Costa Rica 2021: Plains, Ox Carts, Mountains, Volcano

We started out tour in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica (which, I suppose, almost everyone does) but on the next morning got our our tour box and headed out north/northwest

Our first stop was Sarchi, a small town known at one time for its painted ox-carts (Ox-carts, once upon a time, were used to haul coffee and produce.  The picture below is not only an example of such a cart, but the world's largest Ox-Cart).

We continued to drive up into the mountains of Costa Rica.  One thing about Costa Rica is that it is always very green, wherever you are.

We stopped at the town of Zarcero, which is known for its church (San Rafael) as well as its topiary gardens, which were put in 40+ years ago by a young man that suggested building them instead of a soccer field and that he would maintain.  Apparently he is still there, maintaining the gardens.

We continued over the mountains and entered clouds and fogged.  It never truly rained on us, but there was often the threat.

Kasava field:

Lunch was in the town of La Fortuna (so called because when the Arenal volcano erupted in 1968, the town was spared) of fish ceviche.  It was amazingly delicious.  Also of note was Imperial Beer, which up to 20 years ago was the only licensed brewer in Costa Rica.  They are the Budweiser of Costa Rica.

The Arenal Volcano from La Fortuna.  It dominates the landscape.

The coolest thing among many cool things we saw that day?  Actual leaf cutter ants.  They do not eat the leaves themselves, but use them to grow fungus which they eat.

Costa Rica 2021: Prologue

 I have been struggling to collect my thoughts to write about Costa Rica.

It strikes me as odd as I have not really felt that motivated the way I have for other vacations.  I am not sure why that is, really. I can tell you any number of facts:  The population of Costa Rica is about 5.1 million people and 7 provinces, the largest of which is San Jose and includes the capital city of San Jose.  Their major exports include medical devices (two kinds), pineapples, coffee, and bananas.  They are one of two countries in Central America that has no armed forces (Panama being the other).

But facts are not what really make up a vacation.

As I have continued to think on this, what I have come to realize is that for me, this was an atypical vacation.

Most times I have taken a vacation in the last 10 years (at least), I have been effectively an "active participant in the event.  In going to Japan, I go to train.  In the Grand Canyon, I hiked.  In Montana and in Iceland, we drove and did things:  hiked, walked through museums, looked at things. Which we did in Costa Rica.

But in Costa Rica, it was much more passive.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, of course.  It is nice to not have to worry about your room or your luggage or at least (some) of your meals or getting from place to place.  But at least for me, I found it some enervating.

I thought less.  I sat and looked - sometimes for hours out a bus window (roads in Costa Rica in the areas we were in were narrow, winding, and not always the most direct route.).  It seemed...like a movie.

But movie or not, that is no reason to not post about it.  Certainly not the fault of the country or the people - lovely, green, verdant land with all kinds of agriculture.  And so, deep thoughts or not, let us visit Costa Rica.

Glory

"The Heavens proclaim the glory of God, 

the skies proclaim the works of His hands"

 - Psalm 19:1

Double Vision

 One of the unusual things about returning (repeatedly) to the town you grew up in is that one has the ability to retrace all of one's steps, both good and bad.

This cannot be completely done, of course:  the fields and woods that I walked in as a youth are now developed suburbs or completely fenced off (and people are odd about unknown folks just ambling across their property, of course).  But the outlines are still there and one can drive around them, if not through and in them all the time.

We were fortunate enough to live in the same house my entire life (my room was "my room" until I was 18 and moved away to college, then came back after 1.5 years, then went away again for 3 years, then came back for 1 year; I still sleep in the same bedframe at The Ranch that I did when I was three) and so the boundaries of my neighborhood and range were set - I attended a K-8 school back in the day when "in district" meant you lived in district and so all of my friends were within walking or bike riding distance and at one class per grade level, one's friends stayed the same (more or less) for the whole 9 years.  

All of those places I can still drive to now:  the street where I used to live (the house I grew up in is now completely hidden by growth), my best friend's house up the hill (his mother still lives there), the effectively large circle that constituted the outer range of my friends and where they lived (and where I could go) extending all the way to the the school we went to.  Other than coming to The Ranch (even back then) and my grandparent's house in town, my life was largely measured in a couple of miles.

High School of course expanded my range of course: now I had friends from other schools in town or even out of town.  I grew up here a band and drama nerd (no surprise to my readers, perhaps), and so ended up with another close knit group of friends and acquaintances scattered much further afield; thus, even more landscape pervades my memory.  Here, too, I can still visit the places that we used to go:  The High School (it is still there) where we marched on the football field and performed in the theater; the roads we drove back and forth to each other's house (and in some cases, rather ill-fated and ill-thought out toilet papering attempts); the hotdog-and-fries restaurant that, having achieved a driver's license and ability to go off campus, we would all pile into a friend's VW bug and rush off to (A basket of fresh fries which made a lunch at $1.75); and even their houses (The Actor still lives in the same place that we started our friendship in all those years ago); the railroad tracks that Uisdean Ruadh and I would walk from my house to town and then around town and back home.

Some of the people are still there, but many have moved on.  Which perhaps in some ways is for the best:  Social media, if it has taught me anything, has taught me that in many cases our lack of continuing contact is probably the best thing for all concerned.  And in a way, they have less of a presence and permanence in my memory as such:  in many cases it is simply better to remember how people were, not how they have become (true, I am sure, of me as much as anyone else).  

