Category Archives: US History

Aging, Commentary on the news, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

Aging Resistance

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Yule and the 78th Birthday Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Diane, healing. New computer getting setup. New ottoman. Studying parsha Bo. With Zohar and Zornberg. Finished reading Conclave. Now another Gray Man. PSA stable. Kidney functions a bit off. A1-C a bit high. Nothing too concerning to me. Vince. Alan coming to Conifer this morning. Talking with Tom. My life as a conversational flaneur. Moods. Emotions. Art Green. My son and Seoah coming. A birthday this month. Year of the Snake.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mussar friends

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion  practice-listen for the melody of the other

One brief shining: Aging resistance, a less frenzied, hot breath sorta response, a more relaxed, we can survive this attitude, yet still feeling to me like my way is to call out certain actions, especially those injurious to the planet and vulnerable people, while also tending these seed packets: pluralism, globalism, economic and racial justice, feminism, importance of the common good, support for the individual and individualism.

 

This political disaster feels different from the first Trump infection. Even though he may be sort of more organized with Plan 2025 held in his French fry greasy hand, his Burger King kid’s meal crown slouched rakishly on his orange haired head, and even though he and his cronies have-who can pass up the sports metaphor, football!-flooded the zone; as someone I read in the Washington Post said this is the imitation of competence. In reality it’s a scatter shot series of nods to the base: no to birthright citizenship, freeze all Federal money going out, hammer General Milley, Hegsteth, Kennedy, Gabbard.

This is not governing. It’s the politics of petty revenge. We’ll have to wait for days, those famous first hundred days, to see the metamorphosis, if any, of our nation’s institution. At some point the executive order Sharpie, a Sharpie!, will have to rest and cousin Donald will have to try for legislation. Court fights will be ongoing. We don’t know what’s happening quite yet.

This much I do know. My world, a world in which meanness and cruelty have a bad connotation, a world where the American dream of a people joined together by adherence to the idea of equal opportunity, equality before the law, of a nation that welcomes the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, will not perish.

We will tend with care the seeds of this remarkable and yes flawed experiment. Seeds like the Constitution. Also flawed, yet a reminder in its amendments and in the expansion of its protection through the courts, that it is our flawed document. Seeds like FDR’s New Deal which expanded the Federal Government’s role as protector of the least of those among us. Seeds like our liberal Christian churches, synagogues, mosques, Buddhist temples and retreat centers. Seeds like our academic institutions, like the NIH and the CDC. Seeds like our real history: slavery, slaughter of the indigenous, colonialism and those who have stood against these sins of our fathers and mothers now passed down to us the third and fourth and fifth and sixth generations.

And we will tend to ourselves and each other. Not allowing despair to take hold for too long. Encouraging the forms of declaring our dream still alive and vibrant. Supporting those who take up direct action. Donating funds. Showing up at protests and marches. Maybe forming bookclubs that focus on American history, on the American renaissance, on American authors of all colors, gender preferences, and religious backgrounds.

We are not down. We are not out. Our dream still guides this nation. We just have to  help people wake up to the chances to embrace it.

Politics, US History, World History

Stupidity is dangerous.

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Yule and the 1% crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Sue Bradshaw. Kai. Cheryl. Blood draws. PSA. Wellness checkup. Hip and back pain. Charlie H. Ancient Brothers. Awe. Yirah. Love. First love. Sweetness in relationships. Mussar. Dogs. Their beauty and their majesty. Deer, a curious species. Wolves. Mountain Lions. Black Bears. Grizzlies. Wolverines. Elk. Moose. Chesed and gevurah. Timothy O’Leary. Dermatologist.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Driving down Black Forest/Brook Forest Drive with Snow on the Lodgepoles

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, Compassion

Practice for Rachamim: Listen for the melody of the other

One brief shining: Dr. O’leary had his little magnifying glass out as he looked through tortoise shell glasses at my skin while I sat on the exam table naked except for my underwear (really, Depends) and he would say, normal, normal, normal, then grab his green nitrogen bottle and say, I’m treating this precancerous spot on your ear, 1,2,3; that stung well after I left his office. A sweet man

 

Dermatology yesterday. Today Wellness check. Blood work. Visit with Sue Bradshaw. PSA drawn today. Conversation with her about hip/back pain, shortness of breath, and stamina. Medical tourism.

