• Tag Archives male

  • Ecce Homo

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                             Valentine Moon

    Scott got reservations at David Fong’s, a long time Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. David Fong, Yin’s brother, started a chow mein takeout on the same location about 50 years ago.  This was eating in a Chinese restaurant on Chinese New Year’s, not eating a New Year meal.  The food was very good, especially since Scott came complete with recommendations from Yin as to what we would like.  Handy.

    Frank, Warren, Tom, Scott and I were there.  We shared our steak kow, mongolian beef, lo mein, honey crusted walnut shrimp, pot stickers and a crumbly chicken dish whose name I can’t recall.  You put the chicken in a lettuce leaf, sort of like a taco.  All of them were tasty.

    We spent a lot of time talking about grandkids.  Scott and I had a similar experience of five-year old grand-daughters who decided we were not “real” grandpop’s because we were not the biological father of their parent.  As with Ruth, this has passed in Scott’s case, too.

    Tom has set up an intriguing question for our February 17th meeting:   What does it mean to be a male in our culture?  He has also asked that we bring three images of men that will start off our conversation.  I’ve got a few posted here, but as I’ve gone hunting for images it made me wonder if there is a book called the male image in art.  Lots of such books for females, many of nudes, but of men?  A quick google search in the books section shows none.  Probably are some, but that they’re not obvious says something.

    Another thought that occurred to me, and it relates to third phase life for men, is this, what is our image of a man at home?  That is, beyond the guy with the fly-rod, golf club, barca-lounger, or woodshop.  And these are based on the silly, even pernicious idea of third phase life for men as the replacement of work hours with a favorite leisure activity.

    With no positive image of a man at home it’s difficult to understand how to be at home when one has left traditional work life behind.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Asia Family Friends Holidays Myth and Story Retirement Third Phase Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • A Magical Effect

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    26  bar steep fall 29.56  0mph NE  windchill 26   Samhain

    First Quarter Moon of Long Nights       Day  8hr 53m

    At last snow has begun to fall.  Already we must have gotten an inch or so and it may well snow through the night.  I have the patio light on so I can watch it fall.  The reindeer, lit with white l.e.d. lights, turns its head back and forth, its wire frame body now sketched in fluffy snow.  The lit holly and berries on the patio table also have snow cover, the lights blinking up through small mounds of white.  We only have lights in the back and few at that.   They do a touch of whimsy to the long winter nights.

    A gentle snow has a magical effect on the heart as well as the landscape.  It is one of mother nature’s outright expressions of joy.

    Tomorrow I have agreed to go to a workshop on dismantling racism as I wrote earlier.   When I was in seminary, I participated in anti-racism training seminars run by James and Mary Tillman.  I even traveled to Atlanta and went a weekend long seminar with students from Morehouse University, one of the south’s premier black colleges.  With Wilson Yates, a professor of sociology at United Theological Seminary, we created an anti-racism training kit complete with videos for rural congregations.  At one point I worked with a professional program evaluation company, Rainbow, and evaluated the work of the James and Mary Tillman programs in various institutions.

    Institutional racism and the unearned advantage of being white and male have been part of my political analysis ever since.  That first round of work was now over thirty years in the past.  It is a testimony to the intransigence and institutional nature of racism that now another generation has taken up the fight.

    Part of me does not look forward to a long day on a difficult and unpleasant subject while another part of me is eager to get back to practical, political work on the issue.  We’ll see how it goes.

    Kate’s neck bothers her today.  She has improved a lot in the last three weeks, but she has quite a ways to go before she can go back to her full time work schedule.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Family Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged