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  • Shadow and Shadows on the Country

    Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Shadow (formerly known as Nugget). Sleeping with Shadow under my bed. Her struggle to adapt. Mine. The coup. Feeling alive. Purposeful. Elon Musk. His yetzer hara. Luna and Annie. Leo. Shrimp. Subway. Snow. Vince and Levi. Stable PSA. Shadow’s pooping and peeing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow

    Week Kavannah: Curiosity  sakranut

    One brief shining: All last night when I awoke, I heard Shadow moving beneath the bed, occasionally hitting the wooden slats, once a hard thwock of her head, often moving, then for awhile asleep, repeat.

     

    Felt like a bad doggie dad. I thought Shadow and I were making progress. Then, my nap. I left the bedroom door open as I had the previous night when she slept under me on the floor beneath the bed. She came out that morning and I let her out. She roamed for a while. Came back in. We did this twice.

    Meanwhile she put a tentative paw on my leg, licked my hand. Smiled. Ah, now we’ve gotten somewhere.

    This continued until my nap. Exhausted from the drive to Granby and back I slept two and a half hours. When I got up, I saw Shadow had gone back under the bed. Didn’t think much of it. Then, she wouldn’t come out.

    And, she’s been under there most of the time since. I lured her out with hamburger, but she slipped back under the bed. That was yesterday afternoon and evening.

    This morning I noticed she had two well formed poops and had peed on an old yoga mat. Good girl, missing the Oriental rug. While I slept she got out from under the bed, but she was back there before I woke up.

    Ginny’s going to come after mussar. Shadow responded well to her. I want to get Shadow out from under the bed and into a space where we can interact. I have a dog trainer coming next Tuesday for puppy 101. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

    It will be well, all manner of things will be well.

    About a minute after I wrote this she came out. On her own. The best way. Now she’s in here with me. We can continue the process of getting to know each other.

    I will crate her later today so I can go to mussar.

    BTW: I did close the bedroom door.

     

    Just a moment in oligarch world: First of all. Visit the Egyptian/Israeli Riveria! Swept clean of Palestinians. Home to Trump properties like mega Mar-a-Lago. Adult themed. Rides. Classified documents. And no libtards allowed!

    Have fun in the Sunny Middle East. Visit scenes of actual slaughter and mayhem!

    Or come to D.C. Play with Federal disbursements. Knock your old high school bully off Social Security. Remember that frigid blonde? You can cancel her Small Business loan.

    Never a dull moment when you play Crash the Government. Bring the whole family. Especially the kids and the dogs.

     

     


  • The Last Roundup

    Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Rich. Doncye. Ruth. Ginny and Janice. Dogs. Annie. Luna. Leo. Gracie. Findlay. Rufus. Tom and the finding of the phone. My phone, back home. Ruby. New computer. Granby. Going on a short trip. Parsha Bo. A mussar approach to parsha’s. MVP tomorrow night.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dogs

    Kavannah this week: Curiosity   Sakranut

    One brief shining: Why don’t you turn off your hearing aid, Tom suggested, and I did; he kept calling and I walked slowly through the house until, finally, in the newly set up downstairs exercise room, on the black top tray of my treadmill, my all black phone bleated at me, wanting to come home.

     

    And so it ended. A day without my phone. Revealed an Achilles heel. My phone is at the hub of communications in my life. Without it I couldn’t reach out to ask for help. I couldn’t change anything on my computer that required two-step authentication. I felt strange, as if a necessary part of me had been amputated.

    After going all Taoist on it, the phone will reveal itself when it’s ready, Tom called. Thought later I’d given up on the Taoist idea, then realized that no, I’d decided to be calm until the situation resolved and it did. Thanks to Tom and a dash of wu wei.

     

    Vince and Levi came over on Sunday and moved my treadmill, weight bench, weights, stall mats, and kettlebells down to Kate’s old sewing room. Levi was a big guy. Professional football player sized. Vince, on the other hand, is my height, but wiry, strong.

