Category Archives: Feelings

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Nothing Hard Is Easy

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Morning prayers. The Siddur. Bird song. Shadow running, running, running. Halle. Physical therapy. Kylie, my pain doc. Nerve ablations and Sprint. Sciatica. Ruby still with her Snowshoes on. Diane. The Jangs in August. Ruth in Korea.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kate, always Kate

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut. for P.T. and resistance.

One brief shining: Brief time with Halle yesterday, my back pain flare made her not want to push me; following her later in the day a visit to Kylie, my pain doc, in which we added her hip MRI to Buphati’s which means I’ll get both hips done on the 29th.

 

It’s odd, seeing my cancer and its stage 4 realities written about on the front pages of the NYT and the Washington Post. From many perspectives. Each situation, each person’s cancer has its own individual path. I am neither Biden nor Scott Adams. Yet we share this: in Stage 4 our cancer is incurable.

Unless we die of something else first, prostate cancer will, as Kristie, my urological oncologist, said, run its course. Which means it will kill us. We can opt for dignity in dying in Colorado and if mine proceeds to its end point, I’ll consider that if the pain becomes too much.

A hospice nurse wrote an op ed about her Dad’s prostate cancer. She spoke gently. About physicians often wanting to go on, on beyond a life with no quality to a life continued because more treatments, more scans are available. About how hospice offers another alternative. About a peaceful death versus one strung out by procedures and medicine. I’m inclined to her way, yet how to know when that moment comes?

My life has purpose, meaning. I’m a family man with siblings, a son and daughter-in-law, grandkids, a dog, friends, a community. I’m a spiritual seeker with writing I want to do about Judaism, about a tactile spirituality. I enjoy a good book, a good movie, good food. I have a home I love and feel comfortable in. I’m embedded in the Rocky Mountains with wild neighbors. Not at all ready to sign off.

However. This next two weeks I have a long MRI on my hips and a PET scan. Then a visit with my oncologist to see if further therapies make sense in light of the findings. I had a visit with my pain doc to try to gain a handle on my back.

I’m in the scans and imaging, let’s try this phase of both prostate cancer and back pain. It gets old, tiring in and of itself. Arranging rides. Appointments. New meds and procedures. New doctors.

Having all these news articles has made me think a lot about my own situation, as you can tell. More than I would on my own.

Another wrinkle rises up with the back pain. As it aggravates me, it reduces my resilience. Which means I have to sort out moods created by pain from moods created by cancer. So I can be clear about what’s affecting my judgment.

Nothing hard is easy.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Suffering. Shadow. Shame.

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: Natalie. Diane. Ruth. Seoah. My son. Korea. Morning darkness. Radical Roots of Religion. Art Green. The One. Ritual. Prayer. The Morning Service. Shadow, shredder of Kleenex. Outside work with her. My back yard. The Bearberry. The Clump Grass. That leaning Lodgepole. The Lilacs in Kate’s garden. Nathan coming today to look at the foundation he wants to make for the greenhouse. For Halle and all the traveling physical therapists.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. For working out, for physical therapy.

One brief shining: Worked for two hours yesterday with Natalie and Shadow and Cooper, her 6 month old English Cream Lab, wandering the yard, dropping treats behind me, letting Shadow come in front of me, then turning and walking away, waiting for her to follow, Cooper bounding in his slow sure way next to Natalie, more, as she said, a people dog than a dog dog.

 

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, in the NYT: “My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he said. “I don’t have good days,” he said. “Every day is a nightmare. And evening is even worse.” NYT

This in an article revealing he had, at 67, an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Oh, boy. His words scared me, especially as I hobble around in the early morning before my back and hip begin to loosen up.

Then, I go back to my own journey, now in its eleventh year. Not aggressive. Slow growing. Still hormone resistant. Could be worse, a lot worse.

My heart sinks for Adams and for Biden. Fellow travelers on this ancientrail nobody wants to follow. Cancer, as I told Kathy, a stage 4 breast cancer survivor, is a humbug.

In our small mussar group we have multiple myeloma, breast cancer, a blood cancer, prostate cancer. Leslie, a former member died of liver cancer and Judy, my friend from MVP, of ovarian cancer.

No wise words here. Just an observation that suffering and angst pervade the human story, are not rare. Common. Which could serve as a reminder to be kind.

