2025 Switzerland/Germany: German Countryside

Being as we were in the next town over, we did have to make about a 6 km/4 mile drive to the site.

It has been years since I have been to this part of the world.  I forgot how breathtakingly beautiful it is.

2025 Switzerland/Germany: Hotel And Meals

 Eventually, of course, the visit to Switzerland ended - and we were off to Germany.

(I find clouds from airplanes endlessly fascinating.  I have no idea why.)

Welcome to Germany!  We are now about 1.5 hours south of Munich in Bavaria.

The hotel that folks usually stay in when visiting this plant was full, so we got a very nice one in the next town down.

Welcome chocolate bar!

My one and only "good" dinner on the trip.

Schnitzel and fried potatoes, maybe some of the best I have had.

This was chocolate torte, I believe.

And breakfast.  German breakfast bars are the best - and yes, pretzels for breakfast!

July 2025 Grab Bag

 A the Cat continues his adjustment to New Home 3.0.  Here we see His Majesty benevolently surveying his domain and the live-in help.

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Our weather here has been a bit cooler overall, in the 70's to 80's F (21-26 C).  This is a little cooler than I remember it being last year.  Really, anything below 8% F is pretty tolerable as we get pretty good evening breezes here except when it is very hot.

I have to remind myself to treasure all this.  In a mere three months, it will be mostly gone.

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This past week The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I went to our local New Home 3.0 County fair.

In terms of size, it was probably about the same size as my hometown fair, which surprised me a bit.  The mix for these sorts of things seems to be universal - lots of folks selling things, rides, trailers selling food that likely will clog your arteries on sight, and the "actual" parts of the fair:  animals and 4-H, both of which were pretty well represented.

Judging by the 4-H displays, there may yet be hope.

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Some years ago (in college), I was given a stuffed penguin named Napoleon.  He was my adventure buddy for years and of course came into the marriage, where he ended up going on his own set of adventures (and getting his own photo album).  

After we first got Poppy the Brave, his leather beak became a casualty of a puppy teething session.  He went beak-less for years until, after my move to New Home 3.0, I found a fantastic seamstress who seems to be able to do almost anything, including replacing a penguin's beak:

I am super happy he is back for more adventures.

A Year Of Humility (XXIX): Respecting Tradition

 In yesterday's post concerning training in the art of Iaijutsu, FOTB (Friend Of This Blog) Leigh from Five Acres and a Dream made the following comment:

"What I find curious is that people wanting to make their mark in any field prize their personal adaptation, yet seem to end up just imitating others, usually with poorer quality.  I think it takes great strength of character to follow and respect an established art and its traditions."

If true of art - and it is - it is even more true of Christianity. 

Christianity, in its truest expression, is all about A Person - Jesus Christ - and about His work to reconcile us to God.  This is the core of the Christianity, and the New Testament is all about His life and His work.  As Christians, we have the template of His life, the life of His followers, and the reflection of this same sort of relationship in the Old Testament between God and the Jewish people.  Time and time again in both Old and New Testament the example is given of how we are supposed live and act, based on how God acts.

And yet, throughout history, humans have always insisted on putting their "stamp" on Christianity.

There is a fuzzy line (at least to me) between "culture" and Christianity at times, sometimes a line that (frankly) the Church has gotten wrong as both the underlying implicit concepts of Western Thought and Western economics have sometimes been interpreted as "Scripture" and much has been done to cultures that had little to do with Christianity: we forget to our detriment that the Apostles' initial requirements for the Gentiles was pretty straightforward.  But Christians have always had to interpret Scripture in the context of the situations that they have found themselves.

Some simply followed Scripture and influenced everything around them because of it.  Others made Scripture their interpretation and, while perhaps also having an influence on things around them, perhaps not to that of Christ.

But that is "out there".  What I always have to be concerned about is "in here", or myself.

It is easy enough to point to others and how they have put their own stamp on Christianity; what is more difficult (because I do not like the implications) is how I have done it.

An overgeneralization would be to say that very often, my stamp is reflective of an excuse for me to commit sin - usually starting with sentences like "Well, what I really think this means is..." or "It seems like that was something that was true then....".   The funny part is that just as humanity has been the same for all these years, so the base things that we stumble on has also been the same:  The technology or the circumstances or the culture might have changed, but not the underlying base concepts of sin.

