Ranch 2017

So we had a wonderful vacation last week.  Got to see lots of family, some friends and see sights both new and old.

One thing I do not think I have done in some time is show some pictures of The Ranch, the property that my parents own.  This, to me, is home.

The Last Vacation

Arriving back home,

my heart resounds for the Home

we will never leave.

Of Amazon and Whole Foods

Last week it was announced that Amazon is buying Whole Foods.

How this works confuses me.  It represents two ends of a spectrum:  on one end Amazon, a company that has a market model of providing goods as quickly as possible and at the lowest price as possible, a company that is on the forefront of automation and reducing the number of human employees. On the other hand Whole Foods, a company that unashamedly is at the top end of the cost chain in grocery stores and prides itself on paying top of the line for its employees and its suppliers.

The argument runs that this is the way that Amazon can entire into the consumer food market in a way that it has not been able to up to this point (Whole Foods has 431 stores as of June 2017 in the US, Canada and the UK), making it almost an instant competitor with current regional grocery changes.  The thought is that it will also allow it to use its model of quick delivery and lower prices to actually reach the point where groceries are as ordered on-line and delivered as they are purchase in store (and even then, the potential of enabling smart phone purchase technology).

Full Disclosure:  I have used both services. Amazon, of course, for purchasing mostly books (but other things as well).  Shopping is quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive and it all gets delivered to my door.  I have also been to Whole Foods numerous times - but more as a sort of outing than a regular shopping stop (as the prices really are too much to afford for someone on our budget).  It is always a treat but always a treat which we do periodically, not regularly.

How does this end?  Not well for someone, I fear.  Either Amazon will have found out that it has purchased something it cannot absorb into its system and must operate as a totally separate entity or Whole Foods will lose the reason people shop there, becoming just another shopping experience - and one which undoubtedly will have fewer employees.

In a way it is the clash of two visions of the future, the ruthlessly efficient and cost-saving minimal employee model or the high priced service oriented socially feel good  model.

Whoever wins, I suspect I will still continue to get my groceries and my books from somewhere else.  And unfortunately, either way I expect a lot of former employees of one or the other to do the same.

The Battle of Hohenfriedeberg

The Battle of Hohenfriedeberg occurred on June 4th, 1745th.  I have always enjoyed this painting of it by Carl Rochling (1855-1920) depicting The Attack of the Prussian Infantry.

On Byzantium

To fill in one of my educational voids, I have been reading A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich, which is a summary of his three volume work on Byzantium.  I have crossed Byzantium's paths numerous times through other historical studies - the Crusades, Eastern Europe, the fall of the Western Empire - but have never really studied specifically on it.

Norwich's history, which is quite well written, chronicles the empire from its founding by Constantine to its last feeble flickers in 1453.  In some ways it is hard to fathom how an empire which at one time stretched from Italy throughout Eastern Europe and North Africa and Levant had shrunk to little more than a rump in Europe just before its fall.  And Norwich covers it well, going emperor by emperor until the end (I assume - I am still just before the Fourth Crusade in 1204).

Not everything is the result of bad decisions - after all, outside events effect all of us that we did not initiate and did not control.  But like individuals, empires and states are also victims of their own self-inflicted wounds.  That I can tell to this point, there were three main ones:

1)  Internal Conflict - The Byzantine Empire, it seems was rife with rebellion and infighting, almost from the death of Constantine.  These internal rebellions inevitably weakened the state:  beyond the cost of money and politicization of sides (which often ran to violence), the internal rebellion spent the lives of the Empire's soldier's not defending itself but rather fighting with itself.  Those soldiers and the lands they were recruited from (and was lost) were missed long after the rebellions themselves had died.

2)  A Lack of Sound Fiscal Policy - The Byzantine Empire, like many other empires and states, had trouble managing it funds consistently.  Under some emperors fiscal prudence was maintained, under others all control went out the door.  And the military, which defended the Empire, was caught in the issue of either not being funded enough or trying to make up for poor funding (which over time necessitated higher and higher taxes).  It is not that they were alone in this as a medieval state - autocrats are notoriously big spenders and do not care where the money comes from - but it did ultimately create a state where no money could be spent at all without borrowing it - and all that this implies.

3)  Internal Division:  While the Church and the State were theoretically split in the Byzantine Empire, both the Church and the State meddled with each other.  From the State's side, it took sides in the religious conflicts of the day (the one in question was of Icons) - and pushed the opposing side away.  Likewise, the state acted to enforce religious purity (Bogomil and  Catharism).  What did all of this do?  Embitter and turn away citizens and future citizens from supporting the government at the very times it needed it 

Ultimately the Byzantine Empire ends with a sad sort of silent "pop", hardly befitting  its history.  In the end there were few to fight for her and her reduced size and scope made here as dependent on others to fight for her as herself.

Any and all resemblances to any current nation-states is purely coincidental...

Without

Without is a profound word.

Without love, there is hate.
Without joy, there is sorrow.
Without understanding, there is anger.
Without peace, there is war.
Without care, there is indifference.

And if without is so profound,
why are we so often without it?

The Day The Christians Disappeared

And then one day, the Christians disappeared

At first it was not clear that everyone that had disappeared had that factor linking them.  It was only after the initial shock had worn off and people started to try to piece things together that the realized that all of them publicly or privately shared this as the thing that was common to all.

Initially there was a great deal of confusion:  Where did they go?  In some cases, why did they go? Holes were left in families, in friendships, in businesses, in governments.  In some churches very few people were there on Sunday; in others, it was as if nothing had happened.

What seemed to link the ones that were gone - as opposed to the others that were left -  was that they were always exclusive in their claims about how people could be saved - the "narrow" ones, the ones that always seemed against the tenor of the times, the ones that really acted as if they believed in that whole "Jesus as the Son of God" thing.

The news panels - after floating various theories about what had happened and why - eventually came to the conclusion that on the whole, this was a good thing.  So many things which had been held up  or made difficult by these people could now move forward.  Moralistic arguments about things could now easily be swept away.  And after over 2000 years, the Christian church could finally be put in the place it had really belonged, as a sort of social activity or even a belief system but without any sort of influence or power to interfere with the world as it actually was.  Finally, humanity's utopia was within its grasp.

The problem, of course, was that it did not seem to be going that way.

It is not that people did not try - indeed, at no time in human history had the ability to unite people been better.  But what those that were trying to lead found was that something seemed to be missing, a sort of sense of the common good.  People, relieved of the pressure of the moral judgments they had overtly or covertly suffered from, did not seem to be acting better - in fact, it seemed as if they were acting more selfishly than ever.  And those behaviors that were anti-societal - theft, robbery, violence - seemed to grow in intensity and occurrence, not lessen.  It was if, the self proclaimed "Christians" having left, something had left with them, something that had previously made the world work better, even for those that did not believe.

It was only at that point that some began to consider what they had actually believed.

But by then things began to work very differently.

And We Are Off...

...on vacation, that is.

For two years in a row (unheard of in quite a while) I - we - are taking a vacation.

We will be returning home to see my family and my in-laws, friends, and old haunts.  It will be refreshing - I have not been to the Ranch in 3 years?  4?  And in many ways, that is where my heart really lies.

I am typing ahead a string of posts while I am gone, so my apologies if I am delayed in responding.  My coverage is always kind of hit and miss.

