By Ed Staskus

   The temperature was in the 90’s, like it had been for weeks, and the humidity was swampy, which it had been for weeks, too, when Frank and Betty Glass went for a walk on the multi-purpose track in the Rocky River Reservation, about a mile south of the mouth of the river and Lake Erie. Downtown Cleveland squats on the east bank of the Cuyahoga River ten miles to the east.

   The Cleveland Metroparks, more than a hundred years in the making, are a series of nature reservations within the urban landscape, more than 21,000 acres, which encircle the city and its suburbs. There are hundreds of miles of walking paths and horse trails, picnic areas and fishing spots, and eight golf courses. Steelhead trout abound in the river.

   Their home was on a side street on the east side of the valley park. If there were ever another Great Flood, the river would have to rise more than one hundred and fifty feet up the cliff to threaten them. Turkey vultures nested in the cliff face and soared all summer like gliders in wide circles on the currents rising up from the lowland. The Glass house, a dark gray Polish double, was ten minutes by foot from the park. It was always cooler mid-summer in the shade of the forest and along the riverbank.

   They walked down the Detroit Rd. entrance into the park, past the marina, the soccer fields, and as far as Tyler Field, before turning around. As they neared Hogsback Lane, the top of which was high above the near bank of the Rocky River, Frank suggested they walk up to see his friend Barron Cannon, whom they hadn’t seen recently. Betty wasn’t exactly Barron’s friend and had no great interest in seeing him.

   It was a month ago that they had gotten back from two weeks on Prince Edward Island off the coast of Canada. At the same time Barron had spent an extended weekend protesting on the American coast, in New York City, protesting the Donald Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that was invested in the separation of migrant children from their parents at the southern border. Breaking up families was their big idea of the day. They had big ideas every day.

   “I thought Barron enjoys what he calls the antics of the clown car in the capital,” Betty said.

   “He does, but when he comes back down to earth he finds out the clown car is burning oil and he doesn’t like the consequences.”

   “Smoke and mirrors.”

   “That’s what he always says.”

   “You know I don’t want to go see him,” Betty said. She thought he was a smart man, but at the same time pontifical and smart-mouthed. She wanted to tell him her high school days were long over and she knew her ABC’s well enough.

   “I know,” Frank said, turning up Hogsback Lane.

   Barron Cannon was a trim young man in his 30s who lived in an orange Mongolian yurt he built in the backyard of his parent’s ranch-style house at the top of Hogsback Lane. He had a master’s degree in Comparative Philosophy and was a committed yogi, as well as a radical vegan. He owed a king’s ransom in student loans and was chronically unemployed. He never opened the urgent letters sent to him by the Dept. of Education, throwing them away in the trash instead.

   He practiced yoga for two hours a day and meditated for another half-hour. Sometimes he chanted or played his harmonium. He was thankful they had no nearby neighbors who might complain and the house was slightly off the edge of park land, so the park rangers couldn’t bother him. His parents had long since thrown up their hands. They prayed he would find a girlfriend and move away, but weren’t holding their breath. They suspected no woman of sound mind would have him.

   “He needs to be committed,” Betty had said to Frank on several occasions, usually right after they had visited him and were out of earshot.

   “Why couldn’t he stay in New York and occupy Wall Street instead of his mom’s backyard?” she added.

   Barron didn’t have a car or a television. He read books. He had never voted. ”Suppose I was an idiot, and suppose I was a congressman, but I repeat myself,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

   “I’ll vote when anarchists are on the ballot,” he told Frank.

   Frank wanted to remind him that anarchists who vote would be like atheists who pray, but he thought, what would be the point?

   They found Barron in his backyard, lying face-up in the sun on a Sesame Street blanket, on the south side of his yurt. He was naked except for a fig leaf covering his private parts. It was a literal fig leaf.

   Vera looked away when Barron propped himself up on his elbows and the fig leaf rolled away. She wasn’t a prude, but she was judgmental. She didn’t want to judge Barron’s private parts.

   “Sorry,” he said, pulling on a pair of cargo shorts. “I was getting my daily dose of sunshine here on the acropolis.” He was tan, from tip to toe. Frank could see he hadn’t been using an SPF lotion of any kind anywhere on himself.

   “You should be careful,” he suggested. “Too much sun isn’t good for you.”

   “That’s where you’re right, but even more wrong,” Barron replied. “Too much sun may be bad, depending on your skin and heredity, but avoiding the sun altogether is not good for anybody. Remember, we evolved in the sun, living outdoors for our two million years on this planet.”

   He flipped on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and leaned towards Frank.

   “Then, not very long ago, we started messing with Mother Nature and started avoiding the sun. When you avoid the sun, you may not get rickets, because you can always take a pill, but all the pills in the world can’t replace the real thing.”

   He pointed up to the sky. ”When you avoid the sun, like it’s life and death on your skin, you increase the risk of dying from internal cancers,” he said solemnly.

   Frank must have looked skeptical, because Barron tilted his dark glasses down his nose Lolita-style and exhaled.

   “Look it up,” he said.

   It turned out, when Frank looked it up, Barron was right.

   “I really hate it when he’s right about anything,” Vera said.

   The Journal of Epidemiology, nearly forty years ago, reported that colon cancer rates are nearly three times higher in New York than in New Mexico. Since then many other studies have found solar UVB induced vitamin D is also associated with reduced risks of breast and rectal cancers.

   “When the government and our medical monopoly started telling us to avoid the sun, they forgot to remind us we would need to get our vitamin D somewhere else,” Barron said.

   Tired of Barron’s pronouncements, Vera wandered off and was commiserating with Barron’s mother about the flower garden her son had torn out, except for a small plot she had saved at the last minute after coming home from the grocery and discovering what he was about. He had thrown her flowers into a compost pit and replaced them with rows of root vegetables.

   “Vitamin D is a hormone,”  Barron said “and it’s produced naturally when skin is exposed to UVB in sunlight.”

   Frank noticed a yoga mat rolled up and leaning against the rough bark of a sweet gum tree. The bark was like an alligator’s hide.

   “You’re still doing yoga outside?”

   “I am.”

   “In the buff?”

   “You bet. It was good enough for the Greeks, it’s good enough for me.”

   Barron told Frank vitamin D sufficiency is linked to a reduction in 105 diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. Some researchers believe, he added, vitamin D deficiency contributes to nearly 400,000 premature deaths and adds a one hundred billion dollar burden to the health care system. By many estimates vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide epidemic, with some studies indicating greater than 50 percent of the global population at risk. Three out of four Americans are considered vitamin D deficient, according to government data.

   “Do you know why?” Barron asked him.

   “No,” Frank said.

   “It’s because of overzealous sun avoidance, which has led to a 50 percent increase in that figure in the past 20 years,” he said, slapping a fist into his palm for emphasis.

   “I take a vitamin D supplement every morning,” Frank said. “I don’t have to go out in the sun. Besides, it’s been unbearably hot and there are lots of bugs this year, since we had such a mild winter.”

   “You think our modern time is complete and we know everything,” he said. “You assume science understands all the benefits of sunlight and that the only good it does is make vitamin D.”

   “That’s right,” Frank said.

   “That isn’t true,” Barron said. “Let me give you an example.”

   He told Frank about a recent study at the University of Wisconsin and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. They discovered that something in ultraviolet light retarded progression in an animal model of multiple sclerosis, which is a painful neurological disease for which there is no cure. While vitamin D supplements suppressed progression in the animal model, ultraviolet light worked even better. The report concluded that UV light was having an effect independent of vitamin D production.

   “If it happens to be true in humans, it means that sunlight, or UV light, contains something good in addition to vitamin D,” he said. “We just don’t know what it is. Hey, our ancestors evolved naked, full frontal.” Barron waved his fig leaf like a battle flag.

   “The sun is directly overhead. We have a long evolutionary bond with it. Humans make thousands of units of vitamin D, and who knows what else, within minutes of exposure to sunlight. It is unlikely such a system evolved by chance. When we sever the relationship between ourselves and sunlight, we proceed at our own risk.” Barron gave Frank a sharp look and settled down on his elbows

   At a loss for words, Frank was grateful when his wife reappeared.

   “I’m getting a little toasty in all this sunlight,” she said.

   They agreed that they should be going. They bid Barron goodbye, Vera waved to Barron’s mother and they made their way down Riverside Dr. to home.

   After dinner that night, as Vera watched “Lawrence of Arabia” on Turner Classic Movies in the living room with a bowl of popcorn, sitting on the front porch in the orange-yellow light of a quiet sunset Frank skimmed a review of a paper in the British Medical Journal.

   “Some people are taking the safe sun message too far,” wrote Professor Simon Pearce. “Vitamin D levels are precarious in parts of the population. They stay at home on computer games. It’s good to have 20 to 30 minutes of exposure to the sun two to three times a week.”

   When he put his iPad down, Frank thought, I might give it a try in our backyard, without slathering on any sunscreen as I normally do, but I am definitely wearing a pair of shorts. Inside the living room, on the flat screen, Lawrence and his Arab allies were atop camels and charging across a sun-blasted desert outfitted from head-to-toe in long robes.

   Where did Barron get a fig leaf, anyway? Frank wondered.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journa http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

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“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

Late summer and early autumn, New York City, 1956. Stickball in the streets and the Mob on the make. President Eisenhower on his way to Ebbets Field for the opening game of the World Series. A killer waits in the wings. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye scares up the shadows.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication