Category Archives: Politics

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics

Friends.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow, the trench maker. Tom’s visit. Paul’s trip to Salt Lake City. Kathleen and Jason. My son. Murdoch. Seoah in Gwangju. Zoom. Technology. Alan. First Watch. Dramaturgy. Steroids. Back Pain. Veronica. Her brother. Shiva minyan. Kaddish.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep and old Friends

Week Kavannah: Persistence and strength. Netzach

One brief shining: Sitting shiva for Kate, her yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar tomorrow, memories of her as the ninja weeder, as the physician to children, as my longtime traveling companion, friend, and lover, her dexterity, her quilts, her presence that remains with those she loved.

 

My good friend Tom visited, again. He’s a faithful and honest wanderer on this ancientrail of life. We talk, mostly. About matters of the heart. He’s come often enough that folks at mussar, including Rabbi Jamie, greet him by name. Marilyn and Irv have eaten breakfast with him more than once.

He brought gifts for Shadow. Spoke gently to her, waiting out her cautious, sniffing approach. A man for animals. Obvious.

We men can be different. Tom and Paul and Mark and Bill and I have taught each other how. The Ancients. Men together, caring for each other. Walking each other home.

 

Drove down to Wheatridge yesterday morning. Time with Alan. First Watch. A chain breakfast joint with a wonderful menu and lots of seating.

Challenged myself, testing the legs and back on a thirty minute drive. Not a good experience. Driving has become difficult, even over relatively short distances. This lumbar spine thing is, as we used to say, a real pain.

 

Planned to go to Veronica’s shiva minyan for her brother who died last month. Shadow, however, would not come in. I can’t leave her outside at night-the shiva service started at 7:30. She didn’t come in until 7:45. 30 minutes to the synagogue. Back home in the dark.

Feel guilty I couldn’t make it since Veronica and I became Jews on the same day and became a son and daughter of the covenant on the same day. We’re bonded.

Enough, with the continuing back pain, to press me down a bit, tease the dark moods, open the cavern door just a tetch. You know how that goes. Can’t slam it shut or else more darkness will spill out later. Don’t want to leave it open since sadness and guilt suppress joy.

Acknowledge the guilt. Sad I couldn’t go. Also, glad. Don’t like to go out in the evening, especially at night. Feeling glad made the guilt a bit worse. Could I have gone anyway? Nope. Too late.

The good in it. Having friends up here that matter enough to feel guilty about not showing up. The cavern’s bronze doors beginning to swing shut.

As I embrace the man I am, neither the man I want to be nor a man I don’t want to be, they clang shut.

 

Just a moment: Those famous first hundred days. Turns out, if you’re incompetent and you show it, clap your hands. If you’re petty, mean, and cruel and you show it, clap your hands. If you’ve damaged the economy and you meant it, clap your hands.

Oh, wait. They’re not clapping, are they?

 

Fourth Phase, Men, Politics, US History

A Masculinism for the 21st century?

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Spring and the 2% Wu Wei Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. Rain. Donyce. Ruth. Gabe. Tom. Pain. Talmud Torah. Mussar. Men’s group. CBE. Marilyn and Irv. Primo’s. Aspen Perks. Conifer Cafe. Dandelion. Bread Lounge. Golden Stix. My son. Seoah. The Jangs. Coming to America.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Toys for Shadow

Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: Sat here yesterday with two good friends, Tom and Shadow, Shadow circling, coming up to Tom’s arm, then moving away, yes, I want to know you, but slowly, maybe next time a bit more, I don’t know you, not sure about you, sniff, sniff, sniff, maybe next time a bit more.

 

Shadow has wounds. Trauma. Probably inflicted by a man. Deep voice. Tall. (to her). She cowers sometimes when I put out my hand. Not always now, a big advance. Like many of us H. Sapiens she wants, needs connection, yet fears it, too. A sadness on my part. As Tom said, don’t you love belonging to the gender and race guilty of so much abuse? Oh, yeah.