Coming back to The Ranch and thus to Old Home is thus for me, almost a visit into a temporal displacement where memories overlay the places I drive to and by,  a sort of double-vision laid over a landscape that has both changed significantly and yet, in my memroy, not at all.

Small Towns and Connections

(Note:  The issues that others have complained about on the InterWeb about Blogger not playing nicely with comments and replies seems to have finally arrived at my door.  Apologies in advances for unusual formatting or an untimely delay in response.)

One of the things that one can forget in living in a larger city is how interconnected a small town can be.

I am from a small town - the population has increased significantly in the rather long amount of time since I grew up there, but it is still likely considered a "small town" and will probably always, partially because of the fact that due to geography, they have run out of places to build more.  And while I, like many, left at some point to go to school and then later to work, there are many who simply stayed and never left.

Neither is necessarily good or bad of course; opportunities exist beyond where one grew up that never existed there, but opportunities and way of life that is familiar and related exist can exist where one grew up as well.  US culture is often biased for the first option (maybe other countries as well) in that the modern civilized perception is that if you do not migrate to a big urban area, you are 

"missing out".  In some ways that is not wrong of course, and small towns can be petty, spiteful, and limiting - just as larger towns and cities can be dehumanizing and dangerous.  A lot depends on where you are and who you associate with.

One of the few useful items for Social Media is that one can connect with people that one has not seen in many years even if one was from a small town and moved away.  It seems harmless enough - for the most part, everyone is fairly respectful and mostly posts "what I or my kids are doing now" photos, which is fine.  And at some level, it is always interesting or amusing (to me) where people are and what they are doing.

In paging through the "Updates" or "News" or whatever it is called, I was thus alerted to the fact that one of the daughters' of our across-the-street neighbors had gone to A Magical Place.  She was several years behind me so I remember her, although never saw her after elementary school.  She had moved back to the small town we were both from, and was staying at here parents.  

She went to A Magical Place with a friend.  I checked out the name - then almost dropped the mouse. The name was the last name of someone I had gone from Kindergarten to High School with.  I checked - sure enough, it was one of his kids. 

So then, of course, I go to check her page.  Social Media will "helpfully" let you know shared connections.  It turns out that she and one of my cousins are connected, a cousin I had not seen for 20 years until last February at a shared funeral for TB The Elder's Sister.

I had no idea any of these people knew each other.  How this all happened is, I suppose, a story unto itself.

Connections.

In the modern world, I suppose it is called "Networking", although I would argue that networking has much more of a me-first ring to it.  Inherently, networking is not just done for the sake of connecting with people as it is done for the "what they might be able to do in the future" aspect, whether it be a job, a sale, or an inside connection.  In business of course it makes sense:  there is a real truth to the concept of who you know matters as much as what you know.  

I would argue that at least for me - and perhaps this is my own failing - that there is no such "connectedness" in large cities.  Partially because there are just too many people: one might know one's neighbors, perhaps those that are in some association, club, or hobby that one is involved in, perhaps one's choice of worship locations.  But the chances that these various people are at all connected is almost infinitesimal, given the size and scope of modern cities.  If such a thing happens, it is by random chance more than likelihood.

Of course, I can see where the argument of parochialism would come in - smaller population, more people knowing other people's business - and in that sense a large city offers a sort of anonymity that smaller towns might not have.  And this does not add on the additional layer of a highly mobile population which I would think is more prone to finding itself in larger cities, people arriving and leaving without time to set up any kind of roots which would make such connections possible.

I do not suppose there is really a point to today's post in the sense of "I have arrived at a conclusion" or some pithy statement of purpose or revelation.  More of just a comparison that I am suddenly reminded of between where I have lived and where I now live, and how (perhaps if were are just left to ourselves) connected we may actually be.

The Inability To Speak Reasonably

 One of the more instructive things that has happened over the years as I am have found and followed blogs is that there are a lot of smart and well spoken people out there that are well and far away from any professional sort of "punditry" (which, frankly, serves us all better by being amongst friends).  If you have read any of the blogs to the left or comments in the posts here over the years, you have met many of them.  They are (on the whole) a rather seasoned and experienced group of observers (in some ways I suppose, a fancy way of saying that we are all "well aged"), so when a theme starts coming up among them, it catches my notice.

The theme that has come up this week is, for lack of a better term, a sort of break down in the art of conversation.

There are two different articles that this manifests in.  The first, by Claire Wolfe (who is a top notch observer of things in general) is entitled Violence, fantasy, and reality:  Where do we go from here?  The other, by the very deep thinker (although he presents himself otherwise sometimes) Old AF Sarge is simply entitled Negative Waves.  Both their blogs are listed over to the right; I will leave it to you review the articles as desired (and I highly recommend a follow for both).

The point of today's post is only tangential to the actual nature of their posts (and thus, appropriate for that form of discussion on those posts, not here).  In summary of the posts, both note a different version of a similar issue:  In Claire's, a rather decided turn by many people on all sides to begin openly discussing the exercise of violence in almost the most benign of conversations and tone of voice; in Sarge's the note that we have lost the ability to confine ourselves to the discussion at hand and too often seem to inflict larger issues upon the most innocuous of conversations.

