Category Archives: US History

Dogs, Family, Far Right, Fourth Phase, Greenhouse, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History

Paying For It. Right Now.

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Gabe, thinking of her, thinking of me without her. He and Ruth driving up here yesterday. Oyama. Sushi, our common ground for food. Our conversations. About two college girls on their own in an apartment. About senior sunrise, which Gabe is doing right now.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandkids.

Year Kavannah: Wu wei

Week Kavannah: Histapkot. Contentment.

Tarot: The Forest Lovers, #6

One brief shining: Hammer in hand, I drove four nails into Artemis, two on each outside raised bed, pulled out a length of twine, long, cut it from the spool and tied loose knots around Squash Plant Vines under a branch for strength, attaching the twine to the first nail, looping it, and the second nail, a tight note, redirecting the Squash toward the ground so its large fruits will not occupy the raised bed, robbing the Kale, Spinach, and Beets of Great Sol’s light.

 

Yesterday I wondered what I might do to celebrate Kate’s birthday. Last year I took myself out to dinner at Evoke 1923, ordered oysters for an appetizer, and discovered a pearl. Hard to top that.

Yet, it happened. Gabe thought of me, texted Ruth in Longmont. She contacted me and we soon had a lunch plan for a sushi place in Golden. That morning, yesterday morning, Shadow got me up at 3:30 am, and my back acted up early.

Ruth was ok with driving the extra half hour up here. (I paid for her gas.) They got here to the Mountain home around 11:30. We ate lunch at Oyama, a local sushi spot.

In honor of Kate I ordered a tempura bento box. When the rest of us, Jon, Ruth, and I, would go to a sushi place, she made do by ordering tempura. She was more a prime rib or tenderloin sorta gal.

Discovered, again, why I don’t order it for myself. Too dense. Too heavy. Still, Kate’s memory.

We came back to Shadow Mountain, talked some more. Toured Artemis and her amazing Tomatoes, her Spinach, Kale, Beets, and Squash. Everything that’s growing has done well over the last couple of weeks.

Gabe carried two bags of gardening Soil out to her for me. Something only a few years ago I could have done under one arm. Sigh.

 

Me and my Shadow: Yesterday I laid down for a nap (up at 3:30, remember?) and didn’t call Shadow for naptime. I wanted to get to sleep and sometimes she wakes me up.

I turned on the oxygen concentrator, cranked the fan up another turn, and went to sleep. When I woke up, Shadow had curled her body next to my pillow. Fast asleep. Oh. Well.

 

Just a moment: I read this Atlantic article yesterday, How Ivy League Admissions Broke America. I found the author’s argument not only persuasive, but possibly a way forward. He shows how an intentional change by Harvard to admissions based on intelligence rather than family lineage created an unhealthy distortion in our whole education system. The valorizing of intellect über alles.

We pushed away the bakers and candlestick makers, the steelworkers and the factory workers, farriers and dress makers. Placed them on a lower social rung. We’re paying for that right now.

Ancient Brothers, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Humanities, Poetry, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History, World History

Ways Forward

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Waning gibbous Moon. Morning Darkness. Shadow. Father of Shadows. Great Sol. Artemis and her children. Heirloom Vegetables. Raised beds. Co-creation. Gardening. Kate, always Kate. Bee keeping. The Atmosphere. The Troposphere. Space. The International Space Station. The Hubble. The Web. Exoplanets. Distant Suns. Galaxies. Black Holes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadows

Year Kavannah: Wu wei

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hatov. Recognizing the Good

Tarot: The Seer, #2

One brief shining: The boiler turns itself on, feeding hot Water into the hot Water tank while open windows let cool Air flow in and over my chair, my feet the chair chosen by Kate supporting me while I write.

 

Hakarat Hatov: Recognizing the good. Luke’s joy at getting an associate Professorship in Chemistry. His care for Leo. Rabbi Jamie’s creative teaching. Tom’s quiet confidence. Ode’s sketchbooks. Bill’s everyday kindnesses. Paul’s serious joy.

As Paul said on Sunday, if we seek Hakarat Hatov, goodness abounds in everyday life, no matter the bitter and ugly transformation of our government. Too easy to focus on the doom, let ourselves fall into despair. Don’t ignore it, no, but also recognize the ordinary good all around.

 

Just a moment: A way forward. Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman. Amy, my audiologist, echoing a similar idea. She knows folks she said, progressives, who want to return to the Obama era. No, she says, MAGA has revealed too many cracks (her word. I might go with chasms, abysses.) in the U.S. There’s no going back Amy went on. What we have to do is survive these years, then build something new, something that takes into account the MAGA reveals.

I agree with her and with Friedman. The excesses of the Gilded Age, which Trump apparently has in mind, led to the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt, the trust buster.

Or, we could also call this late stage capitalism wherein the oligarchs gather so much money unto themselves that the rest of us have too little to power the consumer economy.

Greed cometh before a fall. As Gordon Gecko showed us.

 

Learning: Higher education and in particular the Humanities have suffered hit after hit as the conservative mortar crews have begun to walk in their ordnance, finding the bunkers and trenches of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought with their “anti-semitic” coded explosives.

I no longer fear the elimination of Humanities courses. Why? Because Thucydides and Beowulf and O’Neil and Whitehead and Mozart and Caravaggio do not live in the academy. They live in those who seek to understand their own humanity, the ways forward when faced with a culture shattered by avarice and base fears.

We and mine will still read the Iliad to understand how one man’s rage can cost the lives of thousands, even millions with today’s WMDs. We will also return to multiple perspectives as modeled by Impressionist, Expressionist, Abstract, and Realist painters and sculptors. We will embrace a world characterized by the metaphysics of becoming, of a One always in process, over the split apart world of Cartesian metaphysics.

The Humanities will not, cannot disappear because they are us at our best, self critical. learning from the vast deposit of human lives already lived.

 

Asia, Denver, Family, Korea, The West, Travel, US History

The Buckhorn

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Friday gratefuls: The Buckhorn Exchange. Appa and the long guns. Umma eating beef tenderloin. Buffalo Bill Cody. Guru, the Malaysian Sikh, partner to Mary for 28 years. Their attendance at my son’s command ceremony and Mary’s at my son and Seoah’s wedding. Mary’s long stay in Hawai’i after being deported.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mark in Saudi Arabia

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: The Woodward, #11

One brief shining: Ruby drove into the Buckhorn parking lot at 4:45, the first car there for the evening; as Great Sol boiled the asphalt at 102 degrees hipsters rode by on electric scooters and expensive bicycles with very thin tires, the RTD station filling up with early evening commuters while I waited to dine with Appa and Umma, my son and Seoah in Denver’s oldest restaurant.

The Jangs: The whole clan visited the Denver Museum of Natural History in the afternoon. They found its size amazing, Joseph said. Dongun and Dioon (his sister) (please note: I may have these spellings wrong) loved the mummies.

Leaving Shadow on her own in the back yard, Ruby and I left for Denver around 4 pm, filling her up at the Conoco station before hitting 285. Only with my new seat cushion would I willingly drive down the hill. It makes driving bearable, not pain free, but not excruciating.

As I drove down the hill, evening commuter traffic flowed in the opposite direction, west to Littleton and south up 285 to the Mountains. Nice to go against the traffic. Easier.

Picked up 20+ degrees as I left the Rockies and got back on the High Plains, another reason not to drive down the hill. I did though, as we Mountain folk do, have a light jacket with me, knowing the Buckhorn would be air conditioned and the Mountain evening air would be cool.

Appa’s vision of the American West comes from John Wayne movies. The Buckhorn Exchange, 130 years in the same building next year, hosted many famous men of the Wild West era like Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hitchcock.

Founded by a German family, it has, I only tumbled to this yesterday, the feel of an old world Germanic hunting lodge. And, in fact, all the stuffed animals died under the guns of the founding family.

We also learned from our knowledgeable waitress that during Prohibition you could order Pumpernickel Bread. A whole loaf would be brought to the table and inside it would be a bottle of whiskey.

My son, Appa, and I had the special, Elk and Buffalo tenderloin, while Seoah and Umma had beef tenderloin. Appa cleaned his plate and ate some of Umma’s as well.

A fitting final evening meal in Colorado. Seoah’s sister’s family stayed behind, finishing off the gyros from Monday’s way too much for one night supper. They had been surprised by how much they had been spending. Even with a weaker dollar, the won to dollar conversion is not favorable so the actual cost of things snuck up on them. An easy mistake to make your first time out of your own country.

Asia, Colorado, Family, Korea, Politics, Travel, US History

The Third Day

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Appa and Umma. Seoah. My son, their rock. Min yun. Dinosaur Ridge. Buffalo Bill Cody. His grave on Lookout Mountain. Shadow. Sleeping beside me. Ruth and Gabe, coming up today. Artemis, protector of Plants. Buchanan Rec Center. Sue Bradshaw. Post-polio syndrome. Steroids in right hip working.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Talking politics with Seoah’s father, brother, sister, and brother-in-law

Year Kavannah: Wu wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: Three of Bows, Fulfillment. (If I don’t post the question, it is: What do the cards have to say to me today.)

One brief shining: Smart phones out, language apps called up, gyros and hummus and basmati rice from Ali Baba put away, we sat around the dinner table, Seoah translating for Appa, her brother and sister, her brother-in-law as we all vented against Trump, against oligarchs, for governments that serve the people and not the rich, a common fight, one we all recognized, my people, my family.

 

The Jangs: The Jangs and my son went to Dinosaur Ridge, where the first Stegosaur bones were found, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s grave.

Appa had a great time, riding on a faux horse, then getting a cowboy hat and chaps, continuing to ride. I saw videos. He’s a very in the moment guy, open and full-hearted. Whereas Umma holds her emotional cards close. She smiled last night, a rare and happy experience.

The whole family and my son then went to Ali Baba and picked up enough gyros to feed us all. I drove over to the air bnb and enjoyed a meal and an evening with the Jangs.

They’re a friendly, happy family. I enjoy being with them. Even with the language barrier. Seoah took on the difficult task of translator as we discussed the predations of Trump tarrific, the ills of societies structured for the wealthy and against the rest, the common bond we felt as persons who believe government’s role lies in leveling the playing field with affordable housing, decent health care, good education and food available to all citizens.

My sister and brother, both long time expatriots, have had, I’m sure, many similar meals with their Singaporean, Thai, Arab, Malaysian, Aussie friends. I’ve not had the experience often and mostly with Seoah’s family, but I cherish the moments when the realization arises, hey, we have similar feeling and dreams across cultures.

I used to believe that America existed to support such common feeling, support it enough to include dreamers from other nations who wanted to share their dreams with us as fellow citizens. Now I see that dream turning into a nightmare, one that would gather up the Jangs, put them in a concentration camp, then deport them to any random country that would take them, if they chose to stay past their tourist visas.

Sigh.

 

Just a moment: It’s Andy Warhol’s birthday. And yesterday was International Owl Awareness Day. More pertinent to me, August 11th is International Mountain Day. Perhaps Shadow and I will gather inside Artemis to celebrate Shadow Mountain.

 

Memories, Politics, US History

I am become death

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Jangs. Landed. Asleep in Conifer. My son, too. Cool Mountain Mornings. Shadow, defender of the yard. Kate, always Kate. That long thin line between the first single-celled organism and each of us alive today. That long thin unbroken line. Shadow’s upside down Dog move.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Jangs. My son.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: Ace of Arrows, the Breath of Life

One brief shining: Odd to consider a whole family of South Koreans asleep only a few miles from Shadow Mountain, bunked in for now after a late arrival yesterday, asleep I imagine since on Korean soil the time is 9 pm and each of them traveled over 6,000 miles yesterday.

 

Just a moment: Yes. Up here at the top. Why? Two Donald moments that should frighten the bejeezus out of all of us.

The worst of the two:

Didn’t realize how deep seated my fear of nuclear Armageddon had become. Until my President-commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military-announced he had repositioned nuclear-NUCLEAR-submarines in response to a playground taunt from a former Russian president.

An instinctive response. Oh, my god. Dr. Strangelove. 7 Days in May. Not fiction. This is how it begins, who knows how it will end.

Recalled too the many drives before moving to Colorado. Through the barren reaches of South Dakota and Wyoming. The square plots with chain link fences and razor wire dotted every once in a while in the flat landscape. Inside them missile silos. Missiles with nuclear weapons. Too real for me.

In just three days we acknowledge a day that lives in infamy, to paraphrase FDR. August 6, 1945. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” And so it came to pass.

Those of us baby boomers could also be called the cold war generation. The generation of mutually assured death and destroyed worlds. Duck and cover drills? I don’t remember them but I apparently haven’t forgotten the ur-fear of my childhood, nuclear holocaust.

 

The more subtle, yet still horrifying second thing:

So let’s say a courtier brings a message to the king. Oh, king, the harvest in the villages. Some of it will rot in the field because your nobles refuse to pay for the work. Let’s also say that the king feared this message because it would him look like a bad king. Don’t kill the messenger came into common use only after many such messengers died.

And what did our naked emperor do to become famous? He said, “You’re fired!” He’s killed thousands of messengers since then in that third millennium way.

“These numbers, oh, king, are worse than we originally thought. The nobles failed to report them because it made them look bad.”

And the naked emperor did decree on that day that henceforth the nobles would report only good numbers because bad numbers, well, they made him look bad.

 

 

 

Dogs, Friends, Politics, US History

Drug Backwards Through History

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Monday gratefuls: The Seer. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Shadow at play with Annie, zooming. Another night inside. The darkness of early Morning. Tandoori Chicken. Garlic naan. ChutPo salad. Spice Fusion Ranch. Ancientrails back up. Cyber world. The leaning Tree. Friends and family.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends. Ginny and Janice.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: The Seer, #2 in the major arcana. How can I improve my diet?

One brief shining: Took my three pronged cultivator and worked organic fertilizer into the raised beds of Artemis, being slow to plant the fall garden, but already engaged in staking Tomato Plants which get floppy as they get tall, their strong, acidic scent carrying me back to Andover.

 

Friends: Ginny and Janice came over yesterday, picking up food at Spice Fusion Ranch on the way. Ginny had Luna the small in a t-shirt covering her surgery site. Annie the vigorous strained against her leash wanting to get inside, then outside with Shadow.

After an initial testing of each other’s mettle, they began a happy afternoon of racing around the yard, Shadow running just to the left of Annie and behind, guiding her as Border Collies and Australian Cattle Dogs will do.

They wore each other out while we ate lunch made at the too-good for Conifer Spice Ranch Fusion. Mostly we told Dog stories. Of Dogs who did agility courses fast but not accurately or accurately but not fast. Ginny said, “She ran through the tire, then turned and ran through it again.”

I told the favorite tale of Celt whom we took lure coursing. When Kate slipped him, our one hundred and ninety pound Wolfhound ignored chasing the lure and instead chose to head straight for the mini-doughnut stand.

Dog people.

 

Just a moment: Again I say the words. Concentration camps. They came for the immigrants with ICE men in civilian clothes, ready to fill prison facilities already owned by private companies. Hundreds more will be built as a result of the legislation passed last week.

Who will they come for next? LGBT? Jews? Single parents? College professors? This kind of fervor feeds only on hatred, bigotry, and cruelty. And fear. A fear consuming a minority of white people that somehow their lives, their futures, will suffer if they cannot cleanse the land of all others.

This old story crawls its poisonous path through history. Rwanda. South Africa. Sudan. Russia. Germany. China. Myanmar. India. Too many to count.

Who stands in its way? We pluralists. Globalists. Democratic socialists. We who love the rich quilt sewn by different languages, different national origins, by love expressed in its many faceted ways. Who willingly accept the creative tensions of a nation not dominated by one class, skin color, sexual preference, religion, or political inclination.

No time for hesitation, for weak words or weak action. These actions of an administration dragging us backwards through history to a simpler time when oligarchs stood astride the land and our country shrank from the world must not stand.

 

Dogs, Health, Politics, Tarot, US History

A Holocaust Moment?

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Pain and lump resolved. Shadow, the feral dog. United Health Care paying for my P.E.T. scan. Shadow coming in. Potcake Dogs. Harry Dresden. Jim Butcher. The Morning Service. The Woodward. TACO. Darkness my old friend. Immigration/Holocaust. Cruelty, Vengeance, and Greed as a philosophy of governance.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Natalie

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut.

Tarot: The Woodward. ? How shall I live my life today.

One brief shining: Yesterday around six p.m. a sharp, yet diffuse pain in my abdomen, a lump there roughly over the site of my steroid injection yielded a bit to the touch, not hard, an emergency or not, I couldn’t tell so I called the on call doc of my practice who said it didn’t sound like one, but if it gets worse, call him back. It didn’t and the lump is gone this morning. Wha?

 

Yeah. These things happen after hours. By rule. No Kate in the house anymore to reassure me. How would I get to the E.R.? Who would I call? Exposed the everyday vulnerability of all of us who live alone. Things are fine. Until they’re not.

The doc last night reassured me, said he’d leave a message for the front desk, have them call me, get me seen. Glad I have these folks in my hip pocket.

Drive myself or call a friend. Driving myself saves time. Have to find a friend at home and able to come. Then, it takes them time to get here. You get it. No obvious best answer.

 

Tarot: The Woodward, major arcana #11 in the Wildwood deck.

“The Woodward represents emotional support when we fall into a state of out of control, out of reason, when we encounter destructive challenges.

When individuals are pulled out of their comfort zone, they will be deprived of every emotion they once had when they were in a stable state. During that depriving process, individuals will have to seek within them their own true strength.”

Well. Gee. The message. Don’t tip over into anxiety. Call the on call doc. Which I did. Go see a doctor today. Which I will do. Don’t fuss. Act.

 

Dog journal: Natalie came yesterday. It was raining so we worked on a command called place. It involves a towel or some other well defined spot. I reward Shadow when she comes on the spot, then draw out the time she stays on it by slightly delaying the next treat.

Natalie told me Shadow acted like a feral dog. Like a Caribbean Potcake Dog, or a wild Dog fed from the leavings in a pot. She’s smart, learns things in one or two passes, but she’s also very suspicious. That means when a negative thing happens, like when I accidentally stepped on her left paw, she learns right then to avoid that situation.

Classic anxiety. Generalize from a negative experience, then protect against it by avoidance. Slowly, slowly.

 

Just a moment: Concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, then depriving immigrants of due process before deporting them, sometimes to countries where they don’t speak the language and have no family connections.

No, there might not be gas chambers. Yet. But a minority group has been singled out for rough treatment, taken from their homes, and disappeared from the U.S. Which minority will be next?

As Linda Greenhouse says in this New York Time article: We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty. New York Times, 7/14/2025

And I have to also recognize this former Israeli, former member of the IDF, now a genocide scholar’s article: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

I will not be a fellow traveler. I will not let my voice be on the wrong side of history.

Dogs, Greenhouse, New Apostolic Reformation, Politics, US History

The Seven Mountain Mandate

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Tomato Plants. Squash Plants. Compost. Planting again. Today. Greenhouse 90% done. Indoor bed ready to go. Shadow. Outside again. Wu wei. Back and leg pain. Labrum tear. Potential fixes. Nathan and Dakota. Dakota’s recovery. Vince and Preston. Mowing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tomato Plants in Artemis

Week Kavannah:  Wu Wei. Work with the chi.

