Running Before Dawn

The air is cold, a mite bitterly so, as I step off the sidewalk to start my run.

I have just hit the "Start" button on my phone timer and put it in my right pocket, my house keys safely ensconced in the small zippered pocket on the left side in my new blue cold weather running pants, a sort of upgraded yoga pants with "wicking material action" for those that go outside in such times.  It, along with the fancy new running shoes that are hitting the pavement (more than I have ever paid for a pair shoes; the pants and shoes brought to me by a corporate reward program that gives gift card cash for doing certain health things), carry me along as I head out of the parking lot and into the street.

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While I had started running in the Fall, I had let it slip down to a walk every morning.  But general Iaijutsu training, combined with a desire to not have a repeat of the 2023 Mt. Goddard Hike and resulting altitude sickness, has led me to picking it back up - if I cannot gain endurance by regular hiking at altitude (a challenge at the moment), at least I can gain lung capacity by running.

The weather here is off-putting to doing such things, the cold and rain enough to dismay even long-time residents, let alone a new transplant. But as friends here have told me, the weather is what it is:  you get the gear and go out and do the thing.  Thus the new pants and shoes.

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My running tends to take place between 0600 and 0640 in the morning: early enough that most traffic is off the road and still gets me back to my apartment with a comfortable interval to perform my remaining shower, breakfast, and blog reading/writing/responding.  That conveniently means that it is also dark; I like running in the dark (as opposed to light) for reasons that I cannot fully explain other than perhaps it helps me think as I go.

Another change to my running (versus my walking) is that I run without earbuds.  Sid Garza-Hillman in his book Ultrarunning for Normal People does the same; he says it helps him think and be creative.  I had noticed the same thing when I walked without such things and now find the same thing with running.  Many things over the last few weeks which have turned into blog posts have started as a thought as I ran through the cold, dark mornings.

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Sid makes another suggestion in his book, that mileage is more important than time (at least for trail running) and thus one should not feel the need to keep track of time.  Just run and keep track of distance.  As a person who is a slow runner at best, seldom have I read more welcome advice.

As a result my runs look more like leisurely jogs, at a pace where I could hold a conversation if I had to.  If I had to guess, I am losing a little bit of "time" by doing it this way, but the sense of not being rushed in my efforts more than compensates for any sort of loss of an imaginary goal of mile splits that have no meaning outside of my head.

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I am fortunate that I live in a planned development - as a result, I have level, well kept roads and lights pretty much all along the path.  It is a bit of struggle to feel out mileage, as I do not have a clear read until after I have completed my run and my I-phone catches up with me.  As a result, figuring out how much and how far has become an exercise is add streets and blocks to my run, then calculating the results, then adding some more on.

This remains the perfect time to run: traffic is low with only the occasional early riser out and driving to work in the neighborhood.  It is also fairly quiet; to the East one can hear the busier main road and occasionally the light rail bells break through as the train pulls in or leaves the station.  Beyond that it is just myself and my breath as I run.

Even in what is effectively the dead of Winter and cold (current lowest temperature run in is 32 F), the natural beauty continues to astound me.  With the amount of rain and the lack of sun, fog has become a feature of late, its tendrils drifting up to the sky and catching in the full moon and few visible stars through the bare trees.  It takes my breath away - or at least what is left of my breath as I run.

Even in the midst of physical effort and cold and dark and civilization, one can still find elements of beauty and wonder.  And so I huff on in wonder, feet pounding the pavement so loud that they seem to be the only thing I can hear as the mists wander through the cold morning air seeking the sun.

Essentialism (II): What Is An Essentialist?

In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown begins with a story about a corporate executive.

It is story that is likely familiar to many who been somewhat successful at their position:  willing to try to what he was asked and being successful at what he was given, he continued to volunteer and amass work until he was busy to the point of being able to no longer be essential or effective.  He asked a mentor what he should do; his mentor suggested to stay on in his job, but instead of leaving and being a business consultant, act like a business consultant.

And so, he tried the experiment.

He tentatively started saying no to things he did not know if he could actually accomplish or complete  When no-one pushed back on that, he expanded his experiment to begin asking the question "Is this the most important thing I could be doing right now?"  If the answer was no, he would decline the request.

He started letting others jump in on e-mail threads, not attending meetings where he could make no contribution.  He started making space for his work - and his work became working one project at a time, allowing him to make thorough plans and anticipate and remove obstacles. He began making actual progress in his projects.  He began to find time to go home and spend time with his family again.  And his performance ratings went up to and then beyond where they had been.

McKeown notes "...in this example is the basic value proposition of Essentialism:  only give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to say yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter."

The Essentialist, says McKeown, lives by the motto of the German Designer Dieter Rams of the German corporation Braun:  Wenige aber besser (Less but better). Like the Rams' design of the record player that took it from a wood cabinet behemoth piece of furniture to a plastic cover over the turntable (I owned some of these), the essentialist is in pursuit of better.  It is not about getting more things done, he suggests, but rather getting the right things done; "It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential."

The Essentialist lives by design, accepting that life involves trade-offs and decision that are difficult; that design means that the Essentialist lives by choice:  "The Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage.  In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making the execution of the those things effortless."

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Thoughts and Applications:

What strikes me most in reading this example is that I am precisely familiar with it, as likely are a lot of people.  We slowly get pulled into other things that are beyond our ability to influence or control because we are "in that department" or "we would like to have your voice in the room (although it is never called on)" or "this is a critical initiative".  Too, we are often inclined to help people when asked for help, often even at the cost of our own ability to do our work, because that is how we are raised as a people.