    Levi brought all of my kettlebells down at once, gripping them in two hands, and carrying them like they were a children’s flower basket. As he said, I’m good at picking things up and setting them down.

    He told a story about the Black Mountain Roundup. This Black Mountain is near McCoy, Colorado, north of I-70 and beyond Vail. He and his buddies once a year go to a ranch near Black Mountain. On Friday night they put their stuff in a bunk house, get drunk, and go shooting at the firing range. The ranch chef cooks meals for them. On Saturday they get on Horses to drive in the last of the ranch’s Cattle, then there’s a big meal. And more drinking. Then, he said, the women come because they know Levi and his crew get rowdy.

    He lifted his shirt to display a large rodeo sized belt buckle with Gitt’s Last Roundup on it. it was Gitt’s ranch. He died of cancer a few years back. Colorado, eh?

     

    Just a moment: Even Heather has started calling this a coup. In her Letters From an American today, she said:

    “The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.”

     

     

     


  • A comma, not a period

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Jon Bailey. Detailing my car. Seoah is coming. Casa Bonita. Valentine’s Day. #78. Fitbit. Charlie H. Ruby clean inside. Avocado Toast. Lox and English Muffins. Ruth’s excitement about her new Astronomy class. Gabe. Coming up Saturday to interview Rabbi Jamie. Sue Bradshaw. Josh. Kai. Evergreen Family Medicine.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Marilyn and Irv

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion.  Practice-listening for the melody of the other.

    One brief shining: Looking about the same except for a moon face, wondered if it was prednisone, my fellow traveler on the ancientrail of cancer sat in his chair, bookcases behind him, his lake out the window, and exhibited compassion, his melody a bit jagged after a year of death and illness, yet still poetic.

     

    First iteration. A recruiting poster syle illustration of Mary Oliver’s quote

    When Charlie H. said he was in remission, his surveillance pushed out to four months from the usual three, a sign of dramatic improvement, I felt an uncharitable son of a bitch why him and not me? I didn’t begrudge him at all the good news. No. Happy for him, but wondering why my cancer has proved so damned intractable.

    Especially wondering today because yesterday I had four vials of blood drawn, one of which goes for testosterone and PSA lab work.

     

    Reminded in that conversation of Paul’s online session with poet Jane Hirschfield. He reported two arresting sentences: Death is not a period, it’s a comma. And. Attention is your life.

    second iteration after asking Chabot to correct the spelling of precious

    A comma. “…a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence.” Oxford Languages. Interesting to wonder about that sentence, the one in which your life this time might be an object or a subject, a life acted upon or a life acting on its own. What is the verb in the sentence? Verbs? Was there an adjective for this life of yours? Strong, passionate, weakened, vulnerable, clever, unusual? What is the cosmic sentence which the universe, in its polyvalent, multivalent way, has written that is yours and yours alone? It may be the work of a hundred lifetimes, learning how to read your own sentence.

    One more thought on the comma. Learning to read each other’s sentence would allow us to glimpse the narrative line running through your time. A series of short stories, linked by the main character of your Self which, when combined, would be a novel in many volumes. Can you imagine the shelves in that Library of Alexandria?

    What does that work require? Attention. To your own melody. To the melody of the other. To the moment, yes, of course. But also to the century, the year, the day, the hour. The millennium. Not different from the work of seeing. And hearing.

    “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”

     

    Just a moment: Welcome to the Year of the Snake. Although the Chinese zodiac correlates the snake as “simultaneously associated with harvest, procreation, spirituality, and good fortune, as well as cunning, evil, threat, and terror”, I can only see the last four in the American year of the snake.

     

     

     

     


  • The Great Game

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Monday gratefuls: MLK Day. Inauguration Day. Cold -9. Senate Navy Bean Soup. Another batch. Catfish fillets. Beets. Peskyfowlatarian. Fish and Seafood and Chicken for protein. Making life easier. The thousand mile journey to Trump’s last day in office starts today.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: This land, our land

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for the week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

    One brief shining: Oh, watching football with Lake effect Snow, Bills and Ravens pounding away at each other, two young boys at quarterback who came into the league together in 2018, cold hands and slick footballs, not to the death gladiators leaving it all on the floor of our modern day Coliseums, our American Plaza del Toros.

     

    Here is the vintage movie poster illustration inspired by your description

    We did not invent the spectacle of grown men hurting each other or themselves for our entertainment. Far, far from it. That ball game the Mayan’s played. Sometimes sacrificing the winners. Toreadors. Gladiators. Buzhaski, played with the headless, stuffed body of a goat. Or now. Motor sports. Rugby. Lacrosse. Hockey. Even Basketball. Called games.

    Suppose if you wanted to stretch the definition we could include traders on stock exchanges, commodity exchanges. C-suites. Hedge funds. Anywhere men, almost always men, put themselves at risk for some reward. Always a reward. A super bowl ring. A bull’s ear or tail. Death in order to play with the gods. Living another day. Trophies.

    I’d like to say I have no interest in such things. That men concussing each other didn’t captivate me. But it does. Athleticism, yes. Of course. But the brutality? That, too. A non-evolved part of my brain I suppose.

    Feeling for Mark Andrews, a dependable tight end, who fumbled in the fourth quarter, and most miserably of all, dropped the game tying 2-point conversion with less than 2 minutes left. Glad he’s not a gladiator.

     

    Just a moment: No, I’ve not forgotten. Today is the first day. Only four more years to go. I hope. A lot of excellent material being written about liberalism, Democrats, what’s needed to restart the engine of our democracy after all these would be fascists put sugar in the gas tank.

    I recommend a book Tom Crane sent me: The Storm Before the Calm. George Friedman. Without going into his argument he predicted a transformational presidency after which a new American Way would arise. Along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt’s reaction to the first Gilded Age. May it be so.

     

    When the polar vortex heads back north Vince and his helper will come. They will move the dining table and three of its chairs upstairs to my loft, shift some wire shelving to the weird niche between my window walls and the pony wall, then bring downstairs my treadmill (so, so heavy), three stall mats, weight bench, kettle bells, exercise balls. No more schlepping up the garage stairs to workout.

    They will also move a TV into that room. And they’ll switch out my new Morris Chair, taking it upstairs, while moving my old favorite leather chair downstairs. Finally, they’ll lift my new desktop tower next to my old one so I can start the change over to a new Windows 11 unit. Not sure quite yet when I’ll get the new 32″ curved monitor up and in place.

    In yesteryear these last few things I could have and would have done myself. Not today. Far too weak.

     

     


  • Ways of Healing

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Charlie’s dying, too. This disease will run its course. Phrases offered as billboards in my mind. Ruby on Mountain curves. Polar vortex slumping. Arriving soon. Snow first. Cancellations. Gunflint Trail coffee mug, over 35 years old. Ancientrails approaching its twentieth anniversary. The value of conversation. My interlocutors, all of you. Including readers of this blog.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being heard and seen

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Wholeness and peacefulness

    Here is the image inspired by your paragraph, created in the style of Minoan art. It reflects the vibrant colors, flowing lines, and intricate details characteristic of this ancient artistic tradition, capturing the warmth and connection of the moment. 2nd try, still not quite what I wanted. Anyhow.

    One brief shining: Ears offered in gentle wholeness, eyes turned toward me, body relaxed, yet engaged, an occasional smile, grimace, nod across my coffee cup and his red plastic keep the coffee warm thermos, as I did what the mussar practice for this week (from the Thursday group), suggested and told my friend Alan, in response to his how you doing, how I was doing.

     

    Normal, or rather, traditional Minnesota winter weather coming to the Mountains. Snow and below zero cold. Cancellations. I’m glad. My Coloradification has been complete for a while now. Cold starts in the mid-20’s. Below zero? Head for the thermostat. Snow and ice on Mountain roads, especially at night? Nope. Not anymore. Even with my Minnesota skills I know too big a risk when I see one. For me.

