Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Poetry

A comma, not a period

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Jon Bailey. Detailing my car. Seoah is coming. Casa Bonita. Valentine’s Day. #78. Fitbit. Charlie H. Ruby clean inside. Avocado Toast. Lox and English Muffins. Ruth’s excitement about her new Astronomy class. Gabe. Coming up Saturday to interview Rabbi Jamie. Sue Bradshaw. Josh. Kai. Evergreen Family Medicine.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Marilyn and Irv

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion.  Practice-listening for the melody of the other.

One brief shining: Looking about the same except for a moon face, wondered if it was prednisone, my fellow traveler on the ancientrail of cancer sat in his chair, bookcases behind him, his lake out the window, and exhibited compassion, his melody a bit jagged after a year of death and illness, yet still poetic.

 

First iteration. A recruiting poster syle illustration of Mary Oliver’s quote

When Charlie H. said he was in remission, his surveillance pushed out to four months from the usual three, a sign of dramatic improvement, I felt an uncharitable son of a bitch why him and not me? I didn’t begrudge him at all the good news. No. Happy for him, but wondering why my cancer has proved so damned intractable.

Especially wondering today because yesterday I had four vials of blood drawn, one of which goes for testosterone and PSA lab work.

 

Reminded in that conversation of Paul’s online session with poet Jane Hirschfield. He reported two arresting sentences: Death is not a period, it’s a comma. And. Attention is your life.

second iteration after asking Chabot to correct the spelling of precious

A comma. “…a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence.” Oxford Languages. Interesting to wonder about that sentence, the one in which your life this time might be an object or a subject, a life acted upon or a life acting on its own. What is the verb in the sentence? Verbs? Was there an adjective for this life of yours? Strong, passionate, weakened, vulnerable, clever, unusual? What is the cosmic sentence which the universe, in its polyvalent, multivalent way, has written that is yours and yours alone? It may be the work of a hundred lifetimes, learning how to read your own sentence.

One more thought on the comma. Learning to read each other’s sentence would allow us to glimpse the narrative line running through your time. A series of short stories, linked by the main character of your Self which, when combined, would be a novel in many volumes. Can you imagine the shelves in that Library of Alexandria?

What does that work require? Attention. To your own melody. To the melody of the other. To the moment, yes, of course. But also to the century, the year, the day, the hour. The millennium. Not different from the work of seeing. And hearing.

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”

 

Just a moment: Welcome to the Year of the Snake. Although the Chinese zodiac correlates the snake as “simultaneously associated with harvest, procreation, spirituality, and good fortune, as well as cunning, evil, threat, and terror”, I can only see the last four in the American year of the snake.

 

 

 

 

Politics, US History, World History

Stupidity is dangerous.

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Yule and the 1% crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Sue Bradshaw. Kai. Cheryl. Blood draws. PSA. Wellness checkup. Hip and back pain. Charlie H. Ancient Brothers. Awe. Yirah. Love. First love. Sweetness in relationships. Mussar. Dogs. Their beauty and their majesty. Deer, a curious species. Wolves. Mountain Lions. Black Bears. Grizzlies. Wolverines. Elk. Moose. Chesed and gevurah. Timothy O’Leary. Dermatologist.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Driving down Black Forest/Brook Forest Drive with Snow on the Lodgepoles

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, Compassion

Practice for Rachamim: Listen for the melody of the other

One brief shining: Dr. O’leary had his little magnifying glass out as he looked through tortoise shell glasses at my skin while I sat on the exam table naked except for my underwear (really, Depends) and he would say, normal, normal, normal, then grab his green nitrogen bottle and say, I’m treating this precancerous spot on your ear, 1,2,3; that stung well after I left his office. A sweet man

 

Dermatology yesterday. Today Wellness check. Blood work. Visit with Sue Bradshaw. PSA drawn today. Conversation with her about hip/back pain, shortness of breath, and stamina. Medical tourism.

 

How can I, we, pursue our lives over the next few years with love, justice, and compassion? I’m thinking right now of cousin Donald’s executive order targeting transgender persons in the military. It’s quoted in today’s Washington Post:

“…It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.” WP, 1/28/25

I’m feeling the cold finger of Christian fundamentalism as I read these lines. Difference is badness. Difference is wrong. Difference must be sought out, guarded against. These attitudes remind me of Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous confession:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

These lines must be engraved in our hearts.

