Plans, Letting Go, And Time

One of the dangers I am continually reminded of in praying to God is similar to a character in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series where when describing Aslan he is described as a lion, but not a tame one.  The same danger, it appears, happens when you sincerely pray to God for something (or at least, what to me seems sincerely).

God assures us He answers prayer.  What I am finding out - for the 52nd time - is that the prayers fall into the two brackets.  The first is something for ourselves that is superfluous, like a Jaguar automobile (for some reason I have always wanted one). Likely the answer there is "no".  But pray for something like patience or the ability and practice to love your enemies or endurance, and you are likely to get an answer - not in the form of the thing itself but in the form of the ability to exercise patience or loving one's enemies or endurance.

Thus, praying for things has always become a bit of slightly fearful exercise followed by rolling for cover.

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One of the things I have been seeking is simply guidance and direction.  There is a great deal going on (as you all know) and while there is not really a wrong answer, they may be a series of better answers.  On Monday last I prayed for this very thing.  The following day, three things happened:

1) The first was when I arose in the morning.  The Director, working on his doctoral thesis, had a question about history (specifically Spartacus and The Third Servile War).  Modern references he had; did I as a classicist have an idea for sources beyond Plutarch's Life of Crassus?

To be fair, I had to verify with a Wikipedia page, but it turns out I did:  Plutarch's Life of Pompey, Frontinus' Strategemata, and Appian's The Civil Wars were all on my bookshelf to be consulted.  A fourth - Florus' Epitome of Roman History - was not but I was able to find it online for him.

The feeling that I had when 1) I could readily find the references and 2) my friend considers me a "classicist" carried me through rest of the day.  And it reminded that once, long ago during my failed attempt to become a pastor, the alternative career suggested to me was "Classics Professor".

2) In searching for an image for a presentation of a confused path picture (the sort of "How it was supposed to go" versus "How it went" sort of thing), the quote above was one of the first things that came up.

"Well", I thought, "That is extraordinarily weird" - and then went on with my day.  Except I did not, because that thought - give up the life you planned to have the life that is waiting for you - would not disappear out of my head.

3)  One of the folks I follow on Instapic is a gentleman named Father Mike, a Catholic Priest who does pretty good sometimes very funny videos. The video that came up that day was "What do I tell people when they pray for God's direction and will?"

Well, fortunately that was not on my mind at all, or else this would have been fortuitous...

The answer he gave is simply "Take the first step.  And see what happens then."

(I am not sure if it will load - especially if you do not have an Instapic account - but it is here.)

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The bow that tied all of this off came on Friday, with a post by Friend-Of-This-Blog (and occasional famous person) John Wilder on Entitled "Time:  It's The Only Thing You Have".  In it, while discussing the nature of Time as we perceive it, he makes the rather interesting point that as novelty fades, time flows faster for us.

It makes sense, of course.  When we are young, everything is new.  As new things turn to the common place, we pay less and less attention to them; they essentially are on auto-pilot. I can still remember the first route I drove on the first day I drove myself to band camp; I can scarcely remember the thousands of times I commuted back and forth.  

Tied to this idea of novelty, one of his commenters made the sage suggestion to re-invent some aspect of one's self every three to four years.  Why?  For the same reason John suggested:  novelty causes us to pay attention and mark time in a way that the ordinary run of the mill living does not.  

As I pondered this, I realized that many of the times I have "reinvented" myself were not any doing of my own - in fact if anything, I had to be forced into it.  I never intended to work in the industry I am in.  I never intended to move from Old Home.  I never intended to move to New Home.  And I never intended to move to New Home 2.0.  Yet in each case not only was the move a "dot" in my life, it opened up opportunities and experiences I never would have had if I never been pushed out.

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Where does all of this end up?  Three points, I think:

1)  God clearly answered this prayer.

2)  There is clearly an answer to be had here, if I will pursue this quest for direction consistently and just keep taking step after step until I hit a "no".

3)  I need to be open to the fact that what I have "planned" may not be what I really need - or want.

Anger

I have fought a long and rearguard action against anger.

