Sedition has a date, and it’s Aug. 13.

To a large and committed minority of your mothers and fathers, your sons and daughters, your friends and neighbors and colleagues, it’s a day to glorify the fences that divide us, to gather together in blighted person or in hostile spirit and gnaw upon imagined grievances, and to plot no end of terrible inconveniences against a greater society that has shown them only sympathy and forbearance.

Although not always readily identified individually, in generality those discreet dissidents are known by many names. In Australia they’re “mollydookers.” To Italians they’re “mancino,” a term derived from the word for “crooked.” In England alone they’re variously described as gar-pawed, cack-handed, gibble-fisted, scoochy, kay-neived, corrie-fisted, cuddy-wifted and kittaghy. But by whatever name they’re known, they all bridle at many of the simple conventions that have lifted Mankind above lesser creatures and helped our species thrive in a dangerous and indifferent world.

Aug. 13 is International Left Handers Day, and it should give every right-thinking northpaw cause to pause.

Now marking its 25^th year of lateral disaffection, Left Handers Day was founded in 1991 by the Left Handers Club, a globe-spanning cabal of malcontents based in the United Kingdom and dedicated to trashing thousands of years of accumulated human spiritual, cultural and industrial wisdom, not to mention the faultless designs of Nature herself. It’s hard to believe that, in this enlightened era of unprecedented tolerance, anyone would openly espouse deliberate and pre-meditated bias, and yet that’s precisely what Louie and Louise are doing. Among many other self-serving items on its leftist agenda, the Left Handers Club promotes the creation and dissemination of products specific to the left hand. Considering that a great majority of the population is right-handed, and that everything from can openers to golf clubs are quite sensibly fabricated to efficiently serve the greatest possible number of consumers, that amounts to a war against civilization.

The fact is, the port crowd has been treasuring up resentments against the starboard set for thousands of years. By studying the manner in which Paleolithic craftsmen chewed animal skins, paleontologists have determined that only 10 percent of them were left-handed, a proportion that has persisted throughout the ages and unsurprisingly prompted some Righties of well-intentioned, if uncritical, turn of mind to indulge in plausible, if not scientifically supported, speculations about Lefties. In ancient times, for example, the left-handed were presumed to be in league with the Devil, and it was widely believed that ghosts and demons always entered on the body’s vulnerable left side, which is why the prudent were given to tossing pinches of salt over their left shoulders at generous intervals. A ringing in the right ear signaled that somebody was praising you, while ringing in the left indicated that you were being cursed or maligned. An itchy right palm meant you were coming into money, and an itchy left palm meant you were about to lose your shirt.

The Bible holds more than a hundred passages praising the right hand (“The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly, the right hand of the Lord is exalted! – Psalms 118:15,16) and at least two dozen lamenting the left (“He will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on left hand…” – Matthew 25:33). Even today a holy man of Kenya’s cautious Meru culture must hide his left hand from public view lest its evil power inadvertently sour everybody’s milk.

Indeed, the left-handed have always felt oppressed by the very language in their mouths. The English word “sinister,” meaning ominous or menacing, derives from the Latin word “sinistra,” meaning both “left” and “weak.” The French word for left is “gauche,” which also means clumsy, or awkward. For that matter, the very word “left” comes to us from the Old English “lyft” which translates as idle, weak, or useless. And anything offered with the “left-hand” has long been widely understood to be inferior, insincere, or outright insulting.

By hey, that’s ancient history, okay? Before harassing the virtuous Right with a barrage of backwards scissors and east-bound stationary and maladroit keyboards, the Left should update its catalogue of presumed injustices. True, left-handed persons statistically make about 12 percent less money than their dexterous peers, but that’s the fault of anatomy, not bigotry.

By a curious quirk of the human design, each hemisphere of the brain controls the opposing half of the body. The left side of the brain, which is good at things like math and science and language, is dominant in right-handed people. Left-handed people take their marching orders from the right sides of their brains, which tend toward creativity, imagination and sociability. If right-brainers aren’t sopping up the gravy as fast as bean-counting left-brainers, it’s because they’re mathematically more likely to be starving artists than well-heeled MBAs. And for what it’s worth, left-handers tend to an excess of success in sports like tennis and fencing, which vanquished right-handers attribute to the fact that they haven’t had a lot of practice dueling with southpaws.

Nobody, including lots of very keen left-brained scientific types, has any good idea why some people are left-handed and others favor the right hand. No particular anatomical, evolutionary or environmental advantage has been recognized for either condition, and while a possible left-handed gene has been identified, the secrets of its precise function and methodology remain elusive.  As it happens, astute observers are puzzled to note that dogs, and even crows, display what amounts to right/left handedness, although in roughly 50-50 proportion, which natural equilibrium may explain why neither species has yet to produce a left-pawed or right-beaked action committee.

The right brain is theater to all impulses dramatic, and it’s entirely possible that the Left Handers Club is simply a predictable manifestation of the 10 percent’s biological weakness for spectacle. If not condoned, it can certainly be tolerated by the magnanimous 90 percent, who are famously forgiving toward morally harmless physical abberation. On the other hand, cranky cuddy-wifters might be far better served directing their tantrums against the true enemy of all people subservient to a single cranial hemisphere.

Maybe, next Aug. 13, left hand will join right hand in a two-fisted condemnation of the smug and superior ambidextrous, and together dream up products to confound that one person in a hundred who enjoys equal facility with both the right hand and the left. After all, everybody hates a 1-percenter.

“Damned infernal gizmo. My kingdom for a left-handed can opener!”  

C. Montgomery Burns

The two essential ingredients of a truly great vacation are time and money. If you’re awash in both, you might consider piping aboard the Great Loop, arguably the most epic leisure activity afloat.

At its barnacled bottom, the Great Loop is a nautical circumnavigation of the Eastern United States. Up on deck, it’s a self-guided grand tour of some of the country’s most lovely, most colorful, and most historic waterscapes. While growing in popularity as increasing numbers of Baby Boomers clock out for the last time and start casting around for something fun to do that will also give “meaning” to their comfortable retirements, the Loop is still largely the province of a small fleet of amateur mariners described among themselves as “Loopers.” To understand why most Loopers don’t have jobs, consider their itinerary.

The typical Looper casts off from the port city of Stuart on Florida’s balmy Treasure Coast. They’re typically in command of a 30-foot trawler, a shallow-draft vessel affording reasonably comfortable personal accommodations, generous fuel capacity and a relatively low profile. They set sail in springtime, calculating that northern latitudes will have gentled before they get there.

Steaming north along the Intracoastal Waterway past Georgia and the Carolinas, they enter the mighty Chesapeake and keep going until they run out of bay, then sidle east through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal to rejoin the Intracoastal Waterway for a sheltered cruise up to New Jersey. Daring a brief 30-mile stretch of open Atlantic, they dart into the Hudson River at the Big Apple and follow that historic corridor to the even more historic Erie Canal, which dumps them out into Lake Erie.

With summer in full bloom, most Loopers will putz around the Great Lakes for a few months, enjoying the region’s temporary temperance and allowing hurricane season to blow itself out before they head south. About the time kids are going back to school, Loopers are converging on Chicago and the Calumet Sag, a channel linking the Windy City’s busy ports to the southbound Illinois River. It’s on “the Sag” that the humble trawler stands tall. A single bridge over that waterway giving just 19 feet of clearance presents a considerable inconvenience to sailboats and pleasure craft of statelier silhouette.

Following a long drift down the Illinois and a good stretch of the upper Mississippi, the thoughtful Looper hangs a left at the Ohio River and follows it up to the Tennessee River, which leads to one of the Great Loop’s most notable features, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Reaching 234 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, the “Tenn-Tom” took the Army Corps of Engineers twelve years and nearly $2 billion to dig. Completed in 1984 – two years ahead of schedule, in fact – that magnificent ditch remains the largest earth-moving project ever undertaken by the hand of Man, requiring the dislocation of about 310 million cubic yards of dirt, which would be ample to fill in the Panama Canal entirely with several million cubic yards left over for landscaping.

Sailing back into salt water at Mobile, the Great Loop rejoins the Intracoastal Waterway on an easterly course. Once offshore of the Sunshine State, the Looping set has the choice of either zipping across the panhandle direct to Stuart via the Okeechobee Waterway, or getting there the long way around the Keys. In either case, the typical Looper will have covered something like 5,000 miles, consumed 10 months, give or take, and parted company with maybe $60,000, boat not included.

On the subject of boats, a decent pre-owned, Loop-worthy trawler will set you back about $50,000, although Loopers have undertaken the voyage in everything from sea kayaks to 70-foot yachts. Dockage expenses can run anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000, since harbors charge by the foot and the careful shopper can often find free berths in unlikely places. Fuel costs vary widely, from less than $4,000 for a small sail-assisted vessel to well-over $40,000 for a mid-sized trawler with an ambitious navigator at the helm. And, for the ambitious, the Great Loop offers endless tempting opportunities for non-typical variation. A serious Looper with the sea in his blood can easily burn 7,500 miles, $150,000 and more than a year of his time.

A hop up the Potomac for a shipboard gander at Washington, D.C., for example, might add a couple of days and a couple hundred miles to the tally. Some Loopers like to extend their adventure by entering the Gulf through New Orleans, although the Lower Mississippi is a daunting avenue filled with tricky currents, precious few services available to the small-time mariner, and lots of really big moving obstacles to steer clear of. For a truly spectacular digression, bypassing the Hudson to enter the Great Lakes by way of the Saint Lawrence Seaway can be a truly memorable 1,500-mile side trip.

Some Loopers take the route in bite-sized pieces, parking their vessel each autumn in whatever marina they find themselves and nibbling away at the Great Loop over the course of three or four years. Many have sold everything they own and live aboard their trawlers, wintering in the Bahamas and undertaking another full circuit with every turn of the calendar. The record currently stands at nine complete revolutions.

These days there are about 300 boats traveling the Great Loop in any given season, up from less than a hundred 20 years ago. This is known because Loopers, like everybody else, have their own advocacy group. Founded in 1999, America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Organization (AGLCO) provides information and practical support to folks getting ready to Sail America, and works hard to keep track of their comings and goings. AGLCO even sponsors a pair of well-attended annual “reunions” that give Loopers a chance to drop anchor and boast about their endless equipment failures, terrifying weather-related misadventures, and frequent and expensive groundings.

So who’s Looping? Lots of retirees, yes, but also a handful of working people, hard-working citizens who spend years saving up for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cast off their cares and taste the free air aboard ship. There are even families who Loop, parents home-schooling their children underway, kids learning both long division and how to unclog a balky fuel pump in the dark with a pasta fork.

Of time and money there are rarely enough. But should you ever find yourself uncomfortably burdened by either, you’ll find instant relief – and high adventure – on the Great Loop.  

“Thou art guilty to ye foundations…”     Himmilicious

Guilty pleasures don’t have to be.

A sure proof of Mankind’s superiority over the beasts of the Earth is our highly developed ability to re-cast animal appetites in more palatable terms. True, describing the intellectual benefits of “Real Housewives” may test the powers of reason, and explaining the social importance of an entire Saturday afternoon scoping the neighborhood with binoculars would be a tough sell to even the most credulous chimpanzee. And yet there are indulgences that more easily lend themselves to academic rehabilitation.

Chocolate’s like that.

Okay, chocolate has lots of fat and sugar, and, yes, we all know that these two substances  are by themselves responsible for cavities, love-handles, all unhappiness, every mass extinction since the Cretaceous and Jared Fogle.

But there’s good stuff, too. Science-y stuff. Stuff that makes slopping down a quart of Chunky Monkey during the late news seem like the sensible choice of a rational mind. Chocolate doesn’t just fall out of the tree in 0.2-ounce, foil-wrapped drops, after all, and anything that takes so much trouble to make must be worth the effort, right?

Chocolate is derived from the fruit of the Theobroma cacao tree, a species native to tropical Mexico and Central

America whose name literally translates as “food of the gods.” Four thousand years ago, give or take, the humble subsistence-farming culture that preceded the Olmecs cracked open pods of the cacao tree, extracted the seeds, ground them into a neat loaf, took one bite and spit it out onto the ground, probably cursing in proto-Nahuatl, because it tasted like bitter death.

Instead of accepting that not everything that grows in the forest is fit for the plate, they tried again, first fermenting the cacao “beans”, and then roasting them, and then whipping them into a cold, foamy beverage the Aztecs would call “xocolatl.” Because it’s an article of faith in some circles that ancient bug-eating, monkey-worshipping primitives were privy to Great Secrets now lost to humanity, we can assume that the pre-Olmecs had excellent reasons for standing by the vile cacao pod despite the fact that, on a labor-per-calorie basis, it may be the least efficient crop ever cultivated. Indeed, it’s said that the Aztec emperor Montezuma II drank 50 golden goblets of xocolatl seasoned with chili peppers every single day, and observant Conquistadores noted that Montezuma appeared to be exceptionally healthy and vigorous right up until the moment they strangled him.

