Imbolc and the Snow Moon
Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. Shadow, her jaws, her claws, her intensity. A cold night. Good sleeping. Studying Zornberg. The Golden Calf. Cookunity. Shrimp and cheesy grits. American Idols. MAGA. Cousin Donald. $$$$. Matt Desmond. Jon Stewart. Working out. Finishing taxes and 529.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: AGI
Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.
“Being human means being conscious and being responsible. By becoming responsible agents for social change we actualize not only our humanity but also our mission as Jews.” Viktor Frankl
One brief shining: When I turn my coffee grinder on and it begins its whirring chomping way through the dark roast espresso Beans, my ear knows, just knows when enough has been ground to fill the coffee maker. How?
The human body. Talk about awe. It knows so much more than we realize in consciousness. Like the length of time it takes to grind enough coffee beans. Or, where we are in a room and what’s behind us. Or, how fast we have to go to avoid a car merging into our lane. How to move and twist for a layup. When we’re in love.
How to get enough oxygen to your brain. Blood to your organs and extremities. How to make hormones that regulate blood sugar. How to clean toxins from your blood.
Or your brain. Which makes a navigable world each time you open your eyes. Taking in the right amount of data. Not too much, not too little.
The new field of sociogenomics recapitulates Heidegger and his dasein. We affect the world and the world affects us. Through genomics. How the body’s genetic material adapts and gets adapted to by its social environment.
The wonder, the awe of it all. Kate and I often observed that the wonder is not that the body fails sometimes, but that it works so well almost all of the time.
Breathing. Moving us through space. Reminding us to rest. To sleep. Perchance to dream. To wake. To eat. Making use of the fuel we provide it through metabolism. Parceling out nutrients to each and every cell. Speaking of miracles. Of magic. Of life.
Just a moment: I’m imagining a new Whole Earth catalogue. Or, better, a Seed Saver’s Catalogue. With colorful pictures, descriptions of Seeds like organizing, working the political process, current facts about poverty and its many solutions, success stories from around the country and the world, resources.
What Seeds might you include? I would want information on the American Renaissance. Poetry. Slavery. Stonewall. How to grow a garden. Raise Chickens. Wild Neighbors. Climate Change. How to repair a leaky faucet. How government works. The constitution.
Perhaps some sort of AI way of generating new and more information, connections. A link, maybe, to the Wikipedia project.
Liberty and freedom. Communal responsibility.
How to train a dog, raise cattle. Do wildfire mitigation. What are the responsibilities of a citizen?
Engaging, short articles. Lots of images. Lots of resources. If possible, free to all. A labor of love of country and Mother Earth.