Category Archives: General

Cinema and Television, General, Politics, World History

Ten Thousand Schools

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29  87%  26%  5mph NNW  bar29.89 rises windchill25  Imbolc

                  Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Saw Scarlet Johanssen talking to a group of Minnesota students tonight.  She’s pushing Barrack.  The political firestorm that will sweep the nation tomorrow will have a brushfire here in the Minnesota caucuses.  It remains to be seen whether a strong youth turnout for primaries and caucuses will  translate into votes in November, but I find the youth surge a hopeful phenomenon.  Maybe we’re getting back to a situation where the politics of compassion, not compassionate conservatism, and the politics of economic justice, not unjust foreign policy will prevail.  It’s got my vote.

The snow petered out, a dusting only after the vigor of the mid-morning.  Things did get freshened up.

Watched an anime on the Science Fiction Channel.  Saw why Miyazaki is considered an anime god.  This stuff is much more slapdash, also has a slasher feel to it without the grace of the samurai or wu shu movies like Crouching Tiger. 

I seem to find myself digging deeper and deeper into ancient China, especially the Warring States period when Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism plus many others–the Ten Thousand Schools–emerged.  It is also the time of the Qin unification and Qin Shi Huang Di fascinates me.  After the Qin the Han dynasty began and lasted for four hundred years or so, one of the first golden ages of China.  Later, the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties would, each in their own time and in their own way, count as golden ages, too.

General

Giants Walk the Land Tonight

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21  87%  26%  0mph EEN  bar30.00 steady windchill21  Imbolc

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

OK.  Here’s why I like football.  To the best of my knowledge it has no script.  That means from time to time unexpected and amazing things happen right before my eyes.  Like this Superbowl game.  Close down to the last minute, literally.  The undergods, as I called them earlier, came through.  The overgods, the Patriots, lost in a classic tragic performance, perfect, yet, in the end flawed enough to lose.  The moment when momentum changes races my heart.  Sudden turn arounds can sink my feelings.  Vicarious, yes.  But a hell of a lot of fun.

There is, too, the athletic performances.  Even in a loss Randy Moss looks like a ballet dancer.  Eli Manning stayed cool.  The Giants defense kept it up all game long, pressure pressure pressure on Brady.  Then, the intellectual game with co-ordinators for defense and offense, coaches managing the game.  This defense against that offense.  The game works on many different levels.

Yes, it is brutal.  Even violent.  Yes, it produces maimed and sometimes demented athletes at the end of their careers.  These are not things to celebrate.  Yet, they are products of conscious choices by adults.  I hope the affect of the high impact, sudden stop violence of the game will diminish through better equipment, different rules.  I know the disabled players, like disabled persons in every area of life, deserve a decent life. 

But for tonight, for this game, it was a super bowl game, one for the history books.

General, Travel

Braised Shortribs

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27  75%  24%  0mph SSW bar30.02 rises wihdchill27  Imbolc

               Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Made braised shortribs in the slowcooker this  morning.  They should be done soon.  Not our usual fare these days, but we plan to eat a small meal from them and take the rest to the neighbors I spoke about yesterday.

Began sorting out packing chores for Dwellin in the Wood and Hawaii.  Kate will take clothes and a few other items for me; I will take the computer, DVD player, meds, books and files to read on the plane.  Not quite finished, but I’ve chosen my bag and have much of it done.

Tomorrow I’m going to head over to REI and by a pair walking shoes designed for back country trails.  Then, later in the day, along with 1 billion people or so, I plan to watch the superbowl.  I’ll work on my hour long presentation for the retreat during the timeouts and commercials.

General

Watch My Heartbeats

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1  64%  17%  3mph NNE bar30.47 waindchill-3 Winter

          Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

A light snow has begun to fall though we don’t have snow in the forecast.  A good three inches of snow would be good about now.  A freshening.

Yesterday evening I had begun to feel adrift, purposeless.  This sometimes happens to me after a productive time, when I slow down the engine keeps racing for a while.  Need one of those fans that cools the engine after the ignition’s turned off.