These days, the average American consumes about 10 pounds of chocolate per year. The average European consumes about 24 pounds. Dietary scolds on both sides of the Atlantic find year-round employment making the average chocolate consumer feel bad about it. Thankfully, selfless researchers are beginning to turn the tables and take some of the guilt out of gluttony. For one thing, rather than symptomatic of weak moral fiber, intemperate Toblerone intake is actually a perfectly natural, involuntary physiological response to chemical stimuli. In other words, your galloping Hershey habit isn’t your fault.

“Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world’s perfect food.”     Michael Levine

Every bite of chocolate comes with a generous dose of the world’s most popular and widely used psychoactive drug, caffeine. Chocolate is also loaded with the stimulant theobromine, which pleasantly boosts the heart rate and excites the musculature. In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that a theobromine rush, which is deadly for dogs, can in fact cause death to humans who consume more than 22 pounds of chocolate per day, Belgians included. Yet caffeine and theobromine are pikers alongside chocolate’s other upper, a naturally occurring compound called phenylethylamine. Molecularly separated at birth from synthetic amphetamines, phenylethylamine produces the same endorphins in the brain that are released when we feel deep affection.

And speaking of science in the public interest, a recently discovered, mood-altering, chocolate-specific molecule called anandamide has been seen binding with the brain’s cannabanoid receptors in much the same way – and with much the same result – as cannabis, meaning that chocolate gives and satisfies the munchies at the same time. Toss in the feel-good affects of seratonin and tryptophan – both present in chocolate – and it’s small wonder the global cacao market is poised to top $98 billion sometime around October 31 of this year.

But chocolate is no wicked hag tempting you into sweet ruin a la Hansel and Gretel. It’s a benevolent ambrosia unfairly maligned by ignorant nutrition Nazis who are too busy enforcing their flavor-free ideologies to know a good thing when they taste it. Chocolate – particularly dark chocolate – is rich in substances called flavonoids. Densely-educated people in white lab coats and thick glasses credit flavonoids with increasing blood-flow to the brain, thusly fostering improved memory, better reaction times, longer attention spans and enhanced problem-solving skills. What’s more, compounds in dark chocolate promote lower blood pressure, improve one’s ability to see in low-contrast lighting conditions, and positively affect cholesterol levels, platelet function and insulin sensitivity. Even the very aroma of chocolate increases theta brain waves, triggering relaxation. And no matter what your mom told you, no scientific link has ever been demonstrated between chocolate and acne. In fact, by improving your cardiovascular function, a gob-full of Ghirardelli will actually smooth, soften and generally delight your dermis.

Aztec myth holds that the feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, brought cacao to Earth from Aztec Heaven and taught imperfect Man to cultivate and consume it. For that deed, Quetzalcoatl was exiled by the other Aztec gods, who thought xocolatl too good for mere mortals. Although it’s difficult to build a case for cause and effect upon mythological foundations, the fact remains that, from that day to this, a lot of mere mortals experience a twinge of guilt when satisfying their taste for the “food of the gods.”

This year, mere mortals will eat about 7.9 million tons of chocolate.

It seems we’ve learned to live with the guilt.

“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve your brain.”     Dave Barry

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”                                          George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Modern American children have a lot to smile about.

Young’uns today are more cherished, more protected and more lavishly equipped than any before. Today’s tot is better fed than his forebears, and more comfortably housed. He gets more education funding per pup, he’s the revered object of countless government programs, and he’s guaranteed a college degree provided he remains diligent in his studies and doesn’t mind paying back the low-interest loan.

Unlike the youthful drudgery endured by 10,000 generations past, the contemporary American kid doesn’t work for his pint and pail, yet is pleased to wield more walking-around money than a young professional of his grandparents’ generation might, which is convenient because the late-model moppet is also quite literally awash in amusements, entertainments, diversions and distractions. And let’s not forget that the juvenile environment is safer than it’s ever been – today’s kindergartner can reasonably expect to live a longer, healthier and more enjoyable life than virtually every generation that’s ever rose and fell upon this Big Blue Marble. Because they are, modern American children should feel like the luckiest creatures that have ever lived.

So why don’t they?