 

How can I, we, pursue our lives over the next few years with love, justice, and compassion? I’m thinking right now of cousin Donald’s executive order targeting transgender persons in the military. It’s quoted in today’s Washington Post:

“…It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.” WP, 1/28/25

I’m feeling the cold finger of Christian fundamentalism as I read these lines. Difference is badness. Difference is wrong. Difference must be sought out, guarded against. These attitudes remind me of Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous confession:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

These lines must be engraved in our hearts.

Trump and his Clown Posse have already come for diversity and equity initiatives and today transgender military personnel. We cannot, I will not, let this go unchallenged. Each time a different group needs the mercy that Bishop Budde pleaded for we have to say, yes. We stand with her. With all those vulnerable to the powerful and cruel.

We do not stand with the Billionaire’s Cabal that stood beside Trump at his inauguration. We do not stand with the red hats with black hearts. No to the Oligarchy and its defenders.

Here’s a quote from another famous Nazi era Lutheran clergy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Art and Culture, Asia, General, Politics, US History, World History

The Demon of Ignorance. In the long view

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Jamie. Frederick Posner. Mindy. Ellen. Janet. Ginny. Janice. Luke. Findlay. Leo. Gracie. Murdoch. Warmer night. Still cool. My son. Rich. Seoah. Living will. Estate plan. Affairs. Light. Dark. Tao. Light in the dark. Dark in the light. Wu wei. Chi. Ohr. Shiva. Creation and destruction. In the long arcing spiral of existence.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shiva

Kavannah 2025:  Creativity

Kavannah week:   Appreciation of Opposition

One brief shining: Two brown paper bags at a time, crunching the snow on my driveway, I moved my Safeway pickup order from the back of Ruby, into the kitchen, yes you need to do these things, keep the muscles working, placing the bags on the  counter; after, I drove Ruby into her stall, gave her fresh oats and a quick rubdown, and returned to the house to put away my groceries.

 

Here is the Shiva Nataraja depicted in the style of the intricate bas reliefs at Angkor Wat

Hinduism helps me at a time like this. Tom reminded me of Shiva the other morning and I’ve stayed with that thought. Vishnu stabilizes the world; Shiva engages in constant acts of creation and destruction. Both acting over unimaginably long periods of time*, heading toward destruction, then renewal.

Seen in the context of a kalpa, what is the four year presence of an avatar of the id, guided by fear and lust and greed, not unusual attributes found in humanity. Especially in the Kali Yuga, a portion of the kalpa under the destructive, yet cleansing influence of Kali.

I suppose you could see this as the opposite of living in the moment. This way of understanding the cosmic cycle insists on embedding ourselves not in the here and now only, but also in the extended experience of kalpas and yugas. From this lofty perspective cousin Donald and his Clown Posse present as bit players, foils in a cyclic dance between chaos and order, a just world and an unjust world. Just as you and I do.

Here is the depiction of Shiva Nataraja dancing atop the demon of ignorance, styled in the intricate and symbolic manner of Hindu temple art.

In the Shiva Nataraja I have here at home Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance. We can imagine cousin Donald beneath Shiva’s feet. I’m even willing to imagine this demon of all thing’s petty as a cautionary tale in the oh so finite history of our United States. From the next century: Never again.

When we focus on the moment, we lose the breadth and depth of history, of time in the sense of kalpas and yugas. This can be a serious problem in that we may universalize what’s happening in the moment and fail to understand the much, much larger context in which all events occur. A French historian looks at the longue durée. The long duration of history. I prefer the Hindu version because of its cyclical nature, but my primary point this morning?  As bad as he has been and will be cousin Donald does not write the long arc of history. None of us do.

 

*The Cyclical Nature of Time (Yugas and Kalpas)

  • Hinduism views time as cyclical rather than linear. It is divided into vast cosmic cycles called Kalpas, each lasting over 4.32 billion years.
  • Within each Kalpa are Maha Yugas (Great Ages), consisting of four Yugas (epochs):
    1. Satya Yuga (Age of Truth) – the golden age of righteousness.
    2. Treta Yuga – a slightly diminished moral and spiritual state.
    3. Dvapara Yuga – further decline in virtue and wisdom.
    4. Kali Yuga – the age of darkness and chaos, characterized by moral decay and ignorance.

The current era is believed to be Kali Yuga, considered the final and darkest age before renewal.

End of the Kali Yuga

  • At the end of Kali Yuga, it is believed that the world will undergo a period of destruction and renewal.
  • Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, will appear. Kalki is described as a warrior on a white horse, wielding a sword of divine justice. He will restore righteousness (Dharma) and end the cycle of Kali Yuga.

