So we are back from our trip to home. I have a couple of posts to make on where we went and some general thoughts that have come to mind, but those are for later. The bullet points of things that occurred:
- I forgot how much I miss dry heat (instead of the murky humid goo we call Summer where we now live).
- Agriculture is still alive and well and growing, which makes me happy (means that the land is more valuable for growing things than it is for building houses on).
- That said, they are still building a great deal of housing. Which strikes me as funny, because they are also complaining a great deal about water usage (Important safety tip: You cannot more people that use water and then complain about the use of water at the same time).
- I realized that my current life is completely and totally lacking in scenic beauty. You do not realize it until you make the same urban drive with no trees beyond 6' tall for two years.
- Likewise, silence - true silence with only birdsong and the occasional cowbell - is a wonderful thing. And I do not have enough of that either.
- My incentive to feel like I was plugged into work over time decreased. Really, it is not that important.
- On the whole, I miss home.
Monday, July 09, 2018
Sunday, July 08, 2018
Rest
"Even as the sun was bestowed upon the world by God to give light
it still ought to turn aside fairly frequently,
to have a time for peace and quiet...
it ought to know how to set
and be at rest in the evening,
where it enters the embrace of leisure."
- John of Forde (1150-1214) (The Way of Simplicity, Esther De Waal)
it still ought to turn aside fairly frequently,
to have a time for peace and quiet...
it ought to know how to set
and be at rest in the evening,
where it enters the embrace of leisure."
- John of Forde (1150-1214) (The Way of Simplicity, Esther De Waal)
Saturday, July 07, 2018
A Few Words From...Ayn Rand
"Whatever claim you have on me," he (Hank Reardon) said, "no human being can hold on another a claim demanding that he wipe himself out of existence."- Atlas Shrugged
Friday, July 06, 2018
Thursday, July 05, 2018
Automation And Centralization
I sometimes wonder, in my never-ending mental quest to predict the end of all things, what the signal event would be.
It strikes me as odd that the same society that is constantly looking for tremors of environmental catastrophes in s the changing genetics frogs and the movement of ice sheets would not see the same sort of issues occurring in the international environment around them. Even now, we have smaller countries what have failed through dictatorships or broken economies or civil wars, the flow of peoples from one place to another. If animals fled a forest fire it would be declared a disaster; when individuals flee failed states it seems to be ignored amongst polite company.
It also strikes me as odd that the twin forces of centralization and automation remain largely ignored. For example, people largely laugh and mock at the ungainly and unlovely development of solar powered machines that scan fields and pick weeds or make and flip burgers - but what they mis is that at the beginnings of the automotive age the same thing was true of the early horseless carriages. The ridiculous eventually becomes the functional and the functional the necessary. And suddenly the labor we could never do without - the single greatest cost of any organization - is transformed into a single up front cost and many less people to support it.
And centralization - in an age of global competition and interconnectedness, the move to centralization - access to the markets, resources, and scales of economies of other companies - puts more and more companies into a life and death struggle. Any way to keep and retain profits is eventually investigated - be it swallowing up other companies or figuring out ways to automate what is done to reduce labor.
The ultimate impact to all of this is on jobs, of course. and the bifurcation of jobs. For some - the highly technical or highly mechanical - they will continue to do well. For those that perform manual labor, they will increasingly find themselves relegated to the same roles of craftsman in the Industrial Revolution, adrift where their labor is no longer desired or needed except occasionally in a general sense.
My simple question - the one that I wonder if we are actually addressing - is if we see these trends and are acting on them or are turning away in hopes of some utopia which will never actually come to pass?
It strikes me as odd that the same society that is constantly looking for tremors of environmental catastrophes in s the changing genetics frogs and the movement of ice sheets would not see the same sort of issues occurring in the international environment around them. Even now, we have smaller countries what have failed through dictatorships or broken economies or civil wars, the flow of peoples from one place to another. If animals fled a forest fire it would be declared a disaster; when individuals flee failed states it seems to be ignored amongst polite company.
It also strikes me as odd that the twin forces of centralization and automation remain largely ignored. For example, people largely laugh and mock at the ungainly and unlovely development of solar powered machines that scan fields and pick weeds or make and flip burgers - but what they mis is that at the beginnings of the automotive age the same thing was true of the early horseless carriages. The ridiculous eventually becomes the functional and the functional the necessary. And suddenly the labor we could never do without - the single greatest cost of any organization - is transformed into a single up front cost and many less people to support it.
And centralization - in an age of global competition and interconnectedness, the move to centralization - access to the markets, resources, and scales of economies of other companies - puts more and more companies into a life and death struggle. Any way to keep and retain profits is eventually investigated - be it swallowing up other companies or figuring out ways to automate what is done to reduce labor.