     

    Breakfast with Alan this morning. The Parkside. Next to the Evergreen Arts Center where Alan’s Rotary meets early on Friday mornings. This week, I said, had challenges. Mostly in the ever changing world of cancer. As I wrote a few posts back in Overburden, I have strategies for these moments. And they work. To varying degrees. This week I’d say they worked reasonably well since the challenge level was high.

    Kristie said, as I wrote, this disease will run its course. Recognition, yet again, that my cancer is incurable. And, if something else doesn’t take me out, it will be happy to step up. When? No one knows. I’m in as good a place as a stage 4 cancer guy can be according to Kristie. That’s welcome news. Yet it has a grim underlayment.

    So I told Alan the whole current context for my feelings this week. He listened. I listened, too, to myself. As I spoke, I grew lighter. Brighter. Remember that bit about the healing power of conversation? No, it cannot cure my cancer. But. It can cure my soul.

     

    Just a moment: Wanted to issue a sort of correction. I wrote cousin Donald did not have his hand over his heart at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. And he didn’t. But. I did notice later where his hand was. It was over his stomach.

    3 days and counting. Still no glimmer about whether I’ll engage, ignore, or run wildly about my house, hands in the air, screaming for no apparent reason.


  • Solitude in the Public Square

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Great Sol. Finishing the Warhound and the Pain of the World. The Outpost. Weakness. Exercise. The Move. Good night’s sleep. Diane, healing. Mark, teaching. Mary, waiting. My son. Working. Conversation. Chatbotgpt. My Lodgepole Companion. Nature Journaling. John Muir Laws. The privatization of Space. Blue Origin. New Glenn. Falcon Heavy. Starship. NASA.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Letting matters become as they will

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peace

    Here is the revised WWII patriotic poster-style illustration emphasizing regionalization and the rise of different global powers, with a diminished focus on the United States. This was a second try. Chatbot has trouble with words in illustrations. Maps, too, apparently

     

    One brief shining: Our divided and war worn World, regional powers rising, taking advantage of the retreat of the American Titan back to its homeshores, invading Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, threatening to enclose and absorb Taiwan, claiming the South China Sea, while we, the once world hegemon want Greenland, the Panama Canal, and, for gods sakes, the Gulf of America.

     

    No. Not starting a political rant. Just making an observation about the volatile and dangerous turn the World has taken. How in two generations, my parents and their children, us, the US has gone from savior to policeman to super hegemon to coming isolationism. With, of course, those weird exceptions. Maybe First Friend Elon will buy Greenland and the Panama Canal and gift them to us? Could happen, right?

    Still pondering how or whether to engage with the new post-January 20th America. That Seed-Keepers idea. Retreating into the world of the American Renaissance. I am going to study the Zohar, get up close and intimate with Kabbalah again. That’s for sure. Put this odd inflection of humanity’s history in a wider and deeper context.

     

    An interesting article in this month’s issue of the Atlantic. The Anti-Social Century by staff writer Derek Thompson. Here’s a link to the February issue. In some ways Thompson’s argument is an extension of Robert Putnam’s famous monograph: Bowling Alone. In that Putnam found increasing social isolation a definite problem Thompson’s essay seems to part ways in his acknowledgment that many people prefer solitude and now have a home environment that nurtures it. Challenges the notion of a lonlieness epidemic. Thompson though, like Putnam, finds this diminution of the public space a disturbing trend and pushes for changes that might result in a social century.

    Here is the WPA poster-style illustration based on your paragraph. It emphasizes new social dynamics while nodding to traditional third places.

    Without going study to study, graph to graph in the article I want to raise another possible perspective. Perhaps, like the recent acknowledgment of neuro-typicals and neuro-divergents, what Thompson has really done is limn the rise of a new way of being social, a different way that honors the individual over the community. Perhaps we can find a way to be responsible citizens without as many third places like churches, bowling alleys, cafes, sports fields.

