Balcony

Welcome to our Balcony, perhaps better colloquially known as "The Garden in Exile".

I can pretty much take credit for none of this.  The chairs came with move, of course; it was The Ravishing Mrs. TB's idea to bring a mass-produced carpet we had in the house from New Home that we had no further use for there.  It does make the balcony a little swanky (as you will note, it seems to have enough of an overhang to protect it from the rain as well.  It does sort of need a small table between the chairs; balancing your coffee on your lap is a bit of a crap shoot.

My Aunt (the one that lives at The Ranch) gave me this little monk reading years ago. I never really had a place for it but never managed to get rid of it.  Turns out I was saving it for here.

The view at night (the lights, again, were the product of The Ravishing Mrs. TB's imagination).

In the planters I have lettuce, spinach, barley, wheat, and rye while the round planter beyond the monk holds garlic.  Not really enough to do anything of meaning, but at least I feel like I am doing something.

(The planters themselves were a bargain at a Big Box store:  Something something "recycled ocean plastic" something, which translated into apparently not selling well and being 40% off.)

The view directly off our balcony.  It really is a great view, for an apartment.  The small pattern of lights there is obviously a reflection of the lights in the camera; no matter how I try to get rid of it, it shows up.  It does make for a kind of cool effect.

What I See Around The World

 

A Week Of Busy Silence

 One of the things that an audit of your company does is completely eat up your time to pay attention to other things.  

On the whole, I suppose, it is not a bad time to have this happen at all:  as I vaguely recall, it may an election season of some kind and - given the typical cast of elections in the United States since perhaps before the turn of the last century - probably not something I missing anything in by not be aware of it.  But from the little bit I seem to glean from brief moments looking at the InterWeb (it seems to be the only time), the world seems well on its way to falling apart.

Or, perhaps, it is simply par for the course.

Autumn seems to be well on its way to arriving here:  our last Summer style day seems to have been last Tuesday and the temperature has steadily been dropping to the mid-70's F or even into the 60's.  Coworkers assure me this rather golden time will be swiftly eclipsed by what is delightfully called "The Rainy Season", which apparently lasts from about now until the Middle of March or later.

I have to say that this almost total news blackout - accidental as it seems - seems to have worked wonders for my stress levels, as the brief times I look back out on The Real World cause me frets galore.  My isolated bubble of reading, writing, Joy the Rabbit, exercising, iaijutsu, and work keep me rather grounded on a daily basis.

There remains that danger, of course, that events will overtake me and I will be surprised one morning to wake to true disaster.

Or, maybe not.  Given so many years of assuming the worst, actually seeing it manifest in any degree will be more of a "I Told You So" moment - at least right before I starting hacking my way through Apocalyptic Wasteland towards Sanctuary.

With oatmeal, of course.  Breakfast of champions and The Apocalypse.

Sunset New Home 2.0

Vanishing rails

follow the orange sunset

into evening's grace.

Safety Protocol

 

Always follow the safety protocol.

(Apologies; we have an audit at work that is extending my hours, including my work time.)

2024 Turkey: Troy (II)

Schematic of Troy (Source)

As part of the exhibit of ruins, a portion of the citadel wall of Troy II  and Troy III (2500-2000 B.C.).  These are modern bricks which are built over the original mud bricks that were found.  Additionally, the cover you see overhead is the same height as the initial height of the mound circa A.D. 1871.

Fortifications from Troy 1 (circa 2920 B.C.):

The Schliemann Trench:  Cut in between A.D. 1871 and 1890, this is the original trench dug by Schliemann in his discovery.

Schliemann's name, celebrated in his day, is now roundly cursed by almost every archaeologist (ask me; I have one for a daughter).  Schliemann just buldozed his way through, failing to denote items as they were discovered or mark differentiation in layers.  In discovering the site, he destroyed a great deal of its value for future archaeologists (they now do things much differently, of course).

This is the reconstructed ramp of the Troy II citadel (2500 - 2300 B.C.) . The citadel walls this led into were 3300 meters in circumference and 4 meters thick. This version of the city was destroyed by fire, leaving ash to the depth of 2 meters.