The ultimate impact to all of this is on jobs, of course. and the bifurcation of jobs. For some - the highly technical or highly mechanical - they will continue to do well. For those that perform manual labor, they will increasingly find themselves relegated to the same roles of craftsman in the Industrial Revolution, adrift where their labor is no longer desired or needed except occasionally in a general sense.
My simple question - the one that I wonder if we are actually addressing - is if we see these trends and are acting on them or are turning away in hopes of some utopia which will never actually come to pass?
Wednesday, July 04, 2018
Happy Fourth of July 2018
I post this every year on this day. Every year, it seems more and more vivid and alive and current.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
Tuesday, July 03, 2018
Trying A Different Style Of Writing
Over the last few weeks I have been experimenting with a different sort of writing process: instead of writing things every day, I have been writing them for a full week at one sitting.
The past few months have been rather busy, with work becoming more and more of a time consuming machine (followed by the catch up at home). What I found is that the quality of my output was not really rising to my satisfaction and I was stressing out about creating the next day's article. Writing had become not fun any more. And when something is not fun, it needs to be reviewed and either changed or discarded.
Now, I write on Sunday afternoons for the whole week. I have started to put things into buckets as well: A Few Words on Saturdays, God Thoughts on Sunday, etc. I found that this format relieves my stress of "what will I write about?" as well as giving me the ability to look out into the world and have a little fun.
Thanks for your patience. Hopefully this will result in me producing a better product and enjoying the process of creating as I used to.
The past few months have been rather busy, with work becoming more and more of a time consuming machine (followed by the catch up at home). What I found is that the quality of my output was not really rising to my satisfaction and I was stressing out about creating the next day's article. Writing had become not fun any more. And when something is not fun, it needs to be reviewed and either changed or discarded.
Now, I write on Sunday afternoons for the whole week. I have started to put things into buckets as well: A Few Words on Saturdays, God Thoughts on Sunday, etc. I found that this format relieves my stress of "what will I write about?" as well as giving me the ability to look out into the world and have a little fun.
Thanks for your patience. Hopefully this will result in me producing a better product and enjoying the process of creating as I used to.
Monday, July 02, 2018
An Unexpected Turn of Conversation
During a recent conversation about a current event, I was brought into close quarters with the threat of ending a relationship - something that has not happened to me in a very long time. It occurred at a discussion of general nature, but somehow turned to a specific event in the current media. The phrase "This answer is really important to our relationship" was used.
My mind froze. I had no answer ready at hand.
I have read of these circumstances occurring and more lately in certain circles, the ending of friendship and relationships over a particular political or religious belief. And I suppose that in all fairness these things have materialized in my own life as well, albeit as a simple drifting apart to maintain the peace. I can honestly say this was the first time in a very long time that it has occurred.
Ultimately, of course, this sort of conversation goes nowhere. Very few people are willing to immediately and right there end a relationship in the midst of a discussion, perhaps a heated one to boot. What will happen - at least what happened to me - was an instinctive and immediate curling of the soul into a ball that in some ways I do not know if I will ever come out of.
Finding another person's boundaries at the wrong moment is always a terrifying thing. In one second the genteel facades we all maintain to stay in communication falls away and we are forced to recognize that there is a limit which we will never be able to go beyond - perhaps more importantly, will never be willing to even test again. The world of that relationship shrinks a bit and from then on, only the safe and non-controversial topics are discussed - until often they, too, fall by the wayside in the general loss of communication.
This has happened once before with someone else, from an angle and a place I did not expect. And sadly - tragically perhaps - nothing was ever the same. In the rush and passion to prove a point, the long term goal of relationship - authentic trust and sharing - is shattered, perhaps never to return fully.
My mind froze. I had no answer ready at hand.
I have read of these circumstances occurring and more lately in certain circles, the ending of friendship and relationships over a particular political or religious belief. And I suppose that in all fairness these things have materialized in my own life as well, albeit as a simple drifting apart to maintain the peace. I can honestly say this was the first time in a very long time that it has occurred.
Ultimately, of course, this sort of conversation goes nowhere. Very few people are willing to immediately and right there end a relationship in the midst of a discussion, perhaps a heated one to boot. What will happen - at least what happened to me - was an instinctive and immediate curling of the soul into a ball that in some ways I do not know if I will ever come out of.
Finding another person's boundaries at the wrong moment is always a terrifying thing. In one second the genteel facades we all maintain to stay in communication falls away and we are forced to recognize that there is a limit which we will never be able to go beyond - perhaps more importantly, will never be willing to even test again. The world of that relationship shrinks a bit and from then on, only the safe and non-controversial topics are discussed - until often they, too, fall by the wayside in the general loss of communication.
This has happened once before with someone else, from an angle and a place I did not expect. And sadly - tragically perhaps - nothing was ever the same. In the rush and passion to prove a point, the long term goal of relationship - authentic trust and sharing - is shattered, perhaps never to return fully.