This morning, rested and fed, I know I have plenty to do.  There’s always that novel to write and stories to market.  The vegetable planning needs to move forward a few more steps.  I can always study Chinese characters, read Taoism or plow into one of the Asian art books I have.

Something I need to do sooner is prepare an hour’s worth of presentation for the Woolly Retreat next week, though I suppose I could do that during my day at Dwelling in the Woods ahead of the others. 

This morning Kate and I have a family business meeting, an every Thursday thing, and I have some errands to run.  Meds and a new battery for my Polartech watch.  The watch gives me my heartbeat during aerobic workouts, hard to do them without it.

Art and Culture, General, Travel

Security as the Museum’s Id

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25  66%  20%  0mph  SSW bar29.90  windchill24  Winter

             Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

At the MIA I picked up my old security badge with the grinning face and a patch of remnant frontal hair which looked like a soft, brown green at the 1st hole.  This earned me admission to the basement, the haunt of the security guards.  I went in the basement to get my picture taken because the badges are, after all, a security concern, relegated to the basement, or id level of the museum.  This is the instinctive, protective part of the museum’s body; it strikes without forethought to protect art, then vitrines, cases and stands.  In a pinch they will protect people, too, but mostly it’s about the art.   Makes sense.  After all, the guy didn’t come in and sit on a patron; no, he chose the $500,000 Ming dynasty chair. (Now worth $750,000 after renovation)

Anyhow, I went down the stairs.  On the left was the guards lounge with the artistic funky furniture and guard art on the wall.  On the right was the photo shop.  On the wall next to its door was an old museum sign in bronze, perhaps 3 feet high and 18 inches wide.  It gave the hours and days of the museum.  So, the basement is also where old signage goes to live after its working life is over.

Once inside, more guard art on the walls, there were those little light reflecting umbrellas that photographers use, plus a tilted white board at desk level in front of the stool.  Pauline? had a Canon SLR digital on a tripod.  She took three shots:  I smiled broadly, quirkily, and deadpan. 

“I’ll leave it to you to choose the most winning one,” I said and left the basement.

 Back here at home I’ve also begun my attempt to learn Chinese characters on my own, with the aid of softwared I bought a while back.  Over the  years I’ve tried to learn Welsh, Spanish, German and Greek.  I have some Latin and some French.  Languages are not my long suit, but I keep sticking my head back in the stocks every few years.   Part of me is ashamed I’ve never learned another language.  No, make that all of me.  Very ethnocentric and gauche American.

General, Politics

A Richard Nixon Dream

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25  70%  19%  omph SWS bar29.89 steady  Winter

           Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

“The right moment for starting on your next job is not tomorrow or next week; it is instanter, or in the American idiom, ‘right now.’ ” – Arnold Toynbee

A long time ago I read how Arnold Toynbee worked when writing his history of the world.  He did the research in the morning and early afternoon, then wrote into the evening.  You’d have to be pretty organized to have the right material handy, but it does cut down on short term memory loss.

Forgot to mention here that I had a Richard Nixon dream last night.  I spent several dream hours chasing, catching, securing and locking away old Tricky Dick.  Have no idea what that was about, but it did have a recurring theme:  I’m in a hotel, it’s check out time and I’m not gonna make it.  Have no idea what that’s about either.  It did occur to me that Nixon has entered the national bank of archetypes.  He’s the all purpose bad guy, the psychopath who made it to the Big House.  It felt good defeating him.  Maybe that was the point.

Off to the MIA today to get my photo taken for a new security badge.  I need to do this since the last time I had one was in 2001, when I still had hair.

General

A Pale Orange Orb

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4  64%  18%  0mph WSW bar30.07  windchill4  Winter

                        Full Winter Moon

The moon hung low on horizon as I came home from the grocery store, a pale orange orb occluded by dirty gray clouds.  It gave off the aura of Samain in the depths of late January.  As often happens with the moon, I felt a pinch of privilege; I saw this and felt it.  A privilege we all share, if only we look up at the sky instead of down at our feet.

