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  • Incremental Change

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Paul. Cold again. Working on my week kavannah. Not going well. Borzoi. Irish Wolfhounds. Whippets. Akitas. German Wirehairs. Coyote Hound/IW mix. Dogs of all sorts and sizes. Dogs I’ve known and loved. Dogs I haven’t known but would love if given the chance. High Mountain Winds. Shirley Waste. School Bus Drivers. Snow Plow Drivers. Rural Mail carriers. Doing jobs that make our lives easier.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: History

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Differences   Haarecha shel machloket

    One brief shining: How to see the humanity in the inhumane, how to see kindness in the cruel, how to see truth in the liar, how to know the faith in the hypocrite, how to find justice in the unjust, how to do all these things without losing a sense of outrage and personal conviction about inhumanity, cruelty, lies, hypocrisy, injustice will be the challenge not only of this week’s kavannah, but a work of the next four long years. At least for me.

     

    I freely and without reservation admit that yesterday’s post did not advance my appreciation of the differences I find between my own values and cousin Donald and his crew. Satire is not kind. Can be cruel. At best, even if it is these two, it neither lies nor is unjust.

    When drill, baby, drill becomes a battle cry, I can acknowledge my own complicity in our fossil fuel supported economy. When a flat, uninformed dictat like: From this day forward there are only two genders, male and female, in America comes out of the mouth of a President on inauguration day, I can hear the pleading for a simpler, easier to understand relational world. When racial justice will occur in a color-blind, meritocratic society, I can feel the fear of the other advancing, gaining traction. When the leader of the law and order party pardons those who assaulted officers of the law, well, you got me here. How do we square that circle?

    What I’m trying to say is this. Even in the darkest of his and his minions purposes, there lies a sentiment or conviction I can find within myself. In this way I can stay in touch with the humanity of Stephen Miller. Bannon. The Q-Anon shaman. Does this change my direct opposition to their actions, their intended actions? Not at all.

    We serve different gods. My god lives and acts only through human and natural life, through the processes and systems of the natural word. My god opposes inhumanity, cruelty, injustice, lies, and hypocrisy. But not the humanity of those caught up in these acts.

    Not knowing this is the abyss of which Nietzsche spoke, the one that stares back. And the monster that when fighting you do not want to become.

    Mussar suggests small, incremental changes get us where we need to go. This is my small change today. Acknowledging the need for this sort of reflection about our public life. Amen.

     


    Mussar Politics

  • New Apostolic Reformation. Oh my.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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?


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  • Meh in the rearview. For now.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Full Quarter Century Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Full Moon. Cold night. 4 degrees. Good sleeping. Celebrex twice daily now. Chronic pain. Snow. Moving stuff around. Brings George Carlin to mind. Carlin and Monty Python. Douglas Adams. The trinity of comedy for me. Exodus parshas begin this week. Zohar, all 12 volumes. Clearing space for study. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Korea. Mary in Brisbane. Mark in Al Kharj. Diane, healing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grocery pickup

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Year Tarot: The Archer

    Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

    One brief shining: A new Dell desktop sits nearby, still in its substantial box, waiting to get lifted out, placed next to my old Dell desktop so the transfer of files can begin, underwriting in its newness the sense within me, reinforced by my Tarot year card, the Archer, that this will be an important year for me: “This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”

     

    Yes, the period of meh has receded. Encouraged by learning that my aorta won’t bother me. By writing stories in the Storyworth app. By leaning into my mobility limitations. By deciding to go for an ortho consult: right shoulder, left forearm and hand, lower back and hip, neck. By focusing on kabbalah and Torah study. By the new CBE men’s group. By my pescatarian (plus chicken, if nothing else is available) turn. No, not a hard decision, a decision to lower the number of choice points when it comes to food.

    Also by recognizing, even more, the value of my mornings. And further, by the decision to move my home gym down to Kate’s old sewing room. Concentrating my workouts downstairs.

    Glad for all this.

     

    Only a week away from MLK holiday. And, on the very same oh so ironic day, the inauguration of our 47th felon, no. Wait. President. No. Felon President. That’s it. If the long arc of history bends toward justice, the sag created on the 20th will have to be repaired.

    MLK. Malcolm X. I’m more a Malcolm X sorta guy. Sure, non-violence. Yes. As a way of bringing change. When it works. Where it can work. Not much good against despots, Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Christian Nationalists. Violence. Often counter-productive. Yet look at the Day of Love, as felonious cousin Donald has renamed it. That was violent, not extreme, yet that was the overall look and feel. No Velveteen Rabbit stuff. More like where the wild things are.

