Family, Health

Christmas Edition

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Christmas gratefuls: Children, all the children. Christmas Trees. Wassail bowls. Yule logs. Mistletoe. Holly and Ivy. The whole pageant of pagan appropriations. Merry Christmas, everyone. Snow. Ice. Wherefore art thou? Shadow of the morning. All those who are alone, bereft, unloved on this day in particular. Friends and family. Wild Neighbors and the Rocky Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara, Marilyn and Irv

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Tara brings all black, curly haired puppy Eleanor and all white, curly haired Kingsley; they run down the stairs yin and yang on four legs, out the back door and into doggy freedom, while they play Tara and I talk. Humans, eh?

A Christmas edition of Ancientrails. Nostalgia carries me into Christmas, any Christian embers long extinguished. The pagan accretions, the family and friends celebrating. Yes. The incarnation. No.

Jacquie Lawson, the e-card company, puts out a fun animated Advent calendar and I buy one each year. It’s heavy on traditional Christmas themes like Snow, sledding, Santa, hot chocolate, with a soupcon of baby Jesus. This year’s version had an English village setting with the village gaining buildings as the days progressed. A sweet immersion in the parts of Christmas that still matter to me. Very well done.

Yule makes more sense to me with its Evergreen Trees, Holly, and Ivy. Its emphasis on Fire as the human imitation of Great Sol. Wassailing, feasting, singing songs. Celebrating the essential and inextricable relationship between humans and their parents: Mother Earth and Great Sol.

So throw that Yule log on the Fire, drink from a flagon made of Elk Horn, listen to the lute and the zither, and sing the night away into the coming of the light. You pagan you.

 

In saying my piece about the difficult realms of my inner world I put them out there, on the page, away from the clanging cauldron of my doubts. They no longer have the power of hidden things. Does not make them dissolve, no.

Yet. Their power diminishes in the air. Looking back to yesterday’s post, I can see them as part of my larger whole, and only part. That alone puts them in conversation with the strength of my will, with the love of friends and family, with  the sacred energy of my nephesh which joins  my Self to the collective unconscious. In that broader, richer context the self-insulting and self-negating thoughts have to contend with years of reflection and self-understanding. Their obscurantism evaporates, sending them back to their subterranean homes in Kubla Khan’s caverns measureless to man (sic).

Also, when they’re out folks can raise them with me. Diane helped me today with two stuck places: exercise. I committed to resistance work only for the next few weeks. Being weak really bugs me. She also helped me see that reading and writing can indeed be my purpose now. Thanks, cuz.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Fallacies

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Wednesday gratefuls: Luke and Leo. Snowpack Pizzeria. Safeway pickup. Sheetpan meals. Climate change. Being a Jew, a son of Avram and Sarai. The Shema. The Far Right. Democratic socialism. The whole, wide world. Everywhere and everyone. The blessing and grace of the one. This darkness. This light.  Purpose. Meaning. Love. Joy. Compassion. Angst.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Ninth Wave

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  ― Howard Thurman

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Natalie sent a video of Shadow crossing her threshold with no hesitation, tail up, ready to sit with the other dogs for her come in the house treat, then running upstairs with the other four, headed off to bed, in her third week away from home, away from me. An ache in my heart.

*The Ninth Wave” by Ivan Aivazovsky
Year 1850

I suppose most of us, if we felt so inclined, could document the thousand doubts our mind is heir to. I know that.  I’ve shared mine the last couple of days. So here’s another vantage point, a perspectival shift.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead warns us against what he calls fallacies of misplaced concreteness. That is, taking an idea and removing it from its context as if it were a thing sui generis. For example, imagining that there is such a thing as intelligence, justice, love instead of understanding that they are all part of a process of ongoing life, embedded in persons and situations and never existing in any other sense.

So when I place my finger on the doubts, the fears, the weariness and conclude from that I am melancholic or even depressed, I commit just such a fallacy. Yes, those doubts, fears, and weariness are part of me, yes. The key word in that sentence being part. Over the last couple of days I’ve obscured-through a fallacy of misplaced concreteness-my whole self. Imagining that the map I’ve written with those words is the true territory of my soul.

