May 2026 Grab Bag

 One of the pleasant surprises of New Home 2.0 is that there are a great many parks (local and state) that are within easy commute distance.  Today's pictures are taken from a park we visited last Saturday, a very nice 2.2 mile hike and done in time for breakfast.

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Not going to The Ranch this month was not as bad as I thought it might be.

More or less, I have been traveling there regularly for almost 6 years on a monthly basis, so I anticipated that might be some kind of shock when I did not head out as I have in the past.

In point of fact, since the closing The Ranch has not entered my mind much at all.  I am not sure whether to be alarmed or concerned by that - perhaps both.  That something that was a big part of my life has effectively disappeared and it has not created more angst at this point genuinely surprises me.

We have certainly had plenty to do here in New Home 2.0 to fill up the time.  Life, it seems, moves on.

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I have been re-reading Paul Rahe's The Grand Strategy of Ancient Sparta series again.

The series starts with the foundation of Sparta in the Dark Ages of Greece and continues down through the end of Peloponnesian War (404 B.C.)  (One more book is planned to cover the Spartan Hegemony 404 -371 B.C.).

Rahe is a good writer and his documentation is fabulous; each book has pages and pages of cited endnotes.  He does theorize some, but only based on sources that he presents so one can clearly see his chain of thought.

The story of Sparta is both weird and fascinating, a state that was a mystery even to the other Greek States of their time and something very different from everything else that existed at the time.  Reading Rahe's theory on why they acted as they did makes more sense now on the second reading than the first, understanding that given the nature of the state (slaves, or helots, outnumbered the Spartiates by between 5 and 7 to 1), everything was organized around preventing a slave revolt and (after the 6th Century B.C.) in keeping the peace in the Peloponnese specifically and the greater Greek peninsula generally.

Understanding the "why" of a thing makes behaviours more clear.

The series itself currently is likely around 2,000 pages plus endnotes.  Highly recommended.

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The Community Garden Allotment continues apace.

I have yet to post pictures, because I am still not sure that anything, let alone everything, is going to make it.  Even now, we have cool evenings and have not really topped 80 F on a regular basis - pleasant for living, maybe not so much for gardening.

I have been experimenting a bit based on what I see other gardeners doing, putting down some small paths covered with wood chips and exposing the soil more than I was wont in New Home - given the temperature change, it seems to be the thing.

I have at least one more set of planting to do, more corn and soybeans and possibly potatoes (my first potato planting was a complete bust).

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One of the things that the Memorial Day weekend brought to light was how much I do not care for my job at this point.

In lots of ways it is still good - the pay is good, the benefits are good, my coworkers are engaging, the work is important.  But having a weekend where we got to chose what to work on or not work on, not having to go in at a specific time or leave late, and not having to argue about the 102 minor points that are part of the job but in the scope of things will matter not at all - all of this makes me yearn more and more to just be done.

I am not there yet.  But these types of weekends keep pushing me farther down that road.

On An Unexpected Price Increase

I have been a fan of the website Thriftbooks.com for at least three years (according to my order history, anyway).  I had used some other used book websites in the past - alibris.com, abebooks, even Amazon - but Thriftbooks drew me in for at least two reasons:  A purchase of $15 came with free shipping and after a certain number of purchases, one began to acquire a $5 to $7 credit to get a free book.

Given that I like to buy books, this made for a pretty convenient arrangement.

I had not really paid much attention when I ordered, other than checking to see that I met the threshold, until I went to make an order recently.  The shipping cost had gone up - not surprising, given the state of the world, and hardly anything to worry about (they ship book rate, so I presume it reflects the going cost).  What did surprise me was that the free shipping threshold had leapt up from $15 to $20 per purchase.  And, somehow, my relatively low amount to keep my "get your $7 credit status through 2027" had mysteriously leapt up from $1 to $71.

An bit of an increase in shipping is manageable.  A 33% increase in the amount it takes to get free shipping seems a bit less manageable.  And while it is fair to say that there is every reason to believe I could spend $71 on books between now and the end of the year, increasing it that much on what feels a like an unexplained whim is actually a little embittering - all the more so because I know the price they buy books back at (the mark up is pretty spectacular).

It has certainly given me pause (although to be fair, my book buying in general seems to be trailing off somewhat simply because I am running out of space).  

I had not anticipated the general economic situation to impact my used book habit. But it seems that nothing is immune from a world of rising costs.

A Year Of Haiku (XX): Whorls

 

Whirlpool of brown,

the snail of Spring slowly

strides across my path.

2026 Japan: Meiji Jingu (IV)

 These two camphor trees were planted in 1920.  They are now known as "meoto kusu" (Husband and Wife) and are symbols of a happy marriage and harmonious life.

We have seen ema, the prayer boards, before.  Interestingly, there were several asking that the Korean Kpop group BTS come to Japan!

On our way back out:

Post visit snack:

2026 Japan: Meiji Jingu (III)

 Entering into the main portion of the Meiji Jingu.  There is not a lot to say about today's post, other than the beautiful woodwork.

Memorial Day 2026

 

(Hat tip, as always, to Old AF Sarge for keeping this day in my memory.)

A Year Of Kindness (XX): Leave A Trail Of Kindness

(Source)

We all leave a trail in our life.

We are all trailblazers: every day we move into the virgin wilderness of the new day.  Every night we make our campfire in the evening, the day's trail behind us lost in the darkness of time.

The trail itself is, for the most part invisible, a series of events and encounters and feelings which for the most part are transient in nature (but not always).  There are times we leave physical presence, for good or ill - a gift, a thing built; on the other side an injury, a scar physical or psychic.   But really, we cannot see the trail we leave for the most part.

But that trail never really disappears.

I can recall kindnesses and injuries done to me years ago from the trails of others:  the times I was excluded or I in turn excluded others, the times things were taken from me or I took things from others, words of kindness or ill intent for which I can still picture the sound of the voice in my head and the place it happened.

Every day, a trail in the lives of others.

We cannot change the trail up to this point: it is engraved in the merciless stone of the past with a pen made of adamantium.  But the trail today is ours for the writing:  we can leave whatever sorts of mark we want on the paper of today.  And it lies within our power to leave a trail of kindness, of thoughts and memories that will follow our memory in the lives of others with joy and encouragement and good feelings.

No matter what, we will leave that trail.  And if we are doing so anyway, why not a trail of kindness?

Be The Silly You Wish To See In The World

 

(Source)

I freely admit that I am a silly person.

I break into song frequently.  I make puns at work frequently, to the point that people clearly know what is coming at the end of our morning meeting on Friday.  My collection of rabbit shirts continues to grow to the point I could wear a new one every Friday (which is Rabbit Shirt Day) for four months and not repeat myself.

Partially of course, it is simply in my nature.  But partially, it is also a thumb in the eye of the system.

The world - if you let it - will make you serious.  It will make you consumed with rage and the need to react to anything - everything.  It will teach you that everything is an emergency, that fun is something confined to the edges and corners of our lives rather than a central part.    Let it go long enough and it will convince you that silliness is the hallmark of fools and the unserious, not "people making their way in the world".

I have experienced that - I have been those things at one time.  What it did give me was seriousness.  It also gave me a lot of issues I have spent years working my through.

Fight the system.  Be silly.

On An Anniversary

 Today, as it turns out, is our wedding anniversary.  We are now firmly into the mid-30's.

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Wedding anniversaries are interesting things.

If you were to consult your local InterWeb search page, you would find that 58% of couples that were married in the 1990's are still married (42% divorce rate), so already the odds are not great to make it this far.  This is reflected in my own circle of acquaintances:  many of my friends, including some of my most significant (The Director, La Contessa, Uisdean Ruadh) divorced from their first marriage. It is not that any of them were at fault; it is just the way that it happened.

(Interestingly, the same statistics claim that people married in the 2000's and beyond are more likely to be married. One wonders if that is due to the fact that they simply have not racked up enough years yet).