An artist's conception of the rampa and walls in their time:

Part of the royal palace of Troy VI (1750 - 1300 B.C.):

Theater of Troy VIII-IX (950 B.C. to A.D. 500):

The South Gate of Troy VI-VII (1700-1300 B.C.):

The Bolouterion (Council Chambers) of Troy VIII-IX (950 B.C. to A.D. 500):

2024 Turkey: Troy (I)

The Illiad represent the effective beginnings of Western Literature.  Dated roughly to the 8th Century B.C., it recounts part of the legendary 10 year war between the Greeks and their opponents the Trojans in the city of Troy.  The story itself alludes to an older period of Greece rather that the end of the Dark Ages and entry into the Classical Era of Greek History.  The Greeks treated it as history and the heroes - Achilles, Menelaus, Patrocles, Odysseus - as real historical characters.  Alexander the Great was said to sleep with a copy of The Illiad by his bed and allegedly, copying Achilles, was the first to jump from the boat to Asia.  But sometime between that period and later years, Troy was lost to ages, a legend and myth which inspired Greek Literature and therefore indirectly, Western Civilization.

Location of Troy (Source)

Until A.D. 1871, when the German businessman and amateur Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann electrified the world with excavation of a mound called Hisarlik in the then Ottoman Empire in Anatolia.  The city of Troy as a Roman city was known; Schliemann's excavations revealed that the city had been rebuilt a number of times (in the modern era, there are 11 different rebuilt cities on the site over a history of 4100 years, from 3600 B.C. to A.D. 500).

Schematic of Troy (Source)

Archaeological evidence since then has verified that in fact the city Schliemann found was called Ilios or Troia.  Records from the Hittite Empire place a city in that area of the world known as Wilusa or Truwisa.  So at least it seems like there was real place called Troy in the Ancient world.  Additionally, the layers of Troy (names by Roman Numerals, e.g. Troy I, Troy II, Troy III, etc.) show that at least two of the rebuilt cities - Troy VIH - was contemporary with the Mycenean Culture of Greece (you may remember we visited there last year here, here and here), and was destroyed by fire.  That same city had a lower city - only discovered in the 1980's - that suggests that it was 16 times larger than originally thought.  Additionally, geographical studies suggest a possibility that the coastline of the time might be similar to that described in the Trojan War.  And at least one tablet from the Hittite Kingdom mentions Ahhiwaya, believed to be Achaea, or Mycenean Greece.

Bottom line: We may never now if there was such a thing as The Trojan War, but it is possible that there was some kind of armed conflict that became memorialized.

Given that there are so many reconstructions, most of the site is essentially stone rubble.  It takes the imagination to see this as Homer describes it, a thriving citadel of powerful warriors and trade.

Some of the walls of Troy.  At some point these stood 9 meter high with superstructures and mud over the stone, and were as thick as 5 meters.

Looking down on the walls:

Overlooking the plains.  At least one study suggest that the geography of the day could have matched that described by Homer.

What Would I Have Changed: High School Edition

On my trip to The Ranch, as per usual, I had dinner with Uisdean Ruadh and then our equally usual post-dinner stroll and and talk.  The conversation ranged widely as it always does, this time covering elections and state economies and fraternal orders and religion and children and 1960's/1970's space programs and going to Mars.

On the walks through my hometown downtown, we typically pass around and through our old high school.  This time, as we were meandering past the buildings and the gym, we began to rattle off the classes we had in separate buildings and the teachers that we had for those classes (rather remarkable how, after all these years, one can still recall a great many of them).  This reminiscence kept on as we were driving back home, when in the midst of discussing upcoming reunions and old friends no longer heard from, he asks "If you could change something about high school -anything - what would it be and why?"

 I thought for a moment and then told him that was a hard question:  for me high school was a pretty good experience overall.  I had good friends (at least two of whom I continue to speak to this day, including him), relatively good teachers, activities that helped me blossom - band and drama - and I learned, maybe for the first time, that there other people of my "tribe" that thought nerdy things were just as interesting as I did.

He pressed in more.  Surely, he said, there was something.  I thought for longer, and then grudgingly came up with two items.  The first, I told him, was my obsession with having a girlfriend.

This slightly predated my arrival at high school and certainly extended past it well into graduate school, but for several years - 10 at least - I was obsesses with the idea of a girlfriend.  The amount of time I dedicated my thoughts and actions to this, the hours of overwrought agony I put myself through, the mental woes I gifted to myself - energy and time that got me precisely nowhere near that goal (quite literally) but led to my second item:

The inability to consider the impact of my decisions.

In general, I am pretty much a "go along" sort of fellow.  If someone suggested an idea or even if I thought of one, I would often just act on it without thinking.  Fortunately I had a pretty strong moral base set in place by my parents, so serious crimes and wildly bad ideas (the sort that generally show up in The Darwin Awards) were never really under consideration.  But sort of bad ideas?  I was just as likely to say "yes" as "no".

For all my "book smarts", I was a fool.  And a romantic.  And there is little more foolish or dangerous than hopelessly romantic teenager who is always chasing the idea of a girlfriend and is willing to do almost anything to achieve it.

