Daily Archives: July 30, 2014

Garden, Great Wheel, Science

Nocturne

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Summer                                                                  Lughnasa Moon

The days continue to grow shorter. The yellow orb in the middle of the round calendar has begun to pull away toward the center, indicating less sunlight during a 24 hour period. This change is not far advanced, though we have already lost 50 minutes of sunlight since June 25th. The sun’s recession from our day will continue until December 21. On that day we will have 8 hours and 47 minutes of sunlight compared to June 25th’s 15 hours and 35 minutes.

(Hay Harvest, Camille Pissaro, 1901)

The harvest points to the same outcome. The plants we grow here have to fit their reproductive lives into this change, utilizing the sun’s fullness during June, July and August. Then, the flowering and making of seed bearing fruits or pods or increased roots needs to be finishing, otherwise the seeds and their containers will not be ready for September’s chill and October’s frost.

The vegetables are a calendar, too, marking time with their cycles of growth, fruiting and decay. Many of our onions are drying in the shed. About half of the garlic and another large batch of onions are curing in the sun, then they’ll go in the shed, too. The sun, the winds, the temperatures, the weather all change, too, bringing with them the seasons we know. This is the source of the ur-faith, the one before all others and the one common enough and true enough to do even if nothing all else is added.

Commentary on the news, GeekWorld

Streaming

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Summer                                                                          Lughnasa Moon

Turning up the nozzle on the firehose. I read three newspapers daily: the NYT, the Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. In addition I read several magazine articles a day, many from the New York Review of Books, but many from other sources discovered through web-site aggregators. The one I currently use is called Feedly. Wired and Foreign Policy are the two other paper magazine subscriptions I have, only recently having canceled my long-time subscription to the Economist.  I’m also always reading at least one book on my Kindle, sometimes two.

We live in the golden age of science fiction television shows, as I said a while back, but we also live in the golden age of information access. The plethora of good science fiction means some get missed; the plethora of information available has created a perverse problem geometrically more complex than the science fiction one.

On Feedly I have eight categories of websites: stuff, technology, politics, science, magazines (the information aggregrators of the 20th century), philosophy and climate change. I could have double that with no difficulty. Feedly allows me to quickly browse topics and articles to see if there’s something I want to read.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I could spend all day, every day, simply staying abreast of the things I care about. Obviously, this is a problem. It leaves no room for action, no room for work or domestic life. I can only absorb information at some finite rate, whatever that rate is. And I can only absorb, retain and understand an even smaller amount.

This leads obviously to a need to curate (overused, I know, but apt here) information sources and within them categories of information. How do I do that? Frankly, I have no good solutions. I’m often left at some point during the day deciding to quit reading to do something else: Latin, garden, pack, write my own information to add to the flood, think. But when I decide to quit it’s because there is always more, and more easily available. I don’t have to wait a month for a magazine to come, or a day for a newspaper to come. I don’t rely on hourly news digests by radio nor any of the various TV news broadcasts. These latter two are far too broad and shallow for my tastes.

This needs a solution, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.

 

 

 

Faith and Spirituality

Inner Life

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Summer                                                                 Lughnasa Moon

Gosh. Got off on a philosophical, faith oriented jaunt the last few days. I think that’s passed for now.

We don’t talk much about our inner life, mostly we just experience it. We don’t often stop to consider how unique and precious that inner life is. That world, the universe, that lives inside of you is open to no one but you. The outside world sees its effects on you and makes inferences about it, but it stays hidden. For each of us.

Even when we try to talk about it, we often invoke, without intending to, the Heisenberg principle. We modify it as we talk, changing our inner experience as we describe it.

No one else has your particular store of experiences, your emotional responses, your accumulated store of knowledge. No one else has your biases, your prejudices, your fears. All unique to you. That’s why each person is so precious.

If you can, take some time today and consider the realm in which you alone can walk. It is a resource only you can use on behalf of the world. And the world needs your special take on it.