A recent survey of 200,000 kids ages 6 to 14 reveals that only 11 percent consider themselves “happy” and “carefree.” The other 89 percent worry unhappily about all kinds of things that the children of yore gave scant attention, if any. True, most are plagued by the same genetic frets that have bedeviled children since Paleolithic times. Boys list snakes and “monsters” among their garden-variety fears. Girls tend to be more afraid of thunderstorms and the dark. But boys and girls have both tuned into some larger fears that can’t be allayed with a simple flip of the light switch.

An astounding 99 percent stay up nights waiting for some manner of Apocalypse. A full third of those surveyed believe “the Earth won’t be around when they grow up.” Another 56 percent hold the more cheerful expectation that “the planet won’t be as good a place to live.” And when the Big Picture gets too depressing to contemplate, many kids focus on smaller, bite-sized terrors. Nearly 30 percent fear the extinction of polar bears, penguins, and a host of other exotic creatures they likely will never encounter outside of the municipal zoo. These findings have led the eco-crusading group Habitat Heroes to wonder aloud, “Has all of the attention on saving the planet these days actually created more anxiety about the state of the Earth for our children?”

Could be. That would certainly explain the growing profusion of pint-sized recycle-Nazis who think nothing of worrying tax-paying grownups about paper vis a vis plastic. But global destruction and imperiled penguins aren’t the only things giving young folk the night-sweats. Other researchers have marked a pronounced rise in juvenile “risk anxiety.” About half of children surveyed fear getting flattened by a hurricane or tornado, despite the fact that the odds of any one of them being killed by either is about one in 6 million. A sizeable percentage also worry about getting stabbed or shot, although they actually stand a far better chance of dying in a hurricane or tornado. Nearly 50 percent of children lose sleep worrying about cancer, heart disease and/or diabetes. And when the natural world’s ability to terrorize begins to fade, the adaptable mind of youth quickly finds other things to be bummed about. More than 60 percent feel themselves victimized by the recent recession. Since when did any child, ever, get worked up about the economy? Since now, seemingly.

Fact is, no child naturally worries about its own death, any more than they naturally agonize over a dip in the GDP. Risk anxiety, like concern over the Earth’s impending demise, are fears imposed upon them by over-zealous adults.

“You cannot go out and play because you mustn’t talk to strangers, you mustn’t play in the street, you mustn’t play near water,” former British “Child Laureate” Michael Murpurgo tells the BBC. “We’re surrounding children with the anxieties that we have about the world. What is utterly extraordinary is that this is the safest time we’ve ever had. All we’re doing is creating greater anxiety so that our children retreat into the house, where of course entertainment now is vastly more interesting than it ever was.”

Which brings us to what is possibly the most remarkable of the survey’s findings: All fears aside, 74 percent of children surveyed listed boredom as their greatest source of dissatisfaction.

Boredom. The most accommodated, most connected, most entertained generation in the history of the world doesn’t have sufficient amusements to occupy its pixilated consciousness during those long pampered days and warm coddled nights of its youth. It’s not enough, apparently, that the average modern American child spends about 10.5 hours a day interacting with digital devices. All those text messages and video games and iPhone apps are simply not enough to divert the neo-nipper from entertaining dark thoughts about approaching Death Stars and shrinking lemur habitats. Seriously. It isn’t.

Believe it or not, just 40 years ago Evergreen was full of kids going from place to place on bicycles, kids walking the roads in all seasons alone or in small groups, kids camping out in nearby woods of a warm Friday night and taking long, self-guided hikes of a bright Saturday morning, and kids doing all of those things without benefit of the all-seeing parental eye. Those kids risked little, but learned much about independence and self-reliance. They faced outward, and they learned their fears by practical experience, not through Internet essays digested without adequate context or mature analysis. Those footloose, free-wheeling kids of not-very-long-ago developed physical skills and natural appreciations that today’s more tightly-reined children can only approximate on the Buchanan Rec Center climbing wall or National Geographic Kids. Boston College psychologist Peter Gray takes a historical perspective on the phenomenon.

“My research suggests that there’s never really been a time or place in history, aside from times of slavery and intense child labor, when children have been less free than they are today in our society.”

In modern American culture, that lack of freedom translates into sedentary children who increasingly turn inward, fearful of the world at large. Electronically isolated beings who fail to properly develop essential motor, social and associative skills, and who risk psychological paralysis brought on by helicopter parents, media-driven fears and free-floating risk anxiety.

No wonder they’re not smiling.

 “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”                                                           Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker