Category Archives: US History

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Kabbalah, Politics, US History, World History

Shinin’ on me

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The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Better mood. Great Sol shinin’ on me. And my Lodgepole Companion. More blue than milky sky. Quarry Fire 100% contained. Makes me feel better about a Fire nearer to me. Theater and lunch today with Alan. Sue Bradshaw. Moods. James Lee Burke. Magic realism. King Arthur. Lancelot. Guinevere. Percival. The Green Knight.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ginny and Janice

One brief shining: The Tree of life has its sefirots, way stations for the stuff of creation that travels up and down the Tree from its masculine Crown to its Root, from chi borne in the ein sof, nothingness before, to malkut, the residence of the Shekinah, the sacred as female, pulsing and throbbing up and down, back up, back down, always new, always changing.

Kavanah: Joy  Simcha

 

A bit surprised but as Great Sol has snuck out from the dark clouds of last week, I feel better. Feel like the rain and drear might have doubled or tripled my dis-ease last week. I often slip into melancholy around October, the month of mom’s death 60 years ago this year. And last week felt much like early Fall. So… Doesn’t change the reality of anything going on with me of course. But it could change the valence, by a lot. Mild concern becomes serious worry. This bit of pain feels more telling. Combining concerns increases concern like a dung beetle rolling in, well, dung. Not diminishing the moment but perhaps draining some of its intensity.

 

Allows me to stand back and grin about Harris and Walz. Retail politics? Not my thing for the most part. Had a fling with it in the late 1980’s, working on some Hennepin County races, then Paul Wellstone’s first Senate run. I chaired the Farmer-Labor Association, “Put the FL back in the DFL.” Didn’t like it though the results were satisfying. Went back to organizing and working with the Sierra Club.

I can give money though so I paused a second here while writing this and sent $250 to the Act Blue pact. If you ever felt like donating to a political effort now’s definitely the time. We have to show enthusiasm, diverse support, and a willingness to push a bit past where it hurts. This is to put the Orange ifrit back in his Mar-a-Lago swampland.

 

Meanwhile this oh so fraught election year Ukraine fights on, sneaking into the Motherland. My sense is that Ukraine needs something big and doesn’t appear to have it on the horizon. And, further south the world and Israel awaits Iran’s response to the killing of two of Hamas’ leaders, one on Iranian soil. The Lebanese based Iranian terror client, Hezbollah, threatens war with Israel and Israel thumps its weakened chest right back. Could get real ugly, real fast.

As my son and other U.S. military personnel in the Far East stare down China, which has economic woes of its own making.

 

Just a moment: Olympics. Refreshing and beautiful. International. Diverse. See the American Olympic team. And what it’s accomplished.

 

Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, US History

Earth Waves

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The Off to College Moon

Wednesday: Tom. Zoom. Ruth. Money for college. Inspire concerts. 110 minute workout yesterday. Work out days. 2. Focus on Herme’s journey. 5 days. Mayfly life. Earth Waves. Mountains. Mountain Day in Japan coming August 11. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Berrian and Legault Mountains. Evergreen Mountain. Berrigan Mountain. Mt. Blue Sky. My local cluster of Mountains. 82% containment of the Quarry Fire. Evacuations over.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow Mountain

One brief shining: Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s metaphor of our lives as Ocean Waves, above the surface of the Ocean yet still the Ocean, then returning to the Ocean from which we came made me consider Mountains, Earth Waves, lasting much longer than the Ocean Wave, yet also destined to return to the Earth from which they rose. both metaphors for human life and I choose the Mountain, the Earth Wave, to emulate.

 

Continuing on the theme from the last few days. My cobbled together worldview. This is the life of August 7, 2024, risen through the orogeny of waking, strong and tall, durable. From its peak you can see Denver and Minnesota and Thailand and the Outback and Orion and Draco and the Milky Way. Yet also only a day, one of the infinite Mayfly lives, none longer than a day. We surf the Earth Wave of our day, our life, embracing its heights and its valleys.

My Lodgepole Companion greets this August 7th life with their usual stoicism yet expresses joy as its Needles, oriented by Great Sol toward the southeast, soak up life giving Light. The life of August 6th saw Rain for their Roots, may it be so in this life, too.

My day, my only day in which to live, this day, August 7th, 2024, includes greeting Great Sol. Saying the shema. Groaning a bit as my back exacts its price for movement. Excited for Ruth’s visit to work on Kate’s Minnesota Saves account. Free the money. Free the money. Free the money! A nap in this life, I imagine. Near the end of this life, as Great Sol disappears thanks to Mother Earth’s stately spin, I’ll buy some cutup fruit at at the Evergreen Safeway and go to the Mussar Vad Practice group at CBE.

After the day’s light disappears and night falls, I’ll drive home away from Berrigan Mountain and Evergreen Mountain, up the Valley drained by Cub Creek, Blue Creek, Maxwell Creek. Swimming through the Earth Waves in which I live, climbing from Evergreen to the peak of Shadow Mountain where I will rest at the crest of its wave.

One day.

 

Just a moment: The Midwest. My home for over 65 years. 40 of those in Minnesota. Not Coastal. Not a center of power in the political sense. Its politics far more opaque than those who live outside it know. Especially the Upper Midwest states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. More communal with the German and Scandinavian roots. More rooted in Land and Lakes. Distant from the rest of the U.S. Less concerned with the opinions of others, more determined to make its own way. Sometimes populist. Sometimes progressive. Sometimes conservative in the old fashioned sense. Sometimes crazy right. McCarthy is buried outside Appleton, Wisconsin. Not sure what it will look like to the nation as Walz’s turn on the hamster wheel of fame drives close inspection.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

See. Feel. Taste. Hear. Smell.

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The Off to College Moon

Monday gratefuls: Seeing with the lev. Charging the lev. Dow down. Orange one weakening. Kamala strengthening. Heat. The Quarry Fire. 35% containment 14 hours ago. The Ancient Brothers. Bill and Moira. Tom. Paul. Ode. On the best book, movie, music, airplane, art. Yeah, Tom snuck in airplanes. Finishing books. Books. Light-Eaters. Numbers. Reconstruction.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The life of August 5th, 2025

One brief shining: Three weeks ago a junior college student outsmarted local police and the Secret Service to send a bullet or shrapnel pinging off the Orange one’s right ear and Joe Biden saw himself as the eventual victor, today we await the Vice-Presidential pick of sitting Vice-President Kamala Harris in a presidential race turned shall we say, on its ear, showing that the Wizard of Odd pulling the strings behind the curtains of 2024 has yet more strange and wonderful events for this year of years. On the edge of my chair.

Kavanah: Kavanah: PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַ

 

A bit more on the playing cards in the spokes of my lifecycle.* Not going with the three-story universe in the Emerson quote, I imagine he didn’t either, otherwise, yeah. Though. I find less hiddenness. More ordinary sacred moments, events, discoveries. Both in my lev and out there in my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Wild Neighbors, even the physical stuff that makes up my house. All there as Annie Dillard says, holiness holding forth in time, a husk of many colors visible on lifting the eyelids after a night and the 1/60th of death.

Each life a holy life lived by us among and with gods of all times and all sorts. That so young fawn on its wobbly legs. The toddler racing toward her mommy. The Dog smiling at his human partner. Rascal. Findlay. Leo. The beating of my heart. The Quarry Fire. The sacred is not always safe. Thunderstorms. Hurricanes. The Atlantic Oscillation.

And how about this one. People I love living their lives on this spinning Planet so far away: Melbourne. Bangkok. Songtan. San Francisco. Minnesota. Maine.

The older and more clear eyed I become I wonder how wonder cannot be seen. Wonder dances in front of us, behind us, beside us, within us. Right now. In this god, August 5th, of the pantheon we name 2024.

How about hand/eye coordination. Consciousness. Love. Breath. Tides and Tidal Pools. Mountain Streams and Trout. Skyscrapers and elevators. Cars and bridges. Airplanes and rocket ships.