I come by anger honestly in that sense:  my father, especially when he was younger, had a temper - which in due time I inherited. I never had it quite to his extent, for whatever reason - either my mother's direct influence or simply less to be angry about.  My temper was always there of course, ready to flair at a moment's notice - not with physical violence (never that; the one fight I have every been involved in was in the fourth grade; it ended when I hurled my skateboard at my opponents and fled the scene).

I say "my father's anger"; having come to understand him more over the years I have come to understand some of the root of that anger:  an older brother tragically killed by a drunk driver and  his oldest brother took care of his youngest siblings and my grandfather took care of my grandfather; my father was effectively on his own to deal with the loss of his closest in age sibling likely did not assist his own father, who was apparently the classic drinking and swearing man before his conversion to Christ and the Baptist Church.

The last argument my father and I ever had was well over 25 years ago; I think I have told the story, but a small accident that I was unwilling to tell him about blossomed into a shouting match.  He said I never told him anything. I retorted back he never reacted well when I had bad news.  I stormed out down to the park at the end of the street; he came down and found me and apologized.  Never after that day did we have a fight; in fact on more than one occasion if he seemed angry, he apologized for it later.

(Turns out I did write about it here.)

My last argument was, perhaps appropriately enough, with one of my own children.  It was over an issue which impacted none of us directly but she was passionate and then I became passionate. It ended with me raising my voice and effectively shutting down the argument.  That never happened again, but we - and I mean all of us now - never discussed things like politics or religion after that.   

I "won", but effectively I lost.

(It is fine now of course, and in the intervening years we have enjoyed many conversations and adventures all together.  But some subjects are not spoken of and likely will never be again.)

Never in all my years have I been convinced of a thing by the anger of another.  Likely never in my years have I convinced another by my anger.  It can feel good, in that sense, to be enthused and excited about a subject, to feel the passion of "the righteous cause". Sometimes we even point to the idea of "righteous anger".  I suspect, in God's economy, a lot less of us have the benefit of righteousness in our anger than we care to believe.

There is a last thing, of course:  to the quote above, I think it is fair to say that never once have I felt God's presence in my anger.  It has been as if He packed up and left the minute my temper raised and only returned when, alone and exhausted, I see the destruction that my anger has wrought.

Anger, like arrows, can never be recalled once loosed.  They can only be painfully dug out of the flesh of those to whom it was directed against.

Americans And Reading

This week wandering the InterWeb, I came across the most fascinating study:  Adults reading books in 2023.  Since I fancy myself a bit of a reader, I was very interested to see the results.

To say I was a bit shocked is an understatement:

Source

(A link to the article can be found here).

Highlights of the survey results (original data here):

- Crime/mystery, and history were the most read categories at 37% and 36% respectively

- Poetry was the least read category at 8%; men read more poetry (9%) than women (6%), and younger people slightly prefer poetry to older people.

- The survey included physical books, e-books, and digital books.  Physical books were the preference in terms of overall books, by gender, and by educational status (For college educated people, 60% preferred a physical copy and for non-college educated people, 33% preferred a physical copy.

- But....e-book readers read more than audio book listeners or physical book readers (32 books per year to 20 books per year to 18 books per year)

- Finally, they gave a table on how people stack up percentile wise versus the number of books they read:

(Source)

General Comments

- As long time readers may remember, I am a voracious reader (physical media; I struggle with electronic readers and can only manage about 30 minutes on an e-book).  Looking back at my records (they only go back 10 years to 2014), I read on average 88 books a year with a maximum of 116 and a minimum of 69 (Current year count, figured into this number, is 87).  To be fair, this represents a wide range, from several hundred page books to 50 page Osprey Publishing books, so it is not necessarily a linear number.

Likely in the above breakdown, I fall somewhere in the 99.9999th percentile.

- It is worth acknowledging that one of the things that has changed in the past several years is the growth of online video a.k.a The Tube of You as well as websites such as Khan Academy that give individuals access to similar information in a different medium.  Even for myself, if I need to do a task I have never done, I am likely to try to find a video or two on how to do it (there usually are some) - that said, The Tube of You is not my preferred medium.  Like audiobooks, I have a limited attention span.