Am I hoping to accomplish anything beyond vacating while I am gone?  I am not sure.  I feel somehow disconnected, like I am doing all the "right" things but somehow the progress is not there.

And I am surely looking forward to no humidity!

Summer Is Come

The hot sun beats down

while the plump grass shrinks in size

and trees dream of Fall.

A Thought On...God's Justice

"But God's justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity.  The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.  It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded.  As responsible moral beings we dare not so trifle with our eternal future." - A.W. Tozer, The Holiness of God

On The Events in Virginia

I have really struggled with what to write in this post.

Part of me wants to rant about the dangers of incendiary language, of the fact that words mean things and some people mean things with their words.  The other part of me wants to try to ignore yesterday all together, to just overlook the events and continue on.

Perhaps I can split the difference by just listing a few thoughts.

1)  We need to start holding people responsible for the words they use.  In public.  And mercilessly, until people get to the point of thinking about what they say.

2)  Countries and empires tear themselves apart from the inside long before they are torn apart from the outside.

3)  The longer we as a country pretend that there is not a rhetorical and political aspect to the growing violence, the deeper the divisions grow.  I can almost hear them deepening as I write.

4)  Most times where civil wars start is often unclear.  When they end seldom is.

5)  Seldom do the initiators of such events look back after time and think 'That was a pretty good idea."  More often, they are looking at the smoldering ruin of what their society once was.

On Modern and Old Books

Glen's comment of two days ago got me thinking:  "I used to be a voracious reader.  Nowadays - I haven't bought a book in years.  I wonder if it's the same stuff we find objectionable."  It got me to thinking about books.

It occurs to me that most books are a reflection of the time and age in which they were written. I suspect that for many - who have not read anything more than what is currently listed as a best seller or what is recommended in a media magazine - lack the sort of historical span to get a perspective on this.

That said, perhaps that is why (on the whole) I tend to prefer older books.  They were written in a different time - a time that I (for the most part) did not live in but have enough of a thread of memory and familiarity to recognize and enjoy.  They (on the whole) eschewed graphic violence and long steamy sexual passages and the rather lamentable use of cursing - let alone whatever the latest social trends are.

I suppose in some fashion this is true of any age, and to think otherwise is foolishness.  It also explains the existence and continued success of the used book store in the face of the faceless Internet Book Selling Monolith.

As I have written before, most of my fiction used to revolve around Science Fiction and Fantasy - until these became less about the act of flight of fancy and more about making them "real" (see two paragraphs up).  Suddenly it was not fantasy or science fiction, a world of medieval magic or far off stars:  it was our world, with special effects, most often with a point somewhere trying to be made.

My bent now is largely history (and even here you have to be careful - I like history, not someone's opinion of history), specific works around projects I am interested in (gardening, livestock etc.) self improvement books, and the Classics (by Classics I mean literature from largely before 1900).  I do scan the Science Fiction and Fantasy shelves for authors I know and trust, but have found myself steering farther and farther away from such authors.

Why?  Like many other things, I have found that my time is limited.  And I do not really have time to engage in reading something that is A)  Not Useful and B) Not Entertaining.

Am I missing out on some modern classics?  Undoubtedly - although I treat this much the same as I treat most movies in the theater now: at some point they will show up on a streaming service and I can watch them then (funny story - I do not end up seeing most of those either:  Not Useful, Not Entertaining.

But even in the areas I have chosen to read, there are still far more books than I will ever read in this lifetime. Might as well spend the time on things I know and like instead of risk it on that which may be highly objectionable.

Zombies and Earthquakes and The End: Oh My!

So in a fit of indulgence, I have been watching some zombie movies.  Which made me think of all the apocalyptic sorts of movies and books I have seen and read over the years.

Oddly enough, it does not really matter how the world "ends - be it by alien invasion, natural disasters, zombies, economic collapse, or just good old armed conflict.  Every one - every darn one - of the presentations of these events are largely the same.  That is to say, pretty much disastrous for everyone.

Without fail, not one - zilch - of these visions of the future ends with anyone or any civilization being in a better state than it is now.  In fact, depending on your choice of world ending events, the odds are pretty small anyone makes it as all - zombies, it seems, can run much more quickly than they did in the old days and societies tend to break down much faster than they used to.  In not one of these dystopian visions - even something as benign as The Running Man - does society change for the better.

Yet for most, they miss the lesson of the entertainment.

Buried in the midst of all these disasters is a crucial message:  civilized society is a fragile thing.  Any sort of significant disruption has impacts which can quickly escalate into a situation that creates real harm and lasting damage to the social structure.

We see natural and man-made disasters (a.k.a war) now, but even these in all their shock and rawness are mitigated simply by the fact that somewhere, there is still a civilized world to watch and give aid.  Imagine a situation where these things happen - and instead of ships and helicopters and trucks bringing aid, there is nothing but the local resources available.

And yet millions - maybe billions? - continue to exist as if such things never occur - and could never occur.

A short-sightedness has infected much of the world, a short-sightedness that says that we are on a continuing slope upward, ever progressing to a utopia that lies just beyond our reach.  To suggest otherwise - that perhaps we are not so much on a slope as on a parabola - is considered an odd affection at best, dangerous at worst.  But what does it say about ourselves that we constantly entertain ourselves with  a subject that in some fashion, has all too real a chance of occurring - and yet treat it as if such things are never to occur?

We believe that between us and such a future lies a floor of concreted.  How shocking for so many when one day the discover it was never more than a thin layer of ice that has begun to melt.

On Returning A Book

Yesterday I did something that I have not done in a very long time:  I returned a unread book.

It was not even in my book.  It was one that Nighean Dhonn had purchased two weeks ago.

We were at the look almost large chain used book store in our area, loading up for summer and she walks up with it.  "This is the author that writes the book series I read" she said. I glanced at the cover rather quickly and quickly read the summary flap.  It seemed innocuous enough.

Only later did I think to actually look the book up.  And was, frankly somewhat horrified.  Very different from the the books that the author has written.  The thing that pushed me over the edge was the comment by the author in the end that "And parents, do not worry about the swear words - your kids already know them."

I made this mistake once long ago with Nighean Gheal, when, foolishly only thinking it was about dogs, let her read Marley and Me.  It did involve dogs - and a lot of other things as well, things that required explanation.  Some things, once done, cannot be undone.

As I went back and forth about this book, I suddenly took a look at my own shelf and realized I was in the same position: I had some things there that while not "horrible", were certainly not the sorts of things that I probably needed to have on my shelf.  Not that they were not well written books - in some cases they were. But that had parts in them, bits that were not within realm of what I hold as my Christian beliefs.  As a wise man once told me, putting sewage in a cookie does not make the sewage anything other than what it is.

And so I went in and returned the book and got a gift card.  My reasoning (I was honest about that) was apparently acceptable.  I gave it to Nighean Dhonn, explained my reasoning, and gave her the card.  It seemed like an acceptable explanation to her as well.

I know, I know - I ultimately cannot keep the world out.  And I am realistic that the probably are exposed to far more than I care to imagine.  But it seems to me that just blandly turning a blind eye is not acceptable in my responsibility as a parent - nor, it turns out, even blandly turning a blind eye on myself.

