Obsession

While I own a lot of things - which mostly look like books - I would argue that my "obsession" is 1st Edition Gamma World Items.

First Edition Gamma World, as you might recall from posts here and here, was a role playing game produced by TSR from 1978 to 1982, when it then moved to 2nd edition, 3rd edition, etc.  I have never had quite the interest in the later editions as over time they tended to be less "campy" and innovative and more proscriptive in terms of what your characters could do.  They also started to reflect modern technology or based on modern technology, which was also kind of a drag: I am not interested in a game with nanotechnology, I am interested in a game with Black Ray Guns, and Warbots and Think Tanks.

Its production run, such as it was, was a core rule book, a map of the ruined United States, two full modules and a referee's screen with a smaller module, a double handful of magazine articles scattered across  Dragon magazine (which I truly wish I had kept all my copies of now) and two 20 piece sets and 67 blister packs of lead figurines.

I have the original rule books, map, modules, and referee screen (but sadly, the smaller module is a computer print) in print and the magazine articles on a drive (which I should really print as well).  And while I have the twenty piece sets of figures, I only have a handful of the blister packs (which are seldom, if ever, actually in their blister packs).

As a result, any time a new one comes up (mostly on E-bay), I will at least try to buy it.

I know.  They serve no good purpose and they are not of any use to me except for happy memories and the fact they please me.  But if they are not ones I have, I will try to get them.

That is my obsession.  What is yours?

A Year Of Humility (V): The Devil's Snares

 

(Author's note:  I am working through how to structure this series.  It seems undesirable that it only be me writing all the time; I owe it to some quotes that started me on this path and I would be remiss if I did not actively pepper them throughout the series.)

While humility is a thing we are and a thing we do, it can also be a thing that protects us.

"Pride goes before a fall".  How many times have we heard that?  How many times have seen it in others?  

How many times have I applied it to myself?

The proud man or woman does not believe they will fall.  They believe their discipline, their wisdom, their "street smarts", their very nature - all of this will give them the insight and wisdom to avoid pitfalls and snares.

I have believed this - more than I care to admit.  And every time I do - almost without fail - my sin overtakes me.

The humble person knows that themselves are always prone to their weaknesses and their sins - "There but for the grace of God go I" (or words to that effect) feel as if they would be a common thought in their daily lives.  They understand they do not have the discipline, the wisdom, the knowledge to avoid stumbling - alone.  They are always prone to it.  And indeed, as Peter says in 1st Peter, our adversary the Devil is always seeking about for someone to devour.

The proud can easily miss the snare.  The humble very often do not.

Go Outside

 Seen while commuting to work:

I cannot tell you how much this made my morning.

Essentialism (IV): Organizing Our Closets (And Our Lives)

Essentialism, says Greg McKeown in his book of the same name,  is a lot like organizing a closet.

Closets unmanaged can rapidly spin out of control.  They can become stuffed with clothes (and other things) and become disorganized to the point that almost nothing will fit into them.  Every now and again, perhaps driven by frustration or a sheer need to do something, we will purge - but not in an organized way.  And then, as sure as the sun will rise again, the closet will fill up again.

"In the same way that a closets get cluttered as clothes we never wear accumulate, so do our lives get cluttered as well-intended commitments and activities we've said yes to pile up.  Most of these efforts didn't come with an expiration date.  Unless we have a system for purging them, once adopted, they live on in perpetuity".

So we do we organize our closets - and our lives?

1)  Explore and evaluate - We need to turn the questions on our clothes from "Is there a chance I will ever wear this?" to better questions, suggests McKeown, such as "Do I love this?", "Do I look great in this?", and "Do I wear this often?".  If the answer is "no" to any of these, likely they can be eliminated.

The same is true of our personal and professional lives:  "Will this activity make the highest possible contribution towards my goals?

2)  Eliminate - Once we have sorted the clothes, we often have a reluctance to part with them, even though we already believe we will seldom if ever use these again.  This is due, suggests McKeown, to the idea of "sunk cost bias", that we have already spent the money and so are wasting it if we give them away.   The question to ask here is "If  I didn't own this already, how much would I spend to buy it?" If the answer is "not that much" or "I would not buy it", likely it can go away.