Sunday, July 01, 2018
Turning From Sadness
"Therefore my advice to you, friends,
is to turn aside from troubled and anxious reflection
on your own progress,
and escape to the easier paths of remembering the
good things God has done.
In this way, instead of becoming upset by thinking
about yourself,
you will find relief by turning your attention to
God....
Sorrow for sin is indeed a necessary thing,
but it should not prevail all the time.
On the contrary, it is necessary that happier
reflections of God's generosity
should counterbalance it,
lest the heart should become hardened through too
much sadness and so perish through despair."
- Bernard of Clairvaux (The Way of Simplicity, Esther De Waal)
Saturday, June 30, 2018
A Few Words From...Robert E. Howard
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind...Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."
- "Beyond the Black River""
- "Beyond the Black River""
Friday, June 29, 2018
Not All That Wander...
Today's post is brought to you by Glen Filthie. Thanks Glen. This perfectly describes me:
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Going Home
As you read this in the morning, I am on a flight headed to The Ranch.
It is just the youngest Nighean Dhonn and myself for a week visiting my parents and in-laws and some old friends. No particular need prompted this, other than the need to simply get back home.
In a way it is the worst time to go: we have so much going on at work and sometime in, say, September would be better. But I am old enough and wise enough to know that truly, the "right time" never really comes.
So we are off to go places and do things and see people, and hopefully to get me a little more grounded again.
It is just the youngest Nighean Dhonn and myself for a week visiting my parents and in-laws and some old friends. No particular need prompted this, other than the need to simply get back home.
In a way it is the worst time to go: we have so much going on at work and sometime in, say, September would be better. But I am old enough and wise enough to know that truly, the "right time" never really comes.
So we are off to go places and do things and see people, and hopefully to get me a little more grounded again.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
The Debris of Relationships
Sometimes looking at the debris of human relationships in my life, I wonder.
I have now lost contact with more people that I will ever meet in the rest of my life. Exclude the phenomena of social media and the odds get so much worse.
Though social media right now, I am in semi-regular contact with 3 people from my pre-high school days, 3 people from high school, 0 people from college and post graduate school, < 10 people for my entire career from 1996 to 2009. My single biggest contact groups remain my activities. Peel away social media, and that number drops significantly to those I see on a regular basis because of another activity.
I assume like everyone - but perhaps more than most - I have created this situation as well as been a victim of it. I have not been as thoughtful as I should be, often replacing it with a range of questionable personal traits. And in a world where the default mode is to be "in touch", the fact that so many have moved on suggests the very real situation that it was for a reason.
Relationships are very funny things. The combination of human beings into any sort of working relationship at all is kind of amazing, given how individualistic and different we are. The fact that any such relationships can move into a relationship where people are willing to subsume their idiosyncrasies for the sake of the relationship is even more amazing.
SO perhaps the fact that the dissolve rather frequently should not be a surprise.
To go through the debris from time to time is to stir up the dust of memory. In the hazy sunlight the friendship motes tinkle and sparkle: here a joke, there the time you needed a hug because the unthinkable happened, way up in the top left hand corner is the road trip where lightning lit up the entire sky at the dead of night.
And then the dust re-settles.
So much of my day now is consumed in working solitude, the associations of work that I have come to understand are often the tools of convenience by which we make a living - when I leave and go on, it will largely be as if the relationships never were. And it is in those moments that I find that the debris of human relationships becomes a poignant reminder of a life that never quite went the way that I had expected.
I have now lost contact with more people that I will ever meet in the rest of my life. Exclude the phenomena of social media and the odds get so much worse.
Though social media right now, I am in semi-regular contact with 3 people from my pre-high school days, 3 people from high school, 0 people from college and post graduate school, < 10 people for my entire career from 1996 to 2009. My single biggest contact groups remain my activities. Peel away social media, and that number drops significantly to those I see on a regular basis because of another activity.
I assume like everyone - but perhaps more than most - I have created this situation as well as been a victim of it. I have not been as thoughtful as I should be, often replacing it with a range of questionable personal traits. And in a world where the default mode is to be "in touch", the fact that so many have moved on suggests the very real situation that it was for a reason.
Relationships are very funny things. The combination of human beings into any sort of working relationship at all is kind of amazing, given how individualistic and different we are. The fact that any such relationships can move into a relationship where people are willing to subsume their idiosyncrasies for the sake of the relationship is even more amazing.
SO perhaps the fact that the dissolve rather frequently should not be a surprise.
To go through the debris from time to time is to stir up the dust of memory. In the hazy sunlight the friendship motes tinkle and sparkle: here a joke, there the time you needed a hug because the unthinkable happened, way up in the top left hand corner is the road trip where lightning lit up the entire sky at the dead of night.
