Archive for December, 2007

The Beauty of Folded Metal Blades

20  87%  27%  omph  ESE  bar29.95 falls windchill 20 Yuletide                 Waning Gibbous Cold Moon Kate and I bought ourselves a new knife set for the holidays, Japanese knives made of beautiful folded metal.  Boy, are they sharp.  My fingers bear the proof.  The slightest contact with skin and these knives cut.  Of course, that […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Christians Sued for Use of Allah

22  82%  25%  0mph ENE bar 29.95  windchill 22  Yuletide                   Waning Gibbous Cold Moon  My brother Mark sent me this one.  He’s on his way to Malaysia this week to renew his Thai visa. From a BBC Online article:  Malaysian row over word for ‘God’  (Religious freedom is guaranteed under Malaysian law) “A church […]

Read the rest of this entry »

The Stomach Has Its Desires

 22  85%  26%  0mph  NNE  bar 29.97 falls  YuleTide           Waning Gibbous Cold Moon  Excerpt of a poem by William Stafford, Choosing A Dog Your good dogs, some things that they hear they don’t really want you to know — it’s too grim or ethereal. And sometimes when they look in the fire they see […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh! Blessed Rage for Order, Pale Ramon

20  83%  28% 3mph N  bar29.94  falls  windchill17   Yuletide                 Waning Gibbous Cold Moon “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” – Wallace Stevens  excerpts from Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West” She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Minneapolis and St. Paul and Seattle, the Northern Sunrise for Literacy

24 81%  26%  0mph  N  bar30.22 rises  windchill23  Yuletide           Waning Gibbous Cold Moon Allison found this good news about reading, at least here in the Twin Cities.  The twilight’s pall hangs over the rest of the land, but not in these places according to Jack Miller. Residents of Minneapolis and Seattle are the most bookish and […]

Read the rest of this entry »

What Rough Beast Comes?

26 83%  28% 2mph NNW  bar 30.15 rises windchill25   Yuletide                           Waning Gibbous Cold Moon The assassination of Benazir Bhutto chilled me, chilled me more than the air temperature outside.  My reaction surprised me since I have no Pakistani friends, feel no special affiliation with the Pakistani people and know only a little about Ms. […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Will Reading Continue to Dwindle?

17  909%  25%  0mph W bar 29.99 steady windchill17  A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.   – Friedrich Nietzsche The Twilight of the Books offers evidence of a decline in reading.  Here are a few excerpts to prove […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Techno-Lust Satiated: For Now

26 82% 26% 3mph WNW  bar 29.97 steady  windchill25  Yuletide                       Waning Gibbous Cold Moon A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.   – Friedrich Nietzsche 2007 saw the Ellis-Olson household become late adopters in two of the more dynamic techno-revolutions abroad in […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Time Slows, Becomes Sacred

25  93%  26%  0mph  NNW bar 30.05 steady  windchill25  Yuletide                         The Full Cold Moon Go now, Christ’s Mass has ended.  This day devoted, on the one hand, to the infant who would become a world changer, and, on the other, to a joyful orgy of celebration, much like the Roman Saturnalia, comes to an […]

Read the rest of this entry »

A Quiet Christmas Eve

16  88%  23%  0mph E  bar 29.99 falls  windchill16   Winter                            The Full Cold Moon Lydia brought some gifts over from the Perlicks, a bottle of wine and two first day covers and whole sheets of stamps, Kate’s with a dreidel and mine with Dell Superheroes.  Got us pegged. Finally, I’ve found a combination […]

Read the rest of this entry »