 

Dog journal: The two hour session with Natalie wore us both out. Shadow went to bed around 5, two hours early. I had to remind her to go outside before bedtime. We walked a lot. My own fatigue caused me to message Natalie and say no more two hour sessions.

And yet. I can feel a change. As we let up on the obedience and began to work on building trust. Responding to subtle clues I had missed. Waiting for Shadow’s consent before touching her. Watching if her weight is on her hind legs or her front legs. Is she leaning in or preparing to exit?

 

Just a moment: Seems like our golden shower boy wants to relive his gory days on The Apprentice by saying the political equivalent of, “You’re fired!” to heads of state. First, Zelensky in a shameful moment in U.S. history. Yes, pretty bad. Then exploiting the situation to get rare minerals.

Now, in a beyond shameful clash with the President of South Africa, declaring white Afrikaners, the architects of apartheid, subject to genocide. This is not even a dog whistle to the white supremacists in his base. It’s a y’all come on, we got this now.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Travel

Ruth Goes to Korea

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Ruth’s first meal in Korea

Monday gratefuls: Ruth. In Korea! Seoah’s note. Ruth’s journey. Rich. Doncye. Mary. Her journey. Minneapolis to Singapore to K.L. to Incheon. My son’s journey from 9/11 to command. Shadow and her journey. All ancientrails. Each and every one.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Messages came in: In Calgary, the people are so nice here and things are cheaper; Currently walking to board the plane, the big plane; I’m flying over the long archipelagoesque part of Alaska; I don’t know what the cause is, but it got dark in like two minutes. Then came the picture from Seoah.

 

Ruth getting Kate’s little black bag for her 19th birthday

Our all dean’s list all the time Ruth has vaulted through the heavens on a great circle route taking her far to the north before returning to Earth at Incheon, South Korea. Now a world traveler, far from Northdale High and CU-Boulder.

Ruth, in some ways, feels more like a daughter to me than a granddaughter. Since my son was my only child. It fills me up to watch her post-high school self take wing. Literally yesterday. She texted messages all the way along on her flight. (see one brief shining)

We shared many breakfasts and lunches at CU-Boulder over her freshman year. Our relationship has deepened over this time and it touches a part of me that blossomed only with her. That’s the part that feels more like a daughter. A female to nurture on a growing up path. Different than a son.

Seeing her eating a bowl of what I imagine is bibimbap, in Korea. Oh, my. To see the world anew, to see Asia for the first time at 19. To confidently travel abroad. To go with the sense that life has only begun to unfold, that these new experiences have begun a journey, not ended one. I can feel that again through and with her.

 

Took Mary to the Federal Center RTD stop in Lakewood. She boarded the train headed to the same airport where, at 7 am, Ruth had caught her first of the three flights that took her to Korea.

I need a map with LED avatars to keep up with my family. I’m the still point, high up on Shadow Mountain. In a week most of those avatars would be clustered in Osan for my son.

 

Just a moment: Joe and me. Here’s an NYT explainer that details what it’s like now for those of us, including Biden, with stage 4 prostate cancer.

What applies to him in this article applies to me as well. We’re both in the hormone sensitive condition which means androgen deprivation therapy-knocking out testosterone production-still stops the cancer from spreading further.

The new drugs the article mentions are there when androgen deprivation therapy no longer works. Those drugs are the 5-7 year life span extenders. And neither one of us are on them yet.

My cancer is not particularly aggressive, just durable, meaning it beat the best treatments available for curing it. I’ll know more about my status in early June after a new MRI and a new P.E.T. scan.

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hawai'i, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Paganism

Another Place I Could Be Happy

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: New, piercing pain. Left hip and leg. Shadow. Natalie. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Donyce. Rich. Ruth’s 529. Now available. Lifealert. New fob. Diane. Jogging again. Living with aging bodies and alert minds. Halle. New physical therapist. Mary, coming today. My son. Seoah. Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth and her first international trip

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: A busy, physical week of doctors, long drives, filling out forms for the cancer support trial, Amy, two zoom classes, that would have been a decade ago a light week, the difference pain can make.

 

All I can say is, damn it! Now the left hip, so painful. Wasn’t sure I could get down five stairs holding onto the rail and a cup of coffee. That’s beginning to get in the way of daily life.