    Din, or justice in Hebrew, insists on right and wrong, demands restitution and retribution when a wrong is committed. (from Tara’s work sheet on rachamim).

    This image puts the Wanderer’s Journey overlaid on the ten sefirot of Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. Though interesting for that reason I want to focus on the line between Chesed, #4, and Gevurah, #5. Chesed is loving kindness and Gevurah is strength, boundaries, the law. If rachamim, compassion, were placed on here it would be on the midline between Chesed and Gevurah, blending the attributes of strength and boundaries with loving kindness.

    Realized in reading Tara’s notes that I’m a left side of the tree guy. More severe and punishing in my approach to injustices. Which I think is appropriate for public and systemic wrongs. Rabbi Jamie, I think, is more of a right side of the tree guy. Loving kindness and compassion as first approaches. Which I think are more appropriate for individual and small group situations.


    Fourth Phase Judaism Kabbalah Tarot

  • Rachamim

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the almost full Quarter Century Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Vince and his friends. Their muscles. Moving day for my home gym. A couple of chairs. My new computer. The complete Pritzker Zohar. My classroom for the next few years. Year Tarot: The Archer, #7. Life Tarot: The Wheel, #10, and a shadow card, The Wanderer, #1. Wildwood Tarot. Going deeper, yet staying on the surface. Ruby and her Mountain ways. Talmud Torah

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leaning in to mobility limitations

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Year card: The Archer, #7  “The Archer is located on the spring equinox, March 21. The time this card represents is sunrise. The Archer belongs to the Air element, bringing creative energy and inspiration. This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”  TarotX.net

    Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

    One brief shining: Seeing my son over the thousands of miles, listening to him describe his life and work, hearing his melody loud and clear, a strong man, dedicated, caring, loving, thoughtful, a tune marked by doggedness and intelligence, commitment, warrior energy.

     

    Here is the illustration in the style of an ukiyo-e print, visually interpreting the nurturing and generative qualities of compassion.

    This new practice for the month, listening for the melody of the other, has proved challenging to recall. Its purpose is to train my rachamim muscle, my compassion, over against my din muscle, my justice muscle. Justice somehow got wired into my soul from a young age. Always ready to judge and enter the fight on behalf of others. Compassion came later, or at least in much smaller emergences than my desire to stop the war, further women’s rights, block capitalist greed, build affordable housing.

    As I’ve aged, compassion (rachamim) has pushed its way forward. Perhaps because I have needed more compassion. Perhaps because aging can induce, and has for me, vulnerability. Life contains fewer and fewer chances, contains more and more tragedy and chaos. Reduced energy, at least for me, plays a role here, too. I don’t have the get up and struggle sort of vitality, physically, that I used to have. Also friendships and acquaintances have risen to top priority in my life. Following only family. To retain and sustain relationships compassion must show up first.

    Did that shoulder slump? Is her head slightly tilted down? Is there a tightness in his voice? That foot tapping. Clock watching. Smiling without sarcasm. She leaned her head suddenly on to my shoulder. What do I know of the composer? What’s likely influencing this melody? Is it one I’ve heard before? Is it new? Is it shrill? Or is it like morning Bird song? My eye can be, must be my ear.

    Both rachamim and the Hebrew word for womb share the same root. What can we imagine from this? Does compassion have a generative quality, creating a womb-like space for another’s soul to grow? Does compassion nurture over time, making it a necessary element of every interaction with another? Frequent exposure to your compassion may be the fertile Soil another’s soul needs to flourish.

    Sometime I’ll write about din. Which sets aside compassion in the interests of equity, fairness, fighting oppression. Not today.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Mussar

  • Listen to the Melody of Others

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. CBE. New Dell tower. Warmer. But not too warm. Salmon. Asparagus. Baked Potato. Better. Ann, palliative care nurse. Leaving. New nurse in February. Sore shoulder and left forearm. Arthritis in my right hip? Diane and her shoulder. Mark in Al Kharj. Lodgepoles and Aspens in Winter. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox and Mountain Lions. Bears hibernating. Humans with higher heating bills.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Personal Computers

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for the 7 lifetimes in this January 11th life-January 18th week: Wholeness and Peacefulness – shleimut

    One brief shining: A knock on the door, a young East Indian man in a Federal Express shirt holding up a small screen for my signature, where do you want it, and he carried my new computer upstairs to my home office, solving the first problem I would have had with it.

     

    Here’s the updated illustration showing the stressed physicians in a medieval illuminated manuscript style, now highlighting their anxiety and overwhelming work conditions.

    In the way of the medical world these days. Ann, my palliative care nurse whom I’ve seen four times, resigned her position. Moving on. As did Kristen, my former PCP. And Lisa and Susan, other former PCP’s, and Eigner, my urologist, and Bret, the young ophthalmologist who went back home to North Carolina during Covid. And Charlie Petersen before all of them, moving to Colorado, and Tom Davis after him.

    I had one doctor my whole childhood. Dr. Gaunt. Whose son Mike was in my class. When I left Alexandria, he was still at work in his office, in a converted house; I remember it smelled of alcohol, he had a nurse in white with the little cap, glass jars of cotton bowls and syringes so big.

    Not today’s medicine. Hospitals are understaffed. Physicians find working for corporate entities like Kaiser and Optum and Allina stressful. No longer able to practice medicine, rather having to practice assembly line healing, pushing patients through in shorter and shorter visits. Revenue capture now the main goal, not health.

    I get the churn in this environment. Again, though I am anti-murder-as we all should be-I understand Luigi Mangione’s frustration. He is not alone.

     

    Here is the image in the style of Albrecht Dürer, illustrating the concept of active, caring listening through harmonious interaction and natural surroundings.

    Today we’ll study the last parsha in Genesis: Vayechi, He lived. The story of Jacob’s death and Joseph’s, too. A story full of pathos as Jacob blesses his sons, claims Joseph’s sons as his own, then, “…is gathered to his ancestors.” The last line of the book of Genesis: “Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

    There is no mention in the Joseph story of slavery. This is odd since the next book in the Torah is Exodus. In other words the story goes from saving Jacob and his sons, patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, by a big move to Egypt and then to the story of their enslavement and later liberation that defines the Jewish people down to this day.

    You may recall my practice from the last month, to say, “This too is for the good.” especially in situations I might consider negative or even bad. One way to look at the book of Genesis, from the Garden of Eden and eating from the tree of good and evil, down to Joseph placed in a coffin is as a sequence of this too is for the good moments.

    BTW: my practice for this month is to first listen to the melody of others.


    Health Judaism Mussar Torah

  • Men. In their awkwardness. Beautiful.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and a beautiful crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Men’s group at CBE. Flat bread with lox and onion. Pescatarians. Ruth skiing. Such joy. Gabe and his puzzles. 9 degrees. New Snow. Driving in the dark. A boost. Diet. Changing. Matt. Rob. Bill. Jamie.  The mesh bag. Neck weakness. January 20th.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, struggling with their hearts

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 5th life: Persistence

    One brief shining: Drove back last night from the men’s group at CBE graced by the waxing crescent of the Quarter Century Moon; its soft light radiated by a Mountain Fog illuminating the Arapaho National Forest and the curves of Brook Forest Drive, then Black Mountain Drive until Shadow Mountain Home appeared out of the mist, welcoming me.

     

    Got a boost yesterday. Community working its magic. During Torah study in the morning I still felt pressed down, disengaged. Distant. But Luke came up and gave me a big hug. Ginny smiled to see me. I felt seen. Though. Still coasting at a slow low place when I left.

    Came back and did nothing until 5:30 when I left to go back to CBE for the first meeting of the men’s group. Buzzed the door. Got let in by a guy I didn’t know. Then I let in a  couple of other guys, neither of whom I knew. One of them, Matt, turned to get his nametag. Oh, good idea, I said. I’m usually good for one a day he said.

    Steve brought flat bread with lox and onions. Made by his wife. I brought my go to mandarin Oranges in my new mesh bag. Joe brought miniature rugalach and date bars. Jamie tossed a handful of leftover Hanukkah gelt on the table. Chips and dip appeared. Finger food. Manly interpretations.

    The conversation had that awkward I don’t know you tone, things held back, laughing. I only knew Jamie and Steve. Steve just a little. As we navigated telling bits and pieces of our stories, wondering who resided behind the careful words, I felt myself easing onto familiar ground.

    When it came my turn, the Woolly Mammoths came out naturally. 40 years of learning how to get behind the careful words, the fear of vulnerability, with other men. Men trained by American culture and in this case reinforced by Jewish culture that feelings were at best anti-competitive. At worst they could…well, you know, don’t you?

    Sensing the journey ahead and enjoying the tender feelers put out, an occasional smile, a sad look, a story that told more than intended, my downward emotional Dog began to shift to a Sun Salutation. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. Not all the way back to normal, no, not at all, but buoyed up all the same.

     

    Just a moment: Tomorrow some Christians celebrate the Magi’s visit to the lowly manger in which the Son of God was born. And Trump will trumpet the day of love which the bulk of us call insurrection. MAGA or Magi? Even as a Jew I’m going with the Magi.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Health Holidays Judaism Woolly Mammoths

  • Toxic. What else can you say?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    New Year’s Day gratefuls: Tara. Ron. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica. 5 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Snow. A new year. Kinda. The Realm. Von Bek. The Grail. Snowplows. Another Mountain Day, another Mountain life. Ruby in her winter shoes. MVP tonight. Family. Love. A new Zen calendar. Enlightenment. Not hard. Not easy. See what you’re looking at.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The feel of a fresh slate

    Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

    For January 1 life: Wonder, Malchut

    One brief shining: Sitting with Tara over sausage patties, home fries, eggs over easy, and sourdough toast, coffee steaming, the noise almost too much, I felt yet again love, again chesed, again the presence of one who sees me as I am and accepts me, as I see her and accept her.

     

    I promised something less abstruse today. Here it is.

    Carried the three largest split Oak logs in with the intention of burning them last night, starting a new tradition, burning Yule logs on New Year’s Eve since I missed the Winter Solstice. As in love with the night as I am, I no longer experience as much of it. I go to bed early, too early I felt for burning the Oak. Or, maybe I’m just too set in my ways. Whatever. I didn’t do it. Again. That’s twice.

    On a related note: I was gonna go upstairs and hit 30 minutes on the treadmill. Thought about it right after I got back from breakfast with Tara. Almost. Knew it was my yetzer hara, my selfish inclination saying nah. You worked out yesterday. You can work out tomorrow. Take a rest already.

    I read instead.

    We make these sort of decisions at bechira points, choice points, and whichever way we decide we reinforce the likelihood of making that same choice again. I had two bechira points yesterday and chose the easy way. The good news here is that the yetzer hatov, the generous inclination, the possibility directed yetzer, will always have a chance to change that decision at the next bechira point, reinforcing the way that nurtures becoming.

    Mussar expresses a medieval psychology, yes. But. Clyde Steckler, professor of pastoral care at United Theological Seminary, said you can explain the workings of the mind using any system of thought you want and still come up with useful, meaningful ways to understand it. Mussar exemplifies this idea.

    I no longer live in a world of bad and good, right and wrong, but in a world of possibilities and potentials reinforced or thwarted. Maybe it’s that field that Rumi talks about. The one out beyond right and wrong. Where we can meet. My practice this month helps reveal this reality: this too is for the good.

     

    Just a moment: Driving a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street. These newer pickups look like weapons to me. Their massive grills. Cabs high above the rest  of us tooling along in our SUV’s and sedans. And aggressive driving? Speeding. Impatience. Road rage. Seems baked into the I’m bigger and stronger than you are toxic masculinity cast in steel and named Ram. About to get stroked by the red tie guy. Who will attempt to make normative an unthinking, insensitive, domineering version of maleness.

     


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  • Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: This too is for the good. 2024 and 2025. And this December 31st 2024 life. 8 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Von Bek. The War Hound and the World’s Pain. The Psalms. Bob Dylan. The Band. Ain’t No Grave. The Blues. Jazz. Jefferson Airplane. The Doors. Led Zeppelin. Ginger Baker. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Slipping quietly into the next year.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

    Kavannah: Persistence and Joy

    prompt: A vintage father time with sickle and an infant new year

    One brief shining: How to encapsulate a year in one sentence, a challenge, perhaps remembering a Bar Mitzvah with friends and family present, a changed arc for cancer, a couple of months of low feeling, many breakfasts and lunches and zoom calls, visiting Ruth in Boulder, Gabe solving puzzles, many visits from my Mule Deer friends, the Mountains remaining-steady, solid, reliable-Great Sol and Good Night, Orion’s return, all while turning 77. Whee!

     

    As the Zen calendar from Tom says:

    This year,

    yes, even this year,

    has drawn to its close.   Buson

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Japan’s Kano school, visually interpreting your evocative paragraph.

    Though age and wrinkles compared to that slender hipped 28 year old in his silly multi-colored suspenders and shorts would suggest definite linear time, no, I say no to that. I say live by the Great Wheel. By the telling and retelling of the story in the five books of Moses. By Sukkot and Mabon, Samain and Shavuot, the Winter Solstice and Passover. All repeating in a yearly cycle, spiraling through the heavens of time’s confusing paradoxes. Always ready to leave behind the hell of human insistence on seeing the profane where only the sacred-ONLY THE SACRED-exists.

    I confess I don’t understand how time can seem so linear yet reside all the while in an ever repeating, glorious parade of seasons and holidays, all of which may in some future Samain-see the problem, all of which may in some future Samain, be harvested for a final time as our universe slips into its own Winter Solstice. Only, if I have an understanding of it, to experience its own rebirth as a cosmic Great Sol, a Phoenix, rising again, still?, from the depths of a cold forever.

    All this to say happy new year! Let’s hear it for the calendar, for aging, for yesterday and tomorrow, all the while knowing we can never live anywhere but today. And not even today, but in this ichi-go ichi-e moment. Which will never repeat yet is eternal, never gone from the roiling, boiling mix of creation in which we live and move and have our becoming.

    God. I sound like a bad fortune cookie. Nevertheless. Yes. To all this. To however we are, whomever we are, whenever we are. Bouncing along jostling each other, holding each others hands, walking each other home, living with the thereafter, somehow, even if it’s only in molecular hand me downs.

    You out there. To a less abstruse post next year. Tomorrow.

     

     

     

     


    Asia Fourth Phase Great Wheel Holidays Kabbalah Paganism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Cough and Wheeze

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Yule Moon

    Friday gratefuls: This too is for the good. Even this cold. Good sleeping. Third day of Hanukkah. Creativity. Ron. Alan is home. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica and Luke. Handmade Hanukkah candles. Light Snow. Kate, always Kate. Earth. Air. Wind. Fire

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My immune system

    Kavannah:  PATIENCE   Savlanut סַבְלָנוּת  Patience, endurance, holding space; literally to “bear a burden”

    One brief shining: Sometimes your body signals trouble ahead, Kate called it prodrome, an early symptom(s) that catches your attention, and I had one yesterday, stuffiness and a bit of an ache here and there, uh oh, approaching cold, take care, rest and take plenty of fluids, don’t celebrate Hanukkah on Friday night.

     

    No harmonica for Veronica on Friday night’s Hanukkah. Had to cancel. So far a mild cold, but chills and thrills. Lower energy, distracted attention. No buzz. Back to meh, but this time with a physiological referent. Taste thrown off. Not something I want to share with others.

    Good thing I made that batch of Senate navy Bean soup. Gonna have some for breakfast when I get done here. Navy Beans. Ham hock. Carrots. Onion. Celery. A Bay Leaf. Turmeric. Chicken stock.

    Lying low today. Read. Michael Moorcock’s Von Bek. A Grail quest ordered by Lucifer. Yep, you read that right. A little bit of a spoiler, but not much. Probably some TV. Maybe movies from the Criterion Channel.

    What do you do when something gets you down?

     

    Slow writing today. Clogged up neural circuits. Colds do that to me. Mind wanders. I find myself looking at the New York Times instead of hitting the keyboard.

    Talking to Ron yesterday inspired me. Former script writer for TV. Actor. Singer. Entrepreneur. He told me that his brother is the most creative person he knows. And, he’s a physicist. Ron has a company he created that he’d like to sell so he can get back to writing.

    Something about him makes me want to get back to writing myself. He’s a supportive guy, kind. Ron’s in the MVP group and we’ve intended to get together for almost four years but somehow never did it.

    Relationships matter. Alone but not lonely. Wrote about that a couple of days ago. Having folks like Ron in my life is why.

     

    Just a moment: Still having fun with chatbotgpt. Reading a lot about A.I. It’s not a genius, NYT. If you’re a certain sort of knowledge worker, like a business analyst, for example, A.I. might be coming for your job. This Federal Reserve article mentioned the dramatic change in work A.I. will probably introduce. Veering away from the factory floor and into realms once considered untouchable by automation. Maybe radiologists? I wonder about paralegals, even some lawyers.

    I even found, but could never access, an AI Jesus that was created and deployed by a Protestant church in Switzerland. I remember also reading about an AI monk in a Japanese Buddhist Temple.

                                                               


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  • Hanukkah Veronica Harmonica

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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?


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