Task Tracking And Time Investment

So in reading a recent book purchase (The Art of Persistence by Michal Stawicki - well worth your time)  I was introduced to an application called Coachme.com.

The application is a tool for tracking activities on goals - essentially every time "check-in" you get a cute little fireworks display and a happy e-mail the next day telling you how many days you are on a streak for this particular activity.  And best of all, it is free.

I have been using the program for about three weeks now and can say it has made a significant difference in my life.  One would not think that a small fireworks display on a phone screen and learning you are on a 20 day streak would be all that much incentive to continue to do things, but it really has been.  For those activities I selected, I find that I make an effort to accomplish them every day so that I do not "break" my streak.

However, it is also been an interesting learning experience as well.

Over the course of the initial two weeks, I set up 8 things I wanted to do - learning a foreign language (Japan 2018!), not biting my names (a 45 year perennial), martial arts training (Iai), practicing a musical instrument (harp), reading (I love to read but found I was making no time), running (which has fallen off over the last year for some reason), writing (another book - not the blog, that is pretty established now) and a nutritional plan.

What I have found is even the daily reminder, not everything is getting done.

For some activities -  language, harp, Iai, nail biting, and reading - it is.  And that incentive to "check the box" means that I have made peace with the fact that even if I do something for a short period of time, I am doing it.  No, I will not progress in it as quickly, but at least it will get done.  But for other activities - running, writing, and diet - the activity is slim or not at all.  Why is this - lack of commitment, lack of desire?  I am not sure, as in theory I thought these were important things to accomplish as well.  Now I am having to consider if they really are.

The other thing that this has brought up - and may indicate - is that I have reached the amount of time in a day I have to give to these things.

Oh, I could always use my time a little more efficiently.  We all could.  At the same time, there does come a point where if we schedule everything in, we leave no space around edges for the impromptu items or the things we just like to do that may not "contribute" to our lives but are important, like laughing with everyone over a Phineas and Ferb episode or catching up on my favorite blogs or even just rabbit time.

I do not know that I have found that balance yet (and let us be honest - this now also highlights the amount of time I am currently spending in my career, which is necessary a lot of time committed to a single activity).  But beyond just making sure I am doing things, this whole exercise has been to highlight very clearly how and what I spend my time on - and if those are good investments.

An Empty Vessel

"Behold Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled.  My Lord, fill it.  I am weak in the faith, strengthen Thou me.  I am cold in love; warm me make me fervent  that my love may go out to my neighbor.  I do not have a strong and firm faith; at times I doubt and am unable to trust Thee altogether.  O Lord, help me.  Strengthen my faith and trust  in Thee.  In Thee  I have sealed the treasures of all I have.  I am poor; Thou art rich  and didst come to be merciful to the poor.  I am a sinner; Thou art upright.  With me there is an abundance of sin; in Thee is the fullness of righteousness.  Therefore, I will remain with Thee of whom I can receive but to whom I may not give.  Amen.

- Martin Luther

On Not Becoming A Paleontologist

My very first career - decided upon as of 8 years old - was to be a paleontologist.

I loved dinosaurs.  I had a fairly large collection of them that I would arrange on my fabulous cave playset (purchased from Sears and Roebuck) in various poses and forms - the old style ones that had only plastic colors (blue stegosauri, brown T. Rexs).  I had almost all the dinosaur models from Aurora.  I had several books that I read and re-read.  I wrote stories about them, developed narratives for them as they marched across the plastic sheet with ponds and trees and up over the plastic cliffs.

Frankly, I am not quite sure which this career field fell out of favor.  I want to say it was by the time I entered high school for reasons I cannot fully appreciate - after all, it is not like I ever came up with a better career path (to this day).  Perhaps I just got bored with them and moved on to other things - now that I think about it, this was about the time that Role Playing Games entered my consciousness.  Somehow in the longer run, I wonder if this was the better choice.

Would I have been happy with a life as a paleontologist? Oh, probably not.  The career field is pretty limited and it involves either a lot of begging for funding or working for low wages.  But if I think about it there is plenty that I might have like as well:  doing something I found engaging, traveling to desolate places and spending weeks away from .

I still have my original dinosaurs tucked away in a box - they have served me and served my children and hopefully will someday serve my grandchildren. I am sure that now they have some small monetary value (simply from the virtue of being old) but I will probably never part with them - not just from the fact that they have nostalgic value but for the fact that in some small way, they started me down the path of imagination and learning that I have continued with to this day.

A Rabbit Cleaning

One of the greater pleasures in life is watching a rabbit clean itself.

Rabbits are actually somewhat fastidious, somewhat like cats - and like to keep themselves just as clean.  Given the opportunity, they will lick their paws and then scrub their faces or clean themselves by licking away at their fur.

As I write this, Ibun is next to me on the chair, three feet on the ground and one in the air as he vigorously works away at his right hind foot cleaning a bit, then looking at me, then cleaning a bit more.  It is a genuine pleasure to watch him diligently work away at washing himself, listening to the sounds of his tongue and his teeth digging in as he makes his black and white fur presentable.

All of the pleasure and joy for the cost of a little food, some hay, and pellets to change the litter box.  What could be an ultimately cheaper source of joy?

Overwhelmed By Inputs

Have you ever reached a point where you are so overwhelmed by inputs that you can scarcely make sense of it all?

This is what the past week has felt like to me.  Between personal life - Nighean Gheal graduating from high school - and a series of national and world events that just in a six month period would have left one's breath taken away, let alone a week - it feels as if the whole world is simply accelerating.

Towards what?  I wish I had a better - or perhaps more correctly said, a happier - sense of it all.  But all I can see, except for a few glimmers  of light (like graduations, for example) is a sort of endless, mind numbing, overloaded darkness.

It is not that it is especially depressing - perhaps simply from the fact that even depression feels like more of an organized thought pattern than I can muster at the moment.  It is more of a sense of events moving faster than I can make sense of them.

Unchecked, this sort of thing can lead to madness.  Too many what ifs and might bes to fully comprehend, a swirling vortex of possibilities that lead to nowhere particularly welcoming. It is like H.P. Lovecraft's fictional Necrononicon by Abdul Alhazred, purported to drive anyone who dared to plumb its depths mad.

Which is why, I suppose, the simples things of my life - rabbits and gardens and harps and books and even Iai - have a power far beyond their humble activities.  They allow one to make sense of one's world in the small, still areas of dappled sunlight amidst the clouds, the quiet sense of something that is useful and good simply in its execution.

True, a rabbit will never avert the end of the world and most gardens are a far cry from the sort of thing that one might actually need if things were to go badly - but honestly, in the event such things were to happen what would I remember more:  the violence and tragedy of the world's events or the quiet sound of a rabbit eating hay?

Lost?

Did you ever feel as if

you lost your way,

that somehow there was 

an exit missed,

a path not taken,

a road not traveled?

It is not the road you are on

is bad;

it is just that it feels 

slightly wrong,

a territory that should be

more familiar than it is.

Most, I suspect, make a peace

with the situation, 

an admission that this 

is not be the best of all possible worlds

but rather the best of the available words.

But even in my acceptance

I keep looking for exits

that I have long ago passed

never to return,

or see the tops of hills through which

I sense the road not traveled runs

Early June

Green grass and brown hares,

Heat pregnant with almost-rain:

Summer has arrived.