I suppose if you were to interview those marriages that ended, the stories run the gamut:  people changed, a bad match to start out with which did not improve, really bad things (fortunately I know directly of none of those stories in my group), people were bored, they needed to find themselves, etc.  In that sense to me it is an odd thing:  of all the human endeavors that we enter into, marriage is almost universally the one that everyone assumes starting out they will be successful in.  No-one gets married to have a marriage end, let alone badly.

Yet, they often do.

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At this point, I suspect the typical written work would have a part about "How your marriage has survived the years" with "10 top tips" or some such thing. If I think about it, I do not know I have that kind of list at my disposal.

Marriage is hard.  It is lucky for most of us we do not realize how hard it is starting out, as I suspect many would simply give up at the beginning.  Love - or at least the love that seems to start most marriages - will almost inevitably cool.  At that point commitment to one another has to take over at some level.  Without commitment to the other and to the marriage vows, those things we promised, the rest - shared interests, shared stuff, shared pets, shared children, shared life - is likely not enough.

Does God help this mix?  I am a Christian and of course I believe "Yes", but the reality is that there are deeply committed marriages (some that put Christian marriages to shame) that are agnostic in nature.  Certainly the model God gives us in His relationship with the Church models the sort of love and commitment (And forgiveness.  Lots and lots of forgiveness.) that the marriage relationship needs.  And, from my point of view, without God involved I doubt I would have made it this far.

And, of course, a sense of learning what truly matters and what does not, what is worth standing one's ground on and what is not, what is simply the quirks of the person that we married that we chose not see at the time but were always there (I have many of these).

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The day itself will be pretty unremarkable. I have work as I always do these days; The Ravishing Mrs. TB  will take care of some things around the apartment.  In the late afternoon we will go out for a "fancy" dinner at a restaurant recommended by coworker.  All things being equal, we will probably be home by 1900.  

We have forgone the "expensive and expansive" gifts (Thankfully; apparently we are in the "gems" category of traditional gift giving, so this represents a real savings).  Likely we will find something we can do together to celebrate.

Which is fine, of course.  If anything, anniversaries are sign of quiet commitment that lasts, not the flashy commitment that does not.

A Year Of Haiku (XIX): Changing Seasons

 

Can it be that Spring

has finally driven Winter 

North for the season?

Or does the early

Sunrise give the illusion

that Spring has arrived?

2026 Japan: Meiji Jingu (II)

 Both the Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken wrote a great deal of poetry; some is displayed on the walk to the main shrine.

"Colorful flowers

may well beautifully adorn

the hair of a woman,

but the fragrance of sincerity

is the heart's real elegance"

-  Empress Shōken

"Should one desire

to follow a path of learning

even though busy, 

we can always find time to study

even in this world of ours."

- Emperor Meiji

The torii to the Main Shrine:

Instructions on ablutions (in case you are ever in the neighborhood):

A stage.  Presentations and religious ceremonies are performed here.  My school has done a demonstration on a similar stage at the Yasukuni Shrine.

The entrance to the Main Shrine:

2026 Japan: Meiji Jingu (I)

 The Meiji Jingu (明治神宮) is a shrine located in Shibuya, a district of Tokyo (the area as the famous Shibuya Crossing you may have seen in videos). The spirits of the Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shōken are enshrined here.

Emperor Meiji (birth name Mutsuhito, lived A.D. 1852-1912) was a pivotal figure in Japanese history.  At the start of his reign, the Shogunate system, which had effectively ruled Japan for 700 years and left the Emperors as figureheads, was abolished.  The old system of domains was abolished, the samurai removed as a social class, and a process of modernization started.  Depending on your perspective, he either saved Japan from being carved up by 19th Century Imperial powers and brought Japan into the modern world, or oversaw the abandonment (and destruction in some cases) of Japanese heritage and culture. Or maybe both.

The Shrine was started in 1915 and completed in 1926.  It was destroyed during World War II, but rebuilt in 1957.