Do we have to make it so hard to know awe? No, we do not. We can and often do because our gaze slips away toward the next chance. We split ourselves out of this moment, this day by focusing our attention on a yesterday we regret or a future we fear. We sigh and turn away from the Dog’s thumping tail, the Fish that has swum up to the aquarium glass, the child that has gripped our hand in theirs so self-involved that what is present does become hidden to us. We, like Pharaoh, harden our hearts. That last plague no longer in our awareness.

The remedy? See what you’re looking at. Feel what you’re feeling right now. Taste with your whole body. Smell the coffee. Yes. Smell the coffee. Hear the Downy Headed Woodpecker pounding on your home.

 

*Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god. I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.   Annie Dillard.
Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Politics, Travel, US History

International Dialogue

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Stien. Koontz. Ootz. The Netherlands. Arjean. Tara. Susan. Irv. Marilyn. Cade. Vincent. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Zugspitz. Jungfrau. Olympus. Conifer. Evergreen. Labcorp. Great Sol. Data. Mussar. Neshama. Nefesh. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Leo. Paulaner N.A. Kate, always Kate. Ruth and the Inspire Concert Sunday. RTD. Uber.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

One brief shining: Could I have a short spade, please; Tara handed me a gardening trowel and I knelt down in her curved bed of Carrots and Beets, plunging the trowel in beside the missing Beet plant and felt the Earth give way, yes, there was a tunnel there, something, maybe a Vole, had burrowed in and eaten it from below.

 

Interesting lunch at Tara’s. Met Arjean’s family: Stein, Ootz, and Koontz. And, his mother whose name I didn’t get. They’re visiting from the Netherlands. BTW: Don’t rely on those spellings. They’re phonetic, which means based on my hearing. Always a risky basis for sounds.

Asked Koontz, Arjean’s brother, about how American politics looked from Europe. Next question, he quipped. He went on to say what I’ve heard in many other places including Korea and Singapore. In essence, it really matters to us, but we can’t do anything about it. As an example, he mentioned NATO. Well, yeah.

Koontz also said there was some talk in Europe about deserving a vote in American elections since they impact Europe in such critical ways. Made me think of the Chinese taxi driver I talked to in Singapore in 2004, the day before election day. He shook his head and said, “When America sneezes, we get pneumonia.”

Stein, Arjean’s nephew, is in his third year of university pursuing a business degree. He’s also starting a clothing business as a middleman between Chinese garment manufacturers and a European customer base. When I asked him about the stresses of doing both at the same time, he looked over at his dad, Koontz. A bit sheepishly. Oops, I said. I withdraw the question.

After the meal Tara and I went downstairs to look at her garden. She’s had vegetable eating animals taking out Beets, Lettuce, Raspberries, and Tomato plants. She wanted to get my opinion about what was going on. That was when I asked for the trowel. I found the tunnel right away. Some critter has dug their way to a meal, perhaps several meals. She also has rabbits, I think. Her fence keeps the Deer out. They’re the animal that can really devastate a Mountain garden. They’ll eat everything down to the ground. Well, Elk, too.

Had no solution for her save putting in raised beds for next year’s garden. Would help her back, too.

 

Just a moment: A lighter heart. Some hope. Kamala wouldn’t have been my first choice, but she’s sooooo much better than Biden. Since I’ve long thought this election would hinge on turn out, I feel good since she will be able to energize the Democratic base.

Diane and I talked politics this morning. She feels lighter, too. That feeling alone may be enough to swing the election our way.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Poetry, US History

Too much with us

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Lab orders. Cancer. Ruby. Blackbird Cafe in Kittredge. Potato cakes. The fantasy homes along Bear Creek between Evergreen and Kittredge. All Stone exterior. All Log exterior. That one with the Waterfall. Bear Creek full yesterday after heavy Rains on Sunday. Coffee. Milk. Seltzer Water. The Shema. Unitary metaphysics. This spinning Planet.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Homes. Of all sorts.

One brief shining: The kind phlebotomist wanted to help me; but, I’d forgotten my lab orders and she couldn’t find any in her computer system, after I’d driven a half an hour to get to her since my doctor’s office happens to be between lab companies this week; she flipped up the soft arm of the phlebotomy chair and I squeezed out, shaking my head at my own error, not bringing my copy of the orders.

 

Been musing for a while about certain things that cannot be done via computer. Any medical visit that requires puncturing the skin. A physical exam in a doctor’s office. The delivery of physical objects purchased online. A kiss. A handshake. A hug. Driving down the hill and back up again. Flying in an airplane. Travel that involves dining and sleeping. The list could go on.

Too often these days we give the lie to Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us, late and soon…” Instead we settle for the faux experience. Remember Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave? High tech, high touch. Yes. The more we use technology, the more we need in person, face to face, skin to skin. We feel, often without knowing it consciously, with Wordsworth again: “Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away.” With A.I. advancing as it is, we may also find ourselves paraphrasing him: We have given our minds away.

I’m no technoLuddite. Hardly. I have three computers. I’m writing this blog on my computer, expecting you to read it on yours. I spend at least three plus hours every week on Zoom, more some weeks. I no longer read a physical newspaper, relying instead on the digital versions of the NYT and the WP plus other news outlets. My shopping, like most of us who live in the Mountains or in rural America, happens online. My front door, your front door has become a receiving dock.

Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
Kindred Spirits  1849
Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

Yet. The interplay between the online world and the world of physical objects, especially humans and other Animals, Forests and Oceans, Mountains and Lakes has made revisiting the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a useful corrective.

In the United States Romanticism coincided with pre-Civil War and post-Revolution thought, the period often known as the American Renaissance. The Romantic turn toward the individual, the irrational, the natural produced works like Emerson’s essay, Nature, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

This period of American intellectual and artistic life wanted to discover a non-European, American style in literature, poetry, painting. Melville’s Moby Dick. Painters like Church, Durand, Cropsey, Cole. A fruitful period to rediscover for our current ailment.

Health, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, US History

The Great White Whale

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Brakes. Stevinson Toyota. CBE annual meeting. CBE history. Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. Tomorrow. Shirley Waste. Rolling, Rolling, Rolling. The trash containers. Sounds like Thunder. Rain yesterday. Great workout. Faster. 2X resistance. Farmer’s carry added. A short trip to the hallucination store. Great Sol, steady friend.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: New front brake pads for Ruby

One brief shining: Knife cutting through tape, flattening cardboard, cleaning out the trash compactor, that ritual of this American life-trash day-requires plastic bins, plastic bags, throwaway plastic, lots of cardboard since we’ve disaggregated receiving docks, turning our front porches into the truck bays of used to be stores, dispersing the burden from corporate trash bins to local residences and local landfills.

 

Got in 105 minutes of exercise yesterday. With 40 minutes on Sunday that means I only need another 5 to hit my weekly goal of 150 minutes of moderate exercise. Beginning to move faster these days so I’m up in the cardio zone more and more. Started doing a farmer’s carry to improve my grip strength. If Anthony Hopkins can stay fit at 86, why can’t I?

Cousin Diane has an every other day jog from her home on Lucky Street to Folsom and onto Bernal Heights Park. Buddy Mark and his wife Elizabeth have memberships at Lifetime Fitness, same as my old gym in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. Alan hits the elliptical and the weights every morning at the Spire Condominiums where he lives in downtown Denver. Marilyn does jazzercise at 77. Exercise moves the needle on health span. Worth the effort.

 

American Renaissance II:

Been thinking about this more and more. Realized last night that the gang who put I heart the constitution stickers on their cars, who fly American flags from the beds of pickup trucks, who venerate the “founders”, who focus on the second amendment as God’s gift to domestic terrorism have a truncated version of American history. Stuck they are (thanks, Yoda) on a faux legalistic path from the first colonies right down to the streets of Washington, D.C. and January 6th. The history that matters to them is rebellion, not revolution. The golden tablets handed down to Wynken, Blynken, and Nod guide them towards. What? Amurica? A land of guns, liberty, and Christian white folks handed back the reins.

Where in their journey is Rip Van Winkle? The Knickerbockers? The Scarlet Letter. Thanatopsis. Thoreau. Emerson. Mary Fuller. Emily Dickinson. Herman Melville.

Perhaps we can see our time as a hunt for the great White whale. Will it bind us as a nation to its watery flanks, entangling us in harpoons and ropes, sending us all on a Nantucket sleigh ride? Will the great White whale then dive and take us, like Ahab, to a deep ocean grave? Seems possible to me.

We need a fuller, richer understanding of the time when this country came to be. Not only about systems of governance. No. There was poetry. Literature. Broad discourse on the rights of human beings. Benjamin Franklin. How can we lift up the complex, messy, beautiful reality of pre and post revolution early America?

 

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Feelings, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Politics, US History

American Renaissance II

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Phnom Penh Park Hornbills

Tuesday gratefuls: The steady string of twists and other plot surprises. Poor Milwaukee. Joanne and I. All these years we’ve worked. Both shake head. Sushi. Evergreen. Yesterday’s afternoon rain. United Healthcare. A James Bond villain in American corporate clothing. Life with cancer. Flonase. An allergy season from heaven. So far. The Hornbills of Phnom Penh. Thanks, Mark.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild neighbors everywhere

One brief shining: Went into Nana Sushi in Evergreen right across from the main fire station in the same spot where Thai 101 was a few years back; saw Joanne and she asked would I rather go back to the booths, yes I would because I could put my hearing aid to the wall well when we got back there she told me she’d been sitting in the front because it was easier for her to get up. Dueling infirmities.

 

Beginning to feel reality slipping away. The shots in Pennsylvania. His fist raised in the oh so ironic Fight, Fight, Fight. Him entering the convention in profile with a large bandage on his right ear. The polls. That documents case for now disappeared. Presidential immunity. Project 2025. As if a thumb has been pressed on the flow of events in my (our) United States of America, tilting them toward putting this guy and his gang of anti-law, anti-constitution, anti-immigration, anti people of color, anti gay and lesbian, anti climate change in power. That’s the reality slipping away. As if a long string of no that can’t be rights has direction and purpose.

As the wags say though. It isn’t over until it’s over. We still don’t know what the next chapters of the political thriller we’re living in have to offer. Things could change. Couldn’t they?

 

Let’s talk instead about Ruth’s frog. A tattoo on her right upper arm. She asked for ideas for names. I suggested Twain. You know, Calaveras County. Which BTW is an event that continues to this day. I found this cute picture on the Calaveras County Website.

Perhaps there is a route through the potential dismal and painful years. An American literary and artistic renaissance. American Renaissance II. A celebration of American art and artists, locally and nationally. Organized readings, classes in person and on zoom, museum exhibitions. Poetry contests. Prizes for new art and artists. A way to remind ourselves of the history of our national spirit. And of our national spirit itself. An oh so important task right now.

When the Ancient Brothers discussed what they’d do with a quarter of a billion dollar windfall, the last thing I offered involved creating a think tank for the advancement of the liberal arts outside the academy. This could be a big idea. A way to counterpunch. With Emerson and Whitman. Twain and Bierce. Dickinson and Sontag. Oates and Morrison. Copland and Gershwin. Bierstadt and Hopper. Cage and Davis. Monk and Coltrane. Piercy and Hughes.

I like this idea. Come at them from the side rather than head on. Perhaps defuse defensiveness? This one stays in the hopper. Soft power.

Great Wheel, Politics, Science, US History

Sad to say these things

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Monday gratefuls: Joanne. Veronica. The Ancient Brothers. Bill at his family reunion in Door County. Avivah Zornberg, a profound commentator on the Torah. 45 and his lucky ear. Biden, elder statesman. This strange, oh so strange, year. Being alive. Hawai’i for Christmas? Murdoch on base. My sweet son and Seoah. Rich. Susan. Tom. Diane. Marilyn.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

One brief shining: The day dawned as Mother Earth spun round to expose us to the life sustaining Light while giving others the blessings of rest and cooler temperatures, the night calming, dark, a time of sleep; Great Sol remains steadfast, always ready to share the benefits of nuclear fusion, protons joining protons, creating helium and sustaining life on Mother Earth.

 

This cosmic dance of night and day, ready protons in the enormous heat and pressure of Great Sol’s core, our Planet’s orbit, all moving as our galaxy moves, as our local cluster moves, as the universe changes shape, motions constant and the only true state of matter and energy, change, becoming, never still or static or just there. We amuse ourselves with Zeno’s Paradox. You know the one, where the arrow cannot land because it always has half the distance to its target to travel. But this world doesn’t know the strictures of logic, it only knows the demands of novelty, of the forward pull of Whitehead’s creative advance into novelty.

This One which encompasses this one and that one and the one here and the one all way out there in the most distant galaxy never settles into a steady state but rolls and roils with death, decay, nuclear fusion, breathing and hearts beating, births, the growth and development of life from entity to entity until the last syllable of recorded time. Here’s the Big Surprise! It will, too, last beyond that syllable to transform into what must come next.

Ok. Enough of that.

 

Just a moment: The drums have not been silent for years now. The paradiddle of constant political estrangement drowns out the sounds of normal political discourse. In the broader sense I agree with Biden’s call to lower the temperature of our political discourse. We need a more studied, less volatile approach to politics both local and national. Yes, we do.

However. The reality. One party to those politics wants to drag the nation back to the 19th century when Jim Crow reigned, wants to elevate our national interest over against all others, wants to ruin our electoral process in so many ways, a real dagger at the heart of democracy. Or, should I say, a real bullet from an AR-15.

I do not see how compromise is possible with racists, America firsters, with those who find authoritarians like Putin and Oban, even Kim Jong Un, men who should be praised and emulated. How is compromise possible with one whose flaunting of our legal system would be beaten down if he were not a candidate for President? And, if successful in his candidacy, who could distort and actively alter that same legal system?

I am sorry to say these things. I am sad to be in a position where they are my truth. But they are.

Judge Dismisses Classified Documents Case Against Trump. NYT. 7/15/2024. Only moments after I finished this post.

 

Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Science, US History

Election 2024: the Novel. Another Twist.

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The novelist has thrown yet another Big Twist into this election year. Trump’s ear. Oh, my. Red Flag warning today. Red Flag in the day, attention must pay. Numbers. Zornberg’s Bewilderment. Reading. Mitch Rapp. Another week of 150 plus minutes exercise. Radiation consult this Thursday. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Hawai’i.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

One brief shining: Handed in my Powerball ticket, a big winner, over a quarter of a billion dollars, Tom’s challenge, what are those first moments like, how do I feel, what do I do, the Ancient Brothers topic for this morning, an American, so American, fantasy, yet one with a Rorschach template for our real values.

 

Gotta admit. I didn’t see a registered Republican recent high school student using his no doubt legally obtained AR-15 assault rifle to fire eight shots at 45. That one photograph with blood around his mouth. I thought to myself, no way this can get any weirder. Wrong, so wrong. Gobsmacked. Forehead slapped. Mind scrambled.

No thriller writer would have this much chutzpah. The irony way too obvious. The twist, after the debate and the Supreme Court ruling on immunity, and the felony convictions, and the money damages in the cover up trial and the E. Jean Carroll verdict. Too much. I mean, come on. Is that believable?

It is a page turner though. What will happen next? Russian interference? Chinese interference? Maybe a black hole selectively absorbing only those citizens with way more red than necessary in their fashion statements? Each day a different aspect of the democratic process comes under attack from those seemingly interested in a quasi-king instead of a head of the third equal branch of our Federal Government.