Esau's Birthright

"Now Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary.  And Esau said to Jacob 'Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.'  Therefore his name was called Edom.

But Jacob said 'Sell me your birthright as of this day.'

And Esau said 'Look, I am about to die, so what is this birthright to me?'

Then Jacob said 'Sear to me as of this day.'

So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.  And Jacob gave Esau bread and a stew of lentils, then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way.  Thus Esau despised his birthright." - Genesis 25:  29-34

You may be more familiar with the more famous story of Jacob taking Esau's birthright in Genesis 27, where Jacob disguises himself as his brother to receive the blessing of the first born.  But that is really just the working out of this event back in Genesis 25, where Esau gives his birthright away for "a mess of pottage" (as the old King James version says).  

It all seems rather ridiculous, does it not?  Isaac their father was a successful herder and rich in that culture and the birthright was a double portion of all that Isaac had.  And yet Esau just gives it all away - flippantly it seems - because in what seems only like an exercise in the overdramatic he believes he "is about to die".  Really, it just sounds a bit of laziness on Esau's part - and after all, one cannot just lose his birthright over lentils (no matter how delicious)?

But it can - and did happen.  Esau's birthright was given to Jacob (who, for the record, insisted on getting it the wrong way, thus ensuring a rather long and painful life instead of trusting God's timing).

We may laugh at this of course, think it silly or foolish and by all means a waste - and thereby miss the lesson.  Because more often than not, we are just as guilty.

How often have we thrown away our own "birthright" - the good things that God had in store for us - because of laziness or impatience or even simple hunger?  How often have we jokingly let go of something that was meant to be a thing of real value - only to discover after the fact that the joke was really on us, that the thing we had surrender in our flippancy was really and truly gone? How often have we spurned what we were offered as a long term gift for which we had to be patient in exchange for a one time meal of lentils and bread?

Perhaps more often than not it is not that God did not hear and answer our prayers or pleadings; it is that we pray and plead with bowl in one hand and crumbs on our face, wondering where God's promised gifts are when in fact we had already surrendered any right we had to them.

     

Heavenly Silence

I wonder how much silence we will enjoy in Heaven.

Heaven is portrayed - or at least we like to portray it - as a place of sound, of praise and adoration (and it is).  But interestingly, we as humans often seem to feel that God speaks to us in the silent places, in the quiet between the noise.

People far more learned than myself have commented that as a society, we have continued to raise noise to a level until it is virtually impossible to get away from it.  Which, if you think about it, is true:  most people turn on the radio when the get into the car or plug in their heads when they go for a walk or to work out or ride about on public transit.  We live in a world which surrounds us with noise.

Noise is not Heaven to me.  Noise is filler.  Noise is an interruption.  Noise is something to use when I specifically do not want to hear from God.

To me, Heaven is silence.  Silence like I find at The Ranch, where literally one can hear is the wind  through the trees.  Silence like I remember one night at 13 in Colorado, tucked into a tent reading John Carter and looking up at the stars.  Silence when I sit with the rabbits and listen to their almost imperceptible communication.  Silence when I watch bees work quietly.

It is not that I praise God any the less because of the silence - indeed I hear Him more.  Arguably I do need to hear Him more - but then again, so does the world around me as well.

Revelation is filled with great hosts singing aloud (and if you have been part of a great host singing aloud, you know the headiness it encompasses -imagine doing it for the King of The Universe!).  But I wonder if as well, room will be made for those that find their praise and closeness to God as much in silence as they do in speech.

For surely if God made the words, He also made the space between the words.

On Hypocrisy

"Hypocrisy is poison not because it makes people stop knowing right from wrong, but because it makes its victims stop caring about right and wrong" - Kurt Schlichter

This, by far, is the most concise and descriptive statement I have seen about our times.

The article (linked above) discusses a partisan issue (which, as you know, we do not cover here).    But the statement transcends political sides and indeed, many other sides of things.

Hypocrisy - at the least the nickel TB definition - is simply saying one thing and doing another or denouncing an action while participating in it one's self (From Merriam-Webster.com:  "Feigning to be what one is not or believe what one does not; behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel; the false assumption of the appearance of virtue or religion").  It is the insidious force that undermines personal statements, that wreaks habit on religions and personal morals, the ultimately destroys human interactions.  Everyone acknowledges this - in theory, no-one likes a hypocrite - but I suppose folks default to the fact that it makes the presenters/speaker/example and what they are trying to communicate is undermined.

The above quote turns it on its head:  it is not about the hypocrite, but the ones that are harmed by them.

Hypocrisy is not a victimless behavior.  One is never a hypocrite in a vacuum (well, perhaps, but that would simply be a personal failure).  And to those who see the hypocrisy, who have to experience it in every detail - from the very simple to exquisitely painful - the acid of failed expectations, of resentment, of beginning to not care, begins to work its way into their thought processes. Suddenly right and wrong become less critical than pushing back on the hypocrites.

I write this as a hypocrite more times than I care to catalog - some of them fairly petty and minor, some of the monstrously huge.  But in every case I am sure that the outcome is the same, even as it is the same for me in the hypocrisy of others:  the etching of caring, the rubbing away of the cartilage that buffers the right from wrong leaving only the bone on bone of pain - to which we will react.

Is there a way back?  I am truly not sure at this point.  Ideally all have to come to the point of valuing principle over expediency, but I am sadly not hopeful.  The willingness to embrace this would mean the sort of deep self-reflection that we have all but banished from our society.

Instead, I fear, we are destined to live out what the the author of the article foresees:  "This is just the beginning of the reaction, and - make no mistake - this entire situation is a bad thing.  Our society is making choices that lead only to ruin."

Hypocrisy only destroys.  It never builds.

Memorial Day 2017

RIP all those who gave the greatest sacrifice.  

Principle and Expdiency

I suspect that one of the signs of the end of any civilization is the growth of expediency and the loss of principle.

Principle, as you might suspect, is making decisions based on some objective truth:  this thing is right, or this thing is wrong.  It is a logical framework by which one can make choices which reflect a coherent world view and allows one to move towards larger goals.

Expediency, on the other hand, is making decisions purely based on one's own perceived self interest at a point in time.  It cares not about the whether something is right or wrong all the time; it only cares what is right or wrong in relationship to one's position and one's objective.  There is no logic applied - except the logic of what one perceives to the best outcome for one's self.  It could be construed as a form of "The ends justify the means."

So, for example, principle states that offering potential aid and comfort to a country's enemies is always wrong (principle).  Expediency states that it is fine to attack and berate the president I do not like for potential collusion with the enemy, but no to attack the president I do like for stating (when he thought he not on-mike) "I'l have more flexibility after the next election."

The split can run deep - for example, berating one side when a candidate pushes a reporter but quietly standing by when the side I support also pushes a reporter, or decrying the potential for civil unrest while actively keeping quiet when civil unrest perpetuated by my side breaks out.

Why does this such an insidious development?  Because expediency will, in the end, ultimately trump principle in the short term for the simple reason that if one side practices expediency, the other side will ultimately be forced to adopt expediency (decisions that benefit them) to survive - or quietly be wiped out of existence.  On the other side, a series of expedient decisions seldom creates a pattern of sustainable growth and survival: one bounces reactively from one point to another until one is trapped in a box of one's own making (after all, if every one is making expedient decisions you are no more than one obstacle to some one else).