Trump and his Clown Posse have already come for diversity and equity initiatives and today transgender military personnel. We cannot, I will not, let this go unchallenged. Each time a different group needs the mercy that Bishop Budde pleaded for we have to say, yes. We stand with her. With all those vulnerable to the powerful and cruel.

We do not stand with the Billionaire’s Cabal that stood beside Trump at his inauguration. We do not stand with the red hats with black hearts. No to the Oligarchy and its defenders.

Here’s a quote from another famous Nazi era Lutheran clergy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Art and Culture, Fourth Phase

Mondays at the Museum

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Yule and the Quarter Century 4% crescent Moon

Monday gratefuls: Blackbird. Ginny. Janice. Annie. Vince. Diane, healing. Mark, teaching. Mary, waiting. My son, traveling. Cold night. Another full night’s sleep. Shrimp po’boy. Breaded catfish fillets. Chinese AI. Oh, my. Deepseek. Cousin Donald, America firsting. New computer. Ready to engage. Chiefs-Bills. Quite a game.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hawai’i

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving kindness)

One brief shining: The Blackbird in Kittredge has an outside host, even in the winter, though yesterday I was glad to see she’d been given a tent in which she could work in her shirt-sleeved Blackbird t-shirt, a tent where those of us waiting for seats could rest on white metal chairs or wooden crates.

 

Got a little way laid yesterday on seeing. Important, yes. But I really intended to write about art, the Docent years. So.

A person alone in an art museum looking at an earthenware coil built pot from China. In the style of Durer

Those Mondays at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Every Monday for a long time, years, I would drive in from Andover, listening to a Great Courses lecture while coming south past the ring road, crossing the Mississippi, eventually leaving the freeway. Parking in the parking lot near the museum.

Maybe the lecture would be on Chinese Silks. Or, the new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition. Could be Song Dynasty ceramics or the Armory Show. Whatever it was I filled a thick blue notebook with careful notes, soaking up the information, storing it away like a squirrel with acorns.

The Museum excited me, so many cultures, so many artistic disciplines, so many artists. From the early Mediterranean carvers of Venus Figurines to Van Gogh’s Olive Trees. The Chinese Jade Mountain to the Doryphoros. Three floors. Two buildings, connected.

No wonder that after the lecture many of us took full advantage of the museum on a day no outsiders were let in. Mondays were days when the registration department moved art from one gallery to another. Hung new art. Cleaned the art. I liked the scissor-jack platform in the lobby which carried a cleaner to the yellow horn like pieces of the Chihuly glass chandelier. They used small vacuums and feather dusters.

Mostly I wandered. I had my favorites. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta. The smooth, ancient Chinese pot, unglazed earthenware of perfect proportions. One Corner Ma’s painting of a Taoist scholar standing under a pine tree, admiring a waterfall. To have as I long as I wanted with a piece, no pressure to move a group along, no one to intrude on my, yes, I’ll call it reverie.

Each work that spoke to me was direct revelation from the artist’s inner world to mine. It was not like a spiritual experience. It was one.

Delicate works that had survived thousands of years after their creation. Some Chinese ceramicist built that beautiful earthenware pot over two thousand years ago.

The gratitude of the ailing Goya to his Doctor exposed in his vulnerable pose in the Doctor’s care. Kandinsky playing with color and form, moving away from representation.

I loved those Mondays and they remain precious in the memories of my life.

 

 

Art and Culture, Fourth Phase, Memories, Mountains, Tea, Wild Neighbors

Seeing, not looking

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Snow. More. Another full night’s sleep. In a row. Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar. Mysticism. Art. Lascaux. Venus figurines. Minoan. Grecian. Phoenician. Early Christian. Egyptian. Hittite. Babylonian. Roman. Celtic. Norse. Anglo-Saxon. Qin, Han, Tang, Song dynasties. Goryeon. Kang school in Japan. Ukiyo-e. Nayarit. Jalisco. Benin. Early Hindu. Nepalese. Tibetan. Nahuatl. Mayan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving-kindness)

Rachamim practice: Listening for the melody of others

One brief shining: Love that kid, my now 43 year old son, seeing him across 9,000 miles, his hair a bit longer on top, a fade on the sides, talking about Seoah at the gym, Murdoch staying on base for their trip, Hawai’i-a mutual dream, his transition to command, the nod to the Vikings living up to expectations, a visit to Minnesota to see his mom, old friends, skiing and his racing turns, sore legs.