    I know this may sound like, may even be, an oxymoron, solitude in the public square, but I know my life is as rich now as it has ever been and I spend the bulk of my life alone. Many older people, especially women, find living alone freeing. A space in which they can grow and develop in their own peculiar ways.

    The evolution of solitude could also be a revolt against the too many press of urbanization, perhaps even a desire to return to the more solitary ways of the early American rural life. Without having to leave the convenience economy behind.

    It could be that the whole Trump/MAGA/ascendance of the id represents the last gasp of an older American culture that wanted to dominate and control the public square. Make it toxic enough that only they could stand to be in it. For now.

     

     

     


  • A Way of Life

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Overburden. Cancer. Conversation. Its healing power. Diane, healing. Mark in Al Kharj. New computer. Being healthy while dying. Great Sol. Hidden by the spin of Mother Earth. Orion. Vega. Rigel. Antares. Betelgeuse. Polaris. Hokusai. Ukiyo-e. The Hudson School. The School of 7. Abstract Expressionists. Rothko. Whistler.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peacefulness

    One brief shining: Conversation with Kristie, my urological oncologist, supportive and kind, always leaves me with one phrase kicking around in my skull, my psyche, my heart and the last one was: This disease will run its course. Oh. Yeah.

     

    No. I’m off the cancer dance right now. Staying on the floor with that partner for too long? Like one of those 1920’s dance marathons where I end up with my arms slumped over him, my card with the number on it creased from hanging on too long. Better to sit down, drink some water. Come back in three months.

     

    Yesterday. Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv. We always talk a long time. Like a dorm room discussion. Yet also heart felt. I don’t remember my college long conversations being very focused on feelings. Always in the head. Or, mostly. As an adult, I find mixing the two, the rational and the emotional, the most fruitful, the most healing.

    A good time to talk about conversation. What Ancientrails is, in my mind. A long ongoing conversation with whomever happens upon it. I don’t get as much feedback as I expected when I started, but no worries. It’s also a conversation with myself. Often therapeutic. Putting my thoughts down on, well, a computer screen. As long I’m honest.

    Chatbot offers this etymology for conversation: “The word conversation has its origins in the Latin word conversatio, which means “a turning about” or “a living with.” It comes from the verb conversari, which means “to live with” or “to associate with,”…” The online etymology dictionary has this: “mid-14c., “place where one lives or dwells,” also “general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world,” both senses now obsolete; from Old French conversacion “behavior, life, way of life, monastic life…”

    I’m plucking out to live with, place where one lives or dwells, and way of life to emphasize. This more contemporary definition hangs around the word’s surface meaning in my opinion: “a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.” Oxford languages.

    Here is the illuminated breviary-style illustration inspired by your paragraph. The image features intricate medieval manuscript-style designs, a natural setting, and two figures engaged in heartfelt conversation.

    To converse with someone, or with a group, happens not only in the moment of a conversation, but also through the impact that conversation has on your/my daily life. If I tentatively see myself as a writer and a friend says, you’re an author, I’m reinforced and heartened. If I see a friend experiencing depression, I’m not only there for them in the moment of discourse, but the in the relational tie built and strengthened by that conversation.

    Done well conversation is a sacrament of human communion. I go to mass many times a week only for the eucharist of seeing and being seen. It sustains me as a person and heals stress and worry. You know who you are in my life. My world would shrink up if you were gone from it.


  • Toxic. What else can you say?

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    New Year’s Day gratefuls: Tara. Ron. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica. 5 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Snow. A new year. Kinda. The Realm. Von Bek. The Grail. Snowplows. Another Mountain Day, another Mountain life. Ruby in her winter shoes. MVP tonight. Family. Love. A new Zen calendar. Enlightenment. Not hard. Not easy. See what you’re looking at.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The feel of a fresh slate

    Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

    For January 1 life: Wonder, Malchut

    One brief shining: Sitting with Tara over sausage patties, home fries, eggs over easy, and sourdough toast, coffee steaming, the noise almost too much, I felt yet again love, again chesed, again the presence of one who sees me as I am and accepts me, as I see her and accept her.