In a thought, our ability to talk about things is becoming reduced and narrowed.

There have always been those that have seen the world only in the outlines of great historical movements or those who have seen things in the light of "us versus them (but mostly us)".  And even in the confines of the political world, we have historically torn each other to (figurative) pieces - lest we think this sort of "uncivil discourse" is new, read the speeches of Demosthenes or Cicero:  The Greeks and Romans were masters of hating each other long before we were.  In that sense, we as a species have always had the ability to viciously attack each other with words.

But at least in my years, this narrowing is something new.  We - it seems, almost the whole -are actively talking about the sorts of things that unmake systems, societies, and civilizations and coffee gatherings - and we insist on doing it in even the most unrelated of conversations.  As I posted in a comment elsewhere, the concept of Cato the Elder ending every speech with "In my view, Carthage must be destroyed" sounds in theory, a man committed to a cause like a buffalo in a blizzard.  In reality, it must have been rather annoying:

Senator I:  "Marcus Porcius, which vintage do you recommend:  The Attic or the Sicilian?"

Cato:  "In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed."

Senator I:  <Uncomfortable silence>...."The Sicilian, then".

I know what (inevitably) someone will say:  "Well, the other side (choose the side one is not on) is talking exactly that way. " And that is, more likely than not and given the times, quite likely true.  But just because the other side does it - just because everyone does it - does not make it the right or wise thing to do.

My fear - and by fear, I mean "the thing that is manifesting itself directly in front of our eyes" - is that by narrowing the scope of our conversation and insisting on bringing certain subjects into every conversation, we thereby reduce our ability to actually converse, reach solutions to our actual problems, and build networks among people who may not believe like us in everything, but believe like us on the most critical and important things.  It is like any relationship:  when in the end all you are talking about is your differences and how much you dislike the other person and how they never meet any of your needs, you will find that a breakup or divorce is soon to follow.

Breaking up and divorces in relationships involve harsh words, hurt feelings, and sometimes things which are neither pleasant nor good to talk about or dwell on.  Break-ups of societies, civilizations, and nations - at least from what history tells us - are at best no better, and often far worse.

If all we who have (up to this point, anyway) more life experience and education (of many kinds) find that we cannot control our language or conversation knowing - as most of us know - the results of where such language, feelings, and rhetoric leads, do we offer good service to the greater whole when we speak the same way?  We - you, I - should be the voices of reason in such a situation, not the adding to the cacophony and clamor of a world which - if we are honest - is coming to speak only the language of hate, division, and death.

It is said that in this, as in a great many other ways I remain an Idealist and a rather foolish one, someone who clings to a belief system and view of the world that is at odds with the way things actually are and believes that reason and words should only be abandoned as a very last measure.  That is most likely a true statement. It being true, it does not bend my will or aim in this matter.  It may be that I - and hopefully you - remain the last voices of reason in a world gone increasingly mad, even as it plunges into chaos.  It may be that we cannot halt the universal plunge, but at least let us be the last to speak only of it.

(Post Script:  To new commenters:  I try and keep an atmosphere of tolerance and reasoned discussion here.  Be forewarned that unkindness, a lack of respect, threats of actual violence, or just plain profanity will ensure your post is not published.)

Snow 2021

 When I woke up early this morning, the light outside looked far brighter than it should have at that time of the morning.  I went out and looked - it had snowed!

When the Sun came up (somewhere), we had the proverbial Winter Wonderland.

Snow at The Ranch is not unheard of, but not super common either.  We had 3"/7.6 cm at the height of the snowfall - just enough to enjoy, not too much to overwhelm (I am sure not terribly impressive to my neighbors in Alta Canada or to the Northeast, but it is quite a lot to me).

It seems I got my White Christmas after all.

Failures Of Personal Holiness

One of the more egregious things I often find myself guilty of is my own inability to practice personal holiness.  Too often I settle for a sort of perceived holiness, loving the concept of it and even some of the exterior portions of it, but failing to actually internalize and practice it.

I can make excuses, of course: the ability to be unholy is more easily accessed than ever, God is a forgiving God, even that in the scope of things what my issues do not constitute the major breaches of the great sinners of history (that last point, of course, is irrelevant:  all sin is a major breach with God, I just choose to justify it).

Like many things, the compromises we make are inevitably small and perhaps unnoticed by a world that has no intent of concerning itself with such things:  swearing, a little suggestive (or outright blatant) innuendo, that one "extra" glass of alcohol or piece of cake or anything else that represents going over what we know to be our personal boundary, the unkind/uncharitable thought.  No big deal.  Perhaps I ask for forgiveness after I hear the word or see the thing or slur my words a bit or feel stuffed to the point of sickness or realize that my unkind/uncharitable thought actually impacted my behavior.

The problem is not that I recognize any of this, nor even that I ask for forgiveness for it.  The problem is that I then make peace with it, and the envelope is pushed a little farther the next time.  And the next time.

For the record, this meditation was not inspired by some kind of big sin or failure, in case you are wondering. Let us get that out of the way.  It was inspired, like most things, by a small thing:  a series I was watching that had the sorts of small compromises in it that I pretended should be okay, until the larger compromise came and I realize that all along, I had been quietly making peace with - and even recommending - something which I should have neither made peace with nor recommended.