3. Pralaya (Dissolution)

  • After the end of a Kalpa, the universe undergoes Pralaya, or dissolution.
  • Pralaya can occur on different scales:
    • Naimittika Pralaya: The end of a day of Brahma (the creator deity), where the physical world is dissolved but the subtle world persists.
    • Prakritika Pralaya: The dissolution of the entire cosmos into its primordial state.
  • After Pralaya, Brahma begins the process of creation anew.

4. Shiva’s Role: Tandava Dance

  • Shiva, as the cosmic destroyer, plays a crucial role in the end-of-the-world concept. His Tandava dance symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction.
  • This dance is both destructive and regenerative, reflecting the cyclical nature of existence.

5. Philosophical Perspective

  • The “end of the world” is not feared but is seen as a necessary phase in the eternal cycle of creation and renewal.
  • From an Advaita (non-dualist) perspective, the physical universe is ultimately illusory (Maya), and the dissolution is a return to the unmanifest reality (Brahman).

Hindu eschatology emphasizes the impermanence of material existence and the eternal nature of the soul, offering a profound perspective on time, change, and cosmic renew

Commentary on the news, GeekWorld, Politics, US History

Bearing Witness

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie’s translation of chapter 2, Humility. Orchot Tzaddikim. Mussar. All my Jewish friends. One last night of very cold therefore very great sleeping. Winter in all her cold, frosty, white, Snow-packed glory. My Lodgepole Companion. The psyche, a delicate and fungible place. Breakfast with Ruth on Saturday. Boulder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Memories of Gertie

Kavannah 2025: creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of opposition

One brief shining: The spirit of Winter barren Meadows filled with Snow while Lodgepoles gather it on their Branches until it weighs too much, then bending the Branch sloughs it off, I see the curved, cloven hoof marks of Mule Deer hunting for Grass, imagine the Black Bears snug in their beds dreaming not of sugar plums but that Hive filled with sweet Honey and the cold Water of Maxwell Creek, tasty Larvae dug out of a rotten Log.

N.B: I asked chatbot to illustrate this in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites. These two images are what I got. Not even close. Notice, too, how similar they are in design. I’m having fun with this, not always liking what I get, but fascinated by it anyhow.

I could, I suppose, ride out the pardons and the gender bashing and the crashing noises from DEI initiatives by watching Shadow Mountain even more closely. As in John Muir Law’s nature journaling for example. Or, I could lose myself in the study of Torah and the Zohar, kabbalah’s central text. There are, too, so many books to read. So many good TV programs to watch. Movies. Zoom calls to attend. Friends to dine with. Family to visit or who come visit me. Sure. Those kind of blinders appeal to me because I want to do them all.

There is, too, the writing of another novel. Haven’t gotten traction with that work for a while, but it could happen. I would delight in sliding off into a different universe, a world of my creation. Where I have real influence. Not saying it won’t happen.

Maybe I cancel my subscription to the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post. Listen only to tech and philosophy podcasts. AI is a rabbit hole I can happily run down for hours at a time.

I could switch my sleep schedule, stay up only at night. Become, once again, an astronomy nerd. Invest in a fancy Celestron. Send my mind and heart out to distant galaxies.

And yet. I won’t. Perhaps I should. For the peace of my soul. But. I can’t. I will not look away. Will not say I did not know. Did nothing when they let insurrectionists, convicted seditionists go free. Did nothing when they came for programming aiming for a Federal Government whose employees come from all sectors of our population. Did nothing when they came for work to realize the Great Work: creating a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth. Did nothing when they came for the poor, the wretched yearning to be free. Those who believe so much more in the dream that is America than we can fathom. Did nothing when they came for the citizens made so by birth. As was I.

You might ask. What then will you do? I will bear witness. Though I can appreciate the opposing forces in our own body politic, I do not have to let sympathy, which is the best I can manage, cloud my judgment. And, I won’t.

 

 

Politics, US History

Oh, dear

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Oligarchs at play. That hat. Barron. He who would be king. -10 last night, 18 this morning. Ruth back in Boulder. Gentleman Mark teaching future engineers. Mary in Melbourne. Diane, healing. Me, on Shadow Mountain. Great Sol. Sunlight. Snow. Grass under the Snow. Voles. Rabbits. Chipmunks. Salamanders.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Melania’s Hat

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: Barron with his oiled and brushed back hair, much taller now, stood next to his mother and her visible disguise, she Rosemary to his Damien, behind them those powerful men come to lick the boots of the orange haired, fake tanned one: Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.