And to be clear, the application goes far beyond that of the workplace.  It strikes me that the idea of having to make to make choices (and accepting that this is so) is one I have attempted to disprove all my life.  I am one of those people that really does think I can do and be far more that is physically or temporally possible; as a result, I often lose the chance I do have to become better at something because I want to become okay at a lot of things.

McKeown uses the term "Life by design".  I like the idea of "life by design", but my application to this point has been "design in too much".  Clearly, that is not a winning philosophy.

The Collapse CLXXV: Murder

 09 Oct 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

We seem to have had a murder.

I say “seem to”; I clearly was not present at the time. All that has been presented is that one person is dead, another person is accused of killing them, and we have something that needs to be resolved.

The circumstances of my own awareness are such: Yesterday I was out moving wood. Somewhere, to the West, a shot was fired. Then another. Then another. It was close enough that it sounded as if it were in town but not close enough that I could identify it.

Hmmm. Hunting, I thought to myself, then carried on about my business.

Later that day, Young Xerxes came around with more information and an urgent need for me to come with him. Apparently it was not a hunt; it was a killing.

I have mentioned before the RV Park and bar that is on the state highway through town. In times past this would have been closing up more or less as the Summer tourists would have left and few if any stay here through Winter in a Recreational Vehicle. Due to the relative suddenness of The Collapse, there were some that were essentially marooned here with not enough fuel to get anywhere worth getting.

Who they are I cannot really tell you; I seldom if ever went to the bar before and I simply do not go there now. Likely they came to the town meetings, but surely I would not have known them from anyone else; even I am somewhat considered an “Out of Towner” after living here as long as I have.

The facts, Young Xerxes explained as we walked the quarter mile to the Park, was that there was some kind of argument that escalated from words to pushing to shooting. Someone was clearly dead. Someone had clearly shot them.

By the time we arrived at the Park, there was a small crowd: Park residents obviously, local residents that heard the shots, and people that came out afterwards as this was the biggest thing that had happened in months. Two men held a third man, struggling to get free. In front of a long block-like Recreational Vehicle (are they not all long and block-like) was a series of blood stains. To the side, in the shade of the bar, was a covered body and a grieving woman.

And shouting. There was a lot of shouting, shouting coming from some men and women by the grieving woman, others from the man in custody, others from men and women by him.

The shouting went on until Young Xerxes fired a shot. The silence, as they say, was deafening.

The question quickly became what to do – with the body, with the captive, with the murder.

For the body, burial that day was obviously in order. The men by the body said they would take care of that.

For the captive, there were – not surprisingly – two counterarguments. One was the shouts of “Execute him!”, the other of “It was justified!”. Young Xerxes – who never seems to have a problem making a decision – delegated two men to take him into the bar and hold them there.

Finally, what to do about the murder.

Judging from the shouts, there were obviously two different points of view with what would have been very different outcomes.

“A trial, then” suggested Young Xerxes in a voice that would not be brooked for opposition.

“But who will judge?” shouted the grieving woman. “I do not trust anyone that has lived here for years.”

“But not someone that has not lived here at all” came the response from out of the crowd.

Young Xerxes slowly scanned the crowd. “Not an outsider, not a life-long resident. Perhaps someone with experience and knowledge. Perhaps even someone that has already served this town loyally. Perhaps….my father in law?”

All eyes turned to me.

It seems, Lucilius, I need to quickly brush up on my legal proceedings.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

New Home 2.0: The Great Arrival of The Ravishing Mrs. TB

 Today marks the formal arrival of The Ravishing Mrs. TB.

For the record, this brings us together (more or less - see below) after approximately 10 months of living apart.  Not consistently, of course - I had made a few trips back and she had made a few trips here and we met at least one time at third location (San Diego).  But by and large, we have been apart.

I have to admit it will be a little bit odd to have someone living in the house with me again.  10 months is enough time to develop your own habits and ways of living -  - my meals, for example, are probably atrocious by the standards of dining in that they tend to consume as little time as possible to make and eat.  And while most of the things are put away not everything is and I have become comfortable living with the disarray (That, also, will likely change).

I say more or less - she is going back to New Home 2.0 in February to take care of some last things before the move, then will be gone a few days in March, then down to Old Home to help her mother, then out to New Home in May, then in June... you get the idea.  "Great Arrival" does not mean "Final Arrival".

It also means - by default - that her former employment will have ended.  Fortunately through my relocation, she has a twelve month support program for resume help and a job search - although she has joking referred to the upcoming year as her "adult gap year".

Still, after 10 months, it will be nice to have here.  Although, I suppose, I will probably have to sit down and really "eat dinner" again...

2024 Turkey: Ruins of Güzelyurt

 Prior to the 1924 Population exchange - an event where entire populations of Greek and Turkish citizens switched countries to be within ethnic national borders - Kapadokya was largely Christian and the city of Güzelyurt largely Greek.  The Greeks are all long gone, but the ruins of churches, monasteries, and even just living quarters remain.  After our lunch, we took a hike down the hill.

Here you can clearly see how the rock was carved:

One cannot be sure why this arch was built overlooking the mountain, but it could have made a wonderful backdrop to an altar:

These all appeared largely unoccupied:

Another moment of "Imagine growing up with this in your backyard":

Walking by these, I wondered their stories: Who carved them?  Who lived there?  Why did they leave?

From the ruins, it is clear that the city once had a much larger population:

Now, only the plants and occasional animal or bird frequents these haunts.

Hammerfall 2.0: Epilogue

 On 02 January of this year, doing my now semi-regular check of the status of the company that created the layoff called Hammerfall 2.0 (which indirectly lead to New Home 2.0), I came across the following notice:

"Thank you for visiting the website for <Former Employer> ("Company"), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company formerly based in New Home.  The Company is no longer operating.  Any questions may be submitted to <FormerEmployer@Fomer.com>.

Previous SEC filings for the company may be found at <The place you find such things>.

Correspondence can also be sent to <Former Employer>, Small Office Complex, Somewhere, United States."

That is it.   A company history of something like 15 years - 6.5 years of my own life - hundreds of millions of dollars - all gone except for a web page and assets to be liquidated.

The hours we spent there.  The amount of work.  The sacrifices of sleep and emotion.  The things that had to be done - right then - because they were the most important thing in the world, because our bosses told us so.

All gone.

I try and tell the young ones of this, that a company will ask everything of you and will let you go at the drop of a hat, that while doing good work is important and you should always avail yourself of every opportunity you can, never give the company everything.  Because sometime - it happens to most of us anymore - all of your efforts and emotions and sweat will disappear without a trace.

Sic transit gloria mundi - Thus passes the glory of this world.

A Year of Humility (II): Definitions The First

 As a writer and reader, words not only matter to me but are fascinating to me.  As someone who loves to study foreign languages (if he does not end up speaking them very well), what a language has and does not have for words and concepts and how it expresses those concepts tell one a great deal about the culture and thought processes without a single word about the actual culture and thought processes.

Thus, rather than start from the typical "Here is what the Greek/Hebrew says, this is where it appears, and this is the word we use for it", I would like to reverse the order and start where we are now and work backwards.

Humility, were you to look it up in your red hardback Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition (1982), would be defined as "The state or quality; absence of pride or self assertion".   Were you to go back a page to page 683, you could look up humble:

"Humble:  1.  having or showing a consciousness of one's defects or shortcomings; not proud; not self-assertive; 2.  low in condition, rank, or position; lowly; unpretentious.  Verbal Form (-bled, -bling): 1. to lower in condition, rank, or position; 2 to lower in pride; make modest or humble in mind".

You would also find right below this:

"Synonymy:  humble, in a favorable sense, suggests an unassuming character in which there is an absence of pride and assertiveness (a humble genius) and, unfavorably connotes and almost abject lack of respect."  Words presented as synonyms include lowly (an older equivalent to humble with no unfavorable connotations), meek, and modest.

Finally, the entry would tell you the world entered the English language during the period of Middle English as humilitte, which is derived from Old French and ultimately Latin.

Fair enough.  There are many, many terms in Modern English that we ultimately derive from Latin via Latin directly or as a parting gift from the Norman Conquest.  But it always makes me wonder:  what was the original Old English term.

As an example text going forward for this discussion (and next week's), I will use Luke 14:11:  "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted".

The Old English (from the circa 990 A.D. West Saxon Gospel)  reads:

"For-ðam aelc þem hine up-ahefð byð genyðerud (ond) se þe hine niðereð se beoð up-ahafen."

Literally, "For every one that lifts himself up (up-ahefð) will be brought low/put down (genyðerud) and the one that brings himself low (niðereð), he will be lifted up (ahafen)".

So to the Anglo-Saxon mind, the idea of "humble" was that of being made to lower one's self - whether in physical manner or in social standing.  In a society that valued in its literature and culture warrior prowess and bravery, this must have seemed like a very foreign - and not desirable - concept.

So if the Anglo-Saxons saw being "humble" as lowering one's self (as opposed to lifting one's self up), where did they get that idea from?  Stay tuned for next week, where we reach farther back into (linguistic) history.

A New Library Card

Two weeks ago to cap out the old year, I got a library card.

I have not had a library card in something like 12 years - which is an odd exception, as for the bulk of my life I have always had one for whatever local library I belonged to; as I have related in the past, for many years the biweekly library visit was the highlight of my childhood week.  

That all changed in 2013 when, as part of the purchase of our house in New Home, we moved from one county to another.  Even though the library we had always gone to was still the closest one, we were unable to continue our library services there because we were now "out of county" and as such, no longer considered "free" users of the library (we could join for $100 a year).  And so the library lapsed, at least for me.

We did have a smaller community (read "Home Owner's Association") library that I could have joined, but for some reason it never took with me - also, I certainly had enough materials to read at home.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB joined though, and over the years borrowed and listened to many a book.

With our move to New Home 2.0, the closeness of the library (a little over 1 mile away), and the fact that this year is going to be a little lean financially, it seemed like a good time to do so again.  Especially because - thanks to being a county resident - it is "free" (free in the sense my rent pays the property taxes of my landlord that help fund it).

When I was growing up, inter-library loans were not much of thing:  what you had in the library is what you had.  That is no longer the case, judging from what was arguably less of a collection of books than the library I belonged to as a child (eyeballing it, of course).  That said, interlibrary loans are no much more of a thing.  Add to that an app (Libbyapp.com) that allows you not only to do things like reserve. request, and extend expiration dates, but actually check out the electronic books to your phone or electronic device - and suddenly the dearth of physical books is not quite the difficulty I thought it would be.

(The electronic books are both audio and a reader on your app.  I struggle with audio books, really only being able to focus on one thing at a time.  The app for my phone, however, is much better than I had anticipated and I can actually read on it).

My list of "Books I would like to buy" on Thriftbooks has now become the basis of a reading list:  if the book is at the library, I will start there.  If it is not, then I get to ask the question "Do I really want it?"

It is not that I expect my reading to decrease significantly because I am borrowing instead of buying (the final count was 116 books in 2024).  But the variety of books I have access to has expanded greatly.

Who knows what kind of (intellectual) trouble I can get myself into now.