For our personal and professional lives, it is the same.  It is not enough to determine the activities that do not lead us to our highest and best contribution; we need to actively weed out and eliminate those activities.

3)  Execute - Once we have organized the closet, if we want to keep it organized we need a system to do this.  We need to schedule regular clean out sessions.  We need to have a place to put the clothes we no longer want.  And we need to have a time set aside to go to the local donation center and turn the bags in.

In the same way, "...once you've figured out which activities and efforts to keep - the ones that make your highest level of contribution - you need a system to make executing your intentions as effortless as possible".  It is not just identifying those things that are essential, it is "stacking" the system of execution in such a way that we make it painless for us to complete them.

From McKeown:  "Essentialism is about creating a system for handling the closet of our lives.  This is not a process  you undertake once a year, once a month, or even once a week.  It is a discipline you apply each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or politely decline." 

---

Thoughts and Applications:

Cleaning out closets is something that has become recently familiar to me with my move, as well as the practice of having to keep a closet in order (amazing how quickly they fill back up with "stuff".  So what McKeown says resonates with me.

Of these three - Explore and evaluate, Eliminate, and Execute - is there one that is more difficult than the others?  Honestly, for me it is "Execute".  I can evaluate commitments and interests, I can even (in theory) eliminate them - yet I fail to put in place a method to reliably execute on those choices, and so I keep finding myself back at the place that I started, with more than I had intended in my life.

If my life were a closet, you would barely be able to get into it.

The Collapse CLXXVII: Trial Day 1

11 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

This was one of the most exhausting days of my life.

Our “courtroom” was the old large storefront that we had occasionally met at, as it was the only building that could hold the crowd the came out to see the trial – I would not wager the whole population was there, but a great many of them .

Included in that crowd, walking with his head held high, was the accused – let us call him Cataline – wedged between his two guards of the time. Behind him came the woman I can only assume was his wife. And waiting for us at the entrance was the woman I had seen crying and shouting two days ago, apparently the wife of the deceased. Her name, for our purposes, will be Terentia. She stood at the front of the door, her head also held high with a picture of the deceased in her hands, surrounded by her own crowd of assumed family and friends.

This was already turning out to be exhausting beyond measure and we had not even started.

Young Xerxes had somehow cobbled together a courtroom: A table and a chair facing two tables with two chairs each. Two chairs were near the table at the front – I assume for a note taker and a witness. As I reached the front table, I realized that he had also managed to scrounge a gavel from who knows where: “Lion’s Club, Century City, 19XX” read the inscription on the band around it.

I banged it on the table. The room almost mysteriously quieted.

Cataline took his seat, an older man next to him. Terentia took her seat, a fashionable young woman (fashionable even in these times) at her side. Somewhat to my surprise, Pompeia Paulina took a seat in the note taker’s chair – Young Xerxes had not mentioned that at all. To the sides, I saw two men I recognized vaguely from McAdams, their sidearms quite visible.

“Court”, Young Xerxes boomed in a voice I had never heard him use, “is now in session. The honorable judge Seneca presiding”.

All eyes turned to me. I sighed.

This was going to be a long day.

“This court”, I started, “is obviously not the court of the justice system of the country we live – or lived – in. But is the best we have at hand given the circumstances, and to that end we will conduct in a way that if and when the decision is reviewed by an actual court, the proceedings are understandable and the greatest extent possible, just.” I looked to the left and right (Cataline to the left, Terentia to the right). “Are these your chosen advocates?”

Both Cataline and Terentia said “Yes” in voices that were overpowered for the space.

“What are the nature of the charge?” I asked.

“Murder” cried Terentia, point a thin finger with a ring hanging on it towards Cataline.

“Your plea?” I looked to the other side.

“Not guilty”. This was the older man, not Cataline.