Sadly, in the attempt to gain power and prestige through expediency, those that use it find that they are only tearing themselves apart with the own hands, leaving nothing but a wasteland for someone else to build on.

College Choice

So, I suddenly realized that I never updated the blog with Nighean Gheal's  college choice:

Fight on, Friends.

Where's My Why?

One of the starting points that virtually every book on success will tell you (and I have read more than my fair share) is that you have to a "Why", a reason that you are trying to accomplish what it is that you are about.  With the "Why", every difficulty, every challenge can be pushed through; without it, almost any activity is doomed to failure because that underlying incentive is not there.

I have realized that I have lost my Why.

I am not really sure where it went, or even how long it has really been gone.  I am certainly aware that it is no longer operative in my life.

It is not the same as a rut: a rut is just doing the same thing every day until you have worn a trail through your daily life.  No, it is the thing that should have motivated you to get out of the rut in the first place or the incentive that keeps it from becoming a rut as you move on towards something else.

Oh, I could come up with things to fill the gap that exists:  "Serve God", "Save the _____", "Do ___" - but they would simply be that, place fillers rather than something to spark my soul into action.  Which hardly seems like a better solution.

How does one even go about rediscovering a Why?  Maybe it felt like it was easier when I was younger; now, with responsibilities and timelines it feels as my Why has been reduced to meeting the responsibilities and lives of others (which to be clear, in some fashion I did sign up for).

I do not quite know how to find my why.  I just know that I really, really need to find it.  Because without that spark, mediocrity becomes all too easy.

Emotional Exhaustion

So this was supposed to be the ranting post against the horror that happened two nights ago in Manchester, England.  I had worked myself up about it all day, ready with fire and brimstone (and a polite redirection for those that did not want to participate in an unusual current events post).

And then I got to point of writing it, and found that I am too emotionally exhausted to do it.

 I think this may have finally overloaded whatever was left of my "Give a D*mn" gene.  Making war against little girls and young women is both despicable and deplorable.  But then again, sacrificing them at some level for the cultural narrative of pluralism is also despicable and deplorable.

Sadly, the usual round of has come to be our outrage will cycle through again:  flowers, stuffed animals, cards, candles and vigils.  Raids will be conducted - too late for the victims of course - and angry discourse about how we can never have this happen again will be spouted forth.

In reality, of course, precisely nothing has been accomplished.

And this is where my emotional exhaustion stems from.

Do not mistake me:  I care.  I do care deeply.  But I cannot continue to care as we have apparently entered a cycle in which we see these attacks, see their devastation, bemoan the injured and dead - and then effectively do nothing, waiting for the cycle to occur again.

I used to wonder how many would have to die before we finally got serious about the issue.  What I find is that in fact we never intend to get serious about it.

The world is on fire.  And I simply cannot muster the emotional strength to care anymore.  All I can do is weep.

The Dream Killers

You would think after so many years that the Dream Killers would still not impact you so powerfully.

The Dream Killers - those about us who somehow manage to find a way to poke holes in expressed hopes and dreams, who quietly - or loudly - deflate things which are presented to them.  The people who, as Jeffrey Gitomer says, "Rain on your parade because they do not have a parade of their own."

Present them with a financial dream and they will find reasons that it can never come to pass.  Present them with a personal dream and they will suggest that best it will not make a difference at all, at worst it is unachievable.  Tell them a spiritual dream and you will probably get an okay, as long it is remains practical and does not interfere with getting on with life.

Maybe there are people out there that are strong enough that such things do not bother them. I am not one of those people:  I can always feel the moment when my spirit sinks - instantly - when the response comes.  "Deflates" was not just an invented word; it is the real feeling in my soul one moment after the words are said. I can literally feel the hole opened up and the dream quietly escaping.

It is hard to come back from such moments.  Every attempt to rebuild the shattered core collapses back down, like a sand castle after the waves have soaked the sand.  The lowered level of expectations creep in:  the "Well, I could not have anyway" and "What was I thinking" and "I suppose I should be practical".  And there is a low numbness that spreads throughout my spirit, a clinging miasma that dampens even the thought of thinking  a more uplifting thought?

Oddly enough, the one reaction that is normal from such an encounter - an increased silence and closing up - is the most unexpected response of all to the Dream Killer.  It is as if they have no idea what they have done and are genuinely surprised that their comments - which I imagine are meant as practical advice - have instead deeply cut and wounded.

The reaction - again, probably unexpected -is that the dreams and the Dreamers simply go underground in their souls.  Hidden behind many quiet and careful facades - perhaps more than we could expect - are  the passionate hearts of those who have learned through the painful coin of experience that dreams are actually not simply to be shared en masse with every person one meets.

Not everyone, it turns out, is a Dreamer.

A Thought On Heaven

"If some watcher or holy one who had spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men.  How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale, and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week. And were such a one to speak on the earth, would he not speak of God?  Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead?  And after hearing him could we ever again, consent to listen to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God?  Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether?"

- A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the HOly

Garlic 2017

Never in 17 years of gardening has garlic failed me. Not even once.

Wordles

Perhaps over the course of your internet life you have done a Wordle - a compilation of words put together in interesting forms that are art. 

In some you can input text and it will size the words based on their frequency of use.

I wonder, over the course of our lives and all the words we speak and write, what would a world look like? What words have we spoken and written so often that they would be the largest, the most prominent?  If the words of our life were the building blocks of the art, the outcome of our existence, what would it look like?

Did we speak words of wisdom or love?   Did we speak joy or teaching into the lives of others?  Or were our words  so negative, so angry, that all they would leave is a monument to a bitter existence?

I wonder, if in some odd Tron-like digital future, the moment to a life would be the words most used by an individual, constantly streaming across a screen.  What, I wonder, would mine look like?

Societal Cold Front

One of the less enviable things about the weather here in New Home is the humidity.  I did not grow up in it and so have never really gotten used to it as would someone that has always dwelt in this outdoor sauna setting.  It is no fun:  disincentivizing for working outside, hard on wooden structures, and just plain unpleasant to be in - the fact of being moist the whole time you are out and about is not something to persuade anyone to move into it.

The worst are the cloudy humid days.  The clouds do not just add to the humidity, they seem to hold it in, pressing down all with a grey, wet hand that can make the air almost palpable as a substance.  It hands, still and ominous.

Yet surprisingly, these can be the most endurable of days.  Why?  Because often times I know that a cold front is on its heels.

Cold fronts are not quiet arrivals here; they come with a rush of wind and thrashing of trees and leaves and trash being whipped about.  Sometimes they announce their arrival with a howl and boom and other times they simply, suddenly appear.  But there is no mistaking their arrival - or the result.

Rain.

Hard Rain.  Rain that can come down in sheets and give rise to flash floods, that creates puddles in the front and moves the shredded bark out of its borders and into the sidewalk.  Rain that pours into the cracks of the dry earth but never seems to fill them up.  Rain that brings the bursting lightning and blasting thunder that shakes the house.

The humidity is what it feels like to be alive now.

There is a low, throbbing, background rage.  You can hear it if you listen closely - not to words and actions but rather as a distant murmur in the background.  You can feel it overlaying every element of society, every element of our day.  You can see it in the actions and words all around.  It presses down on us like the cloud cover, keeping everything inside and under pressure, until the sweat drips down our brows and the clothes stick to us in large, brown patches.

But the Cold Front is coming.  I do not know when.  I cannot say how.  But I can hear it on the outskirts of the North in my soul, rolling like a speeding train over the Great Plains, bending wheat and trees to its blast, hurtling towards a hot, humid rage.

And when it comes, the torrential rain will drown us, the blistering lightning will blind us, the booming thunder will deafen us.

And all will say "We never saw it coming".

Resilience

There is a certain sense in which we have largely lost our resilience.

It seems to me that this is an outcome not particularly unexpected, based on the specialized society to which we seem to be moving.  Specialization implies a high degree of knowledge and expertise about a particular subject, but also has demonstrated (at least in nature) an inability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

Resilience is the ability to spring back from unexpected events or unexpected changes.  It is the ability to find fifty ways to make something out of what you have when you have more month than paycheck; it is the willingness to find another way to move the heavy object when the lift is not present.  It is the fortitude to take the job loss and figure out another way to generate income.

What resilience does not do - and I fear we are rapidly doing - is divorce itself from reality.

Perhaps we have already reached that point.  Students will in some cases no longer tolerate opinions that are not agreeable, so they demand the other opinions disappear.  A worldwide budgetary crisis that claims only in becoming more debt ridden can one become free and demonstrating charity.  And an economy that somehow believes that everything ultimately comes from the Internet, instead of the places where it is actually produced and thus who and how it is made is actually of very little concern.

I wonder if we are close to a point where our resilience is tested, one of those great moments that occasionally populate history where everything changes in a moment and suddenly who is resilient and who is fragile is uncovered in blinding colors.

The resilient will survive, as they always have.  The fragile will collapse into a million shards.

The Importance Of A Local Supply Chain

Five Seeds

So here is another challenge, mostly brought to you Kymber (who actually took me up on my Five Books challenge):  If you could only grow five things and take the seeds for future planting, what would they be?

A couple of rules:  for me, I am basing this on my experience in my climate and the success rate that I have had.  It may very well be different for other climates and areas (and frankly, other skill levels - mine seems rather poor).  And it is not intended as a total replacement for other dietary inputs, but very much as a subsistence option:  if I had too, I could get by on these (with a large enough plot).

1)  Garlic:  Garlic has been a perennial success story for me.  I have been able to grow it successfully in two different climates and in four different locations.  I may have never successfully grown anything else, but I have always been able to grow garlic.  And it is super good for you as well - from Wikipedia:

"When expressed per 100 grams, garlic contains several nutrients in rich amounts (more than 20% DV), including vitamins B6 and C, and the dietary minerals, manganese and phosphorus. Per 100 gram serving, garlic is also a moderate source (10–19% DV) of certain B vitamins, including thiamin and pantothenic acid, as well as the dietary minerals, calcium, iron, and zinc (right table).

You can fry it, pickle it, can it, and cook it with other things.  It is amazing.

2)  Black-Eyed Peas/Cow Peas:  This has come to me only in the last three years but has been a prolific and reliable producer in that time, often continuing to produce well into the winter.  Nutritionally, it has all the benefits of a legume and an alternate protein source:

"Black-eyed peas contain calcium (41 mg) folate (356 mcg), protein (13.22 g), fiber (11.1 g) and vitamin A (26 IU), among other nutrients, all for less than 200 Calories, in a 171-g, one-cup serving." (Wikipedia)

As a legume, it also adds nitrogen to the soil - so it is a contributor to continuing fertility.

3) Wheat/Barley:  I know many people exclude these from their diets because of gluten or digestion related issues.  I get that - but we (thankfully) had not had to deal with this issue and these grains are among my most successful gardening examples every year.  I have grown a number of different varies of wheat, some more successfully and less successfully.  My barley has always been Jet Barley, a black variety.  From Wikipedia:

Wheat:  In 100 grams, wheat provides 327 calories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of multiple essential nutrients, such as protein, dietary fiber, manganese, phosphorus and niacin. Several B vitamins and other dietary minerals are in significant content. Wheat is 13% water, 71% carbohydrates, and 1.5% fat. Its 13% protein content is comprised mostly of gluten as 75-80% of total wheat protein,[51] which upon digestion, contributes amino acids for human nutrition.[9]"

Barley:  In a 100 gram serving, raw barley provides 352 calories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of essential nutrients, including protein, dietary fiber, the B vitamins, niacin (31% DV) and vitamin B6 (20% DV), and several dietary minerals (table). Highest nutrient contents are for manganese (63% DV) and phosphorus (32% DV) (table). Raw barley is 78% carbohydrates, 1% fat, 10% protein and 10% water.

4) Pumpkins:  This is kind of a surprise, I am sure, and I would not have thought it before this exercise - but I have been able to grow pumpkins everywhere I have lived.  And of all the plants I have dealt with, they are the most prolific coming up from my compost - I have not "planted" pumpkins for 3 years but them come up every year based on the compost I put into my garden!  From Wikipedia:

"In a 100-gram amount, raw pumpkin provides 26 Calories and is an excellent source (20% or more the Daily Value, DV) of provitamin A beta-carotene and vitamin A (53% DV) (table). Vitamin C is present in moderate content (11% DV), but no other nutrients are in significant amounts (less than 10% DV, table). Pumpkin is 92% water, 6.5% carbohydrate, 0.1% fat and 1% protein (table)."

(The vitamin C is interesting - who knew?  And something we cannot produce ourselves).

5)  Okra:  Okra is my one item from living in a hot, humid climate as we do now.  If I can keep the pests off of it, it produces prolifically.  Okra is one of those things that is a bit of an acquired taste (most people have it pickled or fried) but per Wikipedia it too has nutritional benefits:

"Raw okra is 90% water, 2% protein, 7% carbohydrates and negligible in fat (table). In a 100 gram amount, raw okra is rich (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) in dietary fiber, vitamin C and vitamin K, with moderate contents of thiamin, folate and magnesium ."

You will notice that a lot of garden traditionals - tomatoes, onions, peppers, corn, cucumbers - are not on my list.  It is not that I have not tried to grow them - I have, in some cases with moderate success.  But the exercise is for known producers, things that if I had to I could tear up my back yard and do a mass planting of.  And, if I look at the nutritional value, I am some moderately surprised to find out there is a fair amount of balance there.

What is on your list?

Five Books

Between two house fires and the ongoing movement of millions across the globe, a thought exercise came into my head:  If I could take only five books with me, what would I take?

I am a bibliophile:  I have (literally) hundreds of books, all of which I have read at least one time.  But in a clinch - if I could, for some reason, only take five, what would they be?  The one qualifier is that they have to be books that I own now:

1)  The Bible:  Front and center for any Christian.  My version in the NKJV, MacArthur study Bible - so it is almost cheating by getting a book and a commentary in one.

2)  A Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi):  The classic work on strategy (and from my point of view, the most approachable).  I have been reading Musashi for over 25 years and continue to discover new things in the text.