- One of the interesting notes in general is the way the articles are positioned.  The first reference from Statista is "46% of Americans Didn't Read Book a Book in 2023; the YouGov headline is "54% of Americans read a book this year".  Both are true, but one sounds slightly more hopeful.

- The fact that Crime/Mystery and History are the most popular genres is not at all surprising.  Perhaps, with the fact history is up there, we have a small chance to learn from the past.

- There was no breakdown by age, which would have been interesting.  Is it an age based phenomenon and if that is it older or younger, or does it skip generations?  

-The most interesting thing to me is that per the second table above, 79% of Americans read 10 books a year, not quite even one a month.

Final Thoughts

I am reader.  I have been one all my life; it was ingrained into me by my mother and I, in turn, ingrained it into my children.  They are all readers as is The Ravishing Mrs. TB (who, interestingly, is a great fan of audio books). 

Reading to me is life.  When I awake in the morning, I will read.  When I am at lunch, I will read.  At some point during the evening, I will read.  Given my choice on weekends, I will read.  To me, things like airline travel are just excuses to be completely off the grid and read.  

I cannot fathom not reading a single book in a year.

Even discounting the Tube of You and online education aspects, it still bothers me. There are things in books  you simply will not pick up in a video or online.  A book - especially if it is your own - is a treasure to go back and back to again.  The number of times I have "found" something that was always there but means something to me now is one of the most remarkable things of a day; it always excites me.  

It is certainly a study I will look for next year.

Finally, as a reminder September 6th is National Read A Book Day. You have almost a year's warning, so I expect everyone to have one on the ready at midnight September 5th.

On The Coming Of Autumn In A New Place

The changing of seasons is always difficult to know when one relocates.

Having lived for almost have of my Old Home, I can easily enough tell you how Autumn begins:  it will cool slightly through the end of September and then, right at the end of September or beginning of October, there will be a spike of heat, followed by a rapid decline of temperature; by the end of October, if one did not have one's garden in it would be too wet to start one.

In New Home, the pattern was different - not only because of the increased period of heat (from April to almost November in some years) but the fact that there were very few leaves to fall to the ground. One grasped that the season was changing mostly by the cast of the sunlight and the slow cooling of the temperatures - or at least, less and less truly hot days.

In New Home 2.0, of course, I have no stars to set my course by yet, only advise from coworkers and the proposed weather outcomes my phone presents me with every morning.  

My coworkers have noted that the Summer (or at least, the potential hot part of it) starts reliably around the beginning of July and ends sometime around the beginning of September (two month is a fair exchange compared to the up to 7 months in New Home).  True to their prediction, the heat started around the first week of July and - if the phone weather holds true - will continue to drop from here.  Even this weekend we were in the high 90's F, but by this Saturday we will be at 70 F or even 69 F, dropping to at least one day to 64 F.  

The cast of the sunlight has not quite seemed to catch up, although the fact that I now live in a location that is more cloudy suggests that this aspect will be difficult to judge at best - again, if phone weather is correct we do not have another full sun day for 1.5 weeks.

Which leaves, of course, the trees (pun unintentionally discovered).  

The leaves have already started to turn - not in droves, but in drips and drabs that sprinkle the parking lots and roads, the small circular leaves of trees that we simply do not have at home.  The larger ones are not falling yet, but I can begin to see them turning on the outer edges and ends of the extremities.  

I wish I knew things better here to know what kind of Winter this might portend:  life will be different this Winter as I am now in an apartment and the only heat available is either the small wall units installed in every room (likely highly inefficient, or at least my initial tests of them were) or the much more efficient units we purchased.  That, of course, and hoping that the fact the apartment seemingly stays warm in Summer will translate into Winter as well.

It is disorienting, this first round of seasons where one has never been. There is both the tremulous hope of experience new things and the almost certain fear it will be worse than one imagines.

The Collapse CLXI: Gone

02 September 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

It is gone.

The how is certain. The why is unknown.

The smoke started appearing overhead on the 28th of August from the North. Originally a small wispy haze, it continued to grow over the next few days until the sky was always a hazy smudged orange – it cut down on the heat a bit, but now the days were filled with a dreary, smoky haze that seemed to penetrate everything.

Radio calls to the North of us either were unproductive or unanswered. The information we received from Little City over the hill was simply more of what we saw: much more smoke and a glow in the distance. Farther away, Epicurus related the same, except looking South in their case. From Cato, there was nothing at all.

Tonight Young Xerxes came boiling in. They finally had a message from Cato, who had been away setting backfires all week. It was only this very day that they could send someone out to get a view of what had happened.

It was a fire. A fire, it appears, that somehow swept South to consume the field of wheat

How did it happen? Who knows. A random lightning strike? Such things are not unknown at this time of year. Or maybe human set, a traveler cooking dinner? Possibly done in anger? - That makes no sense, but so little makes sense now.

As you can imagine, a fire on a field of essentially dry grass after two weeks (at least) of a very hot and dry season leaves little in its wake.

Cato is apparently fine: this has happened before in their family’s history and they had a plan. But the fire – it still burns around them and down; with nothing to stop it (other than rain or burning out – either seemingly unlikely at this point).

This is fresh from Young Xerxes and I have no more time to digest it than it took me to write this to you. I need a party – a neutral one, even if absent – to absorb this with.

Is the wheat completely gone? I have no idea. Likely Cato has far too many other things on his mind now and Euripides is too far away to assess, even if he was able. But it is safe to assume that, given the time of year we are in, any chance at this point of gathering anything is simply gone – if there is anything left to gather.

I have tried to parse this all out in my head – my calculations, for all that Pompeia Paulina has urged and suggested, are still locked away in there. What keeps coming back to me is nothing times nothing is nothing.

Other than relaying the news, the look on Young Xerxes face – the shock and bewilderment – tells me all I need to know about any plans that had been laid to this point or had been contemplated.

I look out over the burnt orange sky and this small plot of land, Lucilius, and all of a sudden all of my fears are realized. There really is nothing now except what we have here or what we can scrounge locally.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that Pompeia Paulina turned me aside to other things in advance. Even with not planning for that wheat – but oh, how sweet it would have been - I now feel even more exposed, personally and for the larger group.

The Collapse, at least, I thought I could see coming. This, there was simply no planning for.

As a coda to what has been the Summer no-one anticipated and perhaps a sign from a universe possessed of irony, it has begun to rain even as I write.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

Never Forget

 There is real evil in the world.

Turkey 2024: The Call To Prayer

Perhaps the most noticeable sign that one is in a country which by passing appearance is a typically Western one but is in fact Muslim is the adhan, or call to prayer.

(For the sake of clarity, I am no expert.  More general information here.)

The Adhan is sounded five times a day, both to call Muslims to prayer and to remind they to pray.  Traditionally this call would have been made from the minarets, the tall thin towers that accompany every mosque.  A chanter, the muzzin, would have climbed each tower and made the call.  In modern times, the minarets have loudspeakers in them and a single muzzin chants for the entire mosque.  In some cases the call may even be pre-recorded.

During our travels, the times we heard it varied.  In Istanbul, we only ever heard the 1700 call to prayer.  In a more religious area like Konya, we heard it multiple times (including at 0430, when the minaret was just outside our hotel window).

Below is the call to prayer in the Hippodrome in Istanbul (two videos).  You will note that there is a call and then a response.  In this case the call is from Aya Sofia, which is the "senior" mosque as it is the most important mosque in Istanbul (being the first).  The chanter from the Blue Mosque then responds.

You will also note that people are not just dropping to the ground and praying.  Most people are just carrying with this as part of their normal background experience.  

Run time is 0:31 seconds for the first, 0:14 for the second.

On Answers To Prayer: Church Selection

 You may recall that last week in a general end of August update, I requested prayers/good thoughts on selecting a church.  Part of that is due to timing:  my major trips are at an end for the rest of the year and frankly, it is a gap that now I have no reason not to fill.  

To put it bluntly:  Well, that was quick.

The two churches I was considering were very different Christian traditions, but both within the larger pale of orthodoxy (small "o" there). I had been to both.  I knew something about both of traditions.  And I had asked God, even yesterday morning, to give me guidance.

When the sermon for the morning is spot on to your situation and you, it tends to be a pretty big sign.

Beyond just the sermon - which was a very relevant one to everyone, I suppose - was that moment that I realized that the larger intent of the message had been meant for me.  And my decision, which is now effectively made.

There is a certain reticence and reluctance, at least for me, when something like this happens.  The sort of thing that says "Is God really speaking to me?  Me?:"

The response, of course, is simply "Well, you did ask of course.  Why are you surprised when you get one?"

Whoever Will Not Love His Enemies

 

I struggle with loving my enemies.

And yet, I do not have the option.  Christ commands love  "our enemies", not "our enemies that know us and declare themselves as such".  Just "enemies".  The word in Greek there is ὲχθρός,  which means "hater"; literally Matthew 5:44 says "I say to you, love your hater and pray for the persecutor (δίωκοντον) of you (plural "you", speaking to all)".

For those who claim to be His followers, there really is not a choice.

How do I pray for them?  Badly.  The best I can seem to muster is something between a "help them to see wisdom" and "let them see the error of their ways (by thought or outcomes)".  Not great prayers, I know.  We all have to start somewhere.

The only thing that comforts me in these moments is reading of Christians in times past when persecution was physical and being cast out or without rights was not just a theoretical concept but an actual daily fact of life (as it is even our day to many Christians).  How could they love their haters in the midst of torture and robbery and mistreatment?  Likely my failures are a sign of my weakness:  As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity we should perhaps interpret our lack of trials not as a sign we are doing the right thing but a sign that we are weak and untrained soldiers in a world where the battle is raging and those better trained and more skilled are at the front lines.

Will it be noticed?  I have no idea how to answer that.  The easy answer is "I do not know", the less easy answer is "I will not likely know".  But again, that does not absolve me of the requirement to do so.  Like so many things it is not the results that are guaranteed us, only God's presence in the midst of it.

In the end, of course, we will all answer to God for how we lived our lives.  I cannot control anyone's else's actions or reactions except my own.  But I will be very, very accountable for those actions and reactions.

Pollen Bath

Under a slate sky

The pollen of late Summer

calls pollen bearers.

On An Art Festival

During the weekend past, The Ravishing Mrs. TB wished to go to an art festival located at the heart of New Home 2.0 (Big City edition).  Access there is easy enough - a light rail trip of about 40 minutes - and as we did not have any other plans for the day, it seemed like a good idea.

The walk from the train station to the park where the festival was located was typical of the sorts of things one sees in large cities these days, compounded a bit by the fact that it was a three day weekend.  The streets were largely empty, except for the local population of those that do not have a home.  It is easy enough to avoid a situation and the panhandling that I have seen in other locations such as New Home was not nearly as prevalent.  The sidewalk bears the odor of old urine, something that perhaps only the rain will scrub away (we will see when Winter comes, although has its own health issues I imagine).  The buildings of what was probably a thriving local ethnic downtown are faded and for the most part empty, driven out (likely) by a combination of increase of rent and decrease of business caused both by a move to the suburbs and an unwillingness to make a specific trip and step through or around people to get to one's favorite restaurant. 

These days, one can usually find an excellent restaurant much closer to home.

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The art festival itself is located in a central sort of park for one of the city's historic districts. Signs proclaiming "City District Art Festival" begin to dot the poles as we come near.  One cannot miss the festival itself:  a long rectangle of portable chain link fencing marks out the section of the park dedicated to the arts, useful sign holders in bright yellow jackets stopping the traffic to allow people to cross from one side of the park to the next.  The private security guards are discretely packed away in the corners.

Inside, a series of small tents hold the arts and artists from at least half a dozen countries that I can count.  The artworks themselves are for the most part marvelous creations, the sorts of things that people with real skill can create.  Every medium is represented:  jewelry, glass, metal work, printing, paper, photography, sculpture, wood work, fiber - even local handicraft organizations have demonstration booths.

