Great signs from heaven

In the gospel of St. Luke, chapter 21, Jesus is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world  (Luke 21:11).  Most of the scriptural "signs in the heavens" have more to do with guiding along the way than with recognizing the end. 

The Shekinah glory led the people of Israel in the desert, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21).  The star led the magi to the Christ child at the time of His birth (Matthew 2:2).  The Glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds as the angels announced His birth (Luke 2:9).  "The heavens were opened" when Jesus was baptized by John (Matthew 3:13-17).

I believe the beauty and wonder in the created world are also signs of the Creator's presence in the world.  Or can be -- for those who have eyes to see. 

Or it is mere sense-perception.  Optics.  Atmospheric phenomena. 

I would rather live in a world where there is beauty, truth, goodness.  I would rather live in a world where there is meaning in such terms.  I would much rather live in a world where, when I see something wonderful, I can echo the words of St. Peter (Mark 9:5), "Lord it is good that I am here."

Even when it is something as simple as a sunset seen behind the grocery store.  

The love endures

I'm old.  I'm way beyond the Sears Christmas Wish Book and its pages of expectations. 

Maybe I'm not so much old as I am of very low expectations.

I would miss the lighted tree if we couldn't have it.  I would miss the lighted garlands.  And I am so, so grateful that, for the most part, I don't have to put them up any more.  Number Two Son did most of the heavy lifting this year.  As last year. 

I would miss the cup of extra-strong coffee after Mass on Christmas Day, if I couldn't have it.  I suppose I would.  I would miss having a warm room in which to drink it while the presents are unwrapped. 

What's the best part of Christmas?  We go out of our way to give pleasant signs of our regard for each other, and sometimes those signs are "Christmas presents".  Life is hard, and it is good to be able to make a little happiness for each other.

I read an article once by a bible scholar who claimed  the birth of Jesus had to have been either around the winter solstice or around the spring equinox.  I forget the reasoning.  I think the scholar came down on the side of the vernal-birthers.  Today of course "experts say" there is no reason to believe the Virgin bore the Child "in the bleak midwinter".   Experts say. 

There is the best reason to believe the Child has a December birthday:  He knows we need it now.  He gave us the grace of a time of light.  (Sorry, southern-hemisphreaks, we Nordic types tend to be rather exclusive, I'm afraid.) 

On this the third day of Christmas, the presents have been unwrapped; they are joyful or humorous or useful; they are pleasant signs; they are memories.

The light remains.  The love remains.

Gifts from years ago, gifts perhaps from those now dead.  Gifts that illuminate and guide us by the power of the love by which they were given. 

The light remains.  The love remains.  Believe it. 

Love endures.  

They tried to ban Christmas. How did that work out?

Christmas might be a minor holy day for English speaking Christians, if a group of Puritans hadn't tried to squash it in the 17th century.

Oliver Cromwell & Co., circa 1644, banned celebration of Christmas by act of Parliament.  The result, of course, was spontaneous attention on the part of the general populace to what might otherwise have fizzled out.  Who knows?

The active enforcement of the Christmas ban only lasted till shortly after Cromwell's death in 1658.

The monarchy was restored, and Christmas returned.  Loudly and drunkenly and accompanied by bingo, I suspect.

Of course, in 1840 Queen Victoria married a German named Albert, who had this thing about cutting down a fir tree and dragging it into the house at Christmas ("O Tannenbaum", remember?).  By the time Dickens indie-published his A Christmas Carol in Prose, the first Christmas cards had been printed, and the holiday was secure. 

The twelve days of Christmas need a revival.  For the materialist (neo-Puritan?) populace, the holiday is pretty much done by noon on the 25th.  At casa Crowndot, we like to stretch it out all the way to Twelfth Night on 5 January, the traditional eve of Epiphany. 

Temporal elasticity

Some year I should take a week off in February.  And make no plans.  Then it might actually seem like a week away from work.  A nice lo-o-ong week.  But do I do that?  No.

I decide to take This Week off.  And it turns out that, so close to solstice and all, the astronomical and gravitational vectors are all pulling the time axis of our dimensionality out of whack.  There are severe time-compression forces acting right now.

Sometimes the atmospheric pressure changes so quickly my ears just about explode.  It's like that, but this week it's time that's coming down like crashing surf.  At this writing, it is Tuesday, 24 December.  Christmas Eve.  I am not sure I remember how I got here from Sunday afternoon.  Yes my memory is that poor, but also:  time compression.

In the long run, scientists are able to go on treating time as if it were a perfectly even number line.  That is because it all evens out.  You see, once I get back to work, time will be stre-e-etched out again.

It all evens out.  Just not the way you would wish.

Oh, merry Christmas. 

Comfort Food

Seventeen years in schools.

It could have been worse.  I almost talked myself into grad school.  Halfway through taking the GRE, the clouds parted and a beam of light smote my desk.  A voice from heaven spoke inside my consciousness, clearly and distinctly: "You don't have to do this.  Just get a job and marry the girl."  After some bumps, I did.  And it's a good thing, too. 

Kindergarten wasn't so bad.  Half a day.  Baby boom, so the school was overcrowded, so they had half of us go in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.  We morning kids liked to think that the morning group were the smart ones.

First grade was the start of Gone All Day.

Even though the first day of first grade was a half day, Mom packed me a snack.  Just in case.  In a little brown paper bag was a banana and a Hershey's milk chocolate bar.  Eating that snack during morning break, I received a valuable blood-sugar adjustment, and felt a little more connected to Mom and home. 

Tastes, like aromas, can be powerfully evocative of memories.  

Banana and chocolate.  The most powerful comfort food in my comfort food arsenal.

Banana and dark chocolate, with coffee in my penguin mug.

Mom was born on Christmas Eve.  Christmas Eve dinner was always Chinese take-out so she wouldn't have to cook, and the kitchen was incongruously decorated with Japanese parasols after the paper lanterns disintegrated.

That's why I am thinking about banana and chocolate today.

My mother died suddenly during the summer of the year 2000.

This year in reading

One of the decisions I took as 2011 drew to a close was to do some non-internet reading every day. Little did I know that Christmas of 2011 would bring to me the gift of a Kindle e-reader! My Amazon Kindle Keyboard has made it easier for me to read without fatigue.  The ability to read narrow columns of large text takes me past the disability of my binocular dysfunction. As a result I might justly be accused of spending too much time with my nose buried in an e-book. (Witness the countless number of "home improvements" left undone.)

Be that as it may. 

Here's what happened in 2013.  The books are in reverse chronological order.  I'm not going to bother to put the titles in italics.