Did it all work out in the end? Sure.  I married far better than I had any right to and - eventually - I learned to think about the consequences of my actions and how they impacted others.

But other than those two things, I told him, I would not change a thing.

As we continued up The Hill, it struck me as odd to look back at something and - for once - be pleasantly surprised at good it really was.

Everywhere

 

On Credit Scores

(Editor's note:  I am, once again, flying back to The Ranch for the weekend to attend to things.  Responses may be delayed, for which I beg your indulgence.)

Last December when we were visiting my in-laws, the question of credit scores came up with my nephews and sister in law, who were chatting away and comparing them.  They asked me what I thought mine was.

I literally had no idea.

To my mind, my credit score only mattered if I was borrowing money.  And since I did not intend to purchase a house or buy a new car or open another credit card, I never really kept up with.  If I needed to know, I was pretty sure that The Ravishing Mrs. TB would let me know.

Cue about two months ago when, due to a major information hack and breach, a rather large number of Americans were faced with the potential of credit theft.  The recommendation?  Sign up with each credit reporting service and put a freeze on your account.  Which, as this was endorsed by The Ravishing Mrs. TB, was duly performed.

The great thing about "signing up" is that now I get almost daily e-mail updates telling me whether or not my credit score is rising or declining:  "Congratulations, your credit score has gone up by 9 points!" or "Your credit score has declined by 22 points."

Looking at my credit score (which, apparently, is "Excellent"), I both have no idea what this means and am aggravated.

I suppose my fundamental problem is that credit scores indicate credit worthiness - which 90% relate directly to the ability to borrow money (the other 10% being rental application - which I have come to know) and certain job applications.  The fact that, at least from where I sit today I have no interest and no need to borrow (so far as I am aware) does not enter into this calculation.

I would bet, were I to think about it more, that likely people with "lower" credit scores are the individuals more likely to borrow and people with "higher" credit scores are less likely to.  It would be wrong to draw many conclusions from that - life happens and all - but I do not wonder that there is likely a correspondence between people that handle their money better and a higher credit score.

On the one hand, I suppose I could just unsubscribe to those e-mails.  On the other, I might miss out on breathlessly awaiting my next "Credit Score Update".

Sorrow

 I do not learn as much from sorrow as I probably should.

To me sorrow is usually something to be rushed through, a sort of waypoint at best on a trip to a destination that is ever, always, somewhere else.  Part of it, I suppose, is due to a personality that can be ebullient almost to the point of psychosis at times.  Part of it is likely due to the fact that I simply do not like to be sad.

I suspect I have missed something in the process.

If I had to think of some of the greatest times of learning I have had, they have come about as part of sorrow, even if I did not recognize it as such: Sorrow about the loss of a parent.  Sorrow about the loss of dreams.  Sorrow about the loss of relationships that seem to simply fade away rather than fulfilling the potential that they had.  

Even something as simple, it seems, as the loss of a beloved pet.

Why does sorrow offer us this?  I do not wonder it is of a similar sentiment to that of C.S. Lewis, who noted in The Problem of Pain "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."  Sometimes there is simply no other way to get our attention than by pain - or sorrow.    But if in pain God seeks to rouse us, perhaps in sorrow He means us to take stock of our situation and treasure all those things we have all the more tightly.

How often have we sought out closer family communication after a beloved relative dies, hugged our children (or pets) closer, or taken stock of all the good things we do have in our lives because sorrow came through grief or loss?  When these things happen, do we not almost instinctively look to the good we still have instead as well as the good we have lost?

Is that the only lesson sorrow might hold?  I suspect not; likely it is different for different people.  But sorrow - at least for me - drives to what I have that is still good, even as I mourn what is past. 

I have not often sought that pearl in midst of my pain.  It appears I need to look for it more closely.

The Collapse CLXII: A Sort Of Anniversary

05 September 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

The heat has broken and for the last three days, the temperature has been dropping back to what would typically expect for this time of year. Warmish days, coolish nights – we have already touched sub-40 F temperatures. If this holds, Winter is coming early.

In the rather overwhelming events of the last communique, I realized upon reviewing it that I had completely failed to denote the formal anniversary of The Collapse – or at least, when I formally date it, that being 02 September 20XX with the declaration of the multi-day banking holiday. Yes, I know that there were some signs prior to that, but that was the day that the whole thing became “formalized”, at least in my mind.

It is odd, how much time seems to have passed since then. Far more than the year that it seems to have actually been. And in some ways, it already seems like a very distant world.

I can certainly very easily recall what it was like to have unlimited and abundant energy instead of the almost complete lack that we have today, with the except of small solar powered items or the last bits of fuel that are stored for trucks or generators. I can remember a life of lights at night and days of not thinking to what would be available to eat next season. I can remember when there was a world away from this place.