Back to Ultimate Electronics to pick up my Blu-Ray player.  I traded in the HD player when Warner Brothers announced they were going with Blu-Ray. Now I have to hook it up.

Worked out in shorts yesterday and it was the first time in years I can recall fitting into the collection of shorts I gathered before I began bulking out.  A proud moment.

General

Sunny and Cold

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-14  67%  21%  0mph W  bar30.42 steady windchill-14  Winter

              Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

We hit -18 at 7 AM this morning.  Sleep comes easy when the nights are cold.  We have down duvets that adjust without the need for extra blankets or wiring.  The day is clear and bright, though the outdoors has a certain foreboding at this temperature; cold weather can kill you and it wouldn’t take long.

Having said that I’m inside, warm and looking outside.  Today I hope to finish my work on the religious influence on contemporary art piece I have to do for the docent book club in March.  I want to get off an object list, book recommendation and an essay or two for advanced reading along with a series of questions/observations.

Kate and I will have our money meeting this AM, made much easier by her recent earnings and deferred compensation.  We’re going to have to get another TV (darn) because the workout TV has developed a wavy line pattern that annoys big time.  This means we’ll be all HD all the time, at least when we have HD programming.

Annie’s coming up today and will get our old Sony and the DVD player that goes with it.  It’s a fine TV and never gave us any trouble, though we bought it in 1994.  TV’s last a long time these days, so spending a good bit on one is not quite as illogical as it may seem.

General

Clear, Bright and Cold

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7  53%  22%  0mph WNW  bar29.81 steep fall  windchill3  Winter

            Waxing Gibbous Crescent Moon

Busy day so far.  Rechecking and reading questions for the highlights tour and the Asia tour tomorrow.  Editing and revising a very short article for the Muse on poetry and touring.  Beginning to tease out some graphics for my discussion session on whatever happened to religion’s influence in art?

Got a note today from Headwaters Parish, reminding me of my April 13th date with them and requesting more info.  Have to get a topic to them soon.  I’ll probably go with either some version of  the Transcendentalist presentation I plan to give at Groveland in March or a version of the religious influence in contemporary art.  I might, however, choose something completely different.

The day is clear, bright and cold.  Saturday looks like it will be quite chilly, at least -14, probably colder up here in the northern suburbs. 

General, News of the Strange, Politics

Which is More of A Health Threat: Al-Qaeda or Homeland Security?

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1  64%  25%  1mph WNW  bar29.97  windchill-1  Winter

            Waxing Gibbous Crescent Moon

OK.  This is interesting.

 Which is more of a threat to your health: Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security?

“An intriguing new study suggests the answer is not so clear-cut. Although it’s impossible to calculate the pain that terrorist attacks inflict on victims and society, when statisticians look at cold numbers, they have variously estimated the chances of the average person dying in America at the hands of international terrorists to be comparable to the risk of dying from eating peanuts, being struck by an asteroid or drowning in a toilet.

But worrying about terrorism could be taking a toll on the hearts of millions of Americans. The evidence, published last week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, comes from researchers who began tracking the health of a representative sample of more than 2,700 Americans before September 2001. After the attacks of Sept. 11, the scientists monitored people’s fears of terrorism over the next several years and found that the most fearful people were three to five times more likely than the rest to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments.”

The article goes to identify roughly 10 million people affected by the, what else to call it, fear-mongering of the Department of Homeland Security.  Can anyone say Committee of Public Safety?  I agree with the article and the physicians that the health consequences to individuals are significant and in themselves alarming; but, I believe the larger health problem is that of the body politic.  10 million voters with a fear of terrorism so significant that it affects their personal health represent a voting bloc, a demagogues paradise.  Now let me see, have we had anyone playing the terrorism card in recent elections?

Going to the Walker Art Center tonight to see the TEAM, a group of performance artists who have a work called, Heartland.  I’ll let you know how it was.