It is not. As Whitman wrote, I am many, I contain multitudes. I am no more explained by doubts and fears than I am by my knowledge and compassion. Probably less so. Why? Because the doubts and fears are more like flotsam and jetsam in the ocean of my Self. Sometimes certain currents swirl around, collect them, force them to the shore, to consciousness.

Oh, yes, I am these, too. No, wait. They are all I am. I cannot see beyond them. Never ever true.

Always a part of larger, more complex and wonderful whole. Not to be ignored, not to be pushed away in fear or pushed down in frustration, but to be felt and known and embraced and then put back out to sea, their work done. For now.

Not quite ready to stop listening to and learning from my doubts, my I can’ts. But I will be. Soon, I hope.

*Ninth Wave (Russian: Девятый вал, Dyevyatiy val) is an 1850 painting by Russian marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. It is his best-known work.[1][2]

The title refers to an old sailing expression referring to a wave of incredible size that comes after a succession of incrementally larger waves.[3]

It depicts a sea after a night storm and people facing death attempting to save themselves by clinging to debris from a wrecked ship.   Wikipedia

 

*

Feelings, Fourth Phase

I Can’t Quite

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, who sees me. Joe coming in January. Shadow in her third week of boarding school. Going to public spaces. That old debble melancholy. Deep darkness, nurturing. Now more light, let the growing season show its first tiny shoots. The dance of light and dark. Shadows. Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Self

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  ― Howard Thurman

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Can you feel the trembling heart of children, ones who await not gifts but special dispensations from the holy Santa Claus who once a year accomplishes the miraculous, Reindeer powered sleigh landing on rooftops, finding a way in even to non-chiminied homes, eating millions of cookies and drinking gallons of milk, knowing what each child’s heart needs, and bringing a present that speaks love and caring.

 

And so. I’ve mostly said it out loud. I can feel, often feel, boxed in by my choices, living a tentative life with medicine offering temporary balms, welcome, yet always with the awareness that this drug, that ablation, will fail.

Chips away at my sense of self, my fantasy of permanence. I feel myself too often sliding into no, I can’t, rather than my usual, from a life I remember well, I can. I can’t travel. I can’t take care of this dog. I can’t engage large tasks. I can’t stand long enough to cook. I can’t.

When I can’t takes over, the self does not lose agency, it relinquishes it. No wonder sadness follows. What a pitiful excuse for a human being. Who’s old enough to know better.

Ah, as Shakespeare wrote, there’s the rub. I do know better. But knowing is a weak cousin to action and an even more distant relative to healing a wounded heart. From this well, I look up and see others handling their lives, doing this and that, keeping their life going while I languish. The one who can’t.

I know. For sure and certain.  This view flows from a crippled heart. And yet, I can’t seem to find that Archimedean lever to move my inner world.

It’s not for lack of love. Not at all. Friends and family, yes. Who see me. Care for me. It’s not for lack of self knowledge gained the hard way over years of analysis and honest self-reflection.

Then, what is it? I think, sometimes, that I should sell the house, move into a condo or an apartment, or assisted living where the burdens I feel in this independent, introverted life I lead would fall away. Then I remember AA, wherever you go, there you are. No to geographic escape.

I need to figure this out living in this place I love, with the Dog and human family I love, with my friends, with my wild neighbors both of whom I love. With Mother Earth, from her I  came and to her I will return.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Seeking Joy

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Monday gratefuls: No fire during the high winds. No downed Trees. Nathan starts work on Friday. Will finish before Shadow comes home. Ruth and Gabe, my empaths. Joe, too. Hannukah. Food in the fridge. Water from the well. Septic system. Generator. Internet. Friends checking in. Mother Nature and her powerful ways. Pagans at Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor. The Winter Solstice. Light returns. Slowly.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Melancholy, my old friend

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ― W.B. Yeats

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Those moans and sighs, the pulsing of windows, the generator’s gentle music have seized; but this day, a day when the sound of the chain saw will dominate, more high winds, yet all the while neighbors and businesses have barely begun to set things right again, squaring up life today with what’s left from yesterday.

 

Ruth gave me a spiral bound calendar of positive affirmations. When I asked her if she thought I was depressed, she hesitated, then nodded. Later on I told her that yes, sometimes I wonder if I’ve just had too much. Too much loss. Too many medical interventions. I guess the word, better than depressed, might be melancholic.