Here’s the Vaudeville-style illustration based on your description. the first iteration.

The trillion dollar trio. Like Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Bezos to Musk to Zuckerberg.  They shuffled around nodding to those who have sworn fealty to them, dukes in a contemporary medieval amorality play. The royal family included Jared and Ivanka who were not named on their way in. Also, the two sons who kill large animals with big guns. None though, not even cousin Donald, who could match Melania’s hat. A model who understands the power moves which fashion can reveal and conceal. All hail the queen of mean.

I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to watch the coronation. But I did. I even listened to the speech. America’s golden age starts right now. I. I. I. I. I. I. Bad people. Bad policies. I. I. I. I. Drill, baby, drill. Look at me. See me. Acclaim me. And, we won’t forget God. Yes, he actually said that.

After his speech. America’s tenor? Sang of America the Great. Following him. The most chilling part of the event for me. A military chorus moved down the aisle starting their musical offering with the first verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

the second iteration. after I asked for a spell check

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

CHORUS:
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

As I heard these words, I knew who cousin Donald believed this song referred to. And I feared for us. Even for myself.

Amy Klobuchar, the relentlessly vanilla senator from my former home state of Minnesota, though. She who spoke truth to power on that accursed day. Reference after reference to the peaceful transfer of power, the value of the Constitution, the norms of our democracy, the people’s will. I was proud to have lived in her state, to have voted for her.

I think of FDR. A paraphrase:

YESTERDAY, January 20th, 2025, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the crudest and vilest of our own citizens.

Make no mistake. This man means to bring retribution to his enemies, succor to insurrectionists, and more money to the oligarchs who sat near him.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

New Apostolic Reformation. Oh my.

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: 1 degree. 3 inches of new Snow. Talmud Torah on Zoom. Tech meets that baby in the reed boat. Joseph and Moses. Compare and contrast. That hygge feeling as Snow falls and the temperature sinks. Love it. NFL playoff games. Another Gray Man novel. Zohar volumes. The sacred world as we see it. Everyday.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah, visiting next month

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: As the calendar rolls on toward the inauguration of cousin Donald, the movement of his big day inside the Rotunda shows who rules this country and the world, Mother Earth.

 

Expect a long Ancientrails sometime in the near future about the New Apostolic Reformation. After reading the Atlantic article about it, which came just after the Anti-Social Century article I talked about on the 16th, I found what might be a purpose for me over the next four years. Being in opposition to it. Partly why I chose appreciation of opposition as my kavannah for this week. The other one being so, so obvious.

Here is the illustration in the style of a National Parks poster, reflecting the contemplative and thematic connections of your paragraph.

If you look at the Wikipedia article about it, you’ll find that it references C. Peter Wagoner as its founder and chief influence. Hard for me to believe but I studied with this guy back in the 1980’s. In Pasadena at Fuller Theological Seminary. At the time he was a guru in the church growth movement and one of my tasks as an Associative Executive for the Twin Cities Presbytery involved consulting with churches on just that topic.

I discovered in the Atlantic article that part of their work began as a counter to the Liberation Theology movement then ascendant in many Latin and Central American Catholic churches. In 1974 I attended a weeklong conference focused on bringing Liberation Theology to North America. Cornel West was part of the conference. My sentiments were then and are now with the spirit of the Liberation Theologians, not the New Apostolic Reformation, yet I seem to have connected with key figures in both movements. Odd. To say the least.

Just a moment: A hostage deal. Back home in the Hoosier State we’d say, day late and a dollar short. October 7th 2023 is a long way back. 94 hostages remain alive and in the hands of Hamas. The cease fire? Bout time. I hope this leads to a full stop to this horrendous chapter in Israeli and Palestinian history.

At some point the pieces have to get picked up, if they can be found, and a new era in the Middle East will slowly emerge. What will it look like? No one really knows. A weakened Iran. Syria without Bashar and with a new government of Islamic jihadists. Houthis still firing missiles toward the Persian Gulf. Lebanon with a weakened Hezbollah. Israel with Gaza and the West Bank still Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas weakened.

I’d like to see a Saudi Arabia/Israel brokered diplomatic initiative, though I don’t expect one. And of course, cousin Donald now enters. What could possibly go wrong?