I turned to both parties. “Given the circumstances, the likelihood of an unbiased jury seems remote. Are you both willing to abide by a judge’s decision?” Cataline’s advocate nodded firmly, Terentia’s less so.

“A two day trial” I declared, not asking. “One day for the prosecution, one day for the defense. Witnesses to be called and cross examined by either side. When witnesses are done, we close for the day."

With that, one of the bailiffs brought a Bible to the front, the first witness was called by Terentia’s advocate, and we had started.

The first witness was a neighbor who stated he had seen much of the initial incident – in short, Cataline had been about Terentia’s house apparently looking for something. He had not found it, but found Terentia’s husband instead. A verbal argument had broken out, then physical pushing. At this point the neighbor had gone inside to get his son for help; by the time he had come out both parties had departed.

What was the argument about? He could not specifically make out the conversation. Cataline had nothing in his hands that the neighbor could remember, nor had he taken anything when he was there.

During this time, Pompeia Paulina was writing away – what, I had no idea. She had never indicted stenography as a talent, but she had surprised me before.

The next witness stepped up – another witness, a character witness. No, he did not know the defendant nor had he seen him before – but surely Terentia’s husband could not have threatened to kill him. He was well known for years in this town and neighborhood as a thoughtful and generous man, a pillar of whatever remained of this small and slowly dying town. Had he seen the argument? No, no he had not. But not seeing the argument did not change the facts.

And so the day ran into the afternoon, witness after witness coming forward to extol the virtues of Terentia’s husband. No-one else upon questioning could really confess to having seen the actual event of the killing – that apparently happened in the RV park – but it was quite clear to all the witnesses that Cataline – that outsider, one of those stuck here without anything but a RV – was at best highly questionable and at worst to blame, although no-one could offer eyewitness proof.

By late afternoon we had been through a dozen witnesses, expertly lead by the Fashionable Woman – who if not a lawyer in a previous life (she claimed not to be), was far better versed in the law that anyone else in the room. Without having a solid eyewitness or motive, she had managed to set forth a tale of the salt of earth local being set upon unjustly by a man with little to lose and unknown motives. Having nor more witnesses to call, the case was rested.

I had little to say to Pompeia Paulina that night, and she kindly left me in peace. Which was appreciated, as I had nothing to say other than the hope that I had more to make a decision on that just “He was a great man done wrong”.

If this was the lot of a judge, I wondered why any stuck with the position.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Paşabağlari Örenyeri I (Fairy Chimneys)

 The Fairy Chimneys of Kapadokya (Paşabağlari Örenyeri) refer to a unique landscape found in Kapaokya.

Originally formed by volcanos, over thousands of years wind, water, time, and even human intervention have served to carve out freestanding monoliths and columns in the landscape

An excellent picture showing the various layers of rock:

Balancing act:

Oftentimes these reminded me of mushrooms:

2024 Turkey: Underground City of Özkonak

 In 1972 a local farmer in Kapadokya, Latif Acar, noticed that excess water from his fields was disappearing.  He was curious and followed the runoff to an underground room.  That discovery led to an archaeological expedition, which rediscovered the city of Özkonak. 

(Model of the city)

When fully excavated, the city was found to descend down to a depth of 40 meters/131 feet and could likely support a maximum of 60,000 people for 3 months.  It is believed that Byzantine inhabitants of Kapdokya dug the city, although it could be much older.

Above and below are near the surface.  These would have been used as stables and fodder storage.

Besides ventilation shafts, this city has two unique features from other similar cities in the region:  one is holes above passages to dump hot sand on invaders, the other is a pipe "communication system" to communicate between levels.

The city had a total of 10 levels; only the first four are open to the public.

It is also known for having a wine processing area (below), because there is no reason we cannot be civilized.

Looking up at another level.

Passageway and grain storage bin:

Rock doors, used for sealing passages in the event of an invading force.

Ventilation shaft:

Full view of one of the rock "doors":

It is estimated there are over 200 underground cities in Turkey, at least that are known.

Sorting Lives

(Author's note:  As part of this visit to The Ranch, I stopped by to see my Aunt Pat, whom you have very kindly been praying for/thinking good thoughts for.  Imagine my surprise when she opened the door!  She is doing much better, to the point they are thinking of moving her off hospice.  Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and prayers.) 

Two weeks ago, I completed the sorting of the last of the materials at The Ranch.

The moment almost slipped by me without noticing, the last sheet of paper in a pile of papers from the file cabinet that I set aside during my last visit to go through again to make sure I did not dispose of anything that I truly wanted to keep.  I sorted it into the appropriate pile - keep, burn, shred - and looked for the next sheet.  It was not there.

I was finished.

It was an odd feeling, as this is a process that more or less has been going on for the last four years.  We knew this time would come; if anything I was guilty of not being proactive and starting to sort sooner.  That slower pace worked as long as I was able to get back there for one week a month; it did not work nearly so well when a week became a weekend.

Having never sorted a life or lives, it is a sobering thing to realize that you have in essence looked at an individual's life (or in this case a married couple) through the things that they owned.  In some reasons I know why those things are there, in other cases I do not:  Why did they keep this?  What significance did it have?  If I let go of it, am I releasing some precious treasure?

Ultimately of course, all we can do is all we can do:   we set aside the things we know, we evaluate the things we do not know, and let the rest go to some else.

And somehow, suddenly find ourselves at peace.

A Year Of Humility (IV): Appearances

Were you to reach for your New Strong's Concise Concordance of the Bible (King James Version) and turn to page 311 (1985 edition), you would find that the words humility and humble and their various forms (humbled, humbldest, humbleness, and humbly) appears around 70 times.  For reference the King James version (1769 edition) has 31,202 (or so) verses.

Were you to sit and count the references, you also find that of the 70 listed, only 15 of them appear in the New Testament. Matthew 18:14, Matthew 23:12, Luke 14:11, Luke 18:14, Acts 20:19, 2nd Corinthians 12:21, Philippians 2:8,. Colossians 2:18, 2:23, 3:12, and 3:18, James 4:10, 1 Peter 5:3, 5:5, and 5:6.

Even if you allow for different translations using the word "humility" and humble" more or less based on the translator, that seems like an incredibly small number for something that has become such an important part of Christianity.

John MacArthur, in his "Topical Index" in the MacArthur Study Bible, gives a hint of might lie underneath the difference between what appears as text and what is an integral part of Christianity.

Beyond just references to the appearance of the word (as presented above), he also has a category named "exemplified by", and then lists various people of the Old and New Testament which demonstrated the concepts of humility, even if the word "humility" or "humble" was not specifically mentioned - and Christ gets His own section on this.

Suddenly for me, this changed how I viewed humility in terms of Scripture.  While there are many admonitions - do this, do not do that - humility is a virtue that is just as much lived out and demonstrated as it is defined.  And perhaps this is the reason that it does not appear so often yet permeates Scripture:  the examples of humility are so present (especially in Christ) that the writers of Scripture did not feel the need to mention it all the time.

Humility, then, is as much a thing that we live and are defined by as it is a quality that we have.

Gone Training 2025

 Friends - As you read this missive, I am either getting ready for or on my way (via ground transport or air) to Japan for martial arts training.

The training venue, as in years past, will be in Katsuura, a town located on the southeastern coast of Japan about 1.5 hours from Tokyo via train in Chiba Province (also, apparently, the home of the second largest fish catch in Japan).  We will be there for 4 days, after which we will move back to Tokyo for the remainder of our training.

I know what you are thinking:  "Given the year you have had - moving, re-orienting your life, already taking a pretty big vacation last year to Turkey, and (frankly) a drop in income - is this really the best idea right now?"  The sensible answer, of course, is "no" - but sensibility seems to have abandoned this vessel some months ago (if it helps, the flight was purchased with points).

I had not necessarily planned to go this year, given all of the items that above.  But then the e-mail came out and thinking through, the answer became "Why would you not?"  For all of the reasons that I listed, the facts remain that my Headmaster is growing older and opportunities to train with him are rare enough that any opportunity to train directly with him should be sought out as much as possible.