It is not a big thing - in fact, in the modern world it would likely not register on anyone's radar as anything unremarkable.  But all of a sudden, it registered on mine.

How did I come to make peace with the unholy?  How did I come to quietly become comfortable with that with which I should be uncomfortable?

Understand that this has nothing to do with the world out there.  This has nothing to do (inherently) with changing the world for good or ways to combat evil in the world.  It has everything to do with my being an effective tool of God, and the ways that I prevent that by loving evil more than loving good in my own heart.

I think perhaps the most alarming thing when a shock like this confronts me is how far the rot seems to have spread internally.  How far I have deviated from mean.  How much I have, as John the Apostle wrote, come to love "the lust of eyes, the lust of flesh, and the pride of life".

Change, of course, is both simple and hard - simple in that it is a known process (that of repentance), hard in that it involves uprooting a great many things that I have allowed to take root in my life.  It means removing several things from my life (not necessarily those I listed above) both root and branch - not just the visible (mental or physical) manifestations of them in my life, but the invisible ones and the things that I have allowed in to support them.  In some cases, it literally represents completely absenting myself from certain activities or entertainments or enjoyments which might for others be legitimate and unproblematic, but for me represent points of failure.

I could make the point, I suppose, that really I am just reflecting the state of the Church today. I suppose I could make that point, but really it is pointless to do so and perhaps even counterproductive.  To blame my own failings on something or someone else is to cede not only my responsibility for them but my power to abandon them.  

But to be fair, it has nothing to do with Church - and everything to do with me.  The Gospel states that we as individuals - not we as a corporate entity - are to be judged and are responsible for our own decisions.  These failings remain my own, the fruit of my own choices and compromises.

And therefore, the solution and the cure - and the now evident price for the undoing of this all - remains solely and completely with me.

The Joy of Fire

 One of the joys - and luxuries - of coming to The Ranch is building a fire.

A fire-based heating system does not make sense for us in New Home - the house is simply not set up to accommodate such a thing (the actual hearth, as with most newer housea, being buried back in the corner of the family room where it will heat nothing and in our case, also plumbed for natural gas), and we have no ready supply of wood.  The fact that houses were built so long after the actual availability of such a thing on regular basis brings to mind how fundamental the idea of a "hearth" and heating around a central location is, even if (as it true of our home) it is neither feasible nor practical.

At The Ranch, of course, it is another matter.

In one sense the house was not laid out any better in that it while the woodstove is elevated and in the living room, which is the central living area, there is an entire subside of the house (the bedrooms) that will not be heated as they are down a hallway - but, as I suspect was done in the older times, one assumes that quilts and blankets will be sufficient for that (especially if there is no back up heating source, which is happily not true here).  But within the main living space where my parents, and now I, spend most of my time, it is more than sufficient.

We are fortunate in that the supply for wood is (literally) all around us - just in fallen and dead trees (not accounting for those the power company takes down out of an abundance of caution for power lines), we have enough wood to last into my grandchildren's time - not accounting for any forestry management, of course.  It needs only be cut and stacked - which even up to the end, was one of the few hobbies and activities my father still maintained. 

Perhaps that is why it still has such a place in my heart.

The house has natural gas for heating, so it is by no means required that I build a fire at all, although for years that is exactly all my father did (in a sign of change, in the Winter leading up to last December, he would use the heating system, which was unusual).  For something like over twenty years, heating here throughout the Winter was pretty much based on the wood stove.

So I do not have to use fire when I am here.  But I do anyway.

Fire - not just fire itself but the process of building and maintaining it - is a joy.  There is a sense of accomplishment when one takes paper, kindlin' (if you have heard the word only as "kindling", it is not so spoken among us lower class rural folks), and wood and using a single match or one touch of the lighter, create a fire.  I am not 100% there yet, but I am getting better even with my infrequent visits.  It also is a talent to be able to maintain a fire for days on end, something which I am actually not bad at - the fire I started Saturday night upon my arrival will go until I leave again on the following Saturday. 

Everything about a home fire is, in a sense, a victory.

And once it is going, it continues to bring joy.  Fire will speak if you listen to them:  the quiet crackle and "whoosh" of the flames when the damper is fully open, the much more restrained noise but slowly rolling flames when the damper is closed and the flames burn almost in slowly motion, quietly rolling out and over the wood and onto the top of the firebox.  Visually, the fire is alight not with the rather unfortunate popular version of fire - red, orange, yellow - but with a thousand permutations of these, adding in blue and purple hints.  The smell, when one opens the door, can be as varied as smoke (early on) to the smell of heat (it has an indefinable scent) to the light puffiness of ash that lodges in the nostrils when shoveling out the ashes.

And heat, of course - in all ways but taste, fire and its heat fill the senses in a way that any other kind of heat never does.

Finally - although it is not a huge matter of concern - building a fire simply sings to me of provision.  The wood is from this land.  If the power goes off, at least for heat (and tea and coffee and even food in a pinch), I am provided for. Fire gives the soul a sense of freedom that being completely dependent on a company or industry for such things will never give.

In that sense, every time I am hear I do not build a fire out of need or perhaps even fully out of want. I build it out of joy - the joy the fire brings my senses and the joy that being in some small way free of a system that so often seems to encourage dependency, not independence.

One Year Ago

 Making my way back on the plane this weekend to Old Home and The Ranch, I realized that it has almost been a year since things really took a turn for the worst.

Last December was the moment I think my sister and I realized that my mother was really at the point of needing assistance - and my father was too.  Two weeks more or less from this writing, my Aunt J - my mother's sister - would pass away as well.  And, as my sister pointed, this was almost a year ago that her mother in law passed away as well.

It is remarkable in that is some ways it seems like time has passed very quickly  - I literally cannot believe it was only a year.  In other ways, it seems like it has been a very long haul.

A legitimate question I asked myself as I was thinking this through was how was I doing with this.

It is hard to explain to someone that has not gone through it.  On the one hand, my parents are still as alive as they were a year ago. In that sense I have not "lost" them in sense of death.  On other hand, conversations with the parents I grew up with and knew are completely gone.  At best at this point their body is there, but their minds not so much.

My sister and I went by for visit yesterday - in a first (for me) I was able to go into the facility and visit them (which was appreciated for the warmth).  Both my parents seemed to recognize me (and possibly my sister - we are not sure). I told them about Costa Rica and showed a few pictures, and told them about how everyone was doing at home.  My father fell asleep - the nursing assistant mentioned he had a very restless night.  My mother of course will listen to conversations but will not really interject anything new so ultimately it became my sister and I talking just about general things.  At most, it was a 25 minute visit or so.

I certainly do not mind going to see them, and we have done this long enough now that I have no anticipation of things suddenly changing .  It does leave me with a sense of incomplete loss, of something that is gone but not fully:  the forest which is half burned but the only part that we can see is the burned part, not the part that still maintains the hope of life

At this point and in some ways, it is hard to think of having a conversation with my mother like I used to as those are almost 6 years or more gone.  My father is much more recent; up to a year ago we still were able to talk about this and that.  But this and that have disappeared into a mist of history that will never come back now.

Circumstances and the situation have settled, of course:  my parents are together in the same facility, and their is (at the moment) no likelihood they will have to be moved.  And barring that which we cannot know in terms of happening, things will continue on the gentle slow decline they have endured these last few years.

To be frank, we could use a little gentle decline at the moment as last year's drop off - which started about a year ago - is not what any of us anticipated.

Rabbits That Sue

 

The Decline And Fall Of Christmas Cards

 For all of my life, I have lived where we received Christmas cards at Christmas.

My parents, for whatever reason, started send out pictures of my sister and I when we were young - back in the days when you had to take the picture, develop it to verify that it was a good picture, and then provide it to a company to print them on photo paper.  Ever year, the card went out and over time, building a nice picture of us growing up to those far away (my sister for one Christmas collected all of them for me as a picture, which brings me joy).  My mother would spend hours hand signing and then addressing each card.  As I recall as we got older, we got "volunteered" to apply stamps, back in the day when they were not self stick.

In return, we received a plethora of cards from friends and relatives:  some with just a card, some with a card and note or letter, some picture cards, and the best - a card with a gift in it.  This was the annual exchange of greetings and catching up, a sort of analog Social Media before Social Media existed.

The Ravishing Mrs. TB has taken over the task in our house.  The mechanics are different: an electronic picture, sent electronically and then artfully arranged on a computer, printed with soy ink on non-rain-forest-destructive/recycled paper, labeled with printed labels and stamped with self-sticking stamps.  It is fortunate that she does it - I have neither the interest nor the inclination, both from the patience to do it standpoint and the "this all ends up recycled anyway" point of view.

Over time, I have noticed, the cards coming in are less and less.

Part of this is to be expected, of course:  people pass away or move, addresses change, or you do not "make the cut" for this year's list.  At the same time, I would argue over the last two years there has been something more like a precipitous drop.

I do not know that it surprise me, of course.  I suspect that very few over 40 sends out cards anymore, based on a combination of cost, interest, and the fact that Social Media (for a lot of people) fills this update role.  In that sense, we are as "out of touch" as we want to be.

Every year at the end of the season, I hint about the number of cards that we have received, more as an exercise of "are we going to do this next year?"  To date, no such conclusion has been made - and to some sense it is understandable:  especially to older relatives (a large chunk of whom we send to), this may be their update for the year - and it does give them a picture to hang on a refrigerator or wall (and I have seen more than one of them at someone's house).  I suspect none will ever be made and I suppose I am okay with that:  in the course of events it is a minor cost and if it does bring joy to someone that needs it in this (of all) seasons, it is worth it.

As of the date of this writing (09 December) we have a total of 5 cards that we have received. I assume they will continue to trickle in, either as the mail plods along or the sudden reaction of some that "they sent us a card, we need to be polite and send one back".  That seems a little down to me from earlier years, but it is not as if I keep a running log of these things - although I remember when the count was likely 60 or more.

I am not one that cheers the death of traditions, as usually they are let go for reasons that have nothing to do with the tradition or the purpose of it.  But for once, in this case, I am not sure that I would mind if the sending of Christmas Cards simply and inevitably became the unusual and surprise occurrence instead of an expected social necessity.  Perhaps it is the growth of social media with more frequent updates, or perhaps it is simply the sense that a card once a year is not a true substitute for a relationship that in some cases, may simply be a reaction to what comes in the mail. 