At 77 this is almost more excitement than I can handle. Normally a bit breathless here at 8,800 feet, now I’m attached to an oxygen concentrator.

There are as well all those polls showing the orange one ahead in the swing states, the battleground states, while kind Old Joe dithers. And Kamala Harris runs without running. Democrats dither along with Joe. Somebody has to show decisiveness. Let’s turn this damned election upside down and inside out. Elect a Democrat.

 

Just a moment: Here’s the thing. Revelation. A musty old idea. Communication from the other side, eh? Or, maybe from this or that multiverse? Could be God? Always, and I want to lean on this hard, Always, human mediated. Even miracles only become miraculous when reported and confirmed by some human who experienced them. The implication? All of our religious reveries, our sacred writings, our tales of Jesus and Moses and Zoroaster and Shiva and Lao Tze, all within the human experience. What is resurrection but a tale told by a human?

No, this is not a definitive argument against revelation per se. All I can confidently say is that we don’t know it unless someone told us or we experienced it and are the ones doing the telling. Same thing could be said, I suppose, for science. Only the results of experiments by humans, evaluated and reported by humans.

 

Holidays, Politics, US History

Uncle Sam

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Summer and the 2% crescent of the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Irv, Paul, Tom. Rich. Joan. Jamie. Tara. Talking politics under the starlight with Rich. Rescheduling with Joan. Tara today. Driving in the dark. Going to bed really late. This July 4th, 2024 life. Dreams that may come. Joe Biden. The New York Times. Newspapers. Printer’s ink. Justifying the galleys. Linotype machines. Letter presses.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Journalism

One brief shining: A dull steady drone, quiet yet woeful, persistent, challenges my hearing since I cannot locate the source which increases and decreases according to the position of my head, clamoring for all the attention I would rather devote to writing, in the background yet pushing itself into the foreground. Acchh.

 

Wednesday. A busy day. Up sticks. Shema. Back exercises. Write Ancientrails. Over to Evergreen Medical for my Prolia shot. Back to Conifer, Aspen Perks for breakfast, pickup flannel shirts at the dry cleaners, ready for storage, back home to Leo. Get Leo’s stuff together for his Dad’s afternoon arrival. Read. Watch a little TV. Shower. Order from Beau Jo’s to pick up on the way to CBE. MVP. Then, a half-hour with Rich on the Supreme Court, Joe Biden and our hapless nation. In the parking lot, a warm Mountain summer night with a clear field of stars. Home around 10:30 pm. 2 hours past my usual bedtime. Oi. A little THC.

Then up at 7:30. For the life that happens on July 4th, 2024.

Happy birthday, Uncle Sam! Speech. Speech.

Thank you. Thank you. No. Really. Thank you. (puts hands out, palms down. In response the crowd quiets.)

I know. I know. This has not been democracy’s finest year. Anywhere. Except maybe Britain. A bit of a nod to India, too. Otherwise the forces of autocracy and prejudice, of chauvinistic religion have proved ascendant. Yes. I read the newspapers, too. Online of course.

(crowd laughs)

So. What to say. A time of peril for our government and its authority granted by the citizens of our nation. Raising the President above the law? That’s not an American idea. Remember King George? The divine right of Kings? No citizen, no matter what their title or station is above the law. I’ve said that over and over since the founding. A hard lesson, one that may seem too hard to some. But to me? Essential. Sine qua non.

And on that divine right business. Who knows about divinity and what it wants or who it wants to lead? That’s why we established a government of the people, by the people, for the people so help us the non-intrusive god of the Deists who wrote our constitution. Now many of our citizens, in defiance of that bedrock principle, want to put so-called Christian values as superior, as national values. They even want me to preside over a Christian nation.

No. I will not. I’m agnostic myself. Not to mention the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikh’s, Jains, Taoists, atheists, humanists and who knows how many others. We are a quilt, a tapestry, not a pristine white altar cloth.

Enough of that. I’m headed to Coney Island for a hot dog and some fireworks. Enjoy the 4th.