The crowds themselves are the sorts of people that one usually associates with this sort of art show, the sort of people that - on the whole - likely are not the type of folks that agree with me on most things.  Yes, I know, it is perhaps false to judge things purely based on appearances and half heard conversations - but one gets a sense for things after time through dress and attitude and conversation. No-one is rude of course, or impolite - but there is a vague feeling as we walk up and down the aisles that I am, once again, out of place.

The artwork, while exquisite, is expensive:  small prints of delightfully painted birds on old tea bag material runs $75 while a blown glass trio of flowers is $3200 and a wire frame sculpture is $4500.  These are artists are not fools:  they are here because they believe they can make more money than it cost them to generate the work.

Obviously, I am far from my price range.

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As we leave the festival, within 50 feet we re-enter the zone we originally started in:  the buildings are dour and closed off or in the process of reconstruction (likely for apartments).  The park continues and we walk up.  I marvel at the apparent itinerant inhabitants:  a man with black sweatpants and no shirt on who thumps the garbage can and walks away, the small groups of two or three sitting and discussing things, the man sleeping underneath the sculpture that looks pretty neat but is not something we can see now. In the center of one block we see a small playground where a father is carefully watching his children as they frolic over playground equipment.

As we re-enter the city portion, the same largely empty and grey streets greet us.  Traffic is light, but so are folks like us who are clearly not from around here.  The ground level floors sometimes hold businesses or sometimes have "for lease" signs or sometimes are just empty.

Reaching our stop, there is a series of handicraft stores that are open on this almost empty street.  The items themselves are lovely as I look in the windows.  Looking up, I see a security guard in what I assume is a tactical vest walking the beat around the building.  She nods at me, I nod at her.  We step into one of the stores and look until the ring of the train indicates our tourism is at an end for the day.

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Riding back, I marvel at the the sights I have just seen.

The contrast could not be made more clear by the foil of the art festival in the midst of the general run-down nature of what was once a proud neighborhood.  Fenced off to clearly control access and protect valuables and keep the peace. inside were artworks valued (all together) at hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It is hard to put an estimate on the net worth of the individuals present there - of course some were probably tourists like ourselves - but it is also fair to say that there were people of significant financial worth at that event.  

At the same time, walking up the street, I saw three people sharing a sandwich, eating it as quickly as they could.

The festival ended that day; the tents came down and the artists and their works traveled back with them from whence they came.  As the tide returning, the world that was kept at bay for a little while has undoubtedly rushed back in.  Likely you will be unable to go today and tell there was anything there at all.

The irony?  In many cases the people who came to stroll around and see art (and be seen) will likely be the same group of people verbalize how ugly this part of the city has become, how undesirable - perhaps even unsafe.  They will on one hand support and enable those that create policies that make such things possible and then decry the conditions that these policies have created.  It is a vicious circle that in a way begins and ends with them - but they try to look through the mirror to what is beyond, never seeing the reflection.

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The train comes to a halt at our station.  Above and to our left, the rabbits wait in their room for dinner.

The Collapse CLX: Heat And Death

26 August 20XX+1

My Dear Luclius:

The heat continues.

I would not bother to write you of such an update specifically – except that with enough heat, death follows as well.

We have had two such incidents since I wrote you last. In both cases they involved “older folk” (thus, people in or around our age bracket, or just “folk” as you and I would call them). Of the two, one is not completely unexpected given what has been going on: an older fellow, a widower, who simply fell to the ground in the mid-day heat as he worked in his garden. We assume mid-day; he was not found until later by his wife and by then whatever the cause of death was, it was not self evident. He was just there, lying up, looking at the sun, a hoe still clutched in one hand.

The second was both less visible and less pleasant, an older woman living on her own who had not been seen by her neighbors in several days. When someone finally broke in, they found her on her couch in the living room. As you might imagine, several days in an enclosed space did nothing for the appearance or the smell.

Thankfully, in this case, young people with better stomachs than I helped get her out.

Burial in such circumstances is not the mourning of our past lives, as I have written before.