In progress and due to be done by end of year:
The Wouldbegoods - E. Nesbit
Soldiers Three Part Two - Rudyard Kipling
A Christmas Carol (with historical annotations) - Charles Dickens (Kathleen Helal)

These are done:
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
The Story of the Treasure Seekers - E. Nesbit
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll
Darkness Rising: Book One of the Catmage Chronicles - Meryl Yourish
Soldiers Three - Rudyard Kipling
Draw One In The Dark - Sarah Hoyt
Actions and Reactions - Rudyard Kipling
Christian Science - Mark Twain
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens
Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Stucture - Nick Schulz
Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles - Larry Correia
Cricket Learns to Sing - Michael A. Hooten
The Buffalo Runners A Tale of the Red River Plains - R. M. Ballantyne
The Scent of Metal - Sabrina Chase
The Gorilla Hunters - R. M. Ballantyne
Terms of Enlistment - Marko Kloos
The North Pole, Its Discovery in 1909 Under the Auspices of the Peary Arctic Club - Robert E. Peary
A Few Good Men - Sarah Hoyt
Norsemen in the West - R. M. Ballantyne
Five Children and It - E. Nesbit
Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - R. M. Ballantyne
Darkship Renegades - Sarah Hoyt
The Categories - Aristotle
Darkship Thieves - Sarah Hoyt
St. Winifred's (or, The World of School) - Frederic Farrar*
Hukata - Mike Weatherford
Puck of Pook's Hill - Rudyard Kipling
Heroes of Asgard / Tales from Scandinavian Mythology - A. & E. Keary
Erling the Bold - R. M. Ballantyne





Yes, there are a lot of "young reader" books in the list.  So? 

- - -
*WARNING:  Do not read St. Winifred's except as a penitential or academic endeavor! What a dreadful "improving" book.  In my case, the undertaking was academic, as it is mentioned in Stalky & Co.
- - -

What is in store for 2014?  War and Peace, Plato's Republic, Mao's little treatise On Guerrilla Warfare, and more Kipling and more Kipling!  And probably Erling again.  And I'm hoping Sabrina Chase will finish another book!

A father's heart

However it is that we store up memories from the past, the result of the process (if not the process itself) seems as unique as each individual doing the remembering. 

I have seen articles about brain research that describe connections among neurons in the brain.  One thing that seems to be coming to light is that repeated patterns of thought create wider and more interconnected neural pathways. 

In the quiet of the rocking chair a nursing mother may have time to "store up all these things in her heart" in a way that fathers never do.  During the ensuing years, does the mother have time to revisit and keep strong these treasures of the heart?  Probably depends on the mother, doesn't it?

The way a father experiences his child is different.  Think cinema:  mother and child is soft lighting and a camera slowly panning around from a discrete distance with romantic musical score;  dad and kid is stroboscopic short cuts from an action movie with heavy metal.  That's the way it gets engraved in the brain. 

The way a father revisits his memories is different.  Fewer repetitions perhaps.  Less time per visit.  Mixing in of current circumstances. 

There is / were probably good evolutionary reasons for these differences, and given enough time I could probably come up with a story.  But that's not what I want to talk about.  (This is the part where your curmudgeonly host reveals his hidden nature.  Aw...)

My memories of my children are less visual ("I remember just how he looked..."), less verbal ("I remember thinking..."), than they are other-sensory.  I remember the feel of the muscles on my first son's back; I remember the feel of number two son's curly hair -- and the impossibly fine feel of my daughter's hair.  And I remember (and recognize to this day) the smell of the crowns of their heads.  I am confident I could have picked out my babies in the dark by scent alone. 

Recently I was given a scanned picture of my daughter, age four, in a smocked dress.  I honestly can't say I remember the day the picture was taken.  I remember the picture.  But what I want to point out is what the picture evokes:  a scent (calling it "apples and some kind of spice" hints at but does not define it).  I have -- stored up and treasured in my heart -- the texture, the sense-print, and I hope I will never lose it. 

I believe in the resurrection of the dead.  In the body.  A new body.  Not disembodied spirit.  Calling the dead "souls" is a euphemism only; if they don't have some kind of body, they're pretty much out of business.  I trust I will be able to recognize my children, by sense data, in the next life.  That is my hope. 

Panama Independence [sic] Day

First Panama belonged to, well, whoever.

Then to Spain.

Then Panama voluntarily aligned with Columbia.

Then after a bit of global unpleasantness that involved, if I recall correctly, the Rough Riders and some Gatling guns, Panama became the enslaved chattel of the evil imperialist capitalist was recognized as an independent entity by the United States.

On this day in 1903, the USA recognized the independence of Panama, leading to the signing of the treaty that made the Panama Canal possible.  It turned out that having that little aquatic turnstile on the premises was a positive for the little economy whose major export had previously been malaria mosquitoes.

Here is a picture of a tiny piece of the impoverished victim of imperialist aggression:

 [x]


Of course later on Jimmy Carter gave away our share of the proceeds, paving the way for the Panamanians to become (arguably) chattel of the China Ocean Shipping Company. 

USS Alcedo sunk 5 November 1917

The terrain of human history seems an increasingly featureless as our viewpoint in time and space becomes more distant. 

Zoom in on one distant terrain feature, the first U.S. vessel sunk in World War One:

"Alcedo, a 981 gross ton steam yacht built in 1895 at Glasgow, Scotland, was purchased by the U.S. Navy in June 1917 and placed in commission as USS Alcedo (SP-166) late in July. She crossed the Atlantic the next month to join the patrol forces fighting enemy U-boats in the waters off western Europe. In the early hours of 5 November 1917, while she was escorting a convoy en route to Brest, France, Alcedo was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UC-71. Twenty-one of her crew were lost with their ship."

Waist of Time

August 2011:

 June 2012:

September 2013:

The evolution of the Crowndot jeans sizes.

Well, yeah, "relaxed fit" ... 

I guess that's because as I age I'm just more of a relaxed guy!

Left Coast Twilight of History

On 25 September 2013, the California legislature passed AB10 to raise the minimum wage to $10 by 2016.  The bill was passed in both houses late on 25 September and was signed by Governor Brown the same day. 

The signing took place in Los Angeles, not California's capitol Sacramento.

The minimum wage in California is set to raise to $9 per hour on 1 July 2014.  The timing of the first increment is calculated to diminish the felt effect of economic damage until after the 2014 elections.  The minimum wage under the bill rises to $10 per hour 1 January 2016.

The only news stories I am finding as of this writing (26 September 2013, 0740) are the bullshit AP wire feed.  I heard but cannot find in text some audio from the signing ceremony (the first signing ceremony in L.A. -- there will be another one later in Oakland) in which Governor Moonbeam basically said, "Oh yeah, and screw you, California small businesses." 

I remember back in the Clinton years, in response to being asked about the economy-crippling consequences of her proposed health care bill, Hillary Clinton said, "I cannot be responsible for every undercapitalized business in the country."  Basically that is the Democrat party platform.  Screw the job creators.  Because to them, there's no way to turn the graft key on small business.  There's no payback to the party on supply-side economics. 

Minimum wage laws actually hurt low-income workers as a class.  As the minimum wage rises 25%, watch while hours and jobs are cut.  I would be surprised if the first $1 jump does not cost a quarter of a million entry level jobs. 

Just looked again for the off-hand remark at the first signing ceremony.  Can't find.  Well, Governor Moonbeam can't be responsible for every undercapitalized business in California, I guess.

NYT: Which Planet are you on?

And which sun are you looking at?

The New York Times' Kenneth Chang writes:

A week ago, a solitary sunspot blemished an otherwise blank yellow disk. In the ensuing days, a few more specks appeared, but even a small explosion, or coronal mass ejection, last Thursday seemed like the halfhearted effort of a slacker star.

Say what?  While it is true that there have not been flares pointed at us lately, that does not denote a lack of solar weather. 

From the Big Bear Solar Observatory solar activity report:

BBSO Solar Activity Report 24 September 2013 19:21:45 UT
    Solar activity is low. No significant flare events have been observed overnight or so far today. No significant flare events are expected today.
NOAA 11849, N19 W33 (X= 494,Y= 217). Beta region.
NOAA 11846, S18 W13 (X= 205,Y=-402). Alpha region.
NOAA 11850, N08 E15 (X=-246,Y= 21). Beta region.
NOAA 11851, S16 E46 (X=-663,Y=-340). Alpha region.
Positions as of September 24, 2013 at 15:00 UT.
JV 

The NOAA positions listed above are trackable solar weather systems moving across the surface of our favorite fusion engine.  These areas are active.  These areas produce X-rays and particle streams that cause the current state of the earth's magnetosphere to be listed as "unsettled".

The image here looks different than the plain yellow circle published by the NYT. 

Solar maximum has to do with sciencey lingo about long-term solar weather patterns, not today's or this week's or this month's solar weather. 

Note that some of my links above will always show the latest information, and conditions change.  Talking about solar weather is still, well, talking about the weather.  If you hunt around the N3KL site or the BBSO site you can find archive information by date. 

I wonder what NYT headline we may see in January:  "What Lind of Winter is This? No Killer Blizzard in Weeks!"

My Daddy's birthday

I used to have trouble remembering to call him on his birthday. 

Since he lost his brave and all-too-brief fight with cancer in 2005, I never have trouble remembering his birthday. 

He used to say, "We should get together and do something together one of these days." 

"I'll line something up and give you a call," he would say.

"Yeah, I'll think of something and give you a call," I would say.

There was one time we met by chance -- at the cemetery.  It was shortly after my mother's death, and I would go and spend hours.  Pulling weeds, placing flowers, crying, praying, talking, crying.  I would pack a lunch.  Anyway, Dad found me there all red-eyed and weird, and said, "Hey, let's go get a cup of coffee or something."

But I just couldn't.  

Of course now I wish I had.  Of course now that the pain of that time is only a memory I wonder why I hadn't.  I beat myself up about that and many other things on a semi-regular basis. 

Okay I'm done here since it looks like I'm only spiraling downward.

Old and slow, old and slow...

I worked so hard.  I pushed.  I ran way past my comfort zone.  Every time I was boxed in, I put on a burst of speed rather than hold back.  I felt utterly drained at the end. 

And my time for today's 5K was slower than my last one.

*sigh*

American Dialect

Here, I fixed it again:

Remember -- or repeat -- history

On 16 September 1922 the United States Navy was engaged in assisting the evacuation of ethnic Greeks (mostly Christians) from what is now called Turkey. 

Wikipedia explicates a bit:

The Greek genocide, part of which is known as the Pontic genocide, was the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population from its historic homeland in Asia Minor, central Anatolia, and Pontus during World War I and its aftermath (1914–23). It was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire against the Greek population of the Empire and it included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary executions, and destruction of Christian Orthodox cultural, historical and religious monuments.

Worth noting:  when the terrible Burning of Smyrna began, the Ottoman troops had recently occupied the city;  the general officer in charge was Mustafa Kemal, called Atatürk, the "Father of Modern Turkey".  Non-Turkish residents who survived the fire, and who were not evacuated by the Allies, included Greeks and Armenians who were force-marched to the east, where most perished. 

The modern government of Turkey has never acknowledged the Armenian genocide.  This sick sister of Europe has attempted to distance itself from acts of the previous government.  How can personal involvement in genocidal acts be denied if there was a continuity of the chain of command personnel?  The genocidal acts were not instigated by some antique Ottoman rulers, but by the "Young Turks" that became modern Turkey. 

As Prime Minister Erdogan steers Turkey ever closer to sharia law, Turkey appears poised to claim its own brand of death-eating Islamism.

[photo]

Mt. Diablo Fire 8 September 2013

[source]

It's Jesse Owens' 100th Birthday

In 1936, the great Jesse Owens totally pwnzd the 1936 Berlin Olympics by winning Gold Medals in 100M, 200M, Long Jump, and 4X100M Relay. 

12 September 2013 is the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Owens is shown here on the medal podium after the Long Jump, beating members of axis powers Germany and Japan.

Reports were that der Führer was not pleased. 

Sucks to be an "inferior race", don't it Adolph?! 

[wiki pic]

Does that star-spangled banner yet wave?

On 13 September 1814, the issue was in doubt due to the British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry.
 
That event inspired certain lyrics, which say in part:

Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

On 11 September 2012, the issue was not in doubt at the American consulate in Cairo -- the star-spangled banner was down and burned.  And at the consulate in Benghazi, the flag was down and we had four dead, abandoned by the Obama administration. 

Today where the flag still waves, does it do so over the land of the free?  Less and less free, I am afraid. 

But by glory -- yes, by Old Glory on every staff and mast -- she still waves. My hope is that ours will indeed prove to be a home of the brave -- home to a people who act bravely enough that there may truly be a land of the free. 

In which we examine the principle that the grass is always greener on the other side

The short answer is, it really IS greener on the other side of the fence.

The cows wouldn't be straining their necks against the barbed wire if there was plentiful long green grass on their own side of the fence. 

"Ah, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, me lad."  I always imagine it being said by a strict Scottish Presbyterian uncle.  His meaning is clear:  "Be content with your lot in life, and change not your course." 

Which is hogwash.  Or, cattle droppings, lest we mix metaphors to excess. 

The reason the grass on the other side of the fence looks better to the cows is that they never looked over there, until the grass on their own side ran low.  It's a cognitive dissonance thing.  You don't look for something better until your current something good seems to have become something less. 

Personal example.  I run on fire trails.  The vehicles that move over these dirt roads make the familiar double ruts through grassy loam, hard cracked adobe, or broken sandstone.  A runner (or cyclist or equestrian) chooses his rut and travels in it.  Until the rut you're in starts to afford some tricky footing, you don't even think about the rut you're in.  But when you realize you're in a rough rut, you look over at the other side of the road ...  Mirabile dictu!  The grass really is greener   trail really is smoother on the other side of the fence road!

It seems that way, not because it merely appears  (falsely), but because it really is -- because it was not examined until you needed to examine it. 

I leave the finding of a moral to this story as an exercise for the reader.  Or just ask the Duchess. 

Stress -- can be helpful?!

I know.  I seem to be putting up a lot of these lately.  After ignoring this method of sharing the ongoing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of my life for some weeks, I decided it would be better to just share some content that I find interesting/helpful/makes me cry. 

Humor is where you find it

I happen to have severe binocular vision dysfunction.  My two eyes swim around a lot independently before they gather enough information for my brain to process what's out there. 

One of the consequences is that sometimes I read words wrong out of the corner of my eye. 

Like the line about the IRS misuse of power that said something about a midlevel  official (yes, the article omitted the hyphen), but which I first thought said something about a medieval  official. 

Ah!

Nobody is expecting the Spanish Inquisition!

Changin' my mind - you're doin' it wrong

That's when I realize how they got all that money.  They pinched every penny every step of the way till they could see it bleed.

Eleanor Longden and the Voices in her head

"Sometimes it snows as late as May, but Summer always comes," Eleanor's 'good' doctor tells her family.

Eleanor later advocates, "An important concept in psychiatry shouldn't be, 'What's wrong with you?,' but rather, 'What's happened to you?' "

Later:  "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed; you cannot humiliate the person who feels pride; you cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."
 
[UPDATE: the html embed got dropped; should be fixed now. 3 September 2013]

An evening Amtrak arrival

(Taken with my phone 25 August 2013 and converted to MP4 with VLC.)

Thursday Afternoon Trail Run

An automobile carrier (roll-on/roll-off) ship passes Point Benicia in the Carquinez Straight on its way to the AMPORTS dock 25 July 2013.

 

 

The base of an ancient bay tree has become ten or so trunks along the arroyo.

Looking up in a grove of old bay trees

About 500 feet higher than the spot where the picture of the boat was taken, we're looking northwest along the fire trail that locals call "the wall" -- that last quarter mile has most of the elevation gain!

And here we stand at the top of the ridge, looking southeast toward Mount Wanda.  John Muir hiked these very hills more than a hundred years ago!

My Dad used to listen to this stuff!

Firehouse Five Plus Two! 

That time I set a hummingbird free

One afternoon thirty years ago or so, at my previous place of employment, I heard a strange sound out in the warehouse.  A kind of buzzing noise seemed to be coming from the ceiling.  As I walked out and looked up, I expected to see some kind of electrical short-circuit.  What I saw was not what I expected!

Up in one of the skylights, I saw a hummingbird -- caught in spider webs!

The little thing was completely bound in silky webs.  It must have flown in through one of the roll-up doors, and gotten confused about the exit by the light coming in through the overhead. 

I managed to get a ladder that extended high enough that I could snag bird and mass of web with the end of a broom. 

I got down and carefully unwound the sticky spiderweb coating that had gotten wound around the bird. 

The hummingbird seemed to weigh precisely nothing.  As gently as possible I held it and walked outside.  Its tiny heartbeat felt like a vibration against my hands.  Out at the curb, I lifted and opened my hands.  The little creature stood for one second, then flew up and away into the sky. 

Writer's bottleneck

Some people talk about writer's block.  The idea is that you have a clean slate and can't seem to form any thought about what to put down onto it. 

For me, writer's block is more like what happens when you try to pour mayonnaise down a small funnel.  Or pour potato chips out of a bag with too small an opening at the top.  There is plenty of material in the queue, but it won't get in line and go with the flow. 

I started to write a post about grief a few weeks ago.  The words poured out at first.  I had all these things to say...  then I didn't. 

Have you ever mixed paint colors?  There is more technique than theory involved.  The result you get depends on the brand of paint, etc.  Last time I tried getting a creative palette with acrylics, everything ended up looking like mud.  Same thing with writing, I'm afraid: I poured a bunch of thoughts out into the open, and it did anything but clarify. 

Anyway. 

So maybe some day I will go back to those thoughts.  When I have thought funnel with a bigger nozzle. 

Art Criticism

[a repost from June 2011 when crowndot.com was a Posterous (R.I.P.) blog]

So this little communication-challenged man comes up to the parts counter at work, and I am totally not understanding what he is trying to ask me.  Subject?  Verb?  Object?  -- He hasn't filled in any of the blanks for me.
"Eesss a, eess, uh . . .  khow you say?  Uh, you have pepper?," he asked.
"I'm sorry?  Pardon me?," I attempted to ask for clarification.
"Uh, you khave uh pen a pepper?"
I handed him a ball point pen and a clipboard loaded with copy paper.  This is his illustration:

That is an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper.  And that is his drawing.  Really.  This is what I deal with day after day.  For their own safety, people with this tenuous a grasp on reality should not be allowed to roam about unsupervised.  Let alone be allowed to work on large equipment.  He was trying to draw one of these:

Aha!  I see your are cleverly and playfully deconstructing the construction industry!  However I find this work menacing as well, in that the aura of tension created by the minisculization of the scribbled signifier seems very disturbing in light of the accessibility of the work.  With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive transmutation of quasi-biomorphic forms threatens to disintegrate the inherent overspecificity.  In sum, the work verges on codifying our own participation in the critical dialogue of the last decade.  Or something.

Lo-o-o-ong Distance Phone Call

I had seen the movie "The Matrix" the weekend of 17 June 2000.  The idea of phones ringing might have been percolating around my brain.

I was having a midsummer night dream.

I am at a cafe in a downtown high-rise.  Looking out the window, I can see the glass front of another high-rise.  In that other building across a narrow street -- hey, I can see my Mom!  She is standing there with HER  mom (my grandmother, who died in 1981), and they are all dressed up.  My mom is holding a telephone, but she is not speaking.  Instead she is smiling, waving at me, and pointing.  Not pointing at ME but at  something BEHIND me.  I turn around, and see a pay phone on the wall.  I turn back to my mom, and I gesture toward the phone, as though to say, "What?  You want me to make a phone call?"  Mom nods, and she and Grammie smile and wave.  My Mom is still holding the phone, and she's pointing again.  Just then the phone rings.

The phone rings.

I wake up.  I can still hear the phone ringing.  "That's strange," I think, "I can still hear that phone."  Then I get it.  It's my REAL phone ringing.  I rise and pick up the phone, but I don't say anything.

It's 1:20 AM on 21 June 2000.

Finally, I say, "Hello?"

On the phone is my Dad, telling me Mom has been taken to the hospital  in an ambulance. He says slowly, "The prognosis not good."

Well, Mom had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack, and was perhaps dead by the time the ambulance showed up, but her pacemaker restarted part of her heart, so there was some question to the  paramedics.  I know sometimes dreams can create a context for a noise that is about to wake us up.  But I think that the dream was a real call from my Mom.  Lo-o-o-ong Distance and not only "Person to Person" but Soul to Soul.  Calling to give me one last hug, as it were.  It was my Mom, with my Grammie.  There they were, on the "other side" -- and happy.  To me, that is too much for coincidence.  That dream continues to be a source of some comfort, and of great hope.

Things I learned from my big brother

1.)  The water in the cup on the night stand turns into oil overnight, and if you drink it you turn into Frankenstein.

2.)  The last tablespoon of milk out of the carton -- the one with the all the bubbles in it -- is poison.

3.)  The potato chips with the green edges are poison.

4.)  Mom said he could have the last piece of cake. 

5.)  The brown crayons are made out of poop.

Role playing

On a good weekend, I am a Zen Archer.  "Dungeons and Dragons"  (Pathfinder, actually).  That's right, role playing games.  Some families play Monopoly.  At Casa Crowndot, the whole family dons their imaginary personae, weapons, and feats, and move through a world full of creatures that want to take advantage of you, if not kill you. 

Which is to say, it is not all that different from the rest of my life. 

At work I frequently feel that I am playing a character who is not really me (and doing it rather clumsily).  Since I lack the gene for telling consciousness to STFU and go with the flow, most social situations are like role playing to me (and I just rolled a one for sense motive). 

BMI physics

As little as I try to think about it, I do step onto the bathroom scale from time to time.  Healthy lifestyle changes notwithstanding, I've been hovering at about the same weight since November 2011.  At the same time, my waist size has decreased by about four inches. 

This means, basically, that my mass / weight are the same, but my volume is decreasing. 

I figure at this rate, by about the year 2313, I may collapse into a black hole. 

A Triptych of Tanka About Running

June 8 2013



I.
Hot red rubber track,
Four hundred meter repeats.
Best part of my run --
In suddenly clear focus:
A lizard on the sidewalk.

II.
On a predawn run,
Against the luminous sky:
An osprey hunting,

One wheeling white pelican,
A black line of cormorants.

III.
Cracked adobe trail,
Doing some miles in the hills.
Highlight of the run:
Up in the wind on the ridge,
Luminous stalks of dry grass.

[Tanka  is a form of poetry that originated in Japan, in which the lines are arranged with a set number of syllables, in the form 5, 7, 5, 7, 7.] 

 

It must be the pinto pony genes...

I keep my hair short.  Number 1 on the sides blending to Number 2 on top.  If you know barber talk.  Every two weeks. 

Maybe it was the lighting, but when I cut it this morning, it looked like the "gray" (white) was a lot more extensively spreading from the right temple area than the left. 

I'm not going bald -- I'm going piebald. 

Plumber's Nightmare(s)

During one of Tuesday night's all-too-brief REM cycles the feature film of the internal Crowndot Cinema was broken plumbing. In the dream, some kind of viscid bog water was gurgling up from behind the refrigerator.  It was purulent with a black, sooty cast to the bubbly surface.  A great deal of active cleanup was called for, and the family members each had their own idea as to how to proceed.  However, after application of instruments such as towels, shovels, and broken windshield-wipers, the area seemed to be clean and the hell-mouth closed.  The dream ended as I retired from the scene ready for a hot bath, only to meet the evil discharge cascading down from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom -- and, the morning alarm sounds to rescue me from another episode of refreshing sleep. 

A few hours later Tuesday morning I was drenched head to knee with hydraulic oil when I was not quite fast enough to tell a customer not to remove the quick-disconnect fitting from his broken ram.  He was dropping it off at the shop for repair, but decided (while my back was turned) that he would get his trusty adjustable spanner and take the Q.D. coupler home Right Now.  His ram was "Stuck" in the extended position, you see, and that model has an internal BFS (big freakin' spring) that sucks the rod back Right Now -- whether there's oil being pushed out or not -- once the Q.D. fitting started to come free.  In this case, the fitting port being pointed at the service writer (me), the geyser emanated immediately in my direction: nasty, brutish, and fortunately of small volume.  Of course the customer was very sorry.  Of course I keep a spare uniform at work for such contingencies.  Of course I don't want to talk about it. 

This morning we had no water at Castle Crowndot.  It took me a while, first thing in the morning, to realize what was going on.  Why is the cold water flow just a trickle?  Why is the hot water making horrid noises?  Why is there a small quantity of brown rusty fluid coming out of the faucet?  Then the brain kicks in:  "We must not have paid the water bill," the brain says.  Stupid brain.    It turned out that there had been a water main break half a mile down the hill.  We live in earthquake country, and take our prep seriously, so there is always stored clean water.  Well, you still have to make like a soldier in the field, but it can be done.

And it is still a day and a half until the new moon.  My luck is always better after the new moon...  Ya think?

Eclipse

A couple nights ago I went out into the cool of the evening to stare at the starry night.  A satellite appeared.  (I live in the Future!)  It is still amazing to me to see these tiny points of light making their progress across the sky.  I watched it until...

Huh.  It's gone.  I must have taken my eye off it.  Maybe it went behind a bit of cloud haze.  Hey, there's another one and...  Gone.  Huh. 

Silly me.  I forgot that satellites are not "lights" like stars.  I can see them because they are high enough up to reflect sunlight back to me.  These satellites were traveling west-to-east, and had blinked out when they entered the earth's shadow.  That explains it! 

Eschatonic epistemology

Genetic epistemology  has to do with the study of how people come to know.  How do children learn?  How does a body of knowledge come to be "in" the mind? 

What would be the other side of the coin of genetic epistemology?  What if instead of coming out of ignorance into knowledge we dealt with the ultimate destination of knowledge?  Or instead of dealing with the coming-to-be of knowledge of things, we flipped it over to the coming-to-be of the knowledge of  ... persons? 

One may come to knowledge, and know that they have  knowledge; knowing you know is a species of belief, right?  One may come to a certainty that they will come to know; that knowing that you will know is a species of hope, right? 

Faith / belief is something you have, based on what has been experienced before.  Hope is knowledge grounded in -- well in something or someone else -- that has not been experienced (personally) before, but which is held by the power of some report (some other person).

Thoughts for the penseive.  Thinking out loud.   

Any job worth doing...

Way back in 1979 when I was trying to finish a major college paper, I put up a little sign over my desk:  "Any job worth doing is worth doing poorly." 

I had come to the realization, you see, that some weird idealism was keeping me at the task of constantly tweaking the product, to such an extent that the final  product was never going to be produced.

I grew up with the "do it right" mentality.  My mom would scrub the kitchen floor on hands and knees because, "Otherwise it just doesn't get clean."  Dad would see me washing the car and say, "While you're at it, why don't you just pull it into the shade and give it a coat of wax?" 

My kitchen floor is lucky if I spot-clean the occasional spill, or give it a hasty sweep.  My current car (and most others back through my vehicle ownership history) have been uncontaminated by car wax. 

But what I'm really talking about is running. 

Part of my mind still defaults to "do it right" so much that it risks doing nothing.

The running schedule called for 7 miles today.  I just wasn't up to that.  I almost just turned off the alarm and said, "No run today."  Instead, I got up dark and early and ended up doing 3.7 miles.  Me and the birds and the deer and the cottontails in the dawn's early light. 

"Only" three point seven miles. 

Calling it good.  After all, any job worth doing...

What I do instead of taking a nap

Well it's three in the afternoon and I've read the whole internet.  Twice.  So I guess I'll get up and do some work or something. 

Thoroughly Modern

Everything in my digital life is in a constant state of updating.

Business accounting software new version.  New version uses Microsoft .NET Framework.  Microsoft .NET Framework updates.  Java updates.  Flash player updates. 

Please wait.

This may take a few moments.

Your virus definitions have been updated.

Real Player updates are available - update now? 

It never ends.

It didn't used to be like this.  Why, in my day, computers was called typewriters.  And you got a new (used) typewriter, what, every ten years or so?  Why in my day a major update was going from four part invoices with carbon paper to five part NCR forms. 

But actually, THIS is my day.  Today.  Now.  The update-crazy day.  Maybe not a bad thing either, since it serves to emphasize the essential fluidity of being.  Oh there are fixed points too, don't think I've gone all Heracleitus on you.  But so much is evolving, changing, and undefined in the present age (read: the current economy). 

Soon a majority of our working-age population will be people for whom constant updating  is normal.  Given.  The way things are. 

What does this world view do to the idea of permanency?  Permanent relationships.  Unshakable values.  "Unalienable rights"  Absolute truth. 

Lie Nucks

Who remembers the Peanuts comic strip?  Show of hands?  Good.  Now, Charlie Brown's philosophic friend was called...

No, he wasn't called LIH-nuss.  Anybody else? 

Very good!  His name was Linus.  LIE-nuss. 

Okay.  So.  Once upon a time there lived a man named Linus Torvalds.  He was the main dude behind the creation of a computer operating system that geeks the world over love to love because it is not Microsoft or Macintosh:  Linux.  The OS name is based on the man's name. 

Here's where it gets sticky.  Torvalds is Finnish.  Like as in from Finland.  He actually pronounces his name LEE-nuss. 

Do people call the OS LEE-nucks?  Of course not. 

Believe it or not, young'uns, back in the early to mid 1990s the people who were actually using  LINUX (do do things like post and read USENET newsgroup messages) called it LIE-nucks.  And they called Linus Torvalds LIE-nuss, like the comic strip character that Mr. Torvalds admits he was (at least partly) named after. 

LIE-nuss.  LIE-nucks.  Because this is America, not ferthelovagod Finland or France or some such heathen socialist backwater. 

LIE-nucks.  If nothing else the pronunciation will annoy

I know it's hard, but...

Sometimes the truth is hard.  That's where you need somebody who can act solely in your best interest.  Crowndot is here to help you with your file suffix pronunciation. 

Graphics Interchange Format files end in ".gif" and so are pronounced with the same hard G we use for "graphics" (not the J sound we use in "giraffe").  So "roomba-cat.gif" is pronounced ROOM-buh kat dot giff.

"Jif" is a peanut butter.  And yes, that means I am saying Steve Wilhite should just shut up and concede defeat by the forces of nature. 

We're here to help.

It's all in the timing

After a three day weekend, Tuesday feels like Monday.  Remembering after getting home after an extra-innings day at work (more and more of those lately, it seems) that today is a scheduled run day, I instead collapse into a chair.  What's the matter with me?  Oh yeah, I didn't have much lunch, and what I did have was six hours ago.  Dear sweet Mrs. Crowndot makes dinner. Aah.  That feels better.  Wow, I bet I could even go for a run now.  Except that the alimentary canal resembles a boa constrictor that just swallowed its monthly capybara. 

If I want to stick to the run schedule, I have to plan the whole day around it.

The best man I knew

My high school classmate Ed had a great laugh.  And frequently he was laughing at me.  I was a liberal at age 16, and he ridiculed my go-out-and-save-the-world enthusiasm.  At the time I thought I wanted to be a journalist, so I could fight for the right and bring down the establishment. 

Ed was going to be  the establishment.  He wanted to fly.  He was going to join the Navy, become a pilot, stay a few years, and then go work for an airline. 

I did not become a journalist.  I read the Great Books, fell in love.  Changed my politics (the Carter economy had a lot to do with that).  Got a job.  Got married. Got so busy I lost contact with pretty much everybody.

Ed did join the Navy.  And damn if he didn't have the smarts and the guts to become a Navy pilot after all. 

I heard about his death around Christmas in 1983.  Ed was pilot of a U.S. Navy aircraft on a taxiway at a stateside base.  Something went wrong with another plane and it came over and hit his aircraft.  Four men killed, as I recall.  But the only one I cared about was Ed.  I can't find any information now.  It has gotten to where if I can't find it on the internet, I start to doubt my memory.  Plus I'm getting old.

Anyway.  Damn.  He was a good man. 

His death makes as little sense to me now thirty years later as it did at the time.  Those deaths "in the line of duty" don't always make "sense" and they are not always Hollywood material. 

We used to tease each other mercilessly in high school. 

Thinking of you today, Ed. 

Necktie

Civilization is beyond being saved by me. 

In extent alone the contribution of one curmudgeonly blogger is statistically insignificant.

But:  Donne. Island. Man.  Yes, in intent, the individual has an unknowable effect upon the whole of society, effect that passes down generations as well as across family and other boundaries.

This is by way of creeping up on the admission that I wear the necktie as infrequently as possible. 

There was a time when I strenuously sought to remedy the slide of our times into the Gomorrah or Gehenna or the Local Landfill -- by means of personal appearance (neck wear included).  I got over that. 

The necktie is a class signifier as relevant today as the gown and powdered wig in the courts of the United Kingdom.  That is, I'm open to the possibility that it has its place in certain civic and financial settings, up to the civic-cum-religious (in the Virgilian "pious Aeneas" sense).  Weddings and funerals are formal civic occasions in all their appearance, even as they are private spiritual exercises invisibly.  Thus I am willing to maintain "marrying and burying" clothes. 

Oh yes: civilization. 

Well it's looking like the day will come when we're more likely to save civilization with a camouflage uniform than a tailored civic financial/political uniform; the neckties involved may end up being rope not colored silk.  A terrifying possibility.  In the meantime:  neckties.

Neckties.  As Matthew Quigley said of the handgun, after he shoots Dobkin, O'Flynn and (Alan Rickman!!) Marston before they can even aim their guns, then walks up to a dying Marston:  "I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn't know how to use it."

Happy bird-day to you...

I do most of my bird watching by ear.

Cedar waxwings this morning.  Didn't try to see them out in the pepper tree across the street. 

During the course of the day I keep a kind of subconscious tally of species.

Scrub jay.  Mockingbird. Crow. House finch.  English Sparrow.  Song Sparrow.  Meadowlark...

Even when driving across town, when the windows are down.  White-crowned sparrow.  Goldfinch.  Bewick's Wren.  Turkey (!). 

Morning meadowlarks along the fence line across from work, happy house finches in the afternoon, sleepy golden-crowned sparrows in the evening, all make me smile. 

And I don't even have to catch a glimpse.

"Smalls"

Yes, smalls.  In particular, men's smalls.  I know: too much information.

 Never. The. Less.

In the men's shorts world, there is choice of many unsatisfactory arrangements for the bottom half.  Boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs...  Within this world, the available products are made almost entirely by Hanes or by Fruit-of-the-Loom. 

H and FOL have demonstrated their misandry by introducing products for eunuchs, products for donkeys; products made of moisture-impervious materials, products made of industrial abrasives; products that bind in one place and are loose in another, products that are loose in one place and bind in another.  So there are lots of choices.  Without even getting into the choice between the products that fall apart after the first wash, and those that fall apart over the course of half a year of normal use. 

Yes I realize that there are more options if you want to think outside the box:  commando; athletic specialties / European designerwear; gay partywear ("not that there's anything wrong with that").  But those are either "for occasional use, only as directed" or far too pricey for this author to countenance the purchase of the eight to twelve units I like to have in stock. 

It occurs to me:  Hanes and Fruit-of-the-Loom are the Macintosh and Microsoft of the underwear world.  They both hate us, and it's just a question of which is the least uncomfortable fit.  Moreover, the great fit and function you bought last time is a.) not available any more;  b.) dumbed down to the point that it is now produced offshore so it looks like  the product you knew, but now with the added features of random dimensions, abrasive materials, and self-destruction in the laundry. 

H and FOL meet over a drink and smirk together.  "Where else are they gonna go?"  They slap each other on the back.  "Ubuntu?!"

Old dog, new trick...

I liked my computer setup at work.  Then the accounting software company got bought, changed their philosophy, everything got bigger, more expensive... and required more system resources. 

It serves me right for getting really comfy-cozy with my XP Pro system.  A place for everything and everything in its place -- including that little program from the PS2 days that does hydraulic engineering calculations.  Sigh. 

So now the computer systems as well as everything else (see: Obamanomics) is in flux. 

What is my response?  Get a burr under my saddle about needing a laptop computer.  Oy.  So now I have leapt through time and space from XP to Windows 8.  Like I said:  Oy. 

Took a while just to find the control panel. 

Why is it that everything in life is seemingly out of control? 

Oh, don't mind me.  That's just the cognitive dissonance talking. 

I grow old, I grow old . . .

Become the path

"You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself." - Gautama Buddha

"Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible." - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

"There are clubs you can't belong to, neighborhoods you can't live in, schools you can't get into, but the roads are always open." - Old Nike ad

"Never, ever, ever give up." - Winston Churchill

"It's never too late to be what you might have been." - (I don't know who said this one)

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible." - Doug Larson

"Happiness is pushing your limits and watching them back down" - Old New Balance ad

"I love hills.  If it weren't for hills, I'd have to bring climbing gear." - overheard at a race

"The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, ‘You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.’ The human spirit is indomitable." - Roger Bannister

"Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right." - Henry Ford

"It’s elevating and humbling at the same time. Running along a beach at sunrise with no other footprints in the sand, you realize the vastness of creation, your own insignificant space in the plan, how tiny you really are, your own creatureliness  and how much you owe to the supreme body, the God that brought all this beauty and harmony into being." - Sister Marion Irvine (2:51 PR and 1984 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier)

"Sure, I 'become the path' -- every time I run trails in summer, half the path comes home stuck in my socks!" - (I just made that one up.)

On this date in history: The Texas Navy (!) does some whoopin'

16 May 1843 saw the conclusion of the Naval Battle of Campeche. 

Wait, what?  The Texans in sailing ships fought British Officers  commanding Mexican steamships? 

I don't know about you, but the phrase "Texas Navy" stirs my heart.  Do you think they had Texas Marines?  

Anyway, it was the "First and only time sail bested steam men-of-war!"

Wherein I connect some dots

In 1998 my office manager's mother died suddenly in an automobile accident.  My immediate reaction was horror and sorrow.  I had met her mother a few times; she had a great laugh.  What I said out loud:  "God that sucks."

In summer of 2001 when the anniversary of my own mother's sudden death rolled around, the office manager and I had a sort of blinking-back-tears reminiscence session.  "You know," she said to me, "You were the only person who really said something kind and understanding to me when my mother passed."  That put me in a spot, because I seemed to remember I had said, "God that sucks."

"Um, what do you remember me saying?"

"You said, 'God that sucks.'  That was the most honest and kind thing you could have said."

When the shit hits the fan, the brown is all around.  The smell fills the whole room.  There's no escape.  But some people have an Ignore function, or an invent-your-own-reality function, or something like that.

"Try the All Raw Vegetables Diet -- it will cure your cancer."

"Think one positive thought first thing in the morning -- it will cure your depression."

"Get more exercise -- it will cure your chronic fatigue."

"Your problem is you need to... be more assertive."  Or talk louder, or get more fresh air, or avoid eating corn, or have your colors done.

Worst one ever:  "You should be happy your mother is dead -- she's with God now."  (Someone actually said that to me when my grief was still so raw any gentle breeze made me wince in pain.)

Can't you people see the brown?  Don't you notice that smell?

I may be:  sad, tired, depressed, curmudgeonly, downcast, sick...   but I do have a better hold on reality than an awful lot of people.

But what I wanted to say is that when someone tells me they feel crappy, I mostly don't try to fix it.  Since I know what they mean, I mostly just commiserate.  Maybe I go so far as to ask, "So, how are you coping with that?  Wanna talk about it, or change the subject?"

Maybe that's why, looking back on my 50-plus years of interacting with people on this planet, so many people have opened up to me about their problems.  A sympathetic ear.  Yes, some of them were manipulators.  Some were attention whores.  But some were just relieved that I didn't immediately go into "Let's fix this" mode.  They were helped by a simple admission:  "God that sucks." 

Poem for May Day 2013

A SONG OF SPRING 05/01/2013


THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
A frog he would a woo-ing go...

CHORUS OF CEDAR WAXWINGS:
Thee, thee, thee, thee, thee, thee.

THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
In just-spring...

THE VOICE OF THE BELOVED:
Can you change the bag in the vacuum cleaner for me?

THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white...

CHORUS OF HOUSE FINCHES:
You, you, oh, to be with you, be, oh, be, oh, with you, you, you.

THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed...

THE VOICE OF THE BELOVED:
The carpet is wet there because the dog got sick.

THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
...And let our winds / Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste...

CHORUS OF HOUSE WRENS:
Grrrrrrr.  With you.  With you.  With you.

THE VOICE OF THE LOVER:
From you have I been absent in the spring...

THE VOICE OF THE BELOVED:
The toilet is stopped up.

- - -

(c) 2013 www.crowndot.com

Is this where America used to be?

News report late 19 April 2013.  So they got the Boston Marathon bombers.

The fact that an average citizen found Suspect Number Two  after  the lock down order had been lifted plays into my theme today.  Call me cynical, but it's good that Suspect Number Two was found by Joe Homeowner and not a group of Law Enforcement Authority, else he'd have been Dornered.

When Law Enforcement Authority issues an "Order" to shelter in place, absent the conditions of actual public danger (a toxic cloud of chlorine gas, for example), isn't it our prerogative to look Law Enforcement Authority in the eye and respectfully say, "Fuck you!"?

Imagine.  Your town.  The wee hours of Friday morning.  Law Enforcement Authority says don't go to work.  Don't go to school.  Don't open your business.  Don't leave for that long weekend.  Don't get together with friends for a gaming party.  Don't!  Because all of you people moving around out there makes the job of Law Enforcement Authority more difficult.  What do you do? 

1.)  Go along.  Get used to it.  Call it the new normal.  Admit the terrorists won.  

2.)  Go along because of a presumption of good judgement on the part of Law Enforcement Authority, but then tell them after the fact that you are dissatisfied with their trampling of civil rights in their handling of the situation.  Okay, but then what about the  next  time they do it?  Go to option 1 above?  Stick with option 2?

3.)  Go about your business.  The world is a dangerous place on the best of days.  You might get hit by a garbage truck.  You might get blown up at the finish line of that little race you're running with twenty thousand or so of your closest friends.  Go about your business and keep your eyes open for danger and suspicious characters.  Go about your business in exactly the same way you would anyway, but with the added activity of watching for the bad guy. 

I guess I'm saying I'm for option 3.  Of course, Option 3 is likely to put me in danger of being falsely imprisoned (arrested) or Hernandezed.  Proceed with caution.

This is America.  Law Enforcement Authority take on the  office  -- that's why they call them "officer" -- of being the default mode for use of force to protect and serve the public good.  We are the public, so that would be our good they are supposed to protect.  Law Enforcement Authority is  deputed  by the public -- that's why some of them are called "deputy" -- to free us from having to join an ad hoc posse comitatus .  Nowadays (normally) our participation in the administration of justice is reserved to the jury power. 

This is America.  Pardon me for dropping the "F-Bomb" earlier, but I get worked up about Liberty. 

Things just seem to have gotten pretty upside-down in Boston.  

Kill It With Fire

"It can only be killed by fire while awake and by using the Rite of Exorcism if found in its grave during the day."
-- Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings That Haunt Us, Hunt Us, and Hunger for Us, Jonathon Maberry. Kensington Publishing Corp: New York, 2006. p 16-17, from the Wikipedia article on Vampire folklore by region (South Slavic belief).

At the end of World War II, Hitler's body was burned, pulverized, and flushed into the sewers.  Nazi symbols were destroyed and banned.  Men like Eisenhower forced German citizens to face the atrocities they had actively or passively allowed.  "Never again," they said.

They can never all be found and exorcised while asleep.  The evil is always active while seeming dormant.  We are the ones who sleep. 

But the evil continues.  Its undead hunger wakes. 

"I think that September 11 ought to be made a day of mourning everywhere in the West. After all, it will undoubtedly be a day of celebration all across the Dar-al-Islam. 

"We ought never to forget. Never, until the focus of this filthy plague is a hole in the ground, sowed with salt. Never, until Islam is one with the worship of Moloch and Baal. Never, until we can say, 'Mecca delenda est''."
    -- Gerard Vanderleun, What I Saw: Notes I made on September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights, re-posted at American Digest 11 September, 2012.

There is that evil that can only be killed by fire.

 "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the elfstone, Dunadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor.  Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again!  Will you aid me or thwart me?  Choose swiftly."
    -- Aragorn, in Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien.

Tolkien knew that isolationism did not work -- regretted the fact, but admitted it; sometimes the Men of the West have to travel to the gates of Mordor because that is the right thing to do.

North Korean "President" Kim Jong Un threatens nuclear mayhem -- and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tells reporters on 10 April 2013 that Korea is "skating very close to a dangerous line."  Hagel does not appear to be preparing use of a big Pacific Theater flame thrower to Kill It With Fire.  His ilk seem to be off on another Carteresque episode of Why-do-they-hate-us and Is-this-Kim-crazy?  Um, guys?  When the man has the loaded gun pointed at you?  Then it really doesn't matter why he wants you dead or whether he is sane.  Kill It With Fire.

Every time.

Find it.  Kill it.  Burn it.  Pulverize it.  Flush it.  Again.

Never letting a crisis go to waste

After a trip to Russia shortly after the revolution, during which he and others met for six hours with Stalin, American economist and engineer Stuart Chase reported saying, "'Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?"  The quote comes up in an interview in the January 2008 issue of  Reason  in which Nick Gillespie talks to Amity Shlaes, author of the history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man (Harper Collins 2007).

As a public service I offer this unguarded crystallization of policy, this clue to the mind of the old New Dealer, from one of his other books: 

1. A strong, centralized government.
2. An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
3. The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
4. The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
5. The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
6. The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
7. The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
8. The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
9. The control of foreign trade by the government.
10. The control of natural resources.
11. The control of energy sources.
12. The control of transportation.
13. The control of agricultural production.
14. The control of labor organizations.
15. The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline,community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
16. Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
17. Control of industry without ownership.
18. State control of communications and propaganda.

- - -

I leave the cleansing of America from the poison of such socialism as an exercise for the reader.

Advanced Degrees

When my dad was mad he would do a dressing-down that he sometimes called "Reading you the Riot Act".  This was also known as "Giving you What For" and "Giving you the Third Degree".  I was (still am) sort of a slow learner when it comes to picking up social cues, so I never really figured out the difference between those processes.  I did learn that my father leads with his right hand.  Ouch. 

The modern marvel of Wikipedia sheds some light on the Riot Act.  In my mind the Third Degree is associated both with flesh-charring burns and with being banished from the society of men and forced to do tedious work -- much like Doctoral Candidates must do. 

My mother, on the other hand, generally got her meaning through to me more efficiently.  Corporal punishment was largely symbolic with her, incorporating backside-whacks with a large kitchen wooden spoon.  Ouch.  "Do you want me to get the wooden spoon?"  That was enough.  Usually. 

Mom's warnings were set in various audible "fonts".   I could note the seriousness of the situation escalating to the extent to which she started to resort to her childhood North Dakota German upbringing -- the warnings set first in light Alte Schwabacher, then boldface, then dripping blood.  All without raising the volume level very much. 

Mom's other verbal clue was forms of address.  Calling me:  "Cro-own! ... Crowndot! ... Crowndot Blogspot, you come here! ... Ach now, Crowndot Blogspot Dotcom Junior, you come here this instant!!!" 

In lighter moments, after I had been teasing her, the appellation might include not the Third Degree, but Advanced Degrees:  "Oh get out of here you old Crowndotty XYZ, PDQ, The Third, Incorporated, PhD. ... Shoo!" 

This present moment...

" ... Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open!  ..."

Today.  Today is a good day to remember what this little video presents to us. 

Unexpected Feast

Many years ago I took Oldest Son fishing from an ocean pier. 

It was a long drive to get there, but on previous trips there had always been fish.  Lots of hauling up small but edible seafood. 

But this one time, no fish. 

The bait (chicken liver!) kept being stolen by octopuses. 

An little old Italian-looking man watched us throwing the little octopuses back into the water.  "Those are good eating, you know.  'Ink sacks' we used to call them.  My mother would cook them up different ways and sometimes make a gravy out of the ink."

Anyway, he convinced us to take some home. 

Best. Chowder. Ever. 

Which just shows to go ya, as they say. 

Life doesn't always serve up what you think you want. 

Sometimes what you get turns out better.

A little sunshine

My escape from my place of employment was only fifteen minutes (that's like leaving early!) later than my "scheduled" departure time (nine and a half hours after my must-be-there-in-the-morning time) today.  Arriving at home, I did not dawdle in my preparation to dress and head out for a run.  So there was not only sunshine on my skin and a strong shadow to share my footsteps for much of the route, there was also a spot in a lingering ray between the hills in which to relax after the workout. 

Sitting in the sun on a low retaining wall, listening to the sound of birds all around, I noticed a fat alligator lizard doing push ups in the sun on the same retaining wall.

Being near a critter who is unconcerned about my presence makes me happy.  So often my view of critters -- birds, deer, lizards, or whatever -- is just butts.  Running away.  It's nice to simply be a creature sharing space in the sun with another creature sometimes. 

 

Waves of grass

Across the street from where I work is agricultural land.

Last year it was planted in safflower.  Before that cattle sometimes grazed there. 

This year it is coming up grass.  I can't tell yet whether it was actually planted in wheat or barley.  It has been a mild, slow spring, and the grass is now at the 12 to 18 inch length where it bends gracefully in the wind. 

The underside of a blade of grass is less green, more silver than the top.  As the wind moves across the hillside across the street, delicate curving waves of dark and light march slowly along.  Ever changing.  I could watch for hours. 

Earth Hour Music!

In my mind Dancing in the Dark will always be associated with the immortal Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon. 

Here's something to brighten up you day and night!