Essentialism (I): Introductory Post

As longer term readers may know and anticipate, usually at the end of December or beginning of January I post what I believe my goals for the next year will be.

In years past, this has been an agonizing grind at times - agonizing because I endlessly worry that I am going to get things wrong rather than right and somehow miss "the thing I am supposed to be doing".  But the years 2023 and 2024 with their combination of two layoffs, a death, and a relocation have somewhat put that sort of thing to bed.

The other factor - a reality that I do not care to reflect on but is absolutely true - is that I am likely reaching what will be the last third of my life, given the male genetics on both sides of my family.  To be frank, time grows shorter, not longer

To help focus my thinking for the year - something I consciously put off this December - I revisited the book Essentialism over a two period at the end of 2024.  

Written in 2011, by Greg McKeown and recommended by my weight coach The Berserker, it is a book which attempts to give guidance to the question of "What should I be spending my life on?"  (A review from 2021 is here).  

When I originally started this post, it was intended as a one-time listing of my goals and how I got to them (or sort of got to them) for 2025.  But as I thought about it more, I realized that this might very well indeed make for a good longer in depth series:

1)  To help me really walk back through what the outcome of this two-day period of thinking and review was to see if I really "got it";

2)  To give myself the intellectual luxury of thinking through these things on longer term (rather than just rushing through it and calling it good.

3)  As a wider aspiration, I realize that most of my readership are likely in the "latter" stages of their lives.   Perhaps they have figured out what their essentials are (and I can benefit from that) or even that in my wanderings on the subject, it can help others to think about the true essentials in their own lives, no matter where they find themselves along the journey.

From McKeown's Introduction:

"To harness the courage we need to get on the right path, it pays to reflect on how short life really is and what we want to accomplish in the little time we have left.  As poet Mary Oliver wrote 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?'"

The only sensible choice, argues McKeown, is to find the essentials - and do that.

The Collapse CLXXIV: Huckleberries And Walks

 07 Oct 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

The temperature has continued it downwards spiral as the days continue to bleed daylight: at best we are now in the mid to high 50’s F at the peak of the day and easily drifting down into freezing at night. Winter, although not here, is rapidly making its presence known.

This coming season brings with it both a sense of relief on one hand and a sense of disquiet on the other. The relief, of course, is the knowing that unlike last year, the idea that the situation is going to “sort itself out” or get better is simply not on the table: it will not. The disquiet, of course, is the sense that in reality we are truly “on our own”, or as near to that as one can get. Outside of our local township, any assistance is likely to be few and far between.

We still merit over 12 hours of daylight, but the temperature change and general turn of the season means that tasks have become less varied. There is no outdoor garden to speak of now, only the greenhouse and the quail that need a daily check (and one avoids opening the door too much lest that precious heat slip away). The bees are fully wrapped and other than occasionally verify if they need any more food, there is little enough to be done there. Wood gathering continues to encompass a fair amount of my time, as does doing anything we can to stretch the stored food that we have available.

As it turns out, huckleberries are a thing in these parts (I would not have known that; it was all due to Pompeia Paulina). For me, huckleberries are a novelty fruit that one would buy a bottle of preserves of at a tourist shop. It turns out that, if you know where to look – and can beat other living things to them – they are available. As a result, we have gone on several local “huckleberry hunts”.

As a note – and it did not strike me before now – we have taken to being discrete about our hunting and only letting Young Xerxes and Stateira know where we are finding them. It seems a little… searching for a word here...exhibiting a lack of trust for others? Pompeia Paulina understood my concern but also pointed out we had no idea if others were doing the same.

I say that. I have taken to making a circuit once or twice a week around our small town, trying to gauge who is still here and who has left. In some cases it is blatantly obvious, in others cases not so readily discernible. Part of it, I tell myself, is to simply know who is left to either check on or ask assistance of. It is also, I remind myself, to acquaint myself with where I would expect people not to be so that in the event I see something, it will stick out in my mind.

I have always struggled with this sort of awareness Lucilius, this sort of planning for the future. In many ways – although I certainly planned for a retirement – I have tended to live a great deal of my life in the day to day. That does not work nearly so well now: not just in planning for “What will we eat?” or “What will we burn?” but other issues, like “Where will the people problems coming from?”

They have to come of course; I suspect this Winter is when many of the supplies that others had or could be easily foraged are now gone. People will be hungry and cold, and hungry and cold people are desperate people.

And desperate people do desperate things.

That reminds me that I need to ask Young Xerxes about the radio – or any radio – that may still be around. My mind wanders to The Colonel and Cato the Elder and Epicurus and Themista – long distance friends of course, but even long distance friends are better than none at all.

And you of course, dear Lucilius. Although we now remain far beyond the ability to assist each other.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Rustic Lunch

 One of the things that the tour service we have used for travel does (Gate1 Travel, if you are curious) is that they partner with local business/organizations to help support local populations - in 2023 per Statisica, it made up 9.95 of Global GDP, or $9.9 trillion.  Oftentimes the beneficiaries of these are the more traveled to locations; lesser known destinations that do not have major tourist draws do not necessarily see the benefit of that money

To that end, we traveled to the town of Güzelyurt (population 2.750) to visit a school to drop off supplies, listen to the children sing and practice English, and have an authentic Turkish meal.

(View from the central square)

(The same square.  Interestingly, one of the places we had to pay for the restrooms, which I understand is generally more common.)

Walking down to lunch:

The door to our lunch.  If this is does not speak "Authentic Turkish Cuisine" here, I do not know what does.

The house was actually on three different levels, the entry and two lower rooms.  We continued down a and had a seat.  Our hostesses (all women) then served us our meal.

The bread was amazing:

A creamy yogurt dipping sauce and pastries:

Soup:

A rice type dish (Orzo maybe?), and chickpeas.  We saw a lot of bean related dishes there (I had fava beans for the first time in Turkey, and really enjoyed them);

Dessert and tea:

The inevitable water that came with tea and coffee.:

For some reason, I found them endlessly fascinating:

Besides a good meal, such events help support local populations who otherwise are not able to tap into those tourist monies mentioned above.  It is nice that organizations do it; I wish it was more widely done.

2024 Turkey: Driving To Kapadokya

Driving from the city of Konya, we entered the region of Kapadokya  (or in English, Cappadocia).

Cappadocia has a long recorded history; it was known since the time of the Hittites.  It was controlled by the Persians of course during their Empire, was never controlled by Alexander the Great (but fell to his successors) and then eventually became a successor kingdom of Cappadocia until conquered by the Romans.

The region is very much associated with Christianity:  in Acts 2 pious Jews from Cappadocia are mentioned as being present at the day of Pentecost, and the region became fully Christianized.  The nature of the geography there - rock that could be carved - lent itself to the creation of separate churches and monasteries (similar to the Meteora Region we visited in Greece in 2023, here and here).  An entire group of church fathers known as The Cappadocian Fathers originated from here, including John the Cappadocian.

This was literally just across the road from where we stopped.  You can see the carved portions.

After the Battle of Manzikert in A.D. 1071, the Seljuk Turks began to infiltrate the area.  The Greek population remained, in the process creating a dialect of Greek known as Cappadocian Greek.  After the Great Population exchange in A.D. 1924, the language slowly dwindled.

This is also right by where we stopped; not all of the region was high rocks and flat fields.

Planning The Writing Year

One of the most difficult - and most rewarding - things I have done in recent memory was in 2020 when I made it a goal to post something every day.

Looking at my posting history, it had been leading up to that the point:  I had easily been posting every other day (or more) from 2008 to 2017 and then 2018 to 2019 were years I almost hit that mark (but not quite).  Originally it was simply a challenge to myself; only later did I find it to be an excellent discipline and practice.

That said, it came at the cost of something - in this case, the writing of other projects like short stories, the occasional manuscript, and even some other blogs or blog-like structures that I had going or were planned.

Given my foray into Essentialism this year and the fact that I do believe that writing is essential to who I am and what I do, I am looking for ways to 1) Keep the discipline of a post a day; 2)  Build in buffer for other writing projects (an average blog post takes around 20 to 30 minutes, plus editing); and 3)  Automate the process to the extent to which I am able.

To that end, I am working on more of a formal "writing menu".

I have that here somewhat already:  Tuesdays and Wednesdays have become travel days, Thursdays are The Collapse, Sundays are God Thoughts.  That leaves three days - Monday, Friday, and Saturday - which are not otherwise pre-programmed.

To those that have never done it, generating an article ex nihilo can be a mentally exhausting task.  Sometimes you find the subject or words. Sometimes you just look at a blinking cursor.

To that end, this is the schedule I intend to start with:

Monday:             Open 

Tuesday:             Travel

Wednesday:        Travel

Thursday:           The Collapse

Friday:                Essentialism (Series of undetermined length, starting this Friday)

Saturday:            Open

Sunday:              God Thoughts, specifically on Humility (one year series, started yesterday)

This gives me five days a week that I "know" what I am writing about, a great help in content creation.  The other two days?  Things happen in life; it is good to leave some time for them to document them.  It also - from practical experience - gives me the longest lead time to think about the "undefined" subjects (a work week and then a weekend).

This is all tentative of course, subject to how things go and if this works at all.  Who knows: maybe another day gets "pre-programmed", or Monday becomes something else.  But it is at least a framework to help with continuing to give me the discipline to write as well as freeing some intellectual space and time up for other projects.

Thanks as always for your patience and continued support.  

I remain,

Your Most Obedient Servant, Toirdhealbheach Beucail

A Year Of Humility (I): Introduction

One of the things that God put on my heart and mind near the end of the year was humility - specifically, that it was something that I needed to work on more.  My solution to these sorts of things - like most things, actually - is to write about them.

The goal is to write 52 posts (one year's worth) on humility or some aspect of it.  I have been freely "borrowing" memes from the Church Fathers that deal with it and will continue to do so, not just because it is good to be reminded of our history but the fact that Christians have talked about humility for almost 2000 years.  Their thoughts are likely far better starting points than mine could likely be.

Writing should always serve a particular point.  My point in doing this exercise is to work on my own humility by finding references to it and unpacking what it actually means to exercise it. (And also - to be completely fair - I do better when I treat something as a research project.)

It is not a popular virtue of course; it never has been.  The humility of Christ and his followers were one of the more disorienting things about them in the Greco-Roman world (but we will get to that).  And the risk, of course, is that by writing about it one becomes quite the opposite of being humble (which is not really the point, of course).

On the other hand, if we never think on it, speak of it, or write about it, we will never move on to practicing it. And, as Macarius the Great writes above, who would not want a life of peace, tranquility, and happiness?

A Hand Repaired Gift

 When I was in Middle School (my mind clearly tells me the 6th grade, but I have no data for that beyond finding a picture somewhere), my mother bought me a blanket with a tiger for Christmas.  Why I received this particular blanket is a mystery now lost to the ages:  I did not have a particular love for tigers (more so than any other animal) and we certainly had other blankets.  But for better or worse, it became mine.

