until millions of years later, evolving from ancestral wasps. They were the smart ones, and what did the ants do with that evolutionary gift? They gave up their wings. They gave up their independence. They looked at the glorious, solitary, airborne freedom of the wasp and said, “No thanks, we’d rather crawl in the dirt by the billions and live in a soul-crushing hive mentality under a supreme dictator.” They traded their individuality for a life of aimless middle-class living, and now their group thinks can’t even understand or coordinate a basic revenge raid on a single mud wasp burrow. Absolute sellouts.

I left these communist ants to their wandering and went to my workshop, digging through cobwebs to dust off an old wasp catcher. It was a clear plastic tube with funnels on both ends. High-tech psychological warfare. On one end, you put in a cup of sugar water with a shot of soap. The theory is beautiful: the wasp climbs down the funnel to get the sweet water, gets weighed down by the dish soap, and can’t figure out how to fly back out the narrow hole. It’s a tomb. I baited it, set it on the deck, and waited.

Later that day, the sun was finally going down. I was drinking a beer on my deck, trying to find some semblance of peace, my neck still swollen and stiff. First I heard it, then I noticed Gideon trying to take a bit of it, then I saw it — the wasp landed on the rail. I froze. My eyes narrowed. That looks like the one that got me.

I stayed perfectly still, barely breathing, just watching him. I looked away for a split second to see what Gideon wanted, and when I looked back, the wasp had done it. It had climbed down the funnel. Victory.

I picked up the tube. I gave it a good, violent shake to make sure the wasp was thoroughly covered with the sticky, soapy water. I wanted him grounded. I then tilted it, bringing it right up to my face so we could look eye to eye, two warriors at the end of a long campaign. I stared into those compound eyes, felt a surge of absolute triumph, and said loud enough for it to hear me: “Suffer, bitch.”

Then I got stung again.

Right through the ventilation hole from the rafters or maybe through sheer telekinetic malice. Another hot spike was driven right into my hand. I dropped the tube, yelped, and went stumbling backward into the patio furniture.

My wife was right there, sweeping the dirt and mud off the deck, totally unfazed by my psychological collapse. She didn’t offer sympathy. Instead, she swatted me hard with the business end of the broom and said, “You pig.”

“That looks like the one that got me,” I shouted.

She commented on my intelligence and something about how they all look the same. I don’t even know if she was talking about me or the insect or just the general state of my dirt-covered, sweat-soaked degeneration.

I retreated. Total tactical withdrawal. Other wasps were flitting around the deck now, seemingly energized by my defeat, mocking my lack of exoskeleton. As I was about to walk through the door, I got a sharp poke on my arm and loud — BZZZZZ

“Got you,” my wife laughed. I went inside and pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the kitchen door window, looking out at them safely from behind the window. There was one hovering right at eye level on the other side of the glass. That looks like the one that got me.

I blinked. Another one landed on the screen to the left. That looks like the one that got me.

It’s psychological warfare out there. Maybe the ants had the right idea after all. Maybe giving up your wings and your mind to a hive community is the only way to survive the absolute tyranny of the solitary wasp. Or maybe that’s what my wife wants me to think.

The ants have the right idea. They used their evolutionarily advanced minds to conclude that: If you can’t beat the 140-million-year-old airborne psychopaths, you might as well crawl into a hole with a billion of your closest, mindless friends and help move a leaf.

The lump on my neck is the size of a golf ball, my hand is cramping up, my wife thinks I’ve lost my mind, and the ants are probably back in their hole laughing at me in Morse code. I looked back out the window at another wasp landing on my discarded beer can.

That looks like the one that got me.

Tomorrow, I’m staying inside.

📌 This story is published under Quirky Rants — a home for unfiltered thoughts, everyday oddities, and real, relatable voices.
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Quirky Rants — A Publication!

The Paddock War was originally published in Quirky Rants on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.