If I’m honest, and I try very damn hard to be nothing but, I’d have to admit that I’ve often shrugged off exercise. Often spent most of my day watching television. Something I despise. I have three major projects I could work on: Seed Savers, a new Superior Wolf novel, a regular schedule of reading, then commenting on the news. But I only get to the planning. Eating enough has become a challenge.

Perhaps I’ve been  down a long time. Longer than I’d like to admit. Am I coping? Oh, yes. Handling things, even or especially in tough times, I consider a strong part of my character. Yet handling things, too, can take its own toll.

Judaism holds joy to be a religious obligation and I agree. Perhaps my most necessary task this Yule and in the new year will be to focus more on the joy that surrounds me and is within me. To both see it and feel it, let it in.

Like what, you might ask? The generator. Ruth and Gabe’s love. Shadow. No pain in my left hip and back. A constellation of friends, near and far. This delightful house now molded to my life. Great Sol rising. Seasons changing. Family who love me. Memories of a great life with Kate. A mind that continues to sharpen itself on the whetstone of experience. Prostate cancer treatments to keep me alive. More than adequate money. Each Lodgepole and each Aspen. Each species of Moss, Ground Cover, each Wildflower at Shadow Mountain Home. Artemis. Ruby. Electricity. Positive affirmations, eh?

Joy, joy, joy to the fishes and the deep blue sea, joy to you and me.

Family, Holidays, Judaism

Grandkids

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Hannukah. Presents all round. Positive affirmations. Yule. Winter Solstice. Alan. Joanne. Hummingbird. Mechanical puzzles. Challah. French toast. Donuts. Shadow away. Gabe admitted to Hamline. Joe. His smile. Applications for school. Shadow Mountain Home. Nathan and the Dog run.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Puzzles

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
― Albert Einstein

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Blue and white Hannukah gift bags assembled on the table when Ruth and Gabe came inside after their drive up the hill from Denver; Gabe got the menorah and a box of Hannukah candles from the Judaica closet, brought them down to the breakfast table where Ruth busied herself lighting each candles base to seat them in the menorah.

 

The best thank you. As soon we’d finishing opening our presents, Gabe had a puzzle in his hands, already determined. Later on, Ruth, too. These aren’t garden variety puzzles. They come from Kubiya games, ranked in level of difficulty, 1-5. After Gabe finished last year’s puzzles pretty fast, this time I got all 5 level.

He asked me if his struggle was making me happy. I said yes. He laughed.

A season pass to A-Basin, Ruth’s big Hannukah present, had a few smaller ones added to it. A wall-size chromatic color chart, a jigsaw puzzle, vintage, of the human skeleton, and a Silence, Please coffee mug from the Bodleian Library. Gabe got a mug, too.

We’ve been doing Hannukah together since Kate and I moved here eleven years ago yesterday. Some of those early years Jen, Jon, Ruth, Gabe, Kate. Apres divorce no Jen. After Kate died no Kate. After Jon died no Jon. Now the three of us carry on, adding memories and time together.

Gabe got admitted to, and wants to attend, Hamline College in St. Paul. Hamline sits on Snelling Avenue which, further south, runs past St. Paul Central High School, Joe’s alma mater.

My old buddy, Howard Vogel, taught Constitutional Law at Hamline’s law school for many years. Jon graduated from Augsburg College not too faraway in Minneapolis. I lived in St. Paul for several years and Kate and I bought our first house together on Edgcumbe Road. A lot of family history in St. Paul.

Both Ruth and Gabe have finished their semesters. Gabe wants out of high school. So bad. High school sucked, he said echoing more than one senior with only one semester, or as he put it, the final eighth to go.

Ruth completed her first year of pre-med, maintaining her 3.9 gpa and earning the opportunity to become a T.A. in her Chemistry class next semester. She holds down two jobs and carries a full class load.

The grandkids are doing ok.