How much more should I have started from the phrase "Scripture says..." and have gone from there.

Gone Training 2025 Vol. III

This past Sunday and for this weekend and the next, I have the good fortune to train in my dojo with our headmaster.

Over the past two years I have had a surfeit of training with our headmaster:  training in Japan, training in New Home 2.0, and training in New Home 3.0.  If I do the training in my head, that is almost two full weeks of training with a living national treasure this year, or a month over two years.

I am blessed beyond all measure.  

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What is like to train in a traditional art?

It is is repetition. A great deal of repetition. And a great many reminders of where one can improve (I leave every seminar with a rather long list of improvements).

One of the main points I was reminded of in 2024 was the fact that, as a traditional art, my job is not to "interpret" the art.  My job is to faithfully replicate the art - as someone noted, "Add nothing to it, subtract nothing from it".  Take is as a received item.

While that might seem like a simple thing, I find it more difficult than you might expect.  I cannot fully define why I find it so:  part of it, I suspect, is due to the fact that the level of concentration required to fully pay attention is something that I struggle with immensely.  Part of it may be that - like lots of Americans - I like to put my "stamp" on things, because "individuality" and "personal expression:.

One of the greatest changes in how one trains is the realization that it is very much not about you.  It is very much about the art.

In a way, this concept seems similar to me in the treatment of heirlooms such as swords in Japanese culture.  One does not "own" such items; one is merely a caretaker for them until they pass to the next generation.  This is one of the reasons that one finds, for example, swords of 400 years of age throughout the world:  the "collectors" understand they are merely caretakers, not owners, and while the sword may be bring them joy, ultimately it is about the sword, not them.  

In a same manner, the art is about the art, not me.

I will train hard, write down my corrections, and prepare for the next training (hopefully in Japan again).  And try, very hard, to remind myself that it is executing the thing as it is transmitted to me, not as I see fit to execute it.

The master is the die, we are the material.  We should so be like them that there is never any question what art we follow.

Essentialism (XXV): Execute: Buffer

 McKeown starts this section with the story of Joseph (Yes, that Old Testament Joseph) and the story of the seven heads of grain and seven cows.  If you are of a certain age, you will remember this story from its flannelgraph presentation:  the seven fat cows appearing and then getting eaten by the seven skinny cows, the seven full heads of grain being devoured by seven skinny heads of grain.  What did this mean?  A famine was coming; God was graciously giving warning of the fact.  The Egyptians, under Joseph's guidance, used the seven years of plenty to building up supplies for the seven years of famine.

They built a buffer of food - which, simply put, is something that prevents two things from coming into contact with one another.  States have been created as "buffers" to prevent other states from coming into direct contact.  In chemistry, a buffer solution can be used to help mitigate the direct contact between two elements of a solution.

Just as for Joseph, suggests McKeown, buffers play a key role in the life of an Essentialist. How?  By preparing, we can allow adequate time and space to accomplish everything that we need to.

How often have we estimated down to the minute the amount of time it takes us to get from point A to point B, only to find that the unexpected happens:  an accident, a ticket, a detour we had no idea was coming up.  How many times have we allocated X amount of time to accomplish Y task, only to find out that the task was more involved or complex than we thought and we spend far more time on it?

A lack of buffering can represent a sort of "Best Case" scenario thinking.  I have heard the called in my business career "Running The Perfect Race":  Assumptions are made that a year's worth of work can be executed flawlessly and that every manufacturing event will be completed, not acknowledging the fact that things happen and batches are lost. What this leads to is a series of reacting as we try to compensate for the event. Sometimes we can make it work:  the all-nighters to do the paper or report we committed to, the quick turn around to make another run, the remaking of six dozen batches of cookies for the party.  But all of that comes at a cost, most probably to ourselves at least and to others.

If these sorts of things happen - and they always do - how does the Essentialist build these buffers?

1)  Use extreme preparation: McKeown contrasts Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott in their race to reach the South Pole.  The short version is that Amundsen prepared heavily compared to Scott (4 thermometers to 1, 3 tons of food to ton, marking a supply depot with 20 markers miles apart instead of a single marker.  The ending?  Amundsen made the South Pole relatively painlessly; Scott and his team died.  

Preparing better - expecting issues, putting in slack times, acknowledging that you will not run the perfect race - makes success more achievable.

2)   Add 50% to your time estimate:  We are terrible at estimating the length a task will take. How many times have we suffered from transit issues as above?  How many times have estimated time on a task that was inaccurate.

Daniel Kahneman, in 1979, coined the phrase "planning fallacy" in 1979.  It refers to the fact that people tend to underestimate the amount of time a task will take, even though they have done the task before. In one study, only 30% of respondents in a study completed the task in the time they had estimated.

The solution?  Add a buffer.  McKeown suggests add a 50% time buffer:  "Not only does this relieve the stress we feel about being late (imagine how much less stressful sitting in traffic would feel if we weren't running late), but if we do find that the task was faster and easier to execute than we expected (though this is a rare experience for most of us), the extra found time feels like a bonus."

3)  Conduct scenario planning:  Or in the fancy words of business, create a risk management strategy to prepare against the risks of any task.  McKeown suggests 5 questions, based on the work of Erwann Michel-Kerjan:

1)  What risks to you face on this project?
2)  What is the worst-case scenario?
3) What would the social effects of this be?
4)  What would the financial impact of this be?
5)  How can you invest to reduce risks or strengthen financial or social resilience?

Essentialists, says McKeown, accept the reality that nothing can ever be fully anticipated in life.  What can be done to mitigate this is to build in buffers to manage the unexpected.

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Application:

Reading this sections comes across very much as a business sort of exercise. And in one sense that is very true:  risk management and buffering against the unknown is a trait of every successful business.  And yet, how little I apply this in my own life.

Part of this I instinctively use, brought on by my high school band teacher:  If you are early, you are on time;  If you are on time, you are late.  As a results, I tend to try to leave enough time to transport myself somewhere to arrive early.  This is easy in travel terms; I do not apply this regularly enough to all other parts of my life.

A buffer (50% is a luxury) is something I also do almost haphazardly, although I am better about arguing for time at my job.  Along with a buffer, another area of success can be simply spacing out tasks - for example, writing a post with time enough for a leisurely writing and editing instead of cramming it in on the day before (not that this has ever happened here...).

Conduct scenario planning?  I do this financially - but almost nowhere else in my life.  And yet through my job, I see the benefits of this exercise every day.

I am doing some of these things.  I could do much more of them.

The Collapse CXCVII: The First Advent Candle

30 November 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Pompeia Paulina announced to me today that it was the first day of Advent and we would be lighting an Advent Wreath.

Unaware as I was of the advent (no pun intended) of Thanksgiving, I was even less so of the Advent season. I suspect most of that is a combination of things: Christmases for years on my own combined with a loss of the traditions that once upon a time marked this time and a series of churches for which the traditional season of Advent was more of a mention than an actual practice.

That, apparently, has changed this year.

Pompeia Paulina had brought out some candles and had a wreath (a back-up wreath, she assured me; the “good” one was with Young Xerxes and Stateira for their first Christmas) and set it up on our table. The candles – three purple, one pink and one white in the center – sat amid a psuedo-greenery that was clearly not from around here at all.

She had me light one of the purple candles -a taper somewhat burned, clearly used from its charred wick and the runnels of wax down its side. The candle looked strangely cheery in its fake pine branches, as candles often seem to do in the semi-dark of cloud cover days and early evenings.

I looked at her. I admitted that I remembered nothing about this other than the candle lighting.

She smiled back at me. This is the first candle of Advent, she said, the candle of Hope. It is meant to remind us of the Old Testament prophets, who preached the coming of the Messiah through the vicissitudes of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah and the Captivity and Return – and who, through all of it, had the hope of God’s promise.

I admit I teared up.

Hope. How long it seems that we – really, I – have been without such a thing.

It has been said, Lucilius, that Hope is something that we can manufacture if needed. And it has certainly been needed for a while now.

It can take many forms with others, be it continually saying things will get better or providing plans and ideas for how to exist through one season to get to another. Without hope, people eventually give up and die – because living when one day is like another and only leading to worse days will crush the human spirit in irrevocable ways.

But while I can generate Hope for others, I struggle to generate it for myself.

Yes yes, I understand the religious aspect of it and that – at least from a Christian point of view – we hope in something beyond ourselves. But that sense of Hope of salvation can seem bleak in world where the walls feel as if they are closing in and every initiative seems to peter out before it gets started.

Which is why, I suppose, we need others around us to help us find that Hope as well.

We stood there, hand in hand, watching the candle burn, a true orange-yellow flame that went straight up in the cloudy light of Winter’s sky. We read Matthew 4:16: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death, Light had dawned”.

And then we blew the candle out – after all, we have to light this at least four more times this year and one should be practical, now above all times.

And perhaps, Lucilius, that is the very nature of Hope itself: to blow something out, believing that you will need it again.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2025 Switzerland/Germany: Crossing The Rhine

 The Old City of Basel is on the Southern side of the Rhine.  There are several bridges that cross it, as we have seen previous pictures.

A Bridge has stood in this location on since A.D. 1206. Known as the Mittlere Brücke (Middle Bridge), was replaced in A.D. 1905 to allow the weight of trams.

A copy of the original shrine of Käppelijoch, where criminals were condemned to death:

Pretzel on the other side of the bridge.  It was delicious.

Ricola cough drops in Switzerland.  If you are old enough, you know.

A Vespa store.  This was the most European thing ever to me.

2025 Swizterland/Germany: The Spalentor Gate

 Like many Ancient and Medieval cities, Basel at one time was surrounded by a city wall - or rather a series of city walls.  There were a total of three walls built, one started in A.D. 1080, one starred in A.D. 1230, and one started in A.D. 1362 and finished in A.D. 1398.  The latter two were built to accommodate the growing city.

In A.D. 1859, the city fathers made the decision to pull down most of the walls.  Three gates and a short section of wall were kept; one of these was the Spalentor Gate.

Included as part of the Last and outer wall build, it stood from A.D. 1392 to the present.

The Voice Of Reason

 

One of the standing rules that I have told my friends and employees for almost as long as I can remember is that if I am not actively laughing, making jokes, and being generally jovial, the situation is actually rather bad.

My approach to life pretty much falls into the buckets of:

1)  Make everyone's day better.

2)  Ten years from now, 90% of this will not matter.

Life is stressful enough as it is, let alone in the modern work world where the principal of "More with Less" has been raised to a fine art form.  To the extent that by joke or song or the mockery of myself (which is now become second nature to me) I can somehow encourage or lighten the load of others, I will do it.

The second part - that ten years from now 90% of this will not matter - is driven by years of working with products and documents which eventually go into banker's boxes to sit at storage facilities until they can be destroyed, unremembered and unknown except by those that worked on them (now, the banker's boxes are replaced by electronic pixels, which get deleted per the company's retention policy).  How many nights and days were spent on these items, how much worry and energy were spent on "these things that are super important" - that were not, in retrospect, really important.

I will say that one outcome of this sort of view of life is that allows one to maintain a fairly happy outlook during the day.  Yes, it can get bogged down with the occasional incident or emergency, but generally it makes the days more pleasant.

The counter item, of course, is that I perceive myself to not be seen as a very "serious" person.

Which is fine, especially now.  I have almost zero need or want to ascend the ladder of corporate world at this point, and given my choice, I would rather be happy than corporate.

This all works, except for those moments when suddenly someone turns to you and asks for your actual opinion or for you to make the critical decision.  If that is where we are then indeed, we are in a very bad place.

A Year Of Humility (XXVIII): Humble Pie

 Ingredients:

2 Cups Pride

1 Cup  Ego

3/4 Cup Arrogance (If Arrogance is in short supply, Rage can be substituted)

1/2 Cup Inability To Self Reflect

9-11 ounces Water

1/4 teaspoon Vanilla extract

After completing the baking of Crust of Obliviousness (see pp. 43-44), mix the dry ingredients until they are comingled and not clumping.  If there appears to be not enough Inability To Self Reflect (this can be a seasonal thing), be sure to up the amount of Ego.  After the Pride, Ego, Arrogance, and Inability to Self Reflect are a uniform mixture, add the water and Vanilla extract (Note that some people enjoy alternate flavourings to go with their Humble Pie, but Vanilla is the tradition additive). 

Pour into the crust and bake at 400 F for 30 minutes or until the mixture has achieved a warm golden brown colour.  A knife stuck into the filling should be come out clean.  Remove the pie and allow it cool.

The pie is now ready for serving as a Life lesson.   After serving, refrigerate.  Quite likely it will be served for seconds in short order.

Retracing The Same Trail

One of the remarkable things that I am constantly reminded of is how much the modern always requires novelty rather than wisdom.

It is an interesting conundrum, this sense that "modern" means "progress" and "progress" means "novel".  Perhaps it has always been so:  there runs in almost all Classical literature a tension between the looking back (to an ideal age that really never existed) and a looking forward to the modern world.  In some ways it can simply be how ancient ideas will be applied or how methods can be improved.  

Societies have done this sort of thing as well - sometimes in a relatively non-destructive manner (The Meiji Restoration) and sometimes in violent form (see any Communist revolution of the 20th Century).  The past is stripped out and replaced by the new, the modern.

The novel.

And then, suddenly, the modern realizes that the modern falls desperately short.

Take the above quote of Paisos of Athos. Paisos lived in the 20th Century and those concepts of simplicity are based on at least 2000 years of Christian history - or, one could argue, reaching back even further to the Stoic philosophers.  And yet, a great many people would rather ignore the advice of a man based on the belief that as a Christian (and an Orthodox monk at that), he has little to say to the "modern" world.  After all, he does not have any idea of the stresses and strains that modern life imposes.

This is almost inevitably followed up by a blossoming on the Social Internet and even in society of the concept at hand. Books are written, videos are produced, small animations dot Instapic and The Book of Face with the idea that a natural and simple life reduces anxiety and having things increases anxiety.  Groups are created, "Get Rid of Stuff January" becomes trendy, thrifting is now in (again).

And somehow this is all considered novel. As if previous generations had not recognized such things.

It does make me wonder:  What would things be like if instead of spending time reinventing and re-reinventing ideas and concepts, we simply took them at face value, practiced them, and turned our attention elsewhere?  What might we have accomplished in so many fields instead of walking the same meadows again and again which are crisscrossed with trails of those that went before, somehow convincing ourselves that we have a new a different trail this time?

It is not that we have a different trail.  It is just that we are so consumed with modernity and progress and novelty on the horizon that we cannot look down and realize that humanity has covered all of this a great many times before.

Essentialism (XXIV): Execute: How Do We Make Doing The Vital Few Almost Effortless?

 McKeown is, if nothing else, methodical.  As he has walked us through Essentialism, he has taken us through:

- What Essentialism is (Essence)

- How we find our Essentials (Explore)

- How we make room for our Essentials (Eliminate)

Having done all of this, there remains one element:  How do we ensure that we work on our Essentials every day?

McKeown goes back to his example of the overly full closet:  Even after we have organized the closet and have done the initial sorting, closets are not static items.  If we do not make an effort to maintain the organization by providing a methodology of things like regular sorting and donations and watching what we purchase, we will end up with the same issue:

"In other words, once you've figured out which activities and efforts to keep in your life, you have to have a system for executing them.  You can't wait until that closet it bursting at the seams and then takes superhuman efforts to purge it.  You need to have a system in place so that keeping it neat becomes routine and effortless."

Non-essentialists force execution, writes McKeown.  Essentialists take the time they have saved by Eliminating the nonessentials and then invest it into designing a system to make execution a sustaining activity with minimal input from them.

We like to do easy things as humans.  Execute is simply how Essentialists make things easy for themselves to do the Essential things.

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The actual test of any system is not just "Does it work?", but "Does it work over time?"