Over the years, it stayed with me:  at home until I went to college, then to college (multiple times), then to my new home and then to my family where - like many things of course - the blanket became less "mine" and more "my family's", being borrowed by Na Clann until it sort of unofficially became Nighean Gheal's possession on her bed or on the couch.  It came to hold memories, not just of the blanket itself but of the giver and everywhere it had been, a sort of physical history of people and places it had been used by and what had been going on at the time.

The blanket itself retained most of its integrity, but over time the outer stitching on the edging - a nylon sort of thread - began to fail and came loose, which resulted in the blanket beginning to tear.  I had done what I could by gently handling it, but it was clearly not getting better.

Sometime during this past year, when the question of "What do you want for Christmas?" came up, I mentioned in passing that I would love if the edging of the blanket could be repaired.  I am pretty sure it was before the relocation to New Home 2.0, but it was long enough ago that I completely forgot about the request.

Until Christmas Day.  My gift, from Nighean Bhan, was a blanket with resewn edging.

Look at those corners.  Pretty "like new" sewing, and far more sturdy than the original edging.

Nighean Bhan's comment was that a lot of time watching videos on The Tube of You was involved in this project.

It is hard to come up with a "Best Christmas Present I ever got" set of items, but surely this is now in the Top Ten. 

Given the distinct change in temperatures with the move to New Home 2.0, it will be used and enjoyed for many years more.

Bang The Drum Slowly: The Passing of Pioneer Preppy

In some future history work (assuming that there is a future history and that there is power to run it), I do not wonder that this early era of the InterWeb (we are only at 40 years old as of 2023) will be looked back upon the way we now look upon the Japanese era of Ukiyo.

Ukiyo (浮世) literally means the "floating/fleeting/transient world".  The era, which technically runs the Edo Period of Japan coinciding with the Tokugawa Era (A.D. 1600-1867) refers to the idea of the transience of the passing world and the importance of living in the moment.  Its most frequent use was (perhaps not surprisingly) for that of the world of pleasure, but it could be extended to any idea of a moment or moments in time to live for.  Most people only know it from its signature art form, Ukiyo-e, or Pictures of the Floating World.  In paintings and in woodblock prints, Japanese artists presented pictures of the passing world.

(Taking the Evening Cool by Ryogoku Bridge,  Okumura Masanobu, A.D. 1745 [source])

In a similar manner, the InterWeb and the blogs that populate it ultimately have the same concept:  transient constructions of electrons and pixels, rising and falling with the waves and interests and the willingness of authors to write.

---

Blogs and websites usually erupt of out of nowhere, for the most part an act of fiat lux ("Let there be light") on the part of their creators.  But they all end one of two ways. The first - the more explicit and seemingly less common - is that the creator announces its end, perhaps providing a reason or reasons for the termination of the blog/website.

In the second, they do not end as much as they simply drift away, borne on the currents of decaying search engines and links on other blogs that point to a thing that is no longer a living concern, signposts to monuments of the InterWeb now abandoned except for ghosts and tumbleweed.

In most of these cases, we never know the reason for their end.  There can be a variety of course: Sometimes the author loses interest.  Sometimes life simply happens and writing becomes a thing that can no longer be easily done.  The entries become less and less until one day there are no more entries, just a trailing set of comments that drift off into the ether without response.

Occasionally though, we do get a reason.

---

It is likely because of my recent vacation that I missed what has become the final post on The Small Hold this past 27th of December 2024, announcing the death of its proprietor, Pioneer Preppy, earlier on the 8th of December.

PP had been gone from formal posting since February of last year but in point of fact, for something longer than that:  his somewhat regular posts had begun to have longer and longer gaps between them, his comments on other blogs less and less.  He never addressed the reason for the gaps and most did not ever ask (we never do - as a group we bloggers seem uncommonly respectful of privacy in a modern world so free of it).  Comments to that final post went unanswered; periodic check-ins by commenters went without response.

Now, no matter how it happened, we know the reason why.

---

Given the apparently non-search function of Blogger and its comments, I cannot tell you when I first "met" PP.  To my mind it was in the early 2010's, but trying to do a search of posts is somewhat pointless and given the small sample size, it appears that really I got few comments at all before PP showed up.

How he found me I will never know now; likely it was a random search on some subject we shared an interest in.  Repeated comments led to me going back to his blog; from that, the sort of InterWeb friendship that seems to spring up from these sorts of things.

He wrote of gardens and trees, of encroaching civilization and trying to be self sufficient and the ups and downs of weather in Missouri.  His tales of trying to keep his wood furnace going in Winter became a staple of my Winter reading.  And at the end of every post, his admonition to "Keep Prepping Everyone" encourage everyone - no matter what their position or circumstances - to do what they could, where they were.

---

PP was meaningful in my blogging career in two major ways.

The first was that he always - up to the last few posts - made it a point to answer everyone that commented, a trait that I have incorporated (and value in all those bloggers that do the same).  A comment is that most precious of commodities, a slice of time and therefore a slice of life and should be respected as such.

The second was that he was the very first blog I was added to a blogroll on.

It is not such a big thing now - I do not know that anyone does such things anymore on a regular basis, given that blogs come and go.  But seeing my blog there on someone else's blog for the first time was something that I valued greatly.  I had "arrived" as a blogger.

For that, I will always remain grateful

---

I have no idea what the final plans for his blog are.  In a way, his blogroll has become a sort of frozen moment in time, as other blogs have continued to disappear. Their names remain, as do their last updates:  1 year ago, 2 years ago, 6 years ago.  His, too, will now go on his own blogroll list, to either slowly be forgotten and unlinked to or simply to disappear one day, either by conscious choice of his heirs or the shutdown of servers that no longer store items of perceived value.

The Floating World will have claimed another victim.  And the InterWeb will be a bit less bright for his passing.

Salve atque vale - Hail and Farewell, friend.  May we met again under that Happiest of Skies.

The Collapse CLXXIII: Mail

05 Oct 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

The most unexpected thing in the world happened today.

You may remember the Post Office that was attached to the local gas station/mini-market, one of the few establishments (along with the local bar/RV Park) to remain open here even to the Summer of last year. You may also recall that earlier this year, the Post Office was commandeered as a sort of Headquarters for what became our trek to McAdams and the almost nucleus of some kind of small governmental body.

The time for that body, as I have related, has passed – but Young Xerxes, loyal to the idea even in its lingering death, has taken it upon himself to save the maps and other items that are there (including, apparently, the radio we were using to speak with our friends to the North, although where that has gone he has not mentioned). It is not more than one street over and so, every day (per Stateira), he has been quietly bringing things back to their house. “Reasons”, he says when asked.

Yesterday, in the midst of carrying something to or from our house, he handed me something. “Found this in the Post Office” he said as he pressed it into my hand.

It was a letter. More specifically, a letter from you.

The postmark date is sometime last Summer, just before things began to unravel (including the mail, of course). Why was this left behind? Your printing is as inscrutable but vaguely legible, and in such a small town there is seldom if any question who “Seneca” was. Did it get set aside? Lost? Or was it the last delivery of mail that arrived only to find that there was no more service, a last gasp of a bureaucracy doing what bureaucracies even after the world they were designed for ceases to exist?

Looking at the envelope – your return address, my mailing address, a postmark across a stamp with a time, date, and location of a world seemingly vanished – I was struck by how emotional I found myself to be. For one moment there was no Collapse: it was me, standing in my living room, looking at a letter from my friend the way I had always received them in the past. An ordinary, not at all noteworthy, event.

You cannot imagine with what reverence I opened envelope.

Letters from the past are always capsules of a sort, fleeting frozen windows into time and circumstances and people that have vanished. Yours was no different – only in the sense that it was not remarkable in any way.

There were no dire predictions, no complaints about failing supply lines or infrastructure or power that was disappearing or a financial system in the midst of collapsing. It was just about and your life: your apartment, comments on a book you were reading about World War II, a recent dining experience you and Augusta had enjoyed. The sort of things that we used to write about, once upon a time.

Also – it is you, after all – you included the “holy grail” of prayer cards, St. Hyacinth of Kiev*, the unofficial patron saint of Strength Training. You remember I had been challenging you to come up with one of these for years to “complete” my collection (and by collection, I mean mostly that you continually sent them to me for over 30 years until I started putting them in an album).

Just like that, it turns out you were able to do it.

Apparently I was gripping the letter so tightly that Pompeia Paulina came over and asked me what was wrong. I showed her, letter in one hand and prayer card in the other, perhaps a tear or two on my face.

How much I miss you, my friend, and a world where prayer cards in envelopes could be the norm.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

(* Hyacnith of Kiev or Hyacinth of Poland (A.D. 1185 - 1256).  Polish noble who became a Dominican Friar.  In A.D. 1240 during the invasion of Kiev by the Mongols, he went to the sanctuary to take the ciborium, the receptacle for the Eucharist, to save it from the Mongols.  At that moment he had a vision of Mary, who asked him to take a stone statue of her as well.  Although the statue was well over what he could normally lift, he took both the ciborium and the statue and fled, thus his unofficial patronage of Strength Training.   Also known as San Jacinto de Polonia, a pierogi festival is held in his honor every year).

(Source)

The FortyFive 2025 Edition: A Primer

Greetings and welcome to 2025!

As has become a practice (since 2021, apparently), one of the first posts in the New Year is intended as a guide to places and characters that inhabit this particular corner of the world.  Due to high level government concerns of secrecy (I wish; really it for the anonymity) everyone and most places here go by another name.  

To be completely frank, even I have to keep a "cheat sheet" (or "process aide", as we would call it in my industry.

I am your redoubtable host, Toirdhealbheach Beucail ("Toridhealbheach" is a version of my name in Old Irish Gaelic; "Beucail" means "booming or roaring", as in the sound of a cannon. If you ever met me in person, you would find I have only two volumes:  silent and "ON").  I have been taking up space on this corner of the InterWeb for this, my twentieth year (as of July).

A very brief history: I grew up in a small town, the same town my parents and my mother's parents had grown up in. I went away to college for two degrees that have nothing to do with what I ended up actually doing, then came back home and lived in and around that area (referred to here uncreatively as "Old Home") until 15 years ago, when due to a layoff we had to move (to the also uncreatively named) "New Home".  Last year in 2024 after a series of two layoffs in 2024 (Hammerfalls 2.0 and 3.0), I have now ended up in equally uncreatively named New Home 2.0, which is back closer to where I grew up.

I have a variety of interests.  I am a practitioner of Iaijutsu, a Japanese sword martial art.  I make cheese and other dairy foods.  I train with weights.  I write, both blogs and some kind of longer form.   I hike, mostly in the Sierra Nevadas but have also been down into the Grand Canyon.   I study languages, both current as well as the dead ones.  I read voraciously - primarily history and theology, but also philosophy, agricultural books and "old style" (say pre-1985) science fiction and fantasy.  I find myself doing far more travel than I originally anticipated.  In years past I have gardened, although the relocation has reduced this to more of a container gardening situation for the moment.

Dramatis Personae:

        - The Ravishing Mrs. TB:  To whom I have been married for over 30 years now and who actually makes sure the trains run on time and things get done.