Dogs, Friends, GeekWorld, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Internet Refugees

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Samain (last day) and the Moon of New Beginnings

Shabbat gratefuls: Arjean and Tara. Eleanor and Kingsley. Generator. High Winds. The Grid. C.O.R.E. Lenovo. Ana. Natalie. Making the NYT. New computer. Getting it setup. Winter Solstice. Reading the news, books, magazines. Poetry. Morning darkness. Exercise. Shadow in boarding school. Joe in the U.S. Shabbat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Starlink

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
― Albert Einstein

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The days have begun to march toward the end of another year, another orbit completed in our circular, cyclical, non-linear path around Great Sol, yet before we get there: Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s Eve how wonderful, these are my days of awe brilliant with legend, filled with memories, wedded to us by centuries, millennia of human longing.

 

Friday: Internet refugees. With my generator chugging along and my Starlink antenna aimed toward the northern sky, I had both power and the internet. Tara and Arjean had neither thanks to an Xcel intentional shutdown. Both of them had work they needed to do, homework as it is these days, yet could not.

Tara asked if she and Arjean could come and work here. I’m delighted you want to. Come when you need, stay as long as you like. In addition to electricity and internet, I also have a large fenced in back yard. Eleanor and Kingsley needed a place to romp.

The generator, with very brief interruptions, ran from Wednesday around 1 pm to Friday around noon. Made me feel good to be able to share what it made possible.

Due to family Ana had to wait until yesterday to clean the house. For a while, I had three adults and two dogs here. Shadow Mountain home buzzed with energy.

To complete the day Natalie came over to pick up Shadow’s heartworm meds and we chatted about Shadow. She will come to Natalie and let her put on the leash. “Though,” Natalie says, “she still looks like she’s going to die.” She crosses the threshold coming in from outside, yet Natalie says she’s reluctant to go back out. Well, geez.

I’ve recovered my exercise rhythm and had completed my workout before everybody showed up.

A good Friday.

 

Just a moment:  For reasons I don’t fully understand, I’ve begun to feel optimistic about our political future. 11 months to the day in this abysmal simulacrum of governance the cracks in DJT’s obsessive, unfocused, unintentional approach (which have always been there) have begun to widen enough to include Republicans, even some of his MAGA cult members.

Yes, he has three more years and one month (no, I don’t believe he can get around the 22nd amendment) and can still do more damage, but my gut tells me the political zeitgeist has begun to turn against him. We will see.

 

Shadow Mountain, Sport

Power

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Samain and the Moon of New Beginnings

Friday gratefuls: Generator. High Winds. Mountain living. Fresh Snow. Hanukkah. Damaged Dog house. Waiting on Nathan. Shadow and her heartworm meds. Natalie. Dr. Josy. Tara. Eleanor and Kingsley.  The Hummingbird. Alan and Joanne. Marilyn and Irv. C.O.R.E. Our electricity co-op. 80433 still 98% dark. Mother Nature can have a heavy hand. All our Wild Neighbors confronted with loss of body heat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Automatic Transfer Switches

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Maybe an hour or two yesterday evening of connection to the grid, then with a flicker and a thrum, the sound of the generator was once again heard on the Mountain, back to its already over a day of constant on, giving me water, internet, light, warmth, a feeling of security as I switched on my oxygen concentrator last night and went to bed.

 

Hard to value a generator. The whole home sort that Kate and I bought ran between nine and ten thousand dollars when we bought it well over 15 years ago. A lot more now, I’m sure. I said in the post yesterday that Kate’s heat intolerance made the decision. A big chunk of it, yes. The clincher though was water.

Ever since we moved to Andover in 1994, we’ve lived on properties with their own water and septic. Septic works on gravity and hydraulics which power outages don’t affect. Water however relies on an electric pump. Hand washing. Cooking. Showering. Irrigating in the case of Andover. Not to mention staying hydrated. We plunked down our money.

The proof of its value comes over the years. When it comes on with the easy grace of the automatic transfer, a sigh of relief. The longer it runs, the more grateful I am to have it. Beats lighting with candles, heating with a fireplace meant for aesthetics, and cooking by opening cans or roasting something over the fire. May sound romantic, and if voluntary, sure. But all day, all night for two plus days? Not so much.

 

Sports: OK. I’ll admit it. I like football. Watched the first half of the Seahawks v Rams last night. Wish I didn’t go to bed at 7:30, but I do. Got crazy near the end and the Seahawks won in over time. I’m allowing myself more football watching even though it includes advertisements which I loathe and pays ridiculous amounts of money to men, enough to make them ignore concussions and later life altering injuries. If I watch, I’m complicit.