When I say "train", it is exactly that:  we will training 7-8 hours a day Monday through Wednesday, likely Thursday morning and afternoon (after the training ride to Tokyo), 6-8 hours on Friday and Saturday, and a trip on Sunday to the Japanese Old Martial Arts demonstration (Old in the sense of being founded before A.D. 1600) .  I reliably get a little "free time" on Monday in the morning following, before we have to fly back.

I say we.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB, finding herself between jobs, is flying out with me.  She will meet Nighean Gheal who is coming in from South Korea (it is the equivalent of their "Summer Break" and they will spend the week in Tokyo.

As per usual on these things, I have provided a series of posts but responses will likely be delayed.  

Enjoy life, and be good to one another.  See you on the other side.

Your Obedient Servant, Toirdhealbheach Beucail

Essentialism (III): The Nonessentialist

 If there is such a thing as an Essentialist, there must be a thing as a Nonessentialist.

There is, says McKeown, and he knows too well of it. He has a story in his book to tell.

In his case it was a choice between staying with his wife a few hours after the birth of their child and attending a meeting with a client.  He attended the meeting.  His colleague told him "They will respect you for this".  The clients' reaction at his presence suggested that they did not.  What was worse is that the meeting ended up mattering for nothing at all.  The once in a lifetime moment was gone and would never return and what had replaced it was without consequence.

In thinking about this, McKeown realized a truth that has been said many times and many ways:  If you do not prioritize your life, someone else will.

Why is this?  This became a core of his thought, and how people succeed - Essentialism - his life's work.

In working with his clients, he realized a second truth:  Pursuing success can become a catalyst for failure, because our pursuit of success can blind us to our real priorities.

The progression is easy enough to imagine; I am sure it has happened to many.  We do a good job and are successful.  In our success, we are given more options and opportunities.  We take those options and opportunities and spread ourselves thinner and thinner.  In the end, we are working on everything but our priorites.

There are three elements in the world, suggests McKeown, that lead to Nonessentialism:

1)  Too many choices - "We have all observed the exponential increase in choices over the last decade.  Yet even the midst of it, and perhaps because of it, we have lost sight of the most important ones".  The growth in choices, he says (quoting Peter Drucker), has created the situation where more and more people have choices.  And by having choices, they have to manage themselves.  And society is not at all prepared for it.  We are unprepared because..."for the first time, the preponderance of choice has overwhelmed our ability to manage it."  We become so overwhelmed that we develop "decision fatigue", the inability to filter out what is important and what is not.

2)  Too much social pressure - Simply put, it is not just that we have more choices, it is that thanks to technology we are now more exposed to more decisions and outside influences.  We therefore suffer not just from an information overload, but an opinion overload as well.

3)  The idea that "You can have it all" - It is not a new idea of course; Western business and corporations have been peddling it for years.  The idea that you can do everything:  career, family, hobbies, religion - everything.  We write job descriptions this way, our advertising is aimed at people this way.  Our technology enables this by 24 hour/7 day/365 day a year access to information.  We no longer talk about a priority (as we did from the time the word entered the English language in the 1400's) but we speak (since the 1900's) of priorities. The "one big thing" became "the several big things".

And so we try to do it all, making trades at the edges.  When we do not choose purposefully and directly, says McKeown, other people will choose for us.  And since we have lost the idea of what is a priority, everything - the important, the unimportant, the trivial - all become mixed together.  

He closes this section with a quote from an Australian nurse, Bonnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives.  The biggest regret people had: "I wish I'd had the courage to life a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

This, suggests McKeown, does not happy naturally.  We will have to choose.

---

Thoughts and Application:

It is not just life that causes us to be overwhelmed by choices, it is the very culture we live in. Capitalism abounds in the idea that we can have almost everything we want.  We are given a hundred choices for the simplest of things.