     

    I promised something less abstruse today. Here it is.

    Carried the three largest split Oak logs in with the intention of burning them last night, starting a new tradition, burning Yule logs on New Year’s Eve since I missed the Winter Solstice. As in love with the night as I am, I no longer experience as much of it. I go to bed early, too early I felt for burning the Oak. Or, maybe I’m just too set in my ways. Whatever. I didn’t do it. Again. That’s twice.

    On a related note: I was gonna go upstairs and hit 30 minutes on the treadmill. Thought about it right after I got back from breakfast with Tara. Almost. Knew it was my yetzer hara, my selfish inclination saying nah. You worked out yesterday. You can work out tomorrow. Take a rest already.

    I read instead.

    We make these sort of decisions at bechira points, choice points, and whichever way we decide we reinforce the likelihood of making that same choice again. I had two bechira points yesterday and chose the easy way. The good news here is that the yetzer hatov, the generous inclination, the possibility directed yetzer, will always have a chance to change that decision at the next bechira point, reinforcing the way that nurtures becoming.

    Mussar expresses a medieval psychology, yes. But. Clyde Steckler, professor of pastoral care at United Theological Seminary, said you can explain the workings of the mind using any system of thought you want and still come up with useful, meaningful ways to understand it. Mussar exemplifies this idea.

    I no longer live in a world of bad and good, right and wrong, but in a world of possibilities and potentials reinforced or thwarted. Maybe it’s that field that Rumi talks about. The one out beyond right and wrong. Where we can meet. My practice this month helps reveal this reality: this too is for the good.

     

    Just a moment: Driving a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street. These newer pickups look like weapons to me. Their massive grills. Cabs high above the rest  of us tooling along in our SUV’s and sedans. And aggressive driving? Speeding. Impatience. Road rage. Seems baked into the I’m bigger and stronger than you are toxic masculinity cast in steel and named Ram. About to get stroked by the red tie guy. Who will attempt to make normative an unthinking, insensitive, domineering version of maleness.

     


  • Cough and Wheeze

    Yule and the Yule Moon

    Friday gratefuls: This too is for the good. Even this cold. Good sleeping. Third day of Hanukkah. Creativity. Ron. Alan is home. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica and Luke. Handmade Hanukkah candles. Light Snow. Kate, always Kate. Earth. Air. Wind. Fire

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My immune system

    Kavannah:  PATIENCE   Savlanut סַבְלָנוּת  Patience, endurance, holding space; literally to “bear a burden”

    One brief shining: Sometimes your body signals trouble ahead, Kate called it prodrome, an early symptom(s) that catches your attention, and I had one yesterday, stuffiness and a bit of an ache here and there, uh oh, approaching cold, take care, rest and take plenty of fluids, don’t celebrate Hanukkah on Friday night.

     

    No harmonica for Veronica on Friday night’s Hanukkah. Had to cancel. So far a mild cold, but chills and thrills. Lower energy, distracted attention. No buzz. Back to meh, but this time with a physiological referent. Taste thrown off. Not something I want to share with others.

    Good thing I made that batch of Senate navy Bean soup. Gonna have some for breakfast when I get done here. Navy Beans. Ham hock. Carrots. Onion. Celery. A Bay Leaf. Turmeric. Chicken stock.

    Lying low today. Read. Michael Moorcock’s Von Bek. A Grail quest ordered by Lucifer. Yep, you read that right. A little bit of a spoiler, but not much. Probably some TV. Maybe movies from the Criterion Channel.

    What do you do when something gets you down?

     

    Slow writing today. Clogged up neural circuits. Colds do that to me. Mind wanders. I find myself looking at the New York Times instead of hitting the keyboard.