One brief shining: Yesterday I laid my dibble, ruler, and hori hori knife on the shelf inside Artemis, touched the green Leaves of the Tomato Plants and the Squash plants, began the transition from Nathan’s construction project to my greenhouse and I felt an odd, but familiar calm settle over me.

 

Artemis: Nathan took a couple of hours from watching Dakota, who returned home from the vets without surgery needed, and put compost in the greenhouse bed. He also brought six Tomato Plants and two Squash Plants grown in the greenhouse he finished before mine. I’m excited about planting them today after the Ancient Brothers.

We also discussed the Deer and Elk protection, which he had forgotten. He will use black mesh fencing material and build a wide door on each raised bed. The outside beds need this protection. They also have a roof extension over them for hail protection. One hail storm can destroy a garden up here.

Artemis has begun to feel alive, a place for growth and love. I’ve missed having my hands in the Soil, taking care of Plants, eating produce fresh from the garden.

Shadow also has an interest in Artemis. She’s dug a bit in the Cedar chips that cover the floor. Likes the smell I imagine.

 

Dog journal: Shadow continues her outdoor ways. Sleeping near my bedroom window right on the ground. Last night, as other nights of late, she found things to warn off her property. Meaning she was the one breaking the silence of  Shadow Mountain. Embarrassing.

Natalie and I have two objectives: the leash and Shadow inside when it’s dark outside.

 

New Apostolic Reformation: You’ve probably not heard of the Seven Mountain Mandate. Yet in tandem with Cindy Jacob’s new interpretation of “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” it provides a deep rationale for Christian Nationalism.

The idea popularized by Lance Wallnau says to conquer and rule nations Christians (read: charismatic Christians of the New Apostolic Reformation) must rise to the top of the seven mountains of culture:

Only the religion mountain requires a spiritual leader. Wallnau explains this idea with the government mountain. From an Isaiah passage about the anointing of Cyrus-a Persian ruler who freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity-Wallnau proposed that Donald Trump had received a Cyrus Anointing. That is, though not a Christian or even a moral man, as Cyrus was neither a Jew nor a righteous man according to Jewish law, Trump could/would free Christians from their captivity to the forces of Satan.

The Jacobs’ idea of discipling nations and the need for Christians to rise to the top of the seven mountains of culture in each nation makes for a politicization of all the mountains. The Cyrus Anointing brought most New Apostolic Reformation types quickly into the 2016 campaign on Trump’s side.

This is a quick summary. More on this later.

 

Dogs, Health, Minnesota, Politics, US History

Gilbert lies in state

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: Nathan. His Husky, Dakota. Pollen. Plant sex. Lodgepole yellow. Shadow, loves to see me outside. Back and leg pain. Labrum tear treatment. SPRINT. The Greenhouse, very close. Tara and Eleanor. Luke and Leo. Tom and Max. People and their familiars.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Animal Companions

Week Kavannah: Wu-Wei. work the with flow of chi

One brief shining: Taking part in the Sloan-Kettering trial for a better way to help folks over 70 with cancer cope with life, finding most of the material not exactly trite, but obvious at least to me. Disappointed.

 

Dog journal: Shadow and I have a dance. We make progress. Our relationship is happy and loving. She joyfully runs across the whole back yard to throw herself at me. She rests now beside my chair. When she sleeps inside, she spends most of the night on the bed.

However. She dodges the leash. And, she has not come in at night for three nights now. Challenges. How to work with her since we are in a good place with each other. Natalie returns next week. Those will be the main two issues to resolve.

Nathan’s dog Dakota has an intestinal blockage. Multiple thousands of dollars. His old Jack Russel who lived with his Dad died two weeks ago. And, his partner, who runs a Dog sitting business, got bit twice this week after eight years with none.

Our Animal companions burrow their way into our lives, sneaking into soul connections, heart bonds tight. When they’re in trouble, so are we.

Thinking of Dakota who had surgery yesterday evening and has an extended recovery ahead of her.

 

Back and leg pain: Well. Gosh. Now even a short drive puts me in enough pain that on returning home I have to lie down. This in spite of improving strength through p.t. and three times a day dosings with tramadol.

Around the house my pain has ameliorated. Much better. Not sure what it is about driving. But I don’t like it. Come on, SPRINT.

 

Just a moment: In other Dog news, Gilbert, state senator Melissa Hortman’s Golden Retriever, lies in state with Melissa and her husband, Mark, at the Minnesota Capitol. I knew Melissa a little bit from Sierra Club work at the Capitol.

All three were shot by Vance Boelter, a man with strong connections to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). I’m two thirds of the way through Matthew Taylor’s “The Violent Take It By Force” which investigates the NAR’s role in the January 6th insurrection.

I plan a series of posts about this book when I finish it, but one noteworthy piece of information from it may help us understand Boelter’s actions.

Cindy Jacobs, a prophet in the New Apostolic Reformation, added a layer of interpretation to the familiar verse from the Gospel of Matthew cited often by missionary focused Christians: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…”

Missionaries inspired by this command have long traveled the Earth seeking converts and building churches. Jacob’s saw another level of interpretation.

She wants the NAR to make disciples of nations. Not just individuals. This raises the stakes of what the NAR calls spiritual warfare. The metaphors are violent and now, with Jacob’s new approach, apply to whole nations.

The title of Taylor’s book, in fact, comes from Matthew 11:12: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

 

Politics, US History

Capitalism is theft

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: Greenhouse almost done. Nathan. Shadow. Rain. Monsoons. My son and Seoah. Murdoch likes his new balcony. Vince and his brother, Preston. Vermont Flannel. LL Bean. Halle. Progress in p.t. One hour moves. M.O.P. His greasiness, Red Tie Guy. Our waning nation. The Founding Mothers. Fathers. Let’s stop them spinning in their graves. Let them rest. Lox. Cream cheese. Capers. Red Onion. Bagels.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah:  Roeh et hanalod. Foresight. Knowing what will be needed in the future.

One brief shining: When Monsoon Rains pound Shadow Mountain, throwing down bits of large pea sized Hail, Lodgepoles and Aspens, Lilacs and Iris, Bunch Grass and Wildflowers all take a big drink knowing Water for what it is here in the Mountain West, more precious than gold.

 

Just a moment: I know. This is not usually a lead off section, but I need to comment on the Washington Post Editorial Board’s screed about Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory in the New York City primary.

Here’s a sample from the Op Ed:

chatgpt struggles with words. this is the fourth iteration.

“Now, a man who believes that capitalism is “theft” is in line to lead the country’s biggest city and the world’s financial capital. His signature ideas are “city-owned grocery stories,” no bus fares, freezing rent on 1 million regulated apartments and increasing the minimum wage to $30. No doubt these might strike some voters as tempting ideas.”

Can you see the cold dead finger of Jeff Bezos in these words? Yes. The man who stood with his fellow oligarchs like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg behind the President’s family on January 20th owns this newspaper. Which also refused to endorse a candidate in the Presidential campaign.

I disagree with the Bishop of Hippo on many things, like original sin for example, but I’m down with him on this Gemini summary of his position on wealth:

“Augustine of Hippo, in his writings, argued that excess wealth is essentially theft from the poor, as it represents resources that are needed by others. He believed that true wealth lies not in material possessions but in generosity and love for God, and that hoarding wealth is a form of spiritual corruption.”

This Washington Post editorial board opinion is nothing more than red-baiting, an echo of another past political era we would do well to remember as a cautionary tale, not a guide post.

I neither want a return to robber baron politics nor McCarthyism. Hell, I’d settle for the Eisenhower tax structure. Perhaps you can mount an argument, unseemly as it would be, that innovation leads to concentrations of wealth. Or, that money rewards hard work. Both propositions put forward of course by those who benefit from belief in them.

Whatever the rationale capitalism is theft. Ask the Third World. Ask the immigrant coming here for the crumbs off the master’s table. Ask me.

I count myself among the democratic socialists and have for a very long time. How we treat the least of these. Yeah?