Still. The intricacy and the elegance. The struggle. The crash of behemoth linemen, the beautiful running of a back squeezing through the line. A pass arcing just over the arms of a defender then to be caught one-handed. The occasional play that breaks loose: a runback of a kick for a touchdown, a back headed for a first down who breaks a tackle and rumbles on for thirty, forty, fifty yard. Poetry.

Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Blowin’ In the Wind

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Samain and the waning crescent of Shadow’s Moon

Thursday gratefuls: High winds. Mini-splits out. Generator on. Kylie, pain doc today. Shadow on her leash. Making progress at boarding school. Rachel, my Alabama gal palliative care social worker. Her Cat and her Christmas Tree. Trash containers stayed stable until pickup. 80433, my zip code, 98% effected by power outage.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Generator

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Winds have howled like lonely Wolves since yesterday morning, rattling windows, threatening to up turn trash containers and share our leftover stuff with our neighbors, predicted to last now until tomorrow, Friday, morning; the Wind wants to come inside, find a crack, a slightly open window, an unsecured door, a real force of nature.

On one sweaty Andover, Minnesota afternoon Kate and I sat at our long kitchen table, talking about how good the air-conditioning felt. Kate got serious. We need a generator. I knew what she meant. If the heat went out in a frigid Minnesota winter, Kate could cope. If the air-conditioning failed us because of our common summer Thunderstorms, she could not. A hot-blooded Norwegian gal, my Kate.

We gritted our financial teeth and bought a Kohl whole-house generator. These generators connect to gas lines and have automatic transfer switches that sense a power outage. The transfer switch turns on the generator and switches its output to the house’s electrical panel. Happy Kate. Happy me.

We got satisfaction out of being “on generator.” Its two cylinder engine’s thrum proof that we had made a wise decision. When we moved, I decided we’d take the generator along. Not easy, it had to be strapped to a pallet and lifted into the moving van by four very strong guys.

It got off-loaded to the garage and there it sat for over a year as I learned how to deal with a paucity of trades people in the mountains. Finally found Altitude Electric who agreed to install it. The generator sits today on the western side of the house, beside all the electrical panels and the transfer switch. Yes, up here all of the electrical panels live on the outside of the house. Surprised the hell outta me.

Yesterday around one p.m. I read on Next Door Shadow Mountain that one guy’s weather station had recorded a Wind gust of 116 mph. I found it  hard to believe until I looked this morning at reports of wind speeds across the Front Range. Several in the 100, 102 range. So. Could be.

Around that time my lights flickered, my zoom call with Paul crashed and we had to switch to our phones to finish our conversation. Not long after I got off the phone, I heard that thrum again.

Hey, Kate. We’re on generator.

Politics

Richardsonism

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Mark, the mailman. Gifts assemble! For Hanukkah. Ruth and Gabe. Winter, wherefore art thou Winter? Climate changes. Stronger Hurricanes. Sea Level Rise. Ocean temperature rise. Coral bleaching. Polar and Glacial Ice melting. And so much more. The Great Work. Mother Earth and her strength. Humanity and its fragility.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Long Nights

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Seared the thick pork loin chops on high in a large cast iron skillet, put the skillet in the oven while I gathered sauerkraut, cherry Tomatoes, a plate, some aluminum foil to cover the two chops, letting them rest, continue cooking a bit, juices gathering. Ah.

 

 

 

I subscribe to Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin. He included this image in his commentary above the reposting of his tweet:

Silver leans left, even acknowledges his affection for the world Richardsonism wants as suggested in the chatgpt image he produced above. And, yet.

He’s also the consummate political realist, steeped in the world of polls, analytics, and hard-nosed how do you really win strategy. So. While he may admire Richardsonism as a political ideal, he sees it as a naive approach electoral politics.

Silver admits that Richardson did not set out to create what he considers the third of three major divisions in the Democratic Party. But he thinks she has. Here in his  own words are the three factions:

“First, there’s the Capital-L Left: populist, deservedly feeling recharged by the success of Zohran Mamdani and a backlash to the increasingly politically assertive billionaire class.

Next, there’s what you might think of as the Abundance Libs: technocratic, more willing to find common ground with Republicans, and more sympathetic to market-based solutions.