You can see this in the success of Six Sigma/Lean projects.  At one time I used to know the precise number, but well over half of those projects fail after 3-5 years.  Why?  Because the amount of time and effort to maintain them is too much for standard operations.  The project champion moves on and no-one else sees the value in continuing the work.  It just becomes "one more thing to do".

McKeown's closet metaphor works for me, if for no other reason than - having recently moved and had reorganize things - I see the practice of it daily.  Even if I organized things in the house, things seem to keep showing up.  If I do not keep on top of it, the apartment will begin to look like a hoarder's lair in short order.

It is not just enough to organize.  Sustaining is where one realizes long term success.

The Collapse CXCVI: Black Friday

 28 November 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Once upon a time the day after Thanksgiving was known by the sobriquet “Black Friday”, that wild day of shopping madness that was intended to brings retailers from losses (“The Red”) to profit (“The Black”). In the space of my lifetime I saw it emerge from nothing to a virtual mosh pit of consumerism to a more restrained of leisurely shopping event, on par with going to the movies or other forms of entertainment.

The high water mark, as I recall, was sometimes in the mid-aughts, when things reached such a fever pitch point that people were camping out to get the deal of a lifetime. And who can forget the vigorous shoving matches that passed for shopping as individuals jabbed and thrust for the 50% off latest electronic thing or the latest rage in children’s toys.

I would almost wish for the problem of locating a “Tickle Me Elmo” again.

Today’s version of “Black Friday” found me out (at least there was no snow, although it was a clear day) scrounging.

Any day that is not completely wet and snowy here is a good day for it (the wet and snowy ones are less good for them, but it happens on those days as well). I have suggested – and was generally supported – in the idea that we should start working to mine out the resource that we have in town at this point.

Mind you, not that there are a great many to mine out here. The three or four remaining businesses have long been either stripped (our combination gas station/minimarket) or gone (The RV Park and Bar), and unless one needs store fittings, there is not much to be had there. Which leaves homes of course, homes of those who have not been here in almost two years and perhaps are never destined to return. I estimate that within two weeks we will have gotten all there is to have of any value.

This has troubled me greatly, Lucilius. No matter the circumstances (they are indeed grim), I cannot help feeling like I am engaging in some sort of thievery in doing this: these are not our houses, these are not our things. And yet they hold the potential for things that may help some of us get through the Winter into Spring.

At the back of my mind – an even less pleasant thought – is that if we do not get them, those in town that we do not see eye to eye with will get to them first.

The bargain I have had to strike with my conscience is to be as non-destructive as we can be and leave a note. The note does not matter of course I suppose; perhaps if there is ever a “return to civilization” there will be a force majeure put into place and past thievery forgiven.

I write the letters. I sign the letters. I send them off with Young Xerxes and he or one of his compatriots supervising the efforts leaves the letters.

I write “supervises” advisedly. I will not stand for reckless looting and have said as much. And to date, that I know of, nothing of the sort has happened, at least from our end of the table.

I know – likely you consider this sort of thing a bit of farce, a man of another era’s attempt to justify actions in his mind. To be fair, both Stateira and Young Xerxes looked oddly at me when I made the request. Pompeia Paulina, to my knowledge, has reserved all judgment – although she has been kind in selecting the stationary for me to use.

Perhaps there will come a day, even here, where such social niceties perish completely and we are nothing more than savages tearing at one another. That may happen – but with any luck, not during my time.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2025 Switzerland/Germany: Basel Minster (VI), The Rhine

View of the Rhine River from the location of the Prince-Bishop's residence.  Perhaps not surprisingly, they had a fine view.

2025 Swizterland/Germany: Basel Minster (V), The Prince-Bishop's Palace

One of the fascinating pieces of history from Medieval Europe, at least to me, were the Prince-Bishoprics.  These were territorial areas in which the local Bishop (Catholic, given medieval Europe) was not only the ecclesiastical leader of a principality, but the political leader as well. Found within what was then the Holy Roman Empire, at one time there were 40 of these principalities.  All had voting rights in the Imperial Diet.  By A.D. 1810 all had been dissolved.

Basel was included in the Prince-Bishopric of Basel from A.D. 999 to A.D. 1528. 

Beyond the residence above (which was not accessible)  a lovely courtyard and a great many tombs are open to the public