3)  Loeb Classical Library 283:  Marcus Porcius Cato and Marcus Terrntius Varro, On Agriculture:  Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius (Cato the Censor) was by all accounts a fine writer but very few of his works survive.  This work is an instruction manual on the ideal agricultural set up in Republican era Rome.  It is paired with Varro's work (slightly later in time but still within Republican/Augustan times) on ideal agriculture.  Not only is is well written, it gives insight into how things were accomplished when technology was limited (as an added bonus, it is in Latin and English so one could practice two languages!).

4) Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan):  The quintessential inspirational work on the Christian journey.  More enjoyable in the original 17th Century English.

5)  The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Farming (Gene Logsdon):Gene Logsdon is my inspirational agricultural hero, a man who practiced what he preached about agriculture.  This was the first work of his I read and while I have enjoyed his others, this is my favorite.  Logsdon's book oozes not only with practical advice written in such a way to make the agricultural life seem desirable but permeated throughout his work is the underlying confidence that this is something that anyone can do.  It is as much an inspirational work as an instructional one.

Bonus Round:

6-8)  The Fellowship of the Ring/The Two Towers/The Return of The King (J.R.R. Tolkien):  What can one say about the trilogy from which virtually all other fantasies written since them find their root?  The story is grand but Tolkien's use of word and descriptions and the drawing in of a fully imagined past make one wish he had written books on all the rest as well.

9)  Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand):  It is rare that an economist and philosopher can write excellent fiction.  Rand's work (clocking in at about 1200 pages) is a well written and exciting mystery submerged in simple philosophical question: What would happen if the engine of the world - the economy, the producers - where turned off?  Her almost uncanny description which reflects the actual slow devolution of the West is almost eerie.

10)   The Last Days of Socrates (Plato, Penguin edition): This version contains four Socratic dialogues:  Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, Phaedo - which are meant to cover the last days of Socrates' life from his way to trial to trial and sentencing to prison to his death.  Not only an excellent introduction to Plato but a moving consideration of man who knows himself to be in the right yet ultimately submits to the wrong to prove his philosophy.

What would be on your list?

Rainy Garlic

Spring Rain scattering

over the Winter Garlic

falling to the ground

People of Veneer

We have become a people of veneer.

We like veneer; one company (IKEA) has developed an entire industry around the use of it.  You can have bookshelves or dressers or cabinets in a plethora of woods styles - but that only go a 2 millimeters thick, laying over an inner core of composite pressed wood which is ugly, flaky, and heavy.

We have become the same.  

We are people of appearances and opinions.  Our appearances and our opinions run only as deep as our fragile emotions:   give us a perceived insult or express an opinion which we do not agree with and you will have  revealed a dross core of raw emotion that oozes out with a horrid stench, a sort of seething hatred of everything that infects all that we do until we have become so used to the smell that we scarcely notice it in our daily lives.

Oh, we see ourselves differently of course:  individuals of great learning and independence which come by how we are after great thought and carefully construed constructs.  It is those who scratch us that are the real enemy of human-ness and humanity, not ourselves in our lashing back and completely laying waste in a scorched earth policy.  

Somehow we become surprised in all of this, that the only language that anyone speaks anymore is that of anger and hatred, of the raised fist and the hostile word.  We have become not by what we are for or even what we are against but rather by maintaining the appearance of our veneer, by the volume of words and the fierceness of the rage against damage to it.

We become shocked when we meet people who are solid, who hold to their conviction in storms like cattle in a blizzard, who do not react with scorn and rage when their veneer is scratched. We are surprised because it turns out that the veneer is not just at the surface but runs right down to their core.  They can no more lose themselves in the opposition and trying times than a tree can shed the grain of its wood.

Where is the call to become a people of depth?  Where is the call to drain the swamps of our souls, to let the curing process produce in us a hardness and structural integrity that can weather the great challenges of our age.

The reality is that veneer seldom survives unscathed - but solid wood often does.

Finding The Graduate Student Within

One of the thing I have been struggling with is my ability to focus and learn.

Oh, I can do it in a diffuse, sort of non-demanding way.  I can do a little, read a little, think a little - but true progress always seems to elude me.  Part of it, to be fair, is my apparent lack of dedication to what I am trying to accomplish (to quote a wise guy - myself - "You make time for what you want to do).  But to be fair, part of it also feels like I am always fighting to find a little time to set apart to do these things - and not just the things I like to do:  even at my current employment, I find myself struggling to accomplish strategic things in the midst of trying to get the day to day things done.

So I have been thinking:  What could I change?  Is there ever a time that I was continuing to make progress in my life by learning and doing while still existing?

And then the thought came:  Ping!  Graduate School.

I was always rather good at school and studying.  I like the concept of study, test, measure your progress, get recognition (grade, GPA, etc.) and then to apply the knowledge.  Life tends not to work like that after schooling of course:  Learning is mostly OJT (On The Job) where you can fit it in, and the milestones (tests, grades) are almost never present.

And graduate school (for me) was all that and more, in spades.  I worked full time, studied full time, and had classes every MWF (for Japanese) and every evening 11800-2130 for coursework (which, I might add, is not the most conducive to learning when your workday starts at 0600).  But I did it.  And I learned.

Why?  True, there was those milestones - grades and ultimately a degree - that I could shoot for.  But there was also a certain hunger to succeed, to prove to myself that I could do it as well as (for me) the ever present hunger for more knowledge.

The reality is this:  those skills may be atrophied but they are still there.  And the person that did all that - me - is still around as well.  Yes, I may have lost some of that passion and fire but I have made for it (in theory) with wisdom and experience.

I need to find that hungry for knowledge graduate student again.  He is still here, hiding perhaps under  sedimentary layers of defeat and side turns that were not to be expected. I simply need to knock off the dirt and muck, clean him up a bit, and release him in the direction we need to be going.

Avoiding The News

So today in a fit of anguish and not caring, I completely avoided the news yesterday.

It is a little harder than you might think - especially if, like me, you are someone who almost religiously follows it.  But I had just reached the point of complete overload, between my own readings and listenings and the ongoing low chatter of everyone else reacting in the background.  So I consciously avoided looking at or listening to anything.

And here is what happened.

The sun continued to shine.  I still had a job.  The rabbits were glad to see me and Poppy was ready for her walk.  My garden continued to grow, with new seedlings pushing their heads out into the sun. I even learned something I did not know about how the Ancient Greeks and Romans regarded excellence.  My small projects that I like to work on all go done.

And what did not happen?  The world, so far as I know, has not ended.  The economy has not crashed (Or if it did, I will find out tomorrow when I cannot get into work).  And the events of the day, the great and the small, somehow failed to impact my corner of the universe.

An interesting exercise.  I wonder what happens if I try it again today?

The World Has No Place For Us

The World has no place for us:
The Dreamers,
The Gardeners,
The Listeners of the Unseen.

Oh, the World says they have a place, of course:
We use the same words, but speak a different language.
We see the same pictures, but see different things within them.
We conform to no side - and so we are neither.

We are the Invisible.

We have sunk within the cracks of sidewalk,
hidden away in the sunlit bits of soil amidst the grey landscape,
returned to the hills and forests:
sometimes only the wind knows where to find us.

Perhaps we will never come again into the light of the World,
into its entertainment and economy,
its vain pleasures and whitewashed matters of importance
that fade with every social trend.

The World has no place for us,
and yet we live on the fringes,
far more alive than the World.

A Slight Lurch In The Right Direction

So the relocation plunge may be accelerating slightly faster than I had anticipated.

I spoke with The Ravishing Mrs. TB two nights ago about it.  To be perfectly honest with you, I think she may be more fed up with the whole thing than I am at this point (which is saying something).  Yes, traffic is appalling and yes, in two years our traffic patterns should reduce once again when Nighean Dhonn is finished with her current school and we only have one school to drive to - but that does not fix the underlying problems that exist here.

What does that mean?  It means a minimum of 6 years suddenly shifted to 2 years.

That includes a number of assumptions of course, like college will continued to be covered and I can find a job somewhere else if needed (and in all fairness, in two years I should have a much clearer picture of how my current job is going) - or I figured out something else that can support us somewhere else (unlikely, but possible).  It also assumes that the economy here will stay at or above what it is now such that our home value will give us something when we sell.

But it is important because it can help to frame discussions, about what we have and what we do.  Certain things - like continuing to reduce debt and become more frugal - take precedence as a required item (that ship is turning - slowly, but it is turning).  Actually setting aside and saving money specifically for the purpose of (ultimately) not having to work becomes an item of discussion.  And a discussion about what we have and what we need also becomes an increasingly relevant discussion (one I have struggled with for years but now am finally having some clarity about).

It is still potentially a long way hence and fraught with possibles and maybe-nots.  But just the hint of change has a surprising power, a hint of energy I had not anticipated.  Perhaps after feeling being in a rut for so long has left you with few options, the whiff of a different future is enough to waken long slumbering dreams, like the sun on February's daffodils.

Of Chillers and Boilers

One of the things I inherited as a job responsibility when my company moved in November ("other duties as assigned") was the care and feeding of a boiler/chiller system and accompanying hardware and air handling units.  This is not the sort of thing I have had any experience with prior to this moment, but welcome to the world of "Congratulations on your promotion".  So I have been slowly learning, mostly by trial and error and observation of people that actually know what they are doing.

Among other things I learned (besides how to restart a boiler and where the reset switch is for a chiller) is that your hot and cold water loops need some level of care and attention, including draining and refilling and treating the water so they do not rust out your system.  And so, over the course of the last two days, I have been watching a system drain and refill and learn from our consultant about the ins and outs of water testing.

Today, as we were coiling the drain hose he said "You know what?  Most people have no idea what is over their heads and around them in these buildings.  We have a commercial customer (A large tech firm) in a 31 story building that have no knowledge of what is beyond the walls they see.  They ordered special air diffusers in a particular shape. Very difficult to service.  And none of the office types have any idea."

The more I thought about it, the more I thought how true it was.  I may not know a lot about such things, but I know more than some. Probably than many.  But there are many more that know nothing at all - oddly enough, I would argue that it is many of those that are on the forefront of the technological economy.  They can write a piece of code, design a rocket, create a new drug or medical device - but do so within the confines of facilities that they no idea how they operate to keep them cool in the summer and warm in the winter and the toilets and sinks working.  At best for many, I suspect the response would be "We have someone to take care of that".

These are not original thoughts, I realize.  Mike Rowe has probably done more than any other individual in my life time to draw attention to such trades and remind people that they exist and that they, too, are honorable work courses.

The part I find somewhat amusing, in a dark fashion, is that I continue to hear about advances in technology - Artificial Intelligence  or AI - that will possibly design other robots or rockets or create and eliminate thousands of compounds to identify the promising ones.  So many of the things that are replicated in offices.  I have yet to hear of such developments in these humbler trades.

On The Slow Tailing Off Of Involvement With Civilization

I am becoming increasingly mindful of the fact that by and large, I can get by without the bulk of civilization.

No, not materially really - not at this point anyway, and perhaps not at all to level I would wish.  But the longer I am here, the less and less reasons I find for wandering far from my home or going out on a regular basis.

Part of it, of course, is financial.  The less I leave the home the less I find I spend.  And part of it is simply that going anywhere (at least where we are now) involves a great deal of traffic, something I have never really been fond of (and find myself, in a curmudgeonly way, less so every year).  

But I think a great deal of it is simply that I find that civilization is rolling over me and passing me by.

There is a certain comfort in being a relic, a fossil, a thing which has suddenly lost most of the relevance of the civilized powers that be (and are trying to make the world in an image).  One can sink beneath the chatter of the ongoing events, ignore the breathless articles about how society is changing (always, seemingly, for the better) and the future is inevitably bright (although it never really actually seems to work out that way), and simply go about living one's life.  Good heavens, as I sit and think about it the very real possibility exists that one could, with a little it of effort, be completely oblivious to the world and its happenings.

But this is somewhat hard to do in the midst of civilization.  The world presses in on you in almost every way and at almost every level.  One can consciously concentrate on being invisible  (what would the modern version of The Invisible Man be? Someone who is completely off the Interweb?  Would they, too, eventually go mad in the world of the connected?) but the amount of time and energy spent on maintaining this level of invisibility is draining, like a Romulan cloaking device that draws some much energy you cannot use it all the time.

There are other things, I am sure, to be out away from it all.  Perhaps the press of needing to interact with someone can become overwhelming.  Maybe the disconnectedness of the world as it continues on would drive one to distraction.  

But how much more "terrible"  can it really be?   In the age of connectedness and control, the true rebel is the one who rejects both of these as the requirement of existence in the modern age.  The true counterculture, as always, is to not be part of the culture at all.

I am, for the moment, far away from this place and state of mind.  But even I am finding more and more reasons not to go out, not to tune in, not to plug in.  And perhaps, given my current life situation, that is what has to be at this point in time and space:  a certain level of involvement but with increasing levels of withdrawal.

As my hero Herrick Kimball would say, it is as much a place of mind as it is a place that is.

Fireflies

Earth bound meteors
shed their erratic warm light
beneath star's cold light

Spring Garden 2017

So most of Spring 2017 Garden planting is done.

(I'd post pictures, but you would pretty much see flattened mulch, so I will spare you the photo op.)

What did I plant?  Beans.  Lots of beans.  And Black Eyed Peas and okra.  And two kinds of peppers, criollo and Korean (I am getting peppers this year, even if I have to plant and keep them indoors). Some Sweet Sorghum as it did well last year and I would like to try my hand at possibly using it for beer (there is such a thing) or at least trying to see if I can do something with the stems - sorghum, if you did not know, can be pressed and the resulting juice boiled down for sweetener.  Add to this a rather healthy crop of volunteer pumpkins and we are on our way.

What am I still lacking?  A tomato plant or two and some cucumbers.  And that will probably be it for this first time re-imagined garden.  I will need to set up an actual watering jig for when we are gone (not going to make that mistake again).  I have no sign of our local rabbit population so assuming the garden survives a precocious puppy, we should be in good shape.

The onions are still doing their thing and the garlic seems to want start to fall (I am going to try to mulch it up a bit and see if I cannot convince it to stay for a bit longer).  The wheat (two varieties) have headed up and are starting to turn.  I finally transplanted some leeks in hopes of saving them; a number of them have taken nicely.  The spinach and lettuce are flowering (seed saving, here we come) and the lemon and lime trees continue to put on leaves and hopefully fruit.

It is not the best position I have been in to roll into the summer gardening season, but far from the worst I am have ever been.