Wondering again. About the material I read about boys in American schools. About the young college men my granddaughter describes as infected with toxic masculinity. Not worth giving a try. About men like the Proud Boys, the Promise Keepers, the red-hatted flush-faced American flag waving believers in replacement theory and the strange ideas of the incels.

My gut tells me its time, past time, to focus on men and boys the same energy Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan and Angela Davis and Michelle Obama gave to women and girls.

But how. Men. Stoic. Loyal. Competitive. Strong physically. Crippled emotionally. Fearful. Often cowardly. Bert Lahr lions and/or tin men.

I suppose that’s not a bad a way to think about it. American men fell asleep among the poppies on the yellow brick road. They never got a heart or a brain. Instead they use dominance and aggression where empathy and camaraderie would better serve. They pledge allegiance to false idols like conservative Christianity, MAGA, white supremacy rather than using reason leavened with compassion.

How can we wake them up? Shake them up? Not as Republicans or MAGA-men, but first as men. As fathers, brothers, sons, friends, lovers.

I have a hunch that woke men would defeat the red-hat menace all on their own. Would realize the damage being done not only to their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters but to themselves. Let alone our suffering nation once a shining city on a hill now a landfill for the refuse of buried tenderness and thwarted love.

I know I’m complicit. Raised a white man in mid-last century Indiana, subject to all the ills available to young boys and men back then.

That is, of course, the huge issue when thinking about a masculinist movement, a masculinism for our time. We are not oppressed, rather we are repressed. We do not need empowerment, rather we need softening, gentling. No marches for men’s rights. We have more than our share.

The men’s movement, in which I have a small role, has failed to become widespread. It has failed to change the trajectory of masculinity in any appreciable way.

My granddaughter won’t date the men we’ve raised. As many young women will not. Can you blame them?

Perhaps even more than defeating our own Mussolini we need to learn how to become human. How to wake our brothers asleep among the poppies. Get them back on the yellow brick road to see the wizard.

Health, Judaism, Politics, Seed Keepers

Back Pain and Wondering

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Friday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Mussar. Luke. Leo. Shadow. Back pain. Excruciating. Rain. Rain. Rain. Our Fire risk. Insurance. While I have it. Writing. Lumbar support. Rich. Doncye. Ruth and her finals. Gabe and his grades. Chatgpt. Dramaturgy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: Getting out of bed has become painful in the extreme, at the 10 level, more, dispiriting, even after nerve glides, nothing helps except leveraging myself out of bed and beginning to move around though the moving around, motion is lotion, hurts like the dickens, too, until my tin man joints began to creak apart and move more smoothly.

 

Dr. Shadow only knows how to do squeakectomies. Not much help. Although at certain points in the early morning, I feel like I might benefit from one.

I have discovered Chatgpt to be very helpful. This morning I uploaded my MRI results to it, described my Tuesday injections and my subsequent pain, asking if this makes sense.

Here is part of the reply:

“Yes, what you’re experiencing makes sense, unfortunately — and it’s actually not uncommon with your MRI findings and the nature of epidural steroid injections (ESIs).

Let me explain what might be going on, and why”

In what followed I got cogent and clear reasons why my back pain has gotten worse. To a guy like me information is therapeutic. If I can understand what’s happening, my what the hell attitude drains away and I can move to what might be helpful now.

It also helps me understand what the path ahead might look like.

I recommend Chatgpt for medical issues. It’s knowledgeable at a granular level, will expand on things that may not be clear, and offers suggestions about what to do next.

Just a moment: We continue to wonder, don’t we? Wonder what he, they will do next. Wonder how this nation we’ve known all our lives could dissolve in the acids not of modernity but of  reactionary political bile. Wonder how long this will last. Wonder what we can do. If anything.

If I were younger, say in my 60’s, I’d be prepping for a move to Canada. In many ways I’ve preferred Canada since those days in the ’60’s when it looked like a safe haven I might need.

A less coarse public culture. Further north, therefore cooler. Great culture in Toronto, Stratford, Montreal, Vancouver. Cool road signs with a crown on them. A public health system. No history as a colonial power. Boreal Forest and a long border with the Arctic. Poutine.