 

No. Got that out of my system yesterday. Mystical me. Today, let’s talk literature. Nah. How about art? Haven’t gone on that ancientrail for quite awhile. Chatbotgpt and I have had fun over the last few weeks co-operating on image making. I provide the idea, 4o provides the image. With wildly varying results, as you’ve already seen.

Here is the depiction of a 60-year-old version of you in a room filled with traditional Japanese teaware, capturing a serene and tranquil moment.

A bit of nostalgia. Trafficking in the past these days as I continue to write stories in the Storyworth app. 14 so far. Story is too grand a word for these 500 words or so excursions on roadways back into the last millennium. The last century. More like lightning flashbacks, brief illuminations of moments of a life.

Thinking this morning about those Monday mornings as a guide, a docent in training, then a docent when I could go in for a lecture in art history by an expert in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts lecture hall. After. I loved the in depth, detailed way of looking that art historians and curators brought to specific objects.

Never thought of it this way before but a lot of my life has been about seeing, really seeing, what was in front of me. Yesterday I discussed the revelation I find in each and every instance I encounter. Sometimes I see clearly, sometimes, most often, through a glass darkly. Perception clouded by bias, distraction, assumption, all those ills to which the human sensorium is heir to.

Anthropology offers a sort of x-ray vision into human behavior, how culture shapes us, defines us, supports and limits us. Philosophy sees questions where others see answers.

Here is the portrait inspired by our conversations, rendered in the dramatic and textured style of Francisco Goya, reflecting your life and connection to the Rocky Mountains.

Radical politics means looking into the truth of our economic and political relationships with one another and seeing the patterns, the flaws that create distortion, inequity. Gardening opened my eyes to the language of plants, how they express themselves, tell us what they need. Our long interrelationship with them. Having so many Dogs over the years opened my eyes to their distinctiveness, their majesty as fellow creatures, my deep love for them.

Living in the Mountains has turned me toward Wild Neighbors, toward Rock. Pines. Aspens. Fox and Moose. Beaver and Marmoset. Toward Mountain Streams in their dramatic seasonality.

Judaism has given me new lenses for viewing friendship, metaphysics, history, tradition, and myself.

Kate. In a true love affair which helped her understand herself in new ways, to see herself, not just her profession as she helped me see and be my whole self.

 

Judaism, Kabbalah

Zohar

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth. New Snow. Cold. Full night’s sleep. Dreams. Alan. Acting. Directing. Singing. Dandelion. Evergreen. Ruby. Gas. Alan’s BMW. Electrons. Joanne. Taxes. Death and taxes. Diane, healing. Social media. Staying off social media. Gabe. Interviewing Rabbi Jamie. Breakfast. Peskyfowlatarian. Shrimp last night. Smoothie for lunch with protein powder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this new week: Chesed (this week, especially toward myself)

Practice for rachamim (compassion): Listening for the melody of the other (& self)

One brief shining: Opened the “very good” copy of Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar and fell further into a world of monsters, demons, divinity, and hints for seeing the sacred, following an ancientrail with trailheads in ancient Greece, in the Tanakh, merging Athens and Jerusalem, painting a picture that only the lev can see, eyes blinded by scientism and crude materialism, a cracking whacking inner smacking of old ways of thought confronting my deep desire to see what I’m looking at.

 

I now have all 12 volumes of the Pritzker Zohar, translation from an original Aramaic text compiled by Stanford professor Daniel Matt. He and other scholars translate the text and provide detailed commentary. This is as close to the original as I’ll ever get since I have scant Aramaic and only a bit more Hebrew.

It’s an odd experience, studying Kabbalah. At least for me. Its way of thinking and expanding and heading down unexpected paths often obscures more than it enlightens. At first. Though as I’ve gone on from the classes I’ve taken with Rabbi Jamie and David Sanders, especially with the Zohar, I find resonance with the wild speculation, leaps of thought, fantastic imagery.

Accused, I discovered in recent reading, of pantheism, the writers of the Zohar have felt and pressed their way toward insights consonant with my own. I’m discovering in this study why a systematic ge-ology, which I tried to write some years ago, couldn’t come from my lev. I experience the world as a mystic, a world ready to offer revelation at every turn, from a study of the Joseph story in Genesis to a Bull Elk watching me from the Forest’s edge as rain pelted down. Or the knowledge that in Emet, truth in Hebrew, are the three mother letters, aleph-the beginning, mem-the middle, and tav-the end, so that truth has to have a holistic context, is never a single statement or claim. Or the death of my beloved. Or the appreciation of sound as a creative force. In other words revelation of the One, the oneness, the unity and yet the creatively ever advancing all never stops coming to us, is available in every instance of every day.

I keep coming back to Rami Shapiro’s wonderful metaphor of each of us as waves created by the ocean, pushed up and moving for a time, then collapsing back into the ocean. Always part of the One, yet also distinct and remarkable, unique. Our distinctiveness never lost, yet also absorbed into the whole.

Art and Culture, Asia, General, Politics, US History, World History

The Demon of Ignorance. In the long view

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Jamie. Frederick Posner. Mindy. Ellen. Janet. Ginny. Janice. Luke. Findlay. Leo. Gracie. Murdoch. Warmer night. Still cool. My son. Rich. Seoah. Living will. Estate plan. Affairs. Light. Dark. Tao. Light in the dark. Dark in the light. Wu wei. Chi. Ohr. Shiva. Creation and destruction. In the long arcing spiral of existence.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shiva

Kavannah 2025:  Creativity

Kavannah week:   Appreciation of Opposition

One brief shining: Two brown paper bags at a time, crunching the snow on my driveway, I moved my Safeway pickup order from the back of Ruby, into the kitchen, yes you need to do these things, keep the muscles working, placing the bags on the  counter; after, I drove Ruby into her stall, gave her fresh oats and a quick rubdown, and returned to the house to put away my groceries.

 

Here is the Shiva Nataraja depicted in the style of the intricate bas reliefs at Angkor Wat

Hinduism helps me at a time like this. Tom reminded me of Shiva the other morning and I’ve stayed with that thought. Vishnu stabilizes the world; Shiva engages in constant acts of creation and destruction. Both acting over unimaginably long periods of time*, heading toward destruction, then renewal.

Seen in the context of a kalpa, what is the four year presence of an avatar of the id, guided by fear and lust and greed, not unusual attributes found in humanity. Especially in the Kali Yuga, a portion of the kalpa under the destructive, yet cleansing influence of Kali.

I suppose you could see this as the opposite of living in the moment. This way of understanding the cosmic cycle insists on embedding ourselves not in the here and now only, but also in the extended experience of kalpas and yugas. From this lofty perspective cousin Donald and his Clown Posse present as bit players, foils in a cyclic dance between chaos and order, a just world and an unjust world. Just as you and I do.

Here is the depiction of Shiva Nataraja dancing atop the demon of ignorance, styled in the intricate and symbolic manner of Hindu temple art.

In the Shiva Nataraja I have here at home Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance. We can imagine cousin Donald beneath Shiva’s feet. I’m even willing to imagine this demon of all thing’s petty as a cautionary tale in the oh so finite history of our United States. From the next century: Never again.

When we focus on the moment, we lose the breadth and depth of history, of time in the sense of kalpas and yugas. This can be a serious problem in that we may universalize what’s happening in the moment and fail to understand the much, much larger context in which all events occur. A French historian looks at the longue durée. The long duration of history. I prefer the Hindu version because of its cyclical nature, but my primary point this morning?  As bad as he has been and will be cousin Donald does not write the long arc of history. None of us do.

 

*The Cyclical Nature of Time (Yugas and Kalpas)

  • Hinduism views time as cyclical rather than linear. It is divided into vast cosmic cycles called Kalpas, each lasting over 4.32 billion years.
  • Within each Kalpa are Maha Yugas (Great Ages), consisting of four Yugas (epochs):
    1. Satya Yuga (Age of Truth) – the golden age of righteousness.
    2. Treta Yuga – a slightly diminished moral and spiritual state.
    3. Dvapara Yuga – further decline in virtue and wisdom.
    4. Kali Yuga – the age of darkness and chaos, characterized by moral decay and ignorance.

The current era is believed to be Kali Yuga, considered the final and darkest age before renewal.

End of the Kali Yuga

  • At the end of Kali Yuga, it is believed that the world will undergo a period of destruction and renewal.
  • Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, will appear. Kalki is described as a warrior on a white horse, wielding a sword of divine justice. He will restore righteousness (Dharma) and end the cycle of Kali Yuga.

3. Pralaya (Dissolution)

  • After the end of a Kalpa, the universe undergoes Pralaya, or dissolution.
  • Pralaya can occur on different scales:
    • Naimittika Pralaya: The end of a day of Brahma (the creator deity), where the physical world is dissolved but the subtle world persists.
    • Prakritika Pralaya: The dissolution of the entire cosmos into its primordial state.
  • After Pralaya, Brahma begins the process of creation anew.