Away from this place. That seems to be the oddest thing at all about this. With few exceptions – the military in September of last year (sadly, I think my truck is truly gone) and the issues with The Locusts in July – we have heard nothing from the outside world.

It strikes me as eerie and disconcerting. One always imagined that somewhere out there in an actual event, there would still be evidence of people and activity: a war being fought for example, or efforts to hold things together in a way that was more visible to the population. Instead, there has been a great deal of silence.

Surely, I think to myself, things cannot be that bad. How many billions were we as a race? And now, almost nothing. Can it have really gone that badly?

Who knows what other dangers this may have provoked beyond an economic collapse? Wars? Environmental Catastrophes? Plagues? Famines? Aliens?

(Well, not that last one. I feel we would have known if that was the case.)

It is not that I mind it at all. Given the option of contact and complete instability or no contact and some degree of stability, I will happily take the latter. It is still less stressful and I at least do not worry every moment about any number of potential disasters.

We know from folks like Epicurus and Themista and Cato that there are still people out there, people farther away than our neck of the woods. But we do not seem to pay them any mind, we are so busy with worrying about ourselves (which, of course, is only bound to get worse).

I wonder if they, in turn, think about the places they used to go to “Get Back To Nature” at all either.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

I-Bun The Mighty Has Fallen

 I-Bun the Mighty passed away Monday night.

When I adopted him in 2015, he was the rabbit I did not even think that I needed.  We had three rabbits already, but my friend The Shelter Director had already started on me the preceding August.  She kept encouraging me to take out the cage and hold him.  "How is your rabbit doing?" she would tease me during the intervening months.

That December he came home.  Only a few weeks later our first rabbit Bella passed, and he had a place to stay.

Rabbits are said to have the intelligence of cats, and their personalities are just as varied and memorable as any larger animals.  I-Bun was no exception.

To I-Bun, the world was about I-Bun.  He refused to paired with any rabbit, things usually ending in rabbit domination rituals, and so he lived in his own cage.  He would happily hop to the door to greet you, and even more happily hop out to take a stroll around the room.

What I-Bun was most about, though, was attention.

When we had the large purple chair in the Living Room I used for reading, he would perch himself one one arm, where he would firmly begin demanding attention with head butts and even light bites.  Once the attention started - his favorite spot was the hollow just below the ear and behind the eye - he would sink down, his eye almost going completely shut and looking for all the world like he had gone asleep.  And he could stay that way for long periods of time - stop the process, and one would get the baleful eye demanding that the attention restart itself.

Sometimes, he would even deign to give some attention back.

The Plague and Work From Home/Layoffs  (2020-2023, 2023-2024) were a great time for him.  I could set up the X-Pen wire cage in the entry hall and rotate the rabbits in and out so everyone got some out-of-the-cage time.  He relished these times, pushing the walls of the cage towards the carpet and trying to find a way to get out (which he did on more than one occasion).

The last two months of having him and Joy here were, in a real way, mental life savers.  Not just to have someone there when I got home, but the pure joy he exhibited when he got his 30 minute "out time" that we always did even up to the Saturday before he passed.  His routine when the door was open - hopping out, a very long stretch and yawn, then bounding away to explore the room - made the fact of being alone in a large city a little more enjoyable.

Rabbits can pass quickly, a legacy of being a prey animal where weakness is interpreted as becoming dinner.  He was fine Sunday morning, did not eat Sunday night (although this has happened with both rabbits before), and by Monday was definitely looking worse.  My fear was gut stasis, which can be caused by any number of actors - diet, weather change, just because - and I administered Gas-X and Critical Care, which was either not enough, too late, or simply not the issue.

But, to be fair, he was also probably at least 10 years old.  At an average life span of 9-12 years, he had lived a good life.

I stayed with him until the end Monday night, sitting on the couch with him in my arms, then lying down with him.  When I rose to feed him at 2300, it was clear it was close.  His breaths got shorter and shallower and shallower, and then - quietly - they stopped altogether.

One of the greatest books about animals, to my mind, is Watership Down by Richard Adams - both because it is about rabbits (no surprise of my opinion there) and the fact that he writes of rabbits as I would think rabbits probably see themselves.  The very last paragraphs have always touched me:

"One chilly, blustery morning in March, I cannot tell how exactly how many springs later, Hazel was dozing and waking in his burrow.  He had spent a good deal of time there lately, for he felt the cold and could not seem to smell or run so well as in days gone by.  He had been dreaming in an awkward way - something about rain and elder bloom - when he woke to realized there was a rabbit lying quietly beside him - no doubt some young buck who had come to ask his advice.  The sentry in the run outside should not have really let him in without asking first.  Never mind, thought Hazel.  He raised his head and said "Do you want to talk to me"?