The third faction Richardsonism or a term I’ll treat as synonymous with it: #Resistance Libs. They’re older, with extremely high educational attainment, predominantly female, and very highly politically engaged. This is the audience for a cluster of political activism encompassing things such as the No Kings protests and some highly popular anti-Trump Substacks along with certain prominent podcasts and much of Bluesky.”  Silver Bulletin, Dec. 16, 2025

Though I love Richardson’s substacks and usually agree with her analysis, you’ll find me firmly in the Capital L-Left Camp. That is, when forced to choose, as electoral politics forces us to do, I’m an economic justice guy tinged with more than a little retail political realism.

That happens to be Silver’s main point about Richardsonism and the Tea Party. The politics of purity collides with realpolitik. It does so by using its pure ideas, its dreams as a basis for choosing policies, candidates, and strategy. In other words it gets out over its skis by privileging ideas over the actual sentiments of the electorate. Result: Trump in office.

Final note: Though Silver and I both want a Richardsonian America, we recognize true political change as incremental. Yes, in spite of Trump’s appearance to the contrary. Take the Affordable Care act as a for instance. It got as close to universal health care as the realpolitik would allow. Yet it is now firmly lodged in the craw of even the most diehard MAGA congressman and only awaits a shift in the political winds to go deeper and more broadly towards its goal.

As Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

 

 

 

Cancer, Far Right, Health, Politics, White Supremacy, Writing

Reading Right

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Samain and the Shadow Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Paul and Christopher. Findlay and Sarah. Kate and Clare. High Winds. Shadow away. Arrival Day yesterday. Joe. Working out again. Cancer. Dr. Bupathi. Kristie. Dr. Carter. Jenna and Alise. Andouille. Kielbasa. Shrimp. Pork. Sheetpan recipes. New York Times. Ground News. Washington Post. LA Times. Vox. ProPublica. Ezra Klein. No despair.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Protein

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Oh, these cancer days and cancer nights, long have they stayed, often indolent no worries, ordinary sleep, ordinary waking, once in a while, at least every three months, a bit fraught, will the numbers be good or bad, sometimes, like as of late, ordinary sleep, but some edgy days with moving numbers, m.r.i.s, pet scans, radiation.

 

Health: Got my new PSA numbers over the weekend. A big jump. Uh-oh. Couldn’t ask the question until Monday a.m. Sent a note and Hannah said she’d make sure Dr. Bupathi had seen those results. Thanks, Hannah.

Not long after, again from Hannah, “The team thinks this could be the result of inflammation after radiation. Recheck in six weeks.” That’s also the time frame for my next pet scan. So, ok. Part of the process.

What matters here is whether I have transitioned from hormone treatment sensitive cancer to hormone resistant which requires the next step in protocols, new drugs, stronger ones. If my psa goes down, that is below 0.3, I continue on androgen deprivation therapy-hormone treatment-as I have since 2019.

This has my attention. Not worried yet not placid. Things not definitive. Six weeks of this. I appreciated Hannah understanding my concern, following it down. There are no small roles in this personal life and death drama.

 

Just a moment: A continuing commitment. I will read and comment on the news, especially news originating from non-traditional sources like the conservative Bulwark, the liberal Vox and Propublica, Groundnews, the Atlantic, and the Guardian. For my own original reporting I will continue to take you inside texts like Yasem Hazony’s Conservativism Redefined and the Violent Take It By Force, Matthew Taylor on the New Apostolic Reformation.

This week I’ve purchased two that will occupy much of my time for a while. Abundance by Ezra Klein, a progressive political agenda for our time, and Furious Minds by Princeton scholar of the New Right, Laura K. Field, which analyzes the Making of the MAGA New Right.

This is a project I began a while ago when reading Patrick Deneen’s, Why Liberalism Failed, followed by a book on the John Birch Society, another on Christian Nationalism, and yet  another on thinkers who have impacted the New Right.  Renaud Camus, for example, the French political philosopher who developed Replacement Theory. That was 2023. Well before the return of red tie guy.

Replacement theory shows up in the recent Trumpian National Security Strategy as that document’s warning to Europe about “civilizational erasure.” It also shows up among America white nationalists associated with MAGA.

I’m beginning to trust my sense of what drives the new far right, now I want to understand how its rise will effect our future.