Imbolc and the Waiting to Cross Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: Kep, the 5:30 am nudger. We two old codgers get up. This one still in REM sleep. Yoga mats. For the Kep. My son’s good work on the probate. Jen. Ruth. Gabe. Death. Jon, a memory. Kate, always Kate. Darkness. My old friend. A Mountain Morning. The oriental rug. Now a large traction mat for Kep. Pangaea Carpets. Evergreen Design Center. Clean house. Cheeba Chews.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Continental Divide visible on the way to Bailey
Thinking about my buddy Paul living near the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Fundy. Surrounded by good fishing. Northern Forests. The St. Croix River. Close to Canada. A distant world. My own Mid-Continent life. The Midwest, then the West. On a Mountain Top. Far from the fresh Waters of Minnesota now, far from the salt Waters of the Atlantic or the Pacific always. Hawai’i would give me a linkup with the World Ocean. One reason it appeals to me.
Having Mary, Mark, my son and his wife in Asia for so many years. My attention pivoted, turned West. Far West. Thailand. Korea. Singapore. It remains there, peeled away from my long European fixation. Except for Britain. Continental Europe used to hold many of my travel dreams, scholarly fantasies. Not now.
Going to Korea later this year. When I can stay longer, I’ll add in Taipei.
Brother Mark starts today at Amazon’s OKC2, one of its largest warehouses in the Oklahoma City area. His first full time work since moving back to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. May his day be full and not feel long. Mary has moved back to Eau Claire. My son and his wife will leave Hawai’i for Korea. A mobile crew.
A trip to Bailey yesterday. Happy Camper. Topping up the indica supply. A beautiful drive with the Continental Divide in the far distance. Not as Snow topped as I expected. Mt. Blue Sky had a Snow storm as did Mt. Rosalie. 285 was clear.
Chose to get money from the ATM in Happy Camper. Tried twice with my credit card. Oops. Worked with my debit card. A once every couple of months trip for me. I wanted to include lunch at the Smiling Pig, a new Tex-Mex joint in the old Rustic Station, but it’s not open on MTW. Will have to just drive over there for lunch one of these ThFSaSun. The pandemic was rough on restaurants everywhere. I imagine that’s what took out the Rustic Station. It had great buttermilk pancakes.
After that drive I went to Evergreen, looking for an area rug for my upstairs office. Still not done tricking it out. Pangaea Carpets had a lot of beautiful carpets and area rugs. Got to measure my space.
Also. Still looking for a Western something to put on my mantel once Doug gets my interior painted. Stuff there was too generically upscale Western. May hunt for a large Buffalo photograph. Back to the house for a little Korean, some pan fried ground pork with milk gravy.
Class on creativity with Rabbi Jamie. A flash of inspiration. Hochmah. A plan, a container for a work of art. Binah. The act of human creation mimics/is the same as that of sacred creation. In the far away ayn sof, the realm of nothingness, a desire emerges. It travels down the Tree of Life where it realizes itself in the realm of inspirational wisdom, Hochmah. Hochmah passes the desire, now an idea, to the practical wisdom of Binah, the sefirot of builders and wisdom. Here it takes on form, becomes a possibility.
Thursday gratefuls: CT and Bone Scan. Nuclear medicine. Kep. Susan Taylor. Tom. Durango. William. Paul. Ode. Quest labs. Blue Colorado Sky. Hawai’i. University of Hawai’i. Maona neighborhood. This silly real estate market. The January 6th committee. Real government. Earth spin. Sun seen. Sun gone. Back on Shadow Mountain.
A glimmer. Sent out this interesting article 
After I get the kitchen reinstalled and the living room/furniture moving done, I plan to set three days for exercise. And only three days. I will focus on writing on the other three days and when I have time on exercise and D3 days.
Puts the humanities and the arts in a very different perspective. That Chinese scholar alone in his hut in the mountains learned to play the Qin, write poetry, do calligraphy. Not for posterity but for his own development and appreciation. That’s me.
Our form of government, far from the only one, is in danger right now of losing the mandate of heaven by basing its survival on the mandate of money. The weird part is that many folks most damaged by the mandate of money are the ones rebelling against the old democratic regime. Yes, it was a center right thing all along, but at least some progress got made and people weren’t dying by the thousands. So here we have the strange circumstance of rebels insisting on more corporate influence, more oligarchic rule, yet rebels whose own jobs are often in jeopardy.
In the U.S. however the oligarchs have a situation where the white population sees its share of the population shrinking, the sort of jobs its middle and working class depended on disappearing, while increasingly restive ethnic politics like Black Lives Matter strengthen the influence of the non-white population. The road to power still runs through the valley of white privilege though for how long is anybody’s guess. Uncertainty feeds the politics of ressentiment. Ressentiment is “a psychological state arising from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred that cannot be acted upon…” Oxford online dictionary.
African-Americans and perhaps to a lesser extent Latinos look to different Mandates. African-Americans had the mandibles of slavery instead of a Mandate of Heaven. Latinos had sufferance for agricultural work, but met resistance to permanent immigration. Both hope for a new Mandate of Heaven whose arc of acceptance would include them. In the eyes of these communities the American Mandate of Heaven, its Manifest Destiny, has brought them suffering and oppression, not good crops and disease free villages.
It may be time to give up the shibboleth of democracy and ask the hard question: Is this an effective form of government for our time, for all of our people? If the answer is no, as I think it must be, then what form of government will serve all of us? This might be the real question rather than trying to prop up a republic with arcane rules that serve the rich and not the poor.
Where’s the Webb?: Fully deployed the Webb has come 684000 miles from home and has 214000 to go to reach L2. This is 76% of the journey in distance. However this is Mission day 15 and it won’t reach L2 for another 14 Earth days. Slowing still at .2358 mps. Sun shield temp: 131F. Primary mirror: -289.
took the time to consider my schedule. My 
At the Modern Bungalow I picked out a rocker, a coffee table, a chandelier, and a standing lamp. Found an Arts and Crafts clock with a Turtle in ceramic tile and bought that, too. Kate’s totem animal was the Turtle, slow and steady. The clock will give the new living room a definite Kate accent. I scheduled delivery for early February, a birthday present to myself and well after I’ve reestablished myself in the new kitchen.
The Webb. With all of the turmoil and division roiling the political landscape it sure felt good to see a BIG project like the Webb get through launch and deployment. So many of my friends also seem enthralled with this new tool for deep space observation. A lot of its work will be in spectra of light that human eyes cannot see.