Commentary on the news, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, World History

Solitude in the Public Square

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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.

 

 

 

Great Work, Health, Politics, US History

Blunted Dagger Rattling

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Rich Levine. Marilyn. Dr. Whited. Tom. Paul. Alan. Cold, single digits. Vince, plowed driveway. Rabbi Jamie. Writing. Kavannahs. Ukraine. Iran. Iraq. Turkey. Israel. Palestinians. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Yemen. Saudi Arabia. Lebanon. China. Russia. South and North Korea. Japan. Taiwan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aortic Artery

Kavannah for 2025:  Creativity

Kavannah for this January 8th life: Foresight   (roeh et hanalod)

One brief shining: Aortic artery aneurysm they say, spreading, mom’s brain aneurysm, a visit today to a cardiac surgeon, the past coming forward to haunt me, not as a synaptic engraved memory, but as a body recapitulating my mother’s, weakened arterial walls threatening to let my blood run free.

 

Yeah. Keeping the world of doctors, nurses, technicians, phlebotomists, and billing departments in a steady flow of the green blood which runs through their veins. That’s me. Today’s contribution will go to Dr. William Whited, a cardiac surgeon, who will reveal to me the amount of danger I’m in from a slowly thinning aortic artery. A new issue for a new year. Yay.

 

After about a five hour break from that last paragraph I can write off my aorta as an issue. At my age, Dr. Whited said, most likely will never be a problem. I liked him a lot though I admit I’ll like not seeing him again even better. I’ll need a CT scan in the next few weeks, just to make sure measurements are up to his standards, but he expects no trouble. Would that cancer and my back held such casual futures for me.

 

From a geopolitical point of view I can see a certain logic in Trump’s desire for Greenland. Warming of the Arctic. The great northern passage opening up. Rare Earth elements. Sure, as a parlor game. Like, say imagining Canada as our 51st state. When we consider a rules base global order, maybe our NATO treaty for example, it’s not only flat out bonkers but a reflection of the Trump doctrine: keep your friends at arms length and your enemies close to the Oval office. Do favors for your enemies and take what you want from your friends.

Of course, as one commentator noted, this blunted dagger rattling has a bread and  circuses appeal to his followers. Watch me stand up to Denmark and Canada. What a strong guy am I. All the while his real work will be cutting taxes for billionaires, expanding his family’s net wealth, and punishing all who dared to stand against him.

Gonna be a long four years. And they haven’t even started yet.

 

Just a moment: Apocalypse Now. I love the smell of wildfires in the morning. I feel for all those whose lives, whose homes, whose work places may have to yield to the fury of a Mother Earth grieving for her finely tuned climate.

One way to reach the Great Work, a sustainable presence for humans on this Earth, lies in disaster after disaster until a more reasonable population size is left.

Great Work, Plants, Politics, US History, World History

Noble? failures

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Elements and Elementals. The abyss. Sisyphus’ rock. Nietzsche. Whitehead. Plato. Socrates. Democritus. Diogenes. Thales. Xeno. Even Descartes. Kant. Maimonides. The Talmud. The Mishnah. The Torah. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Keats. Lao Tze. Chuang-tzu. Moses. Israel. Joseph. Miriam.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our core story

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for this January 3rd life: Joy

One brief shining: Went to Stinker’s Sinclair yesterday to buy some milk, but there were no quart containers available, so I took four of the 16 ounce plastic bottles to the checkout where the clerk offered to make sure there were not any quarts in the back; while he did that, I looked across the counter to the other clerk, a thin guy with slightly long dark hair, maybe early twenties, and noticed that he carried an empty holster on his hip, tied to his right leg with a carefully knotted strand of leather.

 

I’ve had a quiet week. Spoken to a few friends. Breakfast with Tara and with Alan this morning. Otherwise getting well back into a new workout routine, this time ensuring I do two full body resistance sessions a week and still aiming for the 150 minutes of moderate cardio. Not all the way there yet, but I can feel it coming.

Reading. Finished the Tao of Pooh and ready to start the Te of Piglet, Hanukkah gifts from Ruth and Gabe. Von Bek, stalled in the story of the second Von Bek, The City in the Autumn Stars. Parsha in Bereshit (Genesis). Commentaries. The NYT. The Washington Post.

Watching The Outpost, Seal Team, and Archer. Hawai’i 5-0 when I workout.

Listening to Mozart quartets.

Exchanging e-mails here and there.

