Spoiler alert.

I know how this is going to end.

Just remember, years from now, maybe in a story you pass on to a new generation… just remember, you first heard about it here in the Westphalia Periodic News.

The canal gets built.

That’s it.

It’s like no other canal that’s ever been built. It’s magnificent. A 21^st century canal, large enough to handle 21^st century super tankers and container ships too large for the Suez.

New cities spring up along its path through the Negev desert like flowers in spring.

The ending is just too obvious to ignore. Like in Poe’s “Purloined Letter,” the key to untangling the paradox is hidden in plain sight.

It’s no different than our high school beer parties at somebody’s hunting camp at the end of two-rut roads out somewhere in the northern woods, young guys getting drunk and loud on Kessler’s and Stroh’s, making up stories about somebody’s girlfriend, tables upended, flying fists. But on the way back to town somebody plows his ‘ol man’s pickup into a snowbank and the whole crew jumps in to dig and pull him out.

It won’t be called the Ben Gurion Canal. That would be like one of the guys taking all the credit for getting the pickup out of the snowbank. For the same reason, it won’t be called the Israeli Canal, either, even though that’s what it was originally called back in the 50s when the idea first took root as a top-secret project of the U.S. Department of Defense after Nasser nationalized the Suez.

Moslems, Christians and Jews might want to name it the Abraham Canal, like the recent Abraham Accords, to signify their common origins, but that would leave out the Chinese Confucians, Indian Hindus, Japanese Buddhists and all the rest.

I don’t know what it will be called. Maybe the World Canal because it’s at the center of the world and everybody passes through it on their way to someplace else. I’d call it the Leibniz Canal, but that’s another story.

All I know is that in the end the canal gets built just because I say so and I’m the creator of this story, it’s the path I choose, my morphogenic idea.

Now that I’ve got the canal built, it’s time to turn the page.

A year ago I committed to writing a weekly newspaper column for a year – a morphogenic idea. Except for the two weeks we were in Europe and a couple guest column appearances, I’ve done it. I’ve  written 50 columns. It’s hard work. I typically spend 20 to 30 hours a week to get a single column the way I want it.

But now it’s time for a new morphogenic idea.

My wife, Culley Jane, the retired professor and novelist, is having knee replacement surgery next week. It’s going to go good. She eats right and, as if to spite her one bum knee, walks every day in the park behind our house and gets to the gym and gets me to the gym. She’s ready. She’s strong and has her own private nurse here at home who’ll always be around in a common cause.

The Westphalia Periodic News is not going away but will be transitioning into something new.

I’m sure I’ll still be popping in once in a while. But for right now, I’ve got other things on my mind, new morphogenic ideas, like how to make Culley Jane's breakfast the way she likes it.