There is no formal graveyard in this town, so as people have passed away to this point we simply found a place on the other side of the road – as far as is reasonable possible to drag a body and be away from the river – and made that the town graveyard. The digging for both of these started in the early evening – given the temperatures it was either evening or morning but given the condition of at least one of the bodies, the sooner the better.

We dig in turns – you cannot effectively get more than one person in a grave as it turns out without severely impacting the ability to dig effectively. The soil here, thankfully, is not the compacted hard dirt of my home and even with this last round of heat, still moves pretty effectively. And so the pattern goes: one digs, someone else piles the dirt for convenience. On it goes, stepping out and in, until the proper depth is reached.

In the first event – the older man – his wife was there as were her neighbors as we lowered him in. For the second -given the condition of the body – we just put her in the ground and covered her up as quickly as possible; friends could come after the fact.

The services in both cases were brief and to the point: we have no formal pastors here and so we do the best we can. I have an old Anglican prayer book and can read the service for the dead, although I am not Anglican: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and so forth. A quick Lord’s prayer, and we are done. The grieving and comforting comes after, of course. Perhaps someone will have a wake someday, although that has not happened yet: given the state of the world, the idea of celebrating with food in a time of potential want seems wasteful at best.

As we set the first body in and watched the crowd disperse, Young Xerxes and I made eye contact. As the few members of his family and friends dispersed, he walked up to me.

“How many?” he asked, sotto voce.

My raised eyebrow sufficed for the question I did not understand.

“How many by next year?” he asked again.

I looked, and shook my head. “I have no idea” I replied. “More for sure”.

It is sobering, Lucilius, to look at everyone around you and in a real way, realize they are the walking dead.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: The Dardenelles

 The Dardenelles is a 38 mile/61 kilometer long passage which separates the continent of Europe from the continent of Asia.  It varies between 0.75 to 3.73 miles/1.2 to 6 km wide. The Greeks and Romans knew it as Hellespontes, or Sea of Helle (from the Ancient Greeks' story of the golden fleece, when the sister of the brother and sister duo that rode the flying golden ram fell off into the ocean.  In a somewhat uncommonly happy ending, she ended up becoming a sea princess and marrying Poseidon).  

In Turkish it is called  Çannakale Boğazi, or Straits of Çannakale (that being our planned destination for the evening).

The English name "Dardenelles" is taken from the time when two forts - the Dardanelles- stood on either side of the strait guarding it, thus controlling access (not dis-similar to the two forts on either side of the narrowest point of the Gulf of Corinth when we were in Greece). The forts were named after an ancient city Dardan, which in turn pulled its name from the ancient Greek (probably mythical) Dardanus, a son of Zeus.

Beyond just service by ferry (in the foreground) the straits are now served by the 1915 Çannakale Bridge (since 2022).

As may be clear both from the pictures and the physical description, these straits had major economic and security implications.  Whoever controlled the straits controlled both the cities beyond them and the trade all throughout the Black Sea.  During the invasions of Greece in the Greco-Persian wars, it was at the Dardenelles that the Persians (twice) built pontoon bridges of boats against the current to cross into Europe.  Having now seen the water flow itself, I assure you that was a Herculean task.

The European side has a city, Gelibolu, which has the same name as the whole peninsula.  We know it, anglicized in a slightly different form, as Gallipoli.

What do you do when you are by the sea?  Have fresh fish for lunch, of course!

Efes beer (pictured below) appears to be the "national beer" of Turkey.

Crossing the Bridge.  Welcome to Asia!

2024 Turkey: South To The Dardenelles

 After spending a few days in Istanbul, it was time for us to begin traveling around Turkey.  To do this, we would need to cross over into the Asia part of Turkey (which comprises 97% of the country).  You can do that at Istanbul of course as the city is built on both continents; as we were headed towards the South and inland, we headed down the European side to the Dardenelle Straits.

The body of water you see in the background (here and below) is now called the Sea of Marmara (named, as it turns out, for an island from which marble was extracted). To the Greeks and the Romans it was the Propontis, the sea before the Pontus, which we now call the Black Sea.