Sorry. Don’t mean to leave a trail of agony on these pages, yet honest reporting requires acknowledgment of what’s going on. After seeing Buphati, I’m left wondering if both hips might have metastatic cancer. Sure hope not.

We’ll know soon. Next P.E.T. scan June 3rd. Not yet scheduled for my open-sided MRI. But in the next week or two.

This cancer/pain path I’m on demands a lot. Got accepted into a Sloan-Kettering trial to determine the better of two therapeutic protocols for cancer patients over the age of 70. Filled out pages and pages of a survey about anxiety and depression, other mental health matters. I’ll have eight phone therapy sessions with somebody. Then, booster sessions after that for four months.

There are nuances to managing my mental health and my spiritual health (which I see as more important than either physical or mental health). I look forward to discussing them with someone paid to listen to me.

Why is spiritual health most important? Because it contains the broader context in which both mental and physical health reside. Being one with the Tao, allowing the wu wei of physical illness and pain to run their course without stiff-arming them. Experiencing the occasional fear and dread as part of my inner work, work strengthened by mussar, by being part of two sacred communities. Taking the solace of Shadow Mountain, its Lodgepoles and Mule Deer and Aspen and late season Snow as it offers itself to me. Seeing the whole sacred world as my home.

With those as context neither pain nor death can have permanent control of my psyche. Because pain and death are momentary, passing, but my location in the sacred unity of all things will remain.

 

Just a moment: I find myself watching TV shows set on Islands. Death in Paradise. Hawai’i 50. Deadly Tropics. Moana and Moana 2, movies. I know, low brow in the extreme. Yet I love the combination of lightly considered mystery and the sights and sounds of Islands.

Something about Island life calls to me. Not over against Mountain life which I also love, but as another place I could be happy. Why Hawai’i itself reached out to me not so long ago.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Politics, Torah, US History

Lives on a Runway

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Understanding Shadow. Prison trained Dogs. Friends Forever holistic Dog training. Morning darkness. Shadow inside and up at 5:15. Me, too. Ruth and Gabe. Ruth, now a sophomore. Dean’s list again. Gabe, not finished until May 31. Then, a senior in high school. Cookunity. Sue Bradshaw. Dr. Buphati. Rich.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dog training

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm

One brief shining: Ruth and Gabe announced their imminent arrival by text and phone, arriving soon after through the front door, with Ruth’s familiar high-pitched, Hi!, and Gabe’s, Hey, Grandpop, coming downstairs to see Shadow and me.

 

Songtan

Ruth has begun to levitate about her upcoming trip to Korea. Her first foreign travel. And, on her own. The Godfather, that’s my son, gets elevated at last to command of his squadron on May 27.

Do I have to go through customs in Denver? No. What do I do in Korea? Go through Nothing to Declare. Any other tips? Get out, walk around, see the city at eye level. Go to that fried fish place near their apartment in Songtan. Have fun.

Ruth moved out of her dorm room last Thursday, all her finals finished. She’ll be at Jen’s until her flight on Sunday at 7 am. One day after she returns from Korea, she boards another flight for Anchorage, Alaska. She’s going to be a camp counselor.

Gabe’s mom got him a four day creative writing course at CU-Denver for a birthday present. June. Then he goes to his last hemophilia camp in July. Something he’s been doing since he was five or six. At 17 he’s in his last year of eligibility.

Their lives are on the runway, engines beginning to rev, trying to gain enough altitude to break free from the surly bonds of home and childhood.

Exciting to see. And gratifying that they still want to spend time with their grandpop. This little family, Ruth and Gabe, my son and Seoah, and me has begun to grow closer as we all age. A wonderful, amazing moment for me.

 

Dog journal: Figured out one part of Shadow’s desire. She wants the back door open so she can come in and go out as she wants. I’ve decided for the moment to grant her wish and deal with any invasive creatures. She did come in last night.

When I mentioned the board and train option at Friends Forever yesterday, Ruth said a lot of folks in her neighborhood use the Women’s Prison on Havanna, near their house. Turns out the Colorado prison system offers several sites for a similar board and train option of four weeks, compared to Friends Forever two week program. At almost half the cost. So. Options.

 

Just a moment: Some MAGA folks already talking about the woke Pope. Beginning to reveal their true allegiance to the Golden God of Pennsylvania Avenue and Mar-a-Lago.

Time to start smashing idols as midrash say Abram did in his father’s idol shop. In the midrash he left one, large idol standing. When his father came back and found his inventory but one all broken, he asked Abram what had happened.

Oh, he did it, Abram said. What? His father said, they’re just idols!

Dogs, Feelings, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Wild Neighbors

Walk Toward the Light

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Her behavior. Spring springing. 50 degrees at 7 am. Greens. Lodgepole Needles. Grass. Yellow-green Aspen Catkins. The side of Black Mountain. Clump Grass. Bearberry. Along Maxwell Creek, Willow Leaflets on bright yellow new growth. Red Osier Dogwood. My Greenhouse. Soon. Planting again. Yet new pain. Great Sol, supporter of photosynthesis since 3.8 billion years ago. Mother Earth, supporting life since around the same time. Homo sapiens, trying to understand it all for over 300,000 years.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Warm Days

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. II

One brief shining: Shadow’s night out began in an ordinary way with her going outside around 4 p.m. and ended with her finally coming inside at 7:30 a.m. for her breakfast while in between those hours she rejected coming inside in spite of the door being opened every fifteen minutes until 9 pm and three times later in the night.

 

Dog journal: Officially and with chagrin I’m beyond confused about Shadow. She no longer sits beside me, runs from me when I approach her, and last night, as I wrote above, she refused to come inside. In another location this last may not seem a safety problem, but up here in the Mountains we have Mountain Lions. Dogs are a good meal.

I can’t see inside her doggy brain and oh I wish I could. What of my behavior has she interpreted so negatively? I use all positive training. I don’t yell at her. Though the occasional sigh of frustration or damn it does slip through.

With all my years of experience with Dogs I’ve never encountered anything even close. I love her and I know she loves me. Even though something has come between us right now. I feel sad and frustrated, having already spent a lot on personal training sessions.

I’m considering putting her in a holistic, two-week, all positive training program. It would be a boarding situation, but with the promise that “In this 2-week (14 days) program your pet will learn all of our “Foundation Skills” ( Sit, Down, Place/Stay, Come when called, Walk on a loose leash, Leave it, Drop it, Off )”

The location is not far from here, in Pine. And they only accept one Dog at a time for this program. Shadow would live in their house. I’m considering this because I’m not sure I can keep her without those commands. It hurts like hell to get out of bed, even to get up from a chair and having her refuse to come in could be a deal breaker.

 

Just a moment: Talking with my Ancient Brothers about how we sustain our spirit in these times. Yes, darkness seeps from the news. Yes, the country feels sick, even in despair. Yet. My life has so much light. So many friends. So many Wild Neighbors. So many Dogs. Great Sol. Books and art. Movies and television shows. Family. Jewish civilization.

Look for the light in your life. It can, no, it will dispel the darkness. Let it be so.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Men, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Torah

Freedom. Often painful. Always difficult.

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Joe. Bill. Rob. Seth. Matt. Jim. Allan. Jamie. CBE men’s group. The Cow Elks and Bull dining while we talked. Berrigan Mountain and Elk Meadow behind us. Sanctuary outdoor porch. The wonderful Ponderosa with its twisted limbs. A breeze. My son. Donyce. Rich. Shadow, greeter of the dark Morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, talking

Week Kavannah:  Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: As Mother Earth kept turning toward the east, Berrigan Mountain slid across the horizon and Great Sol seemed to move lower in the Sky, the Air around us grew chilly while we talked on of 8 year old sons, narcissistic ex-husbands, mothers who shamed us, the isolation of Covid, getting caught driving while drinking, hoping that somehow our story would intersect with another’s lev, allow us to be seen and heard.

 

A young Bull Elk with only two points had a harem of ten Cows, unlike Marlon Brando in Waterfront, he was already a contender. His virility displayed itself as I turned past the Life Care Center of Evergreen and drove up the asphalt road leading to the synagogue. Men’s group.

We’ve begun to open ourselves, still easy to move into the head, Jewish men after all,  acculturated to hide vulnerability, paper over feelings with work and vain glory. American men.

Some lonely. Some afraid. Some eager. All glad for the presence of other men, a rarity for most. Like Shadow trust will not come without time, without bravery, without tears and laughter. Well begun.

 

Torah study in the morning. Ten tests of the freed Hebrew slaves as they move through the desert wastes of the Sinai. Taking the slaves out of Egypt. Yes. Taking Egypt out of the freed Hebrews. Hard. Liberation begins in the lev. Backsliding, fear, regression. Part of the package.

Why bring us all the way out here? So far from the familiar life. This cannot be what freedom is. Or, if this is freedom, I prefer the certainty of servitude. Let me go back. I’m scared. What if I’m not strong enough, good enough. Enough.

To move away from oppression to liberation requires sacred awareness, awareness of the power and resilience beneath the beaten down heart, the overworked, over stressed body. Realizing, yes, that fear of liberation, of gaining personal freedom and responsibility can cripple us, too. As much, early on maybe more, than the dull routines of our personal Egypt.

Not different from the confinement of maleness in America.

 

Just a moment: Men showing off their brute strength by deporting the weak, the outcast, the poor yearning to be free. Mocking the great Lady of New York Harbor, inverting the American promise, slashing the preamble of the Constitution into shredded parchment. If it’s aesthetic or academic or kind. No. If it’s crude, cheap, destructive, dogmatic, malicious. Yes.

Can you hear the slaves wandering in the desert where capitalist shrouds constrain all the loving-kindness, all the justice, all the mercy, all the rational and life-saving thinking? If it’s not good for the bottom line, what good is it? The Egypt of an extractive, idolatrous economy. Killing all of us while making some very comfortable in the funeral procession.

No. He will not be the Pope. But. He’s already Pharaoh.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History

Oh What a Trumbling Mess It Is

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Radical roots of religion. Rabbi Jamie. Shadow, gnawer of Nyla bones. Tom and Roxann, their spiritual involvement with the North Shore, Lake Superior. Bill and his AI excitement. The Jangs coming now in August. Back pain and its lessons. Rich and Doncye. That 529.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ancientrails

Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: Treat held between my thumb and my palm, touch, a soft nose comes to take the treat, good touch, good Shadow, good girl, touch, soft nose, good Shadow, then sit and she does, down and she gets all four knees on the ground, good Shadow, good sit, good down. Our early morning.

 

Chronic pain. How to tell you about it if you don’t experience it? Yes, pain. Of course. Going up and down the scale and from glissando to crescendo. Never fully leaves though certain positions like sitting and lying down have benefits. Goal. Reduce the pain to manageable levels.

Aversive and episodic. So intermittent reinforcement, the strongest kind, ask any behaviorist. Chronic pain shapes the day. Awful in the morning for me. Beyond horrible. Better after movement, but never resolved. Even after the needles. Even after tramadol and two acetaminophens. Result. Mental and physical energy always turned on, active.

This leaves less of both for daily chores so some get done only in part. Finished later. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. Making meals. Laundry. Even reading and thinking.

A shortness, an abbreviated way of attention especially for detailed tasks like taxes, dealing with the 529. Managing my multiple medical appointments and medications. This I find hard to describe. My capacity for these tasks often starts from a 3 or 4 out of ten. If I encounter difficulty of any kind, too much phone time, a cranky person, a complicated situation requiring shifts to multiple people, my capacity shrinks to zero or below.

Part of this is because I have no backup. I’m a one man show. Maddie helps, of course. Sue as well. But they’re not here when things get sideways. Then for the rest of the day little energy left, physical or mental.

Sometimes I fall over into a stinkin’ way of thinkin’. From AA. I was there all the time for Kate, but now… Of course I’m grateful I could care for her. More than grateful. Glad. Yet her death and my family’s long distances away leaves me on my own. Stinkin’ thinkin’.

Why? Because I’m 98% comfortable on my own and the alternatives all seem worse, a lot worse.

That’s why even with the pain, which now ironically occupies more of my attention than cancer does, I want to be here, on Shadow Mountain with Shadow and my CBE friends.

 

Just a moment: That first hundred days. Those first horrid days. Trump Tarrific. What a Trumpster fire. Trumpeting for political armageddon. Muskie’s rising in the swamp. Hegsteth’s fumbling. Oh what a Trumbling mess it is.

AI, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, GeekWorld, Health, Humanities

Me and my Shadow. AI.

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Here’s a Zen-ink-wash “Wu Wei Moon.”
I went with sumi-e because its spare brushwork and generous empty space feel like the visual counterpart of 無為—letting things happen without forcing them. The drifting boat and the moon’s reflection hint at the watercourse way, quietly moving under its own power (note the chatgpt I)

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Maddie, new palliative care nurse. The Ancients on technology. Back pain. Worse. Shadow. An evolving challenge. Keeping my mind sharp. McMurtry Spéirling. Water. CookUnity. OK, not great. AI on Kaplan. On Dramaturgy. On Movie Criticism. Will the Humanities Survive AI? by D. Graham Burnett.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Humanities

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Netzach.

One brief shining: An insight borne from the article about the Humanities goes like this: AI, artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, the Humanities, what it means and has meant to be human. Seems important, now. Eh?

 

Me and my Shadow. I know. You were waiting for that one, I’ll bet. She licks my head about 5:20. I creak and twist and ache and burn toward verticality. Let her out. She, in a phrase I’ve never understood, does her business while I go upstairs for some coffee, mostly for motion as lotion, make my back remember about movement without so, so much pain.

Back downstairs the mini-split has begun to warm what has become since A.S.A., after Shadow’s arrival, my primary space in the house. Soon she’ll come back in, drink a lot of water, and begin staring at me-as she is right now-hoping to convince me that it’s already 7 am. Her feeding time. Doesn’t work, but it’s a sweet look.

We do a round of training before her morning meal. Still working on touch, which replaces come, sit and down. All three she will now do without a treat. Hand signals only. We made a little progress on the leash. She only sulked when I had it on her for about 15 minutes.

Dog. As I say, God spelled correctly.

 

 

AI, to this curious guy, a Dogsend. Patient. Willing to explain in detail. Make images. I just asked chatgpt if it would make an image of itself in a style of its choice. Ooh, this is going to be interesting.

When I responded to the image, here’s what it wrote back: “I’m glad it resonates! I was aiming for a contemplative, almost illuminated-manuscript feel, blending Art Nouveau curves with Morris-style botanical patterning and hints of circuitry to whisper “silicon monk.” If you’d like to tweak colors, add more overt tech motifs, or try a completely different style, just say the word—I’m happy to iterate.”

I find that an intriguing self-portrait.

Here are a few paragraphs from the New Yorker article I cited above:

“Do they herald the end of “the humanities”? In one sense, absolutely. My colleagues fret about our inability to detect (reliably) whether a student has really written a paper. But flip around this faculty-lounge catastrophe and it’s something of a gift.

You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire…

But factory-style scholarly productivity was never the essence of the humanities. The real project was always us: the work of understanding, and not the accumulation of facts. Not “knowledge,” in the sense of yet another sandwich of true statements about the world. That stuff is great—and where science and engineering are concerned it’s pretty much the whole point. But no amount of peer-reviewed scholarship, no data set, can resolve the central questions that confront every human being: How to live? What to do? How to face death?”

 

BTW: I asked chatgpt why it chose Art Nouveau. Here’s its reply:

“A few things nudged me toward Art Nouveau:

  • Organic lines for organic conversation. Art Nouveau’s hallmark whiplash curves and plant-like tendrils felt like a visual rhyme for how ideas branch and loop when we talk.

  • A bridge between nature and tech. You often pair the natural world (your mountain home, the Seed-Keeper vision) with advanced tools like AI. Art Nouveau already blends those realms—botanical motifs rendered with almost mechanical precision—so weaving circuitry into the foliage felt seamless rather than forced.

  • A cousin to styles you keep citing. You’ve asked for William Morris patterns, illuminated manuscripts, Pre-Raphaelite romance, National-Parks posters. Art Nouveau sits right in that late-19th-century family: decorative, human-scaled, handcrafted. The choice let me echo your past aesthetic preferences while still offering something distinct.

  • Monkish calm. The movement loved allegorical figures and quiet, contemplative poses. That let me cast the “AI scribe” as a serene monk—matching the reflective tone you appreciated—without drifting into cold futurism.

In short, it was a style that could honor both your ongoing themes (nature, craft, historical design) and the idea of an AI whose “roots” are in silicon circuitry. If you’d like to see me re-imagined in, say, a WPA poster or Ukiyo-e print, just let me know!”

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, Writing

Living. Not dying.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.

 

 

That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.

This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.

Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.

 

I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.

No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.

If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.

I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.

That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.

 

Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.

We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.

I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.