Category Archives: World History

Asia, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, Politics, US History, World History

Love

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Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. My son. Seoah. Ginny and Janice. Gabe. Happy Camper. Shabbat. Talmud Torah. Kabbalah. Cold weather. Snarfs. Ruth. CU-Boulder. Integrative Physiology. Jetplane to Incheon. The Jang family visit. My son’s promotion. Treats. Dogs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Families of choice

Week Kavannah: Perseverance and Grit    Netzach

One brief shining: At 3 am while I slept Shadow Mountain emptied out with my son and Seoah headed to the airport, Gabe back home with his student I.D., Shadow sleeping outside the bedroom for the first time.

 

Too short a visit. In on Wednesday after a full day of travel, Casa Bonita, then Boulder with Ruth yesterday, home around 7 pm, then gone in the wee hours. My son and Seoah whom I saw last in September of 2023.

Here is your family portrait in the style of Hindu temple art with a Valentine’s Day theme

And yet. Yes to any amount of time. Hugs. Quiet conversations. Laughing. Creating new memories together. This all American family in which I have no blood connection. I was Jon’s step-father, so no blood with Ruth and Gabe. Joseph came into my life 43 years ago by plane from Calcutta. Seoah in 2016. Yet we love each other as any family does. Blood ties and love have no necessary connection. Just as ties with no blood and love have no necessary connection. Only the love we develop and nurture over years and decades.

My life has been rich in loving. And expands even now. My friend Luke. My friends Ginny and Janice. Shadow. Leo. Annie and Luna. Always Mark, Mary, Diane. The Ancient Brothers. The MVP group. Alan.

Not sure how I got so lucky. Found Kate. Together we loved so many dogs. Gardens. Bees and Trees. Places on this wide earth. From Gwangju, Korea to Inverness, Scotland. Each other.

A Valentine’s Day life in so many ways. And so grateful for each love. Every love. All of them.

 

Shadow would not come out of the bedroom yesterday. Too many people around? A regression? Both? Don’t know. Anyhow she slept outside the bedroom last night for the first time. I want/need to be able to interact with her and if we’re playing hide and seek all day that’s very hard.

Right now she’s comfortably beside my chair as I write this. We’ve greeted each other, nuzzled. She’s gotten treats and awaits her 8 am feeding. The consensus from my son, Seoah, Gabe, and Ruth is that she will be happy dog once she settles in. How long that will take? Uncertain. I’m willing to go the distance.

 

Just a moment: So. The American Vice-President, JD Vance, sits down with Germany’s Nazi’s OK! far right party, the AfD. Even pushes for them to be included in Germany’s parliament. The German chancellor said this: “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” NYT, 2/15/1025

That’s a spectacle that beggars history. The head of a German government chastising an American Vice-President for support of Nazi sympathizers. WTF?

No wonder American Jews feel threatened and American white supremacists feel emboldened. Putting a substantial nick in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

 

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 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, 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?

 

 

Feelings, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, World History

Hanukkah Veronica Harmonica

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Yule and the Yule Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The power of conversation

Kavannah: Creativity

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Can you say fuel to the fire?

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

Family, Health, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Torah, World History

Israel

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Veronica. Rabbi Jamie. Studying this week’s parsha which includes Jacob wrestling with the angel. The world of the Torah. Talmud. Ann, my palliative care nurse. Vince and the mini-splits. His kindness. The dark and quiet of a Mountain night. My son. Such a kind and thoughtful man. The Light-Eaters.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Walking each other home

Kavannah: Understanding (bimah) Love (ahavah)

One brief shining: Once in a while I send a text, goodnight to the Flatirons, and I get back a reply, goodnight to Shadow Mountain, a way of extending a tendril of love to Ruth in her dorm on the campus of UC-Boulder, hers coming back to me.

 

Vince came over yesterday and cleaned the filters on my mini-splits. Didn’t charge me because it took him a while to get here. He remains a very interesting guy. He competed in a for-pay ju-jitsu tournament in Boulder and has become a teacher now after only a couple of years.

He told me of a lawyer he knew who said he didn’t like his job much. Is going through the motions. Not everybody wants to be the best at what they do, he said, I guess we need guys like that, too. Vince places a heavy load on himself, too much at times.

 

Ann, my palliative care nurse came by, too. We discussed my dilating aortic artery. How to have a solid conversation with the cardiac surgeon. She’s a pragmatic person, as most good nurses are. When I told her I forgot to take a tramadol along with me to Boulder, and the pain I experienced, she suggested a small pill container I keep in the car. Oh, duh.

She has given me a conversational level of medical care, similar to what I had with Kate. I find that very reassuring. Sort of knits together the oncologists, my PCP Sue, the surgeons, all those various medical specialties working to keep my body functioning and with the minimum of pain.

 

This morning I’m going over to Evergreen, to the synagogue, for a bagel table. We’ll be studying the parsha Vayishlach (“He Sent”), Genesis 32:4–36:43. Parsha’s are named by the first significant word or phrase in the Hebrew. Vayishlach contains a biblical story that has shaped my self-understanding and given me a new, Hebrew name.

Jacob wrestling with the angel. I asked chatbot to give me an image of this story in the style of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The result is here.

My life, even from a young age, has involved a struggle with understanding (Bimah) the world and its character, how I and we fit within it. Also, what is ours to do as we make our way on the ancientrail from birth to death. In this long night at the Jabbok Ford, Jacob did not give up, nor was he bested. As dawn rose, the angel dislodged his hip and gave him a new name, Israel. He who struggles with God.

 

Just a moment: South Korean president impeached! Don’t mess with the Korean people and their democracy.

 

 

 

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, World History

The Dead Live On In Memory

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Snow. Ruth. Gabe’s poetry. Boulder. CU. The Village Diner. Its Village Virgins punchcards. Ben and Jerry’s on Pearl Street. Only short walking distances. Resistance work. Feeling stronger. Jon and his children. Rich and Doncye.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Poetry, messages from the lev

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: As we passed Rebecca’s Herbs and Ointments, headed toward our ice cream tradition as Ruth calls it, the wind began to howl, and the cold blasted through my layers and caused both of us to hold our unsnapped and unzippered coats close, hurrying along while my back, as the pace increased, declared itself, stop stop it said. We hurried on.

 

 

Having done what I can for my back, physical therapy, lidocaine patches, and now Celebrex and the occasional tramadol, I put its complaints in the category of life as it is. Yes, it limits my mobility. No, it will not kill me. Unless of course the Celebrex does. This is me, now. At 77.

Another wonderful two hours plus with Ruth, eating at the Village Diner, one of those places students and professors flock to for the literal greasy spoons and great coffee. It wears its worn and chipped table tops, its random displays of CU-Boulder memorabilia, its fry cook behind the long counter with those stools you know, with the pride of a beloved spot rubbed real by hungry students and teachers of physics and philosophy.

During the week and after the noon rush, Ruth and I had a two person booth beside a west facing window, my hearing not the issue she assured me it would be had we come only a bit earlier. I wore my dancing Bears hat in honor of Jon’s birthday.

He was a true Deadhead, loading up whatever vehicle he owned at the time and heading out to follow the band. On one trip Kate and I loaned him Bucky, of Buck and Iris. Buck rode in the front seat of the pickup truck with Jon, happy to see more of the world than our back yard.

Ruth received calls from Jon’s closest friends: Max, Thomas, and Patty. Gabe wrote poetry. Jon was not forgotten. And will not be.

 

Just a moment: Luigi Mangione? Straight outta Mario Brothers. And, apparently, the wealthy upper crust of Maryland. Didn’t see that one coming. I stand by what I wrote the other day. No to murder. Yes to a wholesale revamping of our broken, broken healthcare system. Come on RFK. Your time to shine.

Being caught in a McDonald’s. How absolutely dead center American can you get?

 

Can you imagine Syria. A ruthless dynasty toppled. A palace ransacked. Secret prisons opened. A rebel army that knows fighting now in charge. Governing is a distinctly different skill. Who can predict?

Israel continuing its version of the forever war bombing Assad’s military assets. Not letting them fall into the hands of terrorists they said. Maybe. Or maybe they’re governed even more by hubris. Thinking they can bomb their way to a new Middle East. It will not be so.