 

Listening to the voices of my past as they continue to bubble up. Wondering why I tend to focus on the noble failures more than the successes. At least I see them as noble.

An example. We (odd, but I don’t who recall who “we” were.) heard one of the last remaining local seed companies, Northrup King, had entered into negotiations with Sandoz, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. This purchase followed a trend of Big Pharma and Big Ag Chemical companies buying the smaller companies who sold seeds to farmers for each year’s new crop.

Why? The smaller companies owned patents on the seeds. When there were many local seed companies, the hybridization processes were sensitive to regional and even local variations in soil, weather, pests, and other variables important to good crop production.

The companies buying up the patents wanted two things (at least): control over the seed patents for crucial crops like corn, wheat, soy beans, and rice. Corn, wheat, and rice provide about 50% of the world’s calories according to chabotgpt. That control was step one. After they gathered (harvested?) these patents, these companies could centralize hybridization and begin the process of working on their genomes. This was in the mid-1980’s, when genetic manipulation was still in its infancy.

We organized. Tried to form a local co-op to purchase Northrup-King and keep them out of Sandoz’s hands. We protested at the Northrup-King building which is now a wonderful space for artists. I met a person from the General Accounting Office of the Federal Government and tried to get her interested. We looked for a local buyer.

This was prior to the internet so I subscribed to a company, a clipping service, that would provide relevant information published in magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S. We developed crude information packets for local media.

All this over the course of 9 months to a year, as I recall. We were way out of our league. Barely had an effect on a process more critically handled in the world of finance than of local radical politics.

In my mind a noble failure. We did, for a while, raise consciousness of the issue. We discovered novel ways to fight big corporations and their capitalist driven desire to dominate markets by any means necessary. Still, in the end, Northrup-King disappeared into the world of chemists and genetic engineers, their seed patents with them.

 

Commentary on the news, Holidays, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History, World History

Yesterday’s Lives

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Reconstructionist Judaism. Judaism as jazz. My White Pine companion at Boot Lake Scientific and Nature Area-Minnesota. Those elms I had to cut down and debark in Andover. Emma’s fallen cottonwood. The Seven Oaks out my study window. The dead Ash Tree where the Morel’s grew. The Ironwood that was so tough to cut. Honeycrisp. McIntosh. Plum. Pear. Cherry. Trees in our Orchard.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountain Winds

Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

For this January 2nd life: Netzach  Perseverance and grit

One brief shining: A hand on her back, a flinch, you scared me, oh wondering what could have made her flinch since she knew I was there, right behind her, sad that touch took her into flight mode, the snow blew busily across my driveway.

 

We’re almost done with Holiseason. I count January 6th, Epiphany as the end of this wonderful time of year that began on Samain, October 31st. Here’s a connection I’d not made before. January 6th, day of the insurrection, when MAGA stormed the Capitol building carrying weapons and looting like vandals. January 6th, day of the Epiphany, which celebrates the visit of the three Magi bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Sorta different, eh? Now wedded by history.

 

Not sure why, but yesterday’s lives have begun seeping into my present. Not in a regret or shame or guilt way, but as a remembrance of time’s past. Could be the stories I’m writing in the Storyworth application. Maybe not though. At breakfast with Tara I told Ball State movement stories that I rarely tell. Today in my gratefuls Trees I had known in Minnesota kept coming to mind. A few days ago I took the Artemis Honey jar out of the cabinet and went into a combination of grief and joy, of remembering life with Kate and the persistent joy then which brought grief about its loss and about Kate’s death.

Most lives, like mine, are ordinary. Most lives, like mine, are extraordinary. Ordinary because they will sink under the burden of history, little known and less remembered. Extraordinary because only I could live my life which makes it, like yours, wonderful, another full-on, head down, legs moving experiment in what it means to be human.

May as well lean into it, the onrush of old lives. Seems to be what’s happening in my psyche.

 

Just a moment: That truck. Near Cafe du Monde. Jackson Square. ISIS? Geez, guys. Read the room. So yesterday. And the irony, the maybe intended irony, of an ugly Tesla cybertruck blowing up in front of a long red tie guy hotel in Las Vegas. Why can’t China or Russia be the great Satan? Or at least share the honor.

I can already feel the aggrievement wheels turning in cousin Donald’s meanness machine. What if he decides to turn the full weight of the U.S. military against Muslim terrorists? He’s capable of that. And trust me someone in his sphere of malevolence has probably recommended it already. What if?