As this is the major route to the Black Sea, there seemed to be innumerable ships waiting to make passage.

The land, as you can get from the pictures, seems largely rolling hills or even flat.

A picture from a typical road stop. We made these every sixty to ninety minutes or so.  

End Of August/Labor Day Weekend 2024 Grab-Bag

 (Note:  All pictures as found from the New Home 2.0 Vicinity)

Greetings on this 2024 Labor Day - Another obscure holiday which used to mean "something something 'Celebrate Labor'" but is now is just another excuse to take a day off.  It certainly makes a handy end of the Summer marker:  now the long haul to Thanksgiving.  There has been enough "minor things" to report that just lumping them altogether made the most sense.

The most important news is that The Ravishing Mrs. TB has been here for almost the full week, departing tomorrow.  As you might imagine, we have had a pretty busy time -when she is in town, she likes to go.  Somehow we managed to accommodate travel along the scenery pictures here, a visit to the local zoo and local wood museum, a long drive to through the country to a local flower festival, and whatever we are going to do tomorrow.  She brought another suitcase full of things and we made (yet another) list of things we need to have her bring during her next visit.

One big advantage of her arrival?  An actual USB keyboard.  Being able to type again at regular speed is an amazing thing; you do not realize that you miss it until it is gone.

Last Thursday I got my two upper wisdom teeth out.

For years the agreement with all of my dentists has been as long as I could keep them clean (I had all four), I could keep them.  At a recent dental visit in July, my new dentist announced it was time:  they were angled out and acquiring cavities.  So out they came - delayed, of course, until The Ravishing Mrs. TB could be here if something went horribly wrong.

The whole thing took a bit under two hours, including the application of the application of local anesthesia - really one hour for the main show of "pulling". Seeing one's teeth out after being in the mouth for 50 odd years with perfect roots was a surreal experience, as is suddenly being able to sweep my tongue around the back of my upper teeth - have people always lived this way?  

I am happy to report no significant health impacts other than a lot of napping on the day of the removal.  No significant pain either - although I happily took the codeine prescription that was offered.  Given the state of the world, you never know.

One of the fun things about the drive we took was the stop at a fish hatchery.  I will almost always stop at a fish hatchery; they really are just the coolest thing ever.  This particular hatchery had salmon, trout, and sturgeon.

There are a great many rivers and waterways here.  Who knows.  It almost makes me want to take up fishing again, something I have not done in almost 40 years.  Many things that are old seem new again.  Maybe this is one of them.

All of my children's school years have commenced.  Nighean Gheal  has received here assignment in Cheongju, the capital of North Chungcheong province.  She will be between three schools, including a rural school with only six students.  Apparently there is not specific lesson expectations.  She has said it has been related to her that her students like her.

Nighean Bhan started her practicum at a local school in New Home, where she will be providing help to local students at a grammar school.  And Nighean Dhonn has started her classes in New Home in Classical Studies.

All my children have already exceeded me in so much of their education.

Plans continue to evolve for The Ravishing Mrs. TB's full time relocation here.  We have not really set a firm date, but as we talked it through although it would be great if she could be here in October, financially it would make a lot more sense if she delayed her relocation until February of 2025 (which is when we anticipate having some extra income on the house in New Home).  Plans are still kind of up in the air at this point - she technically has told her work September was the end of her time there, but they have not really started looking for a replacement yet, so maybe they would be open to extending her through the next year.

(In case you were wondering, she is scheduling to be back out her in early October after a trip for almost two weeks, in Old Home for a weekend in November as we discuss the estate, and for Thanksgiving with Nighean Bhan and Nighean Dhonn - as well as me going back for a few days at Christmas.  So it is not like I will not see her between now and then.)

A prayer request, if you are up for it:  I am continuing to struggle with finding a church - not that I have not found two, but that I am struggling with actually finding my way in either of them.  I am realizing that I need to find my place in one of those traditions.  Both are more that acceptable and theologically sound; I just do not know which one.

But reassured:  Life is very good indeed.

Acquire Humility