Sure, there are problems, too. Royal Canadian Mounted thugs. Abysmal treatment, like us, of the First Nations. But that’s all I can think of.

However, I’m 78. The whole emigre process seems more than I care to engage now.

Leaves me with various ideas I’ve had still floating. Seed-keepers, or a variant. Live boldly out of your own values. No shrinking or hiding. Support communities like CBE with presence and money. Hold friends close. Live your best life.

Dogs, Health, Politics

Shadow and Pain

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Diane. Adam and Eve. The story retold. Shadow, up at 4:45. Me, too. Outside. Gabe. Ruth. Darkness. The hours of early Morning. Thrownness. Heidegger. Dramaturgy. Sleep. Back better. For now. Golden Stix. Hot and Sour Soup. Garlic Shrimp. Lumbar support pillow.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: 4:45 am

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: Those needles that burrowed through my extra tight foramens delivering steroids to four of them have offered some relief already, pain decreased, for how long not clear, yet appreciated, a return to a Charlie I had forgotten.

 

Yes. Pain down my legs and around my hip much better this morning. Achiness and pain in my lower back, apparently arthritic, remains. I feel lighter though a bit strung out from the procedure, the mild sturm and drang around it. (All in my head.)

When I got up at 4:30 for the bathroom, Shadow got up, too. She needed to go outside where she is still at 5:20. While she dawdles, I decided to get a head start here.

 

It’s odd. Usually memory of pain recedes with the pain itself. Not with the back. At least so far. I treat myself with the same careful movements and anticipation of discomfort. Perhaps this will fade.

Since these injections were my first procedures for the back pain, I do not know what to expect. As I didn’t when I met Dr. Vu.

I’m a little scared, I told him.

He nodded. Needles. And the spine, eh?

Yes. That was it. And the initial pain. This morning. Worth it. However long it lasts.

 

Shadow slips her head between the slats at the head of my bed. Her warm nose, wet, hits what little hair I have. Then, her tongue. Please get up. Please get up. No. Not yet. Please. Just a little more sleep. More kisses. It’s now 6:50. OK. All right.

She continues skittish, hyper-vigilant though less so by a lot than that first month. She has a deep wound of some sort, just what I’ll never know. But its effect presents itself in each interaction with her.

Shadow unfolds slowly, like a flower not certain it wants to bloom, perhaps the sun is too hot or the bees are not out or rain might damage the petals.

A sudden movement. She cowers. Crossing a threshold seems to have the liminal power of ancient magic. Danger may lurk on the other side.

Once inside and safe. She’s delightful. Tossing her toys in the air. Putting her front paws on my chair arm, extending her full length on her hind feet, all smiles and warmth. It’s a tale of two Shadows.

Her coat has blown but she won’t hold still for me to brush her. A leash still frightens her so I can’t take her to the vet or to a groomer.

Slowly, slowly.

 

Just a moment: In Minnesota up on Leech Lake fisherman come to fish for the fierce Muskellunge, or Muskie. Perhaps a few of those brave souls could cast a lure onto Pennsylvania Avenue and troll for Elon.

 

Asia, Fourth Phase, Holidays, Judaism, Paganism, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

Tao De Jew

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. Torah. CBE. Sacred community. Where everybody knows your name. Shadow and the canoe cut marrow bone. Cold Night. A Mountain Dawn. Great Sol shines again. Being able to buy seeds and plants again. Easter. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe at 17

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: In their waning years Taoists left behind their jobs in the court bureaucracy for small dwellings in the Mountains where they practiced calligraphy, played the Qin, wrote poetry, studied the sages, and lived close to the natural world.

 

Tao De Jew. With a dash of Alinsky and street focused organizer. The Reverend Doctor Israel Harari. That would be me. With a domestic side of Gardener, Beekeeper, and Docent.

Try to work with the flow of chi, the energetic and transformative aspect of our oneness and our sense of uniqueness. Look for the path that emerges, that asks and invites. Follow it. This ancientrail, then that one. With the ease of Water running toward the Ocean.

Find the moment when chi has found you. Act with its already organized aim. If Shadow gnaws the bed at 5:20, get up and let her out. Saves cleaning up. Makes her happy. Gives the day an hour head start.

Reconstructionist Judaism, Paganism, Taoism.  Sacred Community, Mother Earth, and a follower of the Way. When the Mule Deer comes. When the bull Elk bugles. When Fawns and Calves play. As the Mountain Lion strikes. As the Bear paws a Bee hive. Yes. When tender shoots break through the soil. When friends gather over breakfast. When Torah study opens new human insights. When the Breeze through the Lodgepoles whispers follow me. Yes.

 

Have you been following the Adventures of Trump Tarrific? I know I have. Sort of. There was the all tariffs all the time moment. Then there was the oh wait not on tech stuff moment. Now there’s, what is it again? 10% on everybody and a whole lot on China. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Lucky I’m not alone. Business leaders. Economists. Inflation wary members of the Fed. For a start.

Then there’s Trump the Depo Man. Proving his masculinity by using the military, ICE, and millions of dollars to sweep people off college campuses, out of their janitorial and dishwashing jobs, making a mistake or two along the way, but hey that’s ok, omelets and eggs, eh, and not getting many folks deported except the most vulnerable.

That what it says in the Gospels: find the poor, the stranger, put them on a plane and send them to prison in El Salvador. Oh, Jesus. Oh.

 

Just a moment: Yes. It’s Easter. Easter eggs. Chocolate and marshmallow Bunnies. Ham. Cute dresses and boys in ties. All the holiday essentials. Wonder how that whole egg business has worked this year, the year of Bird flu?

Remember Ukrainian Easter Eggs. Wonder if anybody’s on that this year? Or will Putin target little old ladies with eggs and candle wax.

 

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, Writing

Living. Not dying.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.

 

 

That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.

This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.

Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.

 

I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.

No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.

If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.

I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.

That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.

 

Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.

We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.

I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Politics, US History

Veronica. Shadow. Spine Treatments. Oh, my.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Lao Xi. Dao De Jing. Wu wei. Alchemy. The Sage. Pu, pure simplicity. Ziran. Authenticity. Just so-ness. Lao Tse’s journey to the West. On an Ox. Stopped at the Hangu Pass to write his wisdom. The Tao. The Way. Or, the Ancientrail of Chi. Other wisdom ways. That Iroquois medicine man. The Sun dance. Christianity. Especially Eastern Orthodoxy. Mystics of all cultures.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lifting the veil and seeing the ordinary as sacred reality

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: We sat there, the two converts who shared a mikveh day, who received new names on the same day, who did Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah at the same Shavuot service, both a bit cold as a Mountain Evening’s chill settled on Murphy’s, an eatery beside Bear Creek in Evergreen, and caught up about her impending divorce, her brother’s death, her father’s injury, my back and cancer and Shadow my new puppy, upon leaving I said Jews together, she said it back, and we hugged, then just before I got to my car she turned, came to me, and we hugged again. Veronica. Harmonica. Hanukkah.

 

Dog journal: Shadow’s back to training with me now. Except for the leash. She runs when she sees it. Gotta get her leash trained. I want to take her with me places. To the vet. To a groomer. As the weather warms, she’s blowing her coat. To mussar to meet my friends, see the synagogue. Over to the Happy Camper. On grocery pickups. Wandering around. Maybe a hike if the injections work.

Shadow loves her toys. I bought her a miniature tire and she hasn’t played with anything else for a couple of days. Her playfulness makes me smile.

 

What injections you might ask. On April 22nd at 11:00 am, I’ll have needles inserted into four foramens on my lumbar spine. Steroids. Could take two weeks to start working. Typically lasts less than three months if it works at all. Partial relief at best since it will not treat the arthropathy, arthritic damage. A more modest first step. Plus, only ten minutes or so, requiring no anesthesia.

After this there are two other possible procedures: radio frequency ablation of the nerves, and peripheral nerve stimulation. Both are more involved, yet offer the potential for longer term relief. One set of needles at a time.

 

Just a moment: Veronica worked on the GOES satellites, vehicles in her parlance, and now manages Lockheed’s planning and development for the next generation weather satellites. As Trump defunds NOAA, he wants to privatize weather data, leave it to a corporate entity yet unborn. If he succeeds, Veronica may not have work. Who do you know directly affected by the blob that ate our government?

Judge scolds the Justice Department for ignoring her rulings? Scolds. Oh, we are well and truly screwed.

Anticipatory obedience. Check. Congress at heel. Check. Judiciary sidelined. Check. Government as we have known it gutted. Check. Our economy in a tailspin. Check.

Let me know when it’s over.

 

 

Politics, The West, Weather +Climate

Water, Water Somewhere

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Monday gratefuls: Cold Night. Snow. Shadow. Good friends. Here and there. Family. Here and there. Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon. Painting conservators and restorers. Peter Paul Rubens. Caravaggio. Da Vinci. Michelangelo. Hopper. Bierstadt. O’Keefe. Rothko. Kandinsky. Creativity.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rothko

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: The muddy Colorado runs in torrents through northwestern Colorado, carrying in its rush the waters of Snow packed on Mountain sides, deposited over the Western Winter, but will it, can it be enough for Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, the Diné Nation, L.A., and even parts of the Baja.

 

With the end of Winter in sight the question, the every Spring question in Colorado. How’s the Snowpack? This is God’s own Water Bank, stored and frozen for use throughout the Water year. Its politics more fraught than those of the Education Department or USAID. Its impact? On lives in the millions, crops, economies of the West.

This year critical Snowpack like the Upper Colorado River Basin is at 84%. We could still get more Snow, plump it up, but time has begun to run out. The pact that governs Water distribution in the Upper and Lower Basin states resets this summer.

Already hampered by the Gap, an error in the original pact that divided up Water allotments using peak years never again realized, and now beyond the breaking point due to rapid urbanization in the Southwest and Southern California, the pact will require a King Solomon.

Current Water law is a labyrinth of rights based on who got there first, second, third. This makes it impossible to rationalize the allotments. The Upper Basin and Lower Basin states have their own politics to consider. Many senior Water rights are in the Upper Basin states: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico. While much of the development has occurred in the lower basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Thus the states of Wyoming and Colorado in particular produce most of the Water through their Snowpacks, but the largest consumers of the Water inhabit the Lower Basin states.

Changes to Water law face years of precedent and controversy. It will not happen easily.

Having a lower percentage of Snowpack exacerbates the problems and can be anticipated as climate change alters and warms Winter weather.

 

Just a moment: The rejection of the judge’s ruling. The president of Salvador saying of course he would not release the wrongly imprisoned man. Our government, our “Justice” department saying nah, ne, na nah to the judge. Cruelty and our way or the Salvadoran prison way as policy. No longer a question what we have come to. This is what we are. Mean. Insensitive. Immune to the rule of law. Capricious. No way to run a country, especially this country.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Politics, US History, World History

Mormons

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Amy. Ritalin. Gabe and the Water Grill. Aspen Perks. Conoco. Sinclair. Ruby. 4.20. Shadow, fair warning. Sleeping hard. The tiger. Still squeaking. Not for long. Dr. Shadow at work. Mark and his students. Mary and the Monkeys. My son and his wife, anniversary #9 tomorrow. Ruth in her last month of her freshmen year. Taking out the trash. Wish someone would do it on Pennsylvania Ave. Looking like NYC in the 80’s.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: Those Mormon missionaries came by and we talked at my breakfast table, their earnest smiling faces, their convinced sincerity, their modest honesty, and my heart ached for their young minds already captured and tied like a Calf in a Utah rodeo.

 

chatgpt in the style of Giotto

They came inside. I was curious about them. Wanted to know a bit more. So I asked. They pay $400 a month into a pot for all those out on mission. Then they get funds from the mothership for lodging and food, transportation. Elijah’s parents paid. The other, younger looking guy, said he paid his own way.

They go out for two years. Seems like a long time to me. Elijah was from Irvine, California. The other from Utah. They’re living in a cabin in Aspen Park.

Elijah had the extroverts ease. He loved my house, my art. The other guy, quiet, had an air of slight menace about him, the menace of the true believer, ready to throw down if disrespected. Fair enough. He did though answer this to my question about why they believed, “I suppose because I was raised in it.”

an interesting chatgpt take on the Mormon Tabernacle

The book of Mormon settles disputed territory (as understood by Mormons) in the restored church of the LDS, latter day saints. Baptism is a for instance.

At age 8 you become accountable. That’s when you can sin and it’s the earliest you can be baptized. Roman Catholics believe you can baptize by sprinkling an infant; Baptists believe in full immersion. The Book of Mormon endorses full immersion thereby resolving the issue.

There was a moment of weird crossover with the New Apostolic Reformation. Remember them? Mormons have had 12 apostles and one prophet since the time of Joseph Smith. When an apostle or prophet dies, the remaining men (yes, men) choose their successor.

This is significant since only the apostles and the prophet can receive revelations for the whole church. Individuals can, and do, receive revelation for their own lives, but only the top dogs can speak to the whole.

An interesting half hour. I admired their commitment and their persistence. Told them that. But, I also said, not for me.

 

Just a moment: Tariffic Trump. A beautiful plan he says. From a not so beautiful mind, a downright immoral narcissist. Reminds me a bit of the quieter one of the Mormon missionaries. The menace of the true believer.

I know. If you agree, I like you. If you don’t, I not only don’t like you, but I’ll punish you.

Dogs, Health, Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

It’s International Beaver Day!

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Spring? and the Wu Wei Moon

Monday gratefuls: Glaucoma. Dr. Repine. Eye exam. Brother Mark in Al Kharj. His Yemeni students. A big rain gonna fall, in Indiana. National Beaver Day. Shadow. The desqueaked toys. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta. The Doryphoros. The Jade Mountain. Song Dynasty ceramics. Art.

Sparks of Joy and Art: Painting and sculpture

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: Bought a cane, made by the Asterom family woodworkers of Ukraine; it came wrapped carefully in two parts with a nicely designed ring to cover the join between grip and the cane body where I twirled the long screw around and around until the grip fit snugly.

 

As you undoubtedly already know, it’s International Beaver Day. I had chatgpt make this special poster. Shadow, who continues to manifest her inner Beaver, celebrated by throwing her toys in the air, running around the back, and chewing extra hard on her new bone. Oh, what a day!

She continues to ignore me as her trainer. Sigh. As I said, I want her leash trained, the rest can come later after she matures a bit.

She’s bugging me right now for breakfast. Excuse me while I step away.

 

Cousin Diane sent pictures of flooding in Shelby County Indiana where my mom’s family lived and lives. Dramatic.

She also sent some video of Madison, Indiana where a driver recorded themselves driving under a gushing waterfall cascading over the highway. The driver kept saying to their passenger, “This is dangerous.”, while continuing to drive on through. Ah, Indiana.

Meanwhile on the Mountain top we’re in a warming trend. Though you never know about Snow there’s none in the forecast for the next few days. About time to see some Wildflowers, green Grass. Happy ungulates. Bears pushing the sleep out of their eyes.

I’ve already stopped throwing my garbage in the rolling bin outside, instead I now wait for every other Wednesday morning and throw it in then. Reduces by a lot possible Bear raiding. That’s a sign of a Mountain Spring.

 

Glaucoma check today. Visual field test. Eye drops. Dr. Repine and her crystal peering into my retinal nerve. A good news story for Western medicine. My glaucoma has been held at bay for over thirty years.

 

Just a moment: It’s a beautiful plan he says as stock markets all across the globe tumble down. Tariffs confuse me. But I know what economic chauvinism looks like and this is it.

On the new series Mobland on Paramount Plus. Pierce Brosnan, the head of a British crime family says, “What we want we take.” He goes on, “And if you disrespect us, I’ve got a man for that.” You can think of Tom Hardy, his enforcer, as the U.S. military.

Let the wild rumpus begin.