    Talking to Ron yesterday inspired me. Former script writer for TV. Actor. Singer. Entrepreneur. He told me that his brother is the most creative person he knows. And, he’s a physicist. Ron has a company he created that he’d like to sell so he can get back to writing.

    Something about him makes me want to get back to writing myself. He’s a supportive guy, kind. Ron’s in the MVP group and we’ve intended to get together for almost four years but somehow never did it.

    Relationships matter. Alone but not lonely. Wrote about that a couple of days ago. Having folks like Ron in my life is why.

     

    Just a moment: Still having fun with chatbotgpt. Reading a lot about A.I. It’s not a genius, NYT. If you’re a certain sort of knowledge worker, like a business analyst, for example, A.I. might be coming for your job. This Federal Reserve article mentioned the dramatic change in work A.I. will probably introduce. Veering away from the factory floor and into realms once considered untouchable by automation. Maybe radiologists? I wonder about paralegals, even some lawyers.

    I even found, but could never access, an AI Jesus that was created and deployed by a Protestant church in Switzerland. I remember also reading about an AI monk in a Japanese Buddhist Temple.

                                                               


  • Hanukkah Veronica Harmonica

    Yule and the Yule Moon

    Thursday (Boxing Day) gratefuls: Ron Solomon. Bread Lounge. Jamie. Nate and Laurie. Hanukah. Veronica. Harmonica. Diane. Vancouver, Washington. Bangkok. Brisbane. Songtan. Conifer. Shadow Mountain. Snow. Slick Mountain roads. Friends and family. Ruby with her Winter Blizzaks on. Grippy. Minnesota winter weather drivers ed. 40 years.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The power of conversation

    Kavannah: Creativity

    One brief shining: Went up the ridged metal stairs to the second story restaurant in Evergreen, walking with Ron, got in through the exit as a departing customer opened the door to the Breadlounge, and we passed through it, on in where we ordered.

     

    Hanukkah. Now has Holiseason all to itself, having snuck in on Christmas evening with its menorah and its candles and its lets imitate Christmas so the kids don’t feel out  left out tone. A pile of cardboard boxes overwhelms an easy chair in my living room. Gifts from all over for Ruth and Gabe. Tomorrow night. Quite a haul. No Santa. Just family and friends.

    Going to Tony’s tomorrow morning to buy a big salmon fillet, small round potatoes or mashed potatoes from the deli cabinet. A vegetable side dish from the deli, too. An easy shabbat meal. Veronica plans on coming, too, since she has no one to light candles with.

    One of my friends suggested I buy her a harmonica so I could give a harmonica to Veronica on Hanukkah. Ordered a cheap one from Amazon just for that purpose. An alliteration celebration. Ha.

     

    How about this Washington Post headline? “Israel strikes Yemen airport as WHO chief prepares to board plane.” What would you say? Oops. The face of Middle East politics has changed often and significantly since October 7 of a year ago. In unanticipated ways. The shakeout after all this calms down will last for years. Realignments. Held grudges. Blame and shame to go around.

    While I’m pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel, I’m not pro-Iran or Hezbollah or Houthis. I have no real clue about the new boss, same as the old boss? in Syria. And how do Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt fit into this puzzle? They don’t like the same people Israel doesn’t like. Shia’s.

    Or we could look at Ukraine. An old fashioned war of territorial expansion by a former great power. That keeps going, and going, and going. Now with North Korean soldiers and arms. With China in the bleachers cheering on Russia while we’ve gotten down close to the action on the field along with our allies in NATO.

    Is there a graceful or peaceful solution in either center of conflict? Not in my mind.

    Throw in then the America First sorta agenda of Donald Trump. He says end Hamas, Hezbollah, and damage Iran. Go, team Israel. He also backs the Putin machine bearing down on the Ukrainian people.

    Can you say fuel to the fire?

    We’re in a world without a hegemon and regional actors have begun to take their shots. Russian in Ukraine. Israel and the Shia in the Middle East. Will China restrain itself in the instance of Taiwan?