Take shoes.  When I was growing up, I had such large feet I only ever had one choice through the 8th grade:  Keds.  The years New Balance started making wide shoes was the year my life changed.  Now, just with a quick look on The Large InterWeb Retalier, the search term "men's sports' shoes" draws in over 20,000 results.

As noted above as well, society serenely tells us we can have it all.  Our employers do.  Our government does.  Often, much of our religion does.  In every way, we "live" in a world of "we can do it all".

We cannot of course - something that I have to learn time and time again.  And what is worse, the precious time and energy wasted on those choices that went nowhere - the sacrificial after hours work for projects that failed, the time and effort spent impressing people that did not matter, the hard coin spent on things that we thought would matter - is gone and can never be recovered.

We cannot do it all.  We simply have to choose, not matter who or what entity tells us otherwise.

The Collapse CLXXVI: De Curiae

10 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

A saying that I do not think I ever recall being explicitly spelled out in any book but underlying so many of them that I read in history and philosophy is that you can tell the nature of a state or nation by its system of justice.

That is, if you can understand or even recall it.

The details of the immediate future were set out yesterday with relative ease. I asked for (may I say “decreed” now, as I am acting in a legal capacity) a day to review the structure that needed to be in place, then the trial would start the following day. By that time I would have figured out the nature of the trial.

The accused needed to be held until trial, of course. This in itself created a bit of a stir, as one sided wanted him clapped in handcuffs while the other wanted him free on promise to appear. I struck a compromise, having him stay – uncuffed in the now empty post office. It seems that Young Xerxes had arranged a guard of sorts by cleverly having one representative from each “side” be on watch together. Perhaps not ideal, but it was likely for a short time only.

Today, then, was the structuring of the trial.

It is an odd thing, Lucilius: in all of my books I have few on the former justice system as it existed a little over a year ago: a smattering of American history and one on state legislative procedures. The rest of my works which have any sort of relation to legal systems are the histories and speeches and writings of the Greco-Roman era – which while interesting, do not provide a great deal of idea of structure as the writers assumed that the readers knew the structure. Helpful I guess, although how to declaim in the Athenian Assembly was not really what I was hoping for.

Which leaves me to my memory, which seems to be a spotty guide at best.

There is no “corpus of law” here now, no decisions with precedent – the older records remain locked away in courthouses or on dead servers. Kentucky City, being the county seat and relatively close, could be a touch point for law – if I could get there and back and again and know exactly what I was looking for in the law books.

At best I can come up with a structure of the accuser and the accused, an advocate for each, the calling of witnesses, a bailiff or two to manage the court, and a note taker. I had Young Xerxes carry word to each side of their need for an advocate. The bailiffs...I asked Young Xerxes to find one or two of the men that had gone to McAdams. There was no sense in him carrying the whole load.

Beyond that basic structure, Lucilius, I only trust to common sense, common decency, and what I believe to be the point of The Great Lawgiver in His book.

None of this comforts me that right decision will be reached – but at least, perhaps, we can avoid some level of vigilante justice borne of passion and anger and no other alternative.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Venessa Seramik & Pottery

Another unknown fact to me (at least unknown prior to my advent in Turkey) is that Turkey has a long and storied history in ceramics, dating back a very long way.  During our stay in Kapadokya, we got to tour a ceramics studio. 

The rivers of the region of Kapadokya product a good red clay which has been used for centuries by local potters, perhaps back to Hittite times..  The studio where we stopped, Venessa Seramik and Pottery, is a family studio.  The gentleman to the left below is the son of the founder; the younger man to his right is his cousin.

Below you see a very traditional container often used for wine.  This is done from a single block of clay.

Here, the potter cuts it open to demonstrate that he was able to make the complete container.

 

We then walked through their workshop.  The gentleman below is decorating the piece - by hand.  He has done this kind of work for 40 years; this was to be one of his last pieces.  Due to the concentration and detail, he can only work two to three hours a day on it.

A view of the workshop:

Ceramic tiles which join together for a picture:

The different steps of coloring and firing ceramics, along with the changes in colours:

Examples of their work:

Along with rug weaving, I gained a new appreciation of ceramics and how they are made.