4. Shiva’s Role: Tandava Dance

  • Shiva, as the cosmic destroyer, plays a crucial role in the end-of-the-world concept. His Tandava dance symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction.
  • This dance is both destructive and regenerative, reflecting the cyclical nature of existence.

5. Philosophical Perspective

  • The “end of the world” is not feared but is seen as a necessary phase in the eternal cycle of creation and renewal.
  • From an Advaita (non-dualist) perspective, the physical universe is ultimately illusory (Maya), and the dissolution is a return to the unmanifest reality (Brahman).

Hindu eschatology emphasizes the impermanence of material existence and the eternal nature of the soul, offering a profound perspective on time, change, and cosmic renew

Commentary on the news, GeekWorld, Politics, US History

Bearing Witness

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie’s translation of chapter 2, Humility. Orchot Tzaddikim. Mussar. All my Jewish friends. One last night of very cold therefore very great sleeping. Winter in all her cold, frosty, white, Snow-packed glory. My Lodgepole Companion. The psyche, a delicate and fungible place. Breakfast with Ruth on Saturday. Boulder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Memories of Gertie

Kavannah 2025: creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of opposition

One brief shining: The spirit of Winter barren Meadows filled with Snow while Lodgepoles gather it on their Branches until it weighs too much, then bending the Branch sloughs it off, I see the curved, cloven hoof marks of Mule Deer hunting for Grass, imagine the Black Bears snug in their beds dreaming not of sugar plums but that Hive filled with sweet Honey and the cold Water of Maxwell Creek, tasty Larvae dug out of a rotten Log.

N.B: I asked chatbot to illustrate this in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites. These two images are what I got. Not even close. Notice, too, how similar they are in design. I’m having fun with this, not always liking what I get, but fascinated by it anyhow.

I could, I suppose, ride out the pardons and the gender bashing and the crashing noises from DEI initiatives by watching Shadow Mountain even more closely. As in John Muir Law’s nature journaling for example. Or, I could lose myself in the study of Torah and the Zohar, kabbalah’s central text. There are, too, so many books to read. So many good TV programs to watch. Movies. Zoom calls to attend. Friends to dine with. Family to visit or who come visit me. Sure. Those kind of blinders appeal to me because I want to do them all.

There is, too, the writing of another novel. Haven’t gotten traction with that work for a while, but it could happen. I would delight in sliding off into a different universe, a world of my creation. Where I have real influence. Not saying it won’t happen.

Maybe I cancel my subscription to the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post. Listen only to tech and philosophy podcasts. AI is a rabbit hole I can happily run down for hours at a time.

I could switch my sleep schedule, stay up only at night. Become, once again, an astronomy nerd. Invest in a fancy Celestron. Send my mind and heart out to distant galaxies.

And yet. I won’t. Perhaps I should. For the peace of my soul. But. I can’t. I will not look away. Will not say I did not know. Did nothing when they let insurrectionists, convicted seditionists go free. Did nothing when they came for programming aiming for a Federal Government whose employees come from all sectors of our population. Did nothing when they came for work to realize the Great Work: creating a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth. Did nothing when they came for the poor, the wretched yearning to be free. Those who believe so much more in the dream that is America than we can fathom. Did nothing when they came for the citizens made so by birth. As was I.

You might ask. What then will you do? I will bear witness. Though I can appreciate the opposing forces in our own body politic, I do not have to let sympathy, which is the best I can manage, cloud my judgment. And, I won’t.

 

 

Mussar, Politics

Incremental Change

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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.

 

Politics, US History

Oh, dear

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Oligarchs at play. That hat. Barron. He who would be king. -10 last night, 18 this morning. Ruth back in Boulder. Gentleman Mark teaching future engineers. Mary in Melbourne. Diane, healing. Me, on Shadow Mountain. Great Sol. Sunlight. Snow. Grass under the Snow. Voles. Rabbits. Chipmunks. Salamanders.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Melania’s Hat

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: Barron with his oiled and brushed back hair, much taller now, stood next to his mother and her visible disguise, she Rosemary to his Damien, behind them those powerful men come to lick the boots of the orange haired, fake tanned one: Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.

Here’s the Vaudeville-style illustration based on your description. the first iteration.

The trillion dollar trio. Like Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Bezos to Musk to Zuckerberg.  They shuffled around nodding to those who have sworn fealty to them, dukes in a contemporary medieval amorality play. The royal family included Jared and Ivanka who were not named on their way in. Also, the two sons who kill large animals with big guns. None though, not even cousin Donald, who could match Melania’s hat. A model who understands the power moves which fashion can reveal and conceal. All hail the queen of mean.

I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to watch the coronation. But I did. I even listened to the speech. America’s golden age starts right now. I. I. I. I. I. I. Bad people. Bad policies. I. I. I. I. Drill, baby, drill. Look at me. See me. Acclaim me. And, we won’t forget God. Yes, he actually said that.

After his speech. America’s tenor? Sang of America the Great. Following him. The most chilling part of the event for me. A military chorus moved down the aisle starting their musical offering with the first verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

the second iteration. after I asked for a spell check

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

CHORUS:
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

As I heard these words, I knew who cousin Donald believed this song referred to. And I feared for us. Even for myself.

Amy Klobuchar, the relentlessly vanilla senator from my former home state of Minnesota, though. She who spoke truth to power on that accursed day. Reference after reference to the peaceful transfer of power, the value of the Constitution, the norms of our democracy, the people’s will. I was proud to have lived in her state, to have voted for her.

I think of FDR. A paraphrase:

YESTERDAY, January 20th, 2025, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the crudest and vilest of our own citizens.

Make no mistake. This man means to bring retribution to his enemies, succor to insurrectionists, and more money to the oligarchs who sat near him.

Friends, Health, Politics, Sport

The Great Game

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Monday gratefuls: MLK Day. Inauguration Day. Cold -9. Senate Navy Bean Soup. Another batch. Catfish fillets. Beets. Peskyfowlatarian. Fish and Seafood and Chicken for protein. Making life easier. The thousand mile journey to Trump’s last day in office starts today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: This land, our land

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: Oh, watching football with Lake effect Snow, Bills and Ravens pounding away at each other, two young boys at quarterback who came into the league together in 2018, cold hands and slick footballs, not to the death gladiators leaving it all on the floor of our modern day Coliseums, our American Plaza del Toros.

 

Here is the vintage movie poster illustration inspired by your description

We did not invent the spectacle of grown men hurting each other or themselves for our entertainment. Far, far from it. That ball game the Mayan’s played. Sometimes sacrificing the winners. Toreadors. Gladiators. Buzhaski, played with the headless, stuffed body of a goat. Or now. Motor sports. Rugby. Lacrosse. Hockey. Even Basketball. Called games.

Suppose if you wanted to stretch the definition we could include traders on stock exchanges, commodity exchanges. C-suites. Hedge funds. Anywhere men, almost always men, put themselves at risk for some reward. Always a reward. A super bowl ring. A bull’s ear or tail. Death in order to play with the gods. Living another day. Trophies.

I’d like to say I have no interest in such things. That men concussing each other didn’t captivate me. But it does. Athleticism, yes. Of course. But the brutality? That, too. A non-evolved part of my brain I suppose.

Feeling for Mark Andrews, a dependable tight end, who fumbled in the fourth quarter, and most miserably of all, dropped the game tying 2-point conversion with less than 2 minutes left. Glad he’s not a gladiator.

 

Just a moment: No, I’ve not forgotten. Today is the first day. Only four more years to go. I hope. A lot of excellent material being written about liberalism, Democrats, what’s needed to restart the engine of our democracy after all these would be fascists put sugar in the gas tank.

I recommend a book Tom Crane sent me: The Storm Before the Calm. George Friedman. Without going into his argument he predicted a transformational presidency after which a new American Way would arise. Along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt’s reaction to the first Gilded Age. May it be so.

 

When the polar vortex heads back north Vince and his helper will come. They will move the dining table and three of its chairs upstairs to my loft, shift some wire shelving to the weird niche between my window walls and the pony wall, then bring downstairs my treadmill (so, so heavy), three stall mats, weight bench, kettle bells, exercise balls. No more schlepping up the garage stairs to workout.

They will also move a TV into that room. And they’ll switch out my new Morris Chair, taking it upstairs, while moving my old favorite leather chair downstairs. Finally, they’ll lift my new desktop tower next to my old one so I can start the change over to a new Windows 11 unit. Not sure quite yet when I’ll get the new 32″ curved monitor up and in place.

In yesteryear these last few things I could have and would have done myself. Not today. Far too weak.