The land for the shrine was originally a hunting ground for one of the daimyo (Great Lords) that dwelt in Tokyo.  It consists of 170 acres and includes 120,000 trees of 365 varieties.

As we saw at the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Jingu, sake makers send casks to for good fortune for the coming year.

Wine-makers from Burgundy, France also donated casks of wine for consecration.

On Blogging (And Its Demise Or Renaissance)

Patrice Lewis over at Rural Revolution wrote a rather thought provoking article last week entitled "The dying art of writing".  In the article, she reflects on the fact that with the rise of AI, the human art of writing is at a series of interesting points.  

The first point is simply that AI cannot always determine what is human generated and what is AI generated and thus may label human generated comment as AI.  The second point is that - from an article entitled "The Rise Of AI Writing, and The Decline Of the Human Voice" - that language is becoming both increasingly the same in writing (as AI standardizes a voice) and at the same time, less impactful:  "polished, formulaic speech", as the article states.  

The final point is that as AI continues to be brought into the common societal stream, it simply will become more common, if for convenience and cost if nothing else.  At the same time, Lewis laments the fact that as her (and my) generation passes, the coming generations will simply not have the ability to differentiate AI generated writing from human generated writing.

At the end of the article she notes "I don't know how long I will be able to cling to a career as a writer, but I will enjoy it while I can."

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It is a fair statement to say that writing is at a crossroads.

If you are someone that writes or keeps an online presence, likely you have noticed a decrease in the overall "real" traffic to the site - I say real because while I, for example, have tens of thousands of "views" a day (per Google), my individual posts are much, much less than that.  It is not just my imagine: content creators of all varieties have noted that with a change in search engines (Google the primary one), traffic is simply much less because is both much more selective and uses AI to create summaries:  no need to click through if the summary at the top tells you everything.

For folks that make a living from a site, that can be a hard thing:  the rise of SubStack, for example, is one method for creating written content that will somehow fund itself.  Even that is a bit of chancy business I suppose, dependent on the ability of the writer and the audience - although many content creators are directly marketing through social media rather than the traditional "Search Engine" route.

But there are tens of people including myself that keep a blog or site simply because we enjoy writing and indirectly enjoy interacting with people who read our writing.  They are written in the old, painful sense, keystroke by keystroke (if not starting in pen and then transferring to the keyboard).  

AI changes all that of course:  within seconds or minutes it can generate text or a story which may or may not be good - but as Lewis notes above, people may not care about the quality of it as a work of communication or human lived experience.  They care if it has the information or content or entertainment they want.

If blogs or sites create communities strung out like towns a day's travel apart in the Old West, the change in the InterWeb and AI are the equivalent of the railroad coming to town. Some are picked, by chance or choice, and continue on. Others are not chosen and, more often than not, may fade away.

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Where does this all lead?

Some weeks ago, I read an article (I cannot remember where it was) from a blog author who decided he was given up.  He may have been one who wrote and made something of a living at it (as I recall), but now the effort was simply not worth it to him.  He had considered a "pay as you go" experience like SubStack, but also decided that was not worth it.  He was punching out.

Generally speaking, that likely reflects a strong current of what will eventually happen.  It is hard to blame anyone really:  for myself, a blog post can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes to write and edit.  Over the course of a week, that can be up to seven hours (or more).  To pump those out regularly only to see your numbers continue to drift downward can be depressing.  Add to that I suspect the blog and website crowd is likely in the 40's or more, and the medium will likely decline more based on demographics as well.

On the one hand, that saddens me.  As I noted above, blogs (and sites) can become their own sort of community and the loss of every one means one more voice gone.

On the other hand, it is likely not as bad as I might think.

Even within our own modern world, there is a segment of the population that prefers things that are handcrafted or handmade above the commercially generated.  And in a sense, AI could eventually make itself irrelevant in the sense that if all AI sounds the same, it will become bland and boring.

That is where the artisanal blog comes in:  It is different.  It is personal.  It is unique in that every writer has their own unique voice.

Will there be money to be made?  Probably not, although a few hardy souls will figure out a way.  But it will be genuine and honest and real in a way that AI could never be.

Besides, the phrase "This post was hand crafted by a human artisanal writer" has a certain ring to it.

A Year Of Kindness (XIX): The Smallest Act Of Kindness

 

(Source)

We can have the greatest intensions in the world.  But the smallest act of kindness rendered is greater than all the intentions that are never kept.

On What Matters

 This past Wednesday night, I was confronted with two very different emotional states.

The first was one that was leftover from work, a continuation (effectively) of a battle that was going on before I left, the remnants of a conversation that stirred up a cloud of unresolved issues.  This has become more common for me of late, the ghosts of work that hang around my head as I climb the stairs and enter my refuge.

The thought would not let go as I continued to try to work through it, arguments and counterarguments (sometimes very unworthy of someone who calls himself a Christian) echoing through my brain.  I had ten counterarguments, was ready to directly charge the breastworks alone.

And then I read an e-mail.

It was an e-mail from a friend.  A significant medical procedure he had been waiting on for sometime was suddenly happening tomorrow.  Would, he asked, I be willing to pray for him?

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It is funny how our minds works (or perhaps, it is confined only to mine).

On the one hand, I can let things that truly matter not at all (if I thought logically about them) consume my mind long after the event has ended.  They follow me, like the spirits of the departed, throughout the rest of my day or evening, living (as the saying goes) "rent free" in my head.  I form arguments and counter arguments, giving rise to withering repartee and smug satisfactions of a victory earned.

In those moments, I forget the things that truly do matter.

As I often counsel the Younglings at work (at my job, almost everyone is younger than I), most of what we do at work does not matter in the long run.  Most of it will never see the market, will never make it to patients, will die the quiet death of the failed project in darkness, with only banker's boxes of documents or hard drives as reminders, to be slowly destroyed or deleted over the years.

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My friend texted me the day of his operation; all was well and the initial surgery had gone well.   The other part - the ghost battles built in my mind, the great arguments I was going to make - completely made irrelevant by discussions that happened during the day: the "Great Event" turned out to be nothing more than another ordinary meeting.

Thankfully I had something to remind me what mattered.  Would that I remembered this more.

On A Ballot

 This week I filled out my ballot.

When I arrived here in New Home 2.0, I did something I had never done in my life: I registered as "not declaring a party".  This was a conscious choice on my part; after a life time of belonging to one party or the other and being satisfied with neither, I thought I would take a break for partisan politics, at least for the primary elections.

Turns out that if you do not have a party affiliation, your ballot is pretty empty.

There were a slate of local judges with no opponents.  There were two or three local people (e.g., county commissioners or local bodies).  A single proposition.  

Even with reading the ballot, it took less than 30 minutes total.

The local positions were the most interesting to read.  Each had four to five folks running for each position, the current incumbent and the challengers.  The incumbents were easy to identify - not just because of the fact it listed their current position, but all of the organizations that were at the bottom of their statement in support of them.  It was nice to see a healthy challenger pool, even as I suspect that the incumbent will win again, because that is how it works.

(As a side note, the incumbent positions were a marvel of somehow listing everything that they had done along with the fact that there was still so much that was unsatisfactory, yet somehow they are not to blame.)

The proposition was, of course, a tax increase - a fuel tax in this case.  I have reached the point in my life where I vote these down every time.

Do I regret not "picking a side"?  Not really, to be honest.  It certainly simplified my primary season.  Arguably voting for my most local of officials is the most impactful thing I can do (my state and federal officials are likely far less determined by my vote).  

The anger, the rage, the "the other side is Satan incarnate" will come soon enough.  For now, finding my peace unruffled and my mailbox delightfully free of campaign ads is the sort of thing I would like to see more of.

A Year Of Haiku (XVIII): Racing Stripes

 

Falling rain petals

from Spring give the old snail

a decoration.