"Yes, that is exactly what I've come for," replied the other. "You know me, don't you?"

"Yes, of course," said Hazel, hoping he would be able to remember his name in a moment. Then he saw that in the darkness of the burrow the stranger's ears were shining with a very faint silver light.  "Yes, my lord," he said.  "Yes, I know you."

"You've been feeling tired", said the stranger.  "but I can do something about that.  I've come to ask you to join my Owsla.  We shall be glad to have you and you'll enjoy it.  If you're ready, we might go along now."

They went out past the young sentry, who paid the visitor no attention.  The sun was shining and in spite of the cold there were a few bucks and does at silflay, keeping out of the cold wind as the nibble the shoots of spring grass.  It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body anymore, so he left it lying at the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy sense.

"You needn't worry about them," said his companion.  "They'll be all right - and thousands like them.  If you'll come along, I'll show you what I mean."

He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap.  Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were starting to bloom."

Somewhere, in the coming blue-green of the evening where the physical and spiritual world meet, the great Owsla now runs its patrol with a one-eyed rabbit charging forward with joy.

God speed, I-Bun.

Self Control

(Editor's note:  Apologies, we will return to Turkey next week.  My heart is just not in it this week.)

"A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls." - Proverbs 25:28

I have always struggled with self-control.

Self-control is one of those funny sorts of skills.  It is incredibly important to many different aspects of life, but it is something that some people are born with, some people are able to learn, and some are neither born with it or learn it at all.  In that sense, perhaps, it strikes me that it almost a skill like music or athletics:  some people are born naturals, some people can learn it and do okay, and some people have neither the ability nor the interest no matter how often they train or practice.

It is also one of those skills that serves as an indicator of other issues:  have a problem with self control in one thing and it is quite likely that you have a problem with self control in a great many other things.  Why?  Because the issue that the self control does not exist with is not the thing itself, but the personality trait which inevitably appears in other areas of our lives.

Self control can also be subtle.  For many I suspect - at least for me - it is pretty easy to point at some of the major issues that people have issues with and sort of smugly think "Well, that is not a problem for me".  And yet - if I look deeper at myself anyway - I find that the same impulses are there, just in less obvious and perhaps even more socially acceptable ways.

Humility feeds into this equation as well.  In our pride, we can often overlook those subtle signs that indicate that we have a problem.  It can be as simple as "Well, this (fill in the blank) is completely justifiable and not illegal or immoral.  It is fine" or as complicated as "Well, I need (fill in the blank) and if I do not get it, bad things will happen" - and by bad things, we often mean minor inconveniences instead of truly life altering situations.

---

Perhaps obviously, this is the sort of thing that has been on my mind this week.

None of these issues where there were slips in self control were illegal or immoral.  All were, arguably, completely justifiable for most if not many people.  The place where I crossed over from "not a problem" to "a problem" was when rather giddily could not say "no" to myself.

If I am honest, this happens a lot more than I care to admit.  

For example, as I have discussed in the past, I am long time nail chewer who only in the last few years have managed to stop tearing my nails down to the quick.  But I have not completely stopped the habit; I still tear away small chunks.  "It is fine", I tell myself.  "I am not chewing."

Or something as innocuous as the candy basket at my new place of work.  There is no reason I need to be back again and again for another mint LifeSaver (my favorite flavor) but there I am.  "It is fine", I tell myself.  "They are low calorie."

You get the idea.

Ultimately, this all stems from the simple inability to say "no" to myself - not because these things are wrong or bad but because I should have control over my feelings and impulses, not having them dictate to my conscious mind what is to be done.  

---

I guess in this, what is the goal?

I remember one episode of M.A.S.H where one of the principal characters Hawkeye swore off drinking for a period.  He received the inevitable ribbing from his colleagues (he was portrayed as a bit of an inveterate drinker) and struggling through points where it would have been the typical thing he would have done.  Near the end of the episode, he "reaches" his goal of a period of time without drinking.  A drink is put down on the bar as someone says something like "You need it".  He looks at it and then pushes it away.  "I will have it when I want it, not when I 'need' it" he responded.

It can be alcohol or uncontrollable purchasing of an item or nail chewing or even the innocuous little white rings of minty goodness.  If I cannot say "no" to myself - not just once, but until I am in a place where I can pick it up or lay it down at will - I remain, as the writer says, a city broken into and left without walls.

And cities without walls are ripe for destruction.

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.

---

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.)

---

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.

---

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.