     - Nighean Gheal: Number one daughter, a college graduate with a degree in International Business now living in the Cheongju province of South Korea, teaching English (at least through July of this year).

    - Nighaen Bhan: Number Two daughter, also a college graduate with a degree in Communications and pursuing a Master's level program in Speech Disorders (a.k.a., Speech Therapist).

     - Nighean Dhonn: Number Three daughter, currently studying Anthropology and Archaeology.

      - The Fiancé:  New to this years cast of characters, he is the fiancé of Nighean Bhan.   At some point I will have to come with a more original name.

     - The Director:  One of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Lives in Old Home, one of the most intelligent people I know.  Currently working on his Ph.D.  On an unusual note, he is practicing Quaker.

    - Uisdean Ruadh: The other of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Also lives in Old Home, currently living in The Cabin at The Ranch with his mother  A Mhathair na hUisdean Ruadh, who turned 97 in December.  Deeply Catholic, loves traditional Catholicism, planes, and history.  

  - The Berserker:  My weight training coach.  I have trained with him for 8+ years now.  I live in fear of his weekly training regimes, although they have been very successful.

- The Shield Maiden:  A friend I met throw Highland Games many years ago.  She lives much farther away than she used to (Picture the border of Canada and then move down.  Slightly.).  We chat via the InterWeb every day.  She is a reservoir of wisdom and the much needed lectures I will get from no-one else.

-La Contessa: My very good and old friend (post high school, so not quite as long as The Director and Uisdean Ruadh, but almost as long).  We regularly have dinners once a month when I am in Old Home.

-The Outdoorsman:  My brother-in-law and hiking partner in crime.  What started as lark of an idea (hiking the Grand Canyon) has turned into 3-4 smaller training hikes and a single big hike a year.

- The Cowboy/The Young Cowboy:  A father and son team, they have kept cattle at The Ranch for almost 20 years now.  They are regularly present there and help to keep an eye on the place when I am not present.

- The Brit:  My niece's fiancée who has also become a hiking partner in crime.

- Rainbow:  One of the earliest people involved with this blog, she lives in the larger vicinity of Old Home.  She and I speak more or less weekly about life, mostly disguised as a two person writer self-help group.

- The Dog Whisperer:  Another refugee from Hammerfall 3.0 looking for a new job.  Loves dogs (and animals of all kinds).  

Important Places:

- Old Home:  Where I grew up and lived up to 15 years ago.  Originally a combination of the small town I actually grew up in  as well as the larger areas there which we lived in before moving to New Home, I use it more now to indicate my hometown.

- New Home:  Where up to March of 2024, we lived. An urban area located in a state not where I grew up.  It has now been replaced by...

- New Home 2.0:  Another urban area, in this case much closer to the state I grew up in.  This is where The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I now live (currently in an apartment).

- The Ranch:  The Ranch is the property my parents own and live on in <insert yet another undisclosed location here>.  It is approximately 90 acres of land in the mountains which has been our extended family for over 60 years. 

(Note:  This is word for word from two years ago.  Still completely true.)

Like most budding bloggers, when I started this blog I had great visions of this being a mighty bulwark of discussion and thought that would be a beacon of light (and, coincidentally, would let me write full time). It only took about 10 years to realize that neither of these things were going to happen.  Either because of obstinance or foolishness (I am guilty of both) I persevered.

What I did find - and what I still believe in - is that blogging represents the Social Internet (not a phrase that I came up with, but one I love): the ability of people to read, think, and discuss things on the InterWeb (as opposed to Social Media, which I detest).  What has become critically important to me is creating a sort of InterWeb agora, a place where we can discuss subjects - some deep, some completely shallow - in a way that hopefully encourages thought and helps to build connections in a society which values neither thought nor connections except of the most shallow kind (otherwise known as Social Media).

What you find here most days is a combination of personal on-line journal, thoughts or concepts that have run through my mind, book reviews, occasional fiction, things that are just "going on" in my life, ruminations, and the occasional meme.  It is a smorgasbord of my existence (there are literally times I sit down to write with no idea what will be written, and no-one is more surprised than I am when it shows up).

Important Pages:

Ichiryo Gusoku Philosophy:  My overall guiding policy on my philosophy is here.

Ichiryo Gusoku Goals:  My overall aspirational goals are here 

The Collapse:  A rather long running fiction series (in a series of letters) about a man watching society slowly collapse is here.  

Moving TB The Elder And Mom:  As mentioned, my parents suffered a series of health reversals in 2021.  This page pulls together the experience in hopes that others that have or will have the same issues will benefit.

What are the rules?

There are only four.

1)  Be kind:  In all my years of writing here, I have had to not publish only a handful of comments because, frankly, they were mean or just outright wrong-minded.  You can certainly poke holes in my theories or my writing or the responses of others.  I just ask you do it kindly.  Everyone you are responding to is going through something.

2)  No profanity:  My mother was an elementary school teacher and a lovely Christian woman, so comment as if you were speaking directly to her.  Any profanity will simply not make itself a visible comment, no matter how relevant or good the comment is.

3)  No arguing current politics:  Politics as it is practiced currently is simply an exercise in "It is your fault!  No, yours!" followed by vulgarity and crudeness.  Political Science (the practice of forming political societies and their functioning) is far more useful to actually reach a solution.  

4)  No arguing religion:  I state up front I am Christian (useful background for some of what I write) and will happily discuss my own trials and travails and thoughts.  What we do not debate is the nature of religion or different religions.  Again, see the previous comments on kindness.

Thanks!

Comments are always welcome, but even the act of just stopping by and reading (as an investment of time) is greatly appreciated.