The Speed Of Christmas

It is only 17 days until Christmas.

Dear Lord, it feels like I have enjoyed nothing of the season at all.

Time seems to speed up at Christmas in ways that I do not fully understand. I am not quite sure why this happens, although there are always potential causes, of course:  at work, everything that was supposed to be done at the end of the year (and some things that maybe were that nebulous category called "stretch goals") suddenly come to the fore, with everyone not only pushing you to complete your share, but reminding you that "as of X date, we will only processing emergency needs" (which, of course, means that everything is an emergency).  At home, life becomes a flurry of activities and passing in and out of the basic "traditions of Christmas" and being other places.

And all of a sudden, Christmas is almost here and there seems to be nothing for it.

I have the best of intentions of course, always intending to participate fully in the season:  listen to Christmas music, sing carols, reflect a lot, enjoy the trees and decorations.  But meetings pile on top of meetings and activities on activities; it is unfortunate, but (strangely enough) listening to "The Carol of The Bells" as background music to a virtual meeting is frowned upon, for some (unknown) reason.

I wonder:  does this speed of Christmas just increase as time goes one?  Or am I missing some conscious bit of thinking and change that will get me there.

One thing is for sure:  I would like Christmas to be more of a season, not just something else that seems to be a good idea in theory but never really pans out in practice.

On Crises In World Affairs

I am, in a lot of ways, the last generation that grew up with The Cold War.

My cousin was killed in action the year I was born in Vietnam.  I remember very vaguely the Fall of Saigon.  I heard about Afghanistan and wars of attrition years before a great many people alive now did. I remember the Soviet Congresses and Solidarity and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" (and ultimately the tearing down of said Wall).  I remember the constant, low level background of fear that a nuclear conflict could break out at any time.  And I remember traveling in Eastern Europe in 1990, when suddenly (and magically) there was hardly a Communist to be found.

It is with this mindset that I view the current ongoing angst of the US/Russia/Ukraine with a certain jaded eye.

You may recall that back in April I wrote on this as well as things back then had (seemed to) reach a fever pitch.   We are back to said fever pitch, if you have paid any recent attention to the media.

The intent of today's post, of course, is not discuss politics or policies (I try not to do that, both for conversational purposes as well as for the fact that when I have tried, it goes poorly).  The point is to discuss the rather fascinating alarmism that such things seem to engender.

Being a very part-time amateur historian (perhaps lover of history is a better concept), one can always see the parallels to past emergencies:  this is "critical" moment, in which if we do not respond, something terrible is going to happen.  So terrible, in point of fact, that we have to push everything to the brink of saying we will engage in military action - beyond all the usual "send the diplomats home, call each other bad names, threaten each other economically" sorts of things that make for good action pose speeches but make little difference.

What strikes me is that for so many - at least those pushing themselves out there - this is somehow a new thing.  Russia (in this case; your enemy of civilization may vary) is apparently a hair's breadth away from destroying the entire fabric of Western Civilization in the current dispute (or in other, previous, disputes).

Is it possible?  Sure.  There are still nuclear weapons that are undoubtedly pointed here (and, sadly, at our friends in Alta Canada as well).  But is the same as the post 1947 World confrontation between two ideologies that spawned a 43 year chess game of almost nuclear holocaust?  Not really.

To the younger generation, it is hard to explain what having true world ending stuff in the background is really like.  We have become used to the sorts of long term disasters that are going to happen "someday soon"; we are not used to the "It all ends now" the way it used to.  And  I was on the tail end of the Cold War; to those in the 50's and 60's, the reality was even more overbearing (insert 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis here).

And so I read the speeches and the flailing of arms and the "This is our line in the sand - no, this is. Wait, this one over here.  Do not ignore us, we are ready to do things." - and quietly go about my business of feeding the rabbits and practicing Iai and making dairy products and the host of small things that fill my life in meaningful ways.

I suppose the possibility for such a world ending scenario exists.  The reality is, it always has.  And if the past two years has taught us anything - or for us older ones, the previous Cold War - it is that living your life in fear of an enemy you can neither influence nor control or somehow become agitated and vocal about a crisis in a life where you have lived through so many, is simply a path to constantly not living your life at all.

Keep Blogging

Some weeks back, the Inestimable Borepatch wrote a short entry on Supply Chains, saying that he actually had a longer one in mind with far more detail and root cause analysis, but he was thinking better of spending the time because one never knows how many will read it, mentioning of course the by-now well known call for many that blogging is a dying communication tool.

In one sense that is hard to argue, of course.  The Graveyard of Lost Blogs to the right is a small indicator, but going out and looking at any blog roll will find a set of blogs that extend into the sunset:  1 year, 2 years, 4 years ago, the last entry will read.  Sometimes the author lists what has happened, other times there is just a hard stop with no explanation.  The market is certainly not with blogs anymore;  bite size snippets that manifest themselves as social media or article postings on sites with endless commentary rule the day.

At one time - perhaps still - video blogs were going to replace the typed electronic word; this was the promised land.  In some ways I think it may be - but it has begun to manifest the same issues as blogs:  10 minute vblog entries will lose out to 30 second Tick-Tock videos of jumping dogs and stupid people tricks. And for some - at least me - videos do not replace the written or typed word.  The word I can go back and ponder or think on relatively easily; videos I have to try to run back to the point in time for the thing I want to review.

Of course, I get why in some ways both sets - bloggers and vbloggers - give up.  For 99.9% of us, we earn precisely nothing doing this.  We spending hours of our days - be it daily, weekly, or monthly - creating entries for an unknown public.  A few of us - the clever ones - use it as a platform to help market their own products (as they should, and we should buy more from them - we too often shout "small business" but never put our money where our mouth is); the rest of us seem to draw some sort of odd pleasure from the posting of our writing for the world to see or the rough and tumble of posting something and then getting smashed for it.

But I would argue that blogging still matters.

I cannot answer for the complete political, social, and economic spectrum, but from my point of view and the point of view of the blogs I follow, I cannot get a better or more varied view on things than the home grown blog.  Corporate blogs are, well corporate:  they inevitably are trying to sell me something or promote a point of view (often without discourse); blogging is the actual inheritor of the concept of the Agora or the Marketplace, where ideas are brought forward and discussed (maybe not always politely, but there are ways of dealing with that as well).  Some of the best, most original thinking on things like political issues, social issues, conservation issues, and just "issues" happens out here on the fringe of InterWeb, where we are not illegal (yet) but maintain a precarious existence by paying for our lives in other ways and writing.

I do not know if Borepatch will post his thoughts on Supply Chains eventually (I hope he does; he is fun to read), but I do hope that he - and indeed all of us - continue to find the time and energy to blog.  In some meaningful ways, blogs represent the sort of original and thought-provoking content that can actually change a mind - or change the world.

Christmas Decorations

This weekend, the conversion to the Christmas state of being was completed.

My part is this extravaganza has greatly diminished over the years, partially because of the fact that as Na Clann have grown they enjoy doing it and partially because of the fact that I do not enjoy decorating much.  It has reduced even less with the arrival of A the Cat, ensuring that we will (for the second year) use an artificial tree (which is more "cat friendly" and less likely to collapse) so my previous activity of stringing up the tree lights - inevitably twice, I as never manage to get "satisfactory coverage" the first time - is also not done.

Thus, my role is that of hanging the lights from the roof, and benignly watching over the everything else being place.

It is okay, of course - I fully acknowledge I do not have the eye of a decorator (my decorations tend to "clump" in one location instead of being spread out) and I get to thus enjoy the benefits of a holiday season with a minimum of actual decorating requirements.  Kind of a best of all possible worlds.

It is good, I suppose that the decorations are going to be many and plentiful this year.  This season seems different to me.

Part of it, of course, is the year that has been.  The likelihood of a Christmas at Old Home - at least with my family of course - is essentially zero going forward at this point.  The Oldest, Nighean Gheal, is likely to start her new job by next year.  The Middle, Nighean Bhean, is likely going to finish her degree by next Christmas (yay one semester early) and start working towards her next degree, and the Youngest, Nighean Dhonn, will have one more Christmas after this before she is only a returning face from college on vacations as well.  

So in a sense - a real sense - this sort of Christmas is drawing to a close as well.  It is good, I suppose, to be aware of such things - painful of course in some ways, but good as well, at least to be aware of them.  

After all, these seem to be gone in the blink of an eye.

Cultivate Talents

 

Fight or Flight-less

 

Understand You Only Live Once

 As I have mentioned before, I have become quite a fan of Vic Verdier, trainer and just general all around interesting thinker (@vicverdiercoaching if you are on Instagram).  He had another thought provoking post that I duplicate in full here from his post "Understand You Only Live Once":

"For the first time in centuries, life expectancy in men in the Western World is decreasing.

Not because we do stupid and dangerous things but because we eat too much and live a life of comfort and ease.

It’s time to wake up, do hard things, move, be hungry and realize that comfort and convenience are not what life is all about.

It’s time to start a new life made of resilience, risks, hardship, travels and adventures.

It’s time to move, be cold, be hot, be tired and be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

It’s time to live with a purpose that doesn’t involve climate control, Netflix and online shopping.

Real life is out there, not in virtual reality. Wake up before it’s too late and you die in fear."

You can perhaps say a great many things about Vic, but his ability to inaccurately tell the truth is not one of them.

He is right, of course.  If you think about the world as it is portrayed today - or at least the world that is present as the ideal "life", it is the "safe and sane" one of fireworks fame:  go to school, get an office job (by the saints and martyrs, not a trades job or - gasp - "manual unskilled labor" or agriculture), live in a safe modern urban environment with all the conveniences and everything within a 5 mile radius.  Adventures, if you have them, should most be through viewing exciting things on the InterWeb or steaming or "Games" (that is the wave of the future, you know:  e-gaming) or from carefully monitored and safely managed activities that are within cell phone tracking range.  Anything remotely dangerous or uncomfortable (or out of cell phone range) should be eschewed.  Any risks, of course, should be the safely managed ones.

Now, I suspect were to ask Mr. Verdier, he would hardly suggest that what he is proposing is to live a life that by default is uncaring dangerous and foolish - which is where some folks, those one who are proposing we should all "safe" lives, would immediately go.  "If you are not for safe, civilized living you are for The Dark Ages" or something of this nature.  Because in our modern society, this is all that we have allowed for anymore, modern existence or a completely and total abandonment of all reason.

This is not inherently to argue that we should all give up on our lives as they are tomorrow morning, drive to the middle of nowhere, and start living in a yurt (although that does have a certain appeal).  What it does mean, I think, is that at no matter what point in life we find ourselves, it is worth asking a simple question or two.  Like "Am I seeking out challenges, or settling?" or "Is this something I am just doing that I could push the envelope a bit on?"

It could be something radical - like, for example, taking a long hike.  Or something as mundane as deciding you will rise a bit earlier to establish a clear work out schedule.  Or even something as simple as working a bit in weather you would rather not do so in.  The important thing is to be willing to try to expand that bubble, even if just a little bit.

Most people in the modern world would rather read about or watch adventure or pretend it comes in an vicariously lived through a game - as if, ultimately, one's fingers and one's eyes and one's imagination are any substitute for the actual doing of things.  There are a lot of things one can experience through those mediums, but it will never compare with the experience of accepting the challenge and living the experience by one's self.

Habits Of Accident

 There is something about being away from your life as much as being in your life that causes one to develop a certain sort of "Review at Arm's Length Exercise" of your entire life.

This happened to me last month of course:  between hiking the Grand Canyon, being at The Ranch, and being in Costa Rica I was "out of my life" over 50% of the time.  And it is funny what that sort of "arm's length" will do to a person.

We - whether we choose to admit it or not - are largely creatures of habit and schedules.  I see in my own life; I see it in the lives of The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Na Clann at home: Rising about the same time, breakfast of about the same thing, leaving at the same time, returning at the same time, filling the evening with the same schedule as the day before.  In a great many ways this is helpful of course, as it manages our lives with some degree of efficiency and practicality:  given the option of too many choices, I could stand transfixed at breakfast, not eating because I do not know what I want (this actually happened more than once in Costa Rica).  

But what it also does is keep us in a rut of our making as well.

An example:  I have a pretty well established routine in the morning:  Get up, pray, Bible readings for the day (Old and New Testament), journal, a short vocabulary and passage time in a foreign language calisthenics, take Poppy The Brave for a walk, feed the animals, and then either catch up on the news or write a blog post (or both) before eating breakfast and preparing for the day.  My schedule in this regard almost never varies  - when I am home.

But why do I do these things in this order?  Why do I do these particular things?  There is nothing inherently wrong with them, but have I done all of them so long (excluding prayer and Bible reading, which is imperative of course) that I do them without thought?  And what are they getting me towards, or am I just doing them for the sake of doing them?

This is just one element of my day.  It is full of such things.

It is not that any of the things I am doing are "wrong" - but are they "right" in the sense that they are filling some need or advancing some goal?  Or it just habit that, 10 years from now, will look exactly the same as it did before with the same results?

Perhaps a more relevant question is:  Where do I want to go and what do I want to do and are these things helping me to accomplish that?  

Post Script:  I would be remiss in not posting the fact that our friend Leigh Tate at Five Acres and a Dream (if you do not follow Leigh, you surely should; her blog is a very good review of life disguised as a blog about making a self sufficient life on five acres) has recently published a book on Livestock:  Prepper's Livestock Handbook: Lifesaving Strategies and Sustainable Methods for Keeping Chickens, Rabbits, Goats, Cows, and Other Farm Animals.  Leigh is an honest and engaging author that is quite open about her and Dan's successes and failures.  I have read a number of her pamphlets and her book Five Acres and A Dream:  The Sequel and highly recommend all of them.  And, of course, it is Christmas and we should do all we can to support our friends who are actually doing good.

Always In The Future

 And here it is, the beginning of the Christmas season.

To be honest, the entire year feels like it has been a huge blur.   Part of this, I suspect, is the very real fact that as a project manager, you spend all of your time in the future:  a week from now, a month from now, a year from now.  Even today, I was discussing something that is supposed to happen in the first quarter of 2023.  

If your eyes are always on the horizon, you will never see where you presently are.

I would say I am unusual in this, except that in point of fact this is where the world is looking as well.  Very seldom are they looking at the here and now.  They are always out looking into the future, how it can be made better, more accommodating.  That creates one or two problems of course, especially if by focusing only on the future you ignore the impacts this will have on the present.

The classic story of the business man who spent his whole life focused on his business and only then, at the end of all things (well, really at the almost end of all things; if it were the end of things there would be no realization at all) that all those years of pursuing tomorrow's benefit by selling today was not worth it, is held up as a paradigm of "why we should live in the now" - yet even those who promulgate it are looking towards the future (and often sequels to their tales:  "I Wasted My Life in Project Management Volume II:  Really Realizing I Failed").  The present is really the future that the 1950's projected: something out there that we think we can see, but never do.

This is not a hard and fast rule, of course.  To some extent we all have to plan for the future:  farmers have to think about what they will plant next year, and craftsmen what they will need to make things for next year.  And some extent longer term as well:  the soil must be maintained for the long haul, the wood and metal needed for crafts managed in a way that will allow others to do it.  There is some planning, some forethought, some long term views needed.  But not to the point of only seeing the future.

Living in the future is easy.  It only demands that you do things in the name of tomorrow.  Living in the present is very hard, as it means being 100% focused on the now, not the then.