And then the dust re-settles.
So much of my day now is consumed in working solitude, the associations of work that I have come to understand are often the tools of convenience by which we make a living - when I leave and go on, it will largely be as if the relationships never were. And it is in those moments that I find that the debris of human relationships becomes a poignant reminder of a life that never quite went the way that I had expected.
Monday, June 25, 2018
A Changed Battery
Last Monday, the completely expected/unexpected event happened: my car battery died.
I did not suspect it at first - I thought I had somehow managed to kill the car remote again. It was only when I got in the car and tried to turn it over and was met with dead silence that I thought perhaps something else was up. No lights, no, "click click" of a dying battery, nothing.
Well, shoot.
I got out, popped open the hood, got into the battery case and then went for the jumper cables (Public Service Announcement: opening a trunk with a keyless entry when the battery is dead = circus act). I hooked the cables up to the van, turned the van on, and then tried again. Nothing. I readjusted the cables on my battery once, twice, thrice. Not a peep.
Great. I need a new battery.
Grabbed the socket set. Four nuts and some pushing around in the engine compartment (Mazda engine compartments are none too roomy to work in) I had the battery out. A trip to my local Big Box store and battery in hand, I returned and reassembled the battery and car. Total time. About an hour. I even had time on my way to work to reset all of my radio stations.
The point of this story is not particularly that I could do it - it is the moment that I realized I knew how to do it.
I am lucky. I great up in a time where such things were possible and expected and had a father and father-in-law skilled enough to teach me these things. I often take that for granted - except I fear that I currently know any number of people to whom this would seem a mystical act or all day event.
I could be acting overdramatically as I often do, but it occurs to me that we are losing certain kinds of knowledge at a quickly increasing rate - not the sort of knowledge of science and technology (which is always growing) but the knowledge of how to do basic mechanical and general living tasks like cooking, caring for, making by hand, or fixing.
We are currently exchanging our ability to function independently for a cornucopia of knowledge that comes attached to a dependence on technology that we can neither understand nor control nor (for most of us) recreate. It worries me a bit what happens if and when that technology fails.
I did not suspect it at first - I thought I had somehow managed to kill the car remote again. It was only when I got in the car and tried to turn it over and was met with dead silence that I thought perhaps something else was up. No lights, no, "click click" of a dying battery, nothing.
Well, shoot.
I got out, popped open the hood, got into the battery case and then went for the jumper cables (Public Service Announcement: opening a trunk with a keyless entry when the battery is dead = circus act). I hooked the cables up to the van, turned the van on, and then tried again. Nothing. I readjusted the cables on my battery once, twice, thrice. Not a peep.
Great. I need a new battery.
Grabbed the socket set. Four nuts and some pushing around in the engine compartment (Mazda engine compartments are none too roomy to work in) I had the battery out. A trip to my local Big Box store and battery in hand, I returned and reassembled the battery and car. Total time. About an hour. I even had time on my way to work to reset all of my radio stations.
The point of this story is not particularly that I could do it - it is the moment that I realized I knew how to do it.
I am lucky. I great up in a time where such things were possible and expected and had a father and father-in-law skilled enough to teach me these things. I often take that for granted - except I fear that I currently know any number of people to whom this would seem a mystical act or all day event.
I could be acting overdramatically as I often do, but it occurs to me that we are losing certain kinds of knowledge at a quickly increasing rate - not the sort of knowledge of science and technology (which is always growing) but the knowledge of how to do basic mechanical and general living tasks like cooking, caring for, making by hand, or fixing.
We are currently exchanging our ability to function independently for a cornucopia of knowledge that comes attached to a dependence on technology that we can neither understand nor control nor (for most of us) recreate. It worries me a bit what happens if and when that technology fails.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Get Moving!
"We all have those times when there are no flashes of light and no apparent thrill to life, where we experience nothing but the daily routine with its common everyday tasks. The routine of life is actually God's way of saving us between our times of great inspiration which comes from Him. Don't always expect God to give you His thrilling moments, but learn to live in those common times of the drudgery of life by the power of God.
It is difficult to do the "adding" that Peter mentioned here (in 2 Peter 1:5). We say we do not expect God to take us to heaven on flower beds of ease and yet we act as if we do! I must realize that my obedience even in the smallest detail of life has ll of the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. If I will do my duty, not for the duty's sake but because I believe God is engineering my circumstances, then at the very point of my obedience all of the magnificent grace of God is mine through the glorious atonement by the Cross of Christ." - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest
It is difficult to do the "adding" that Peter mentioned here (in 2 Peter 1:5). We say we do not expect God to take us to heaven on flower beds of ease and yet we act as if we do! I must realize that my obedience even in the smallest detail of life has ll of the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. If I will do my duty, not for the duty's sake but because I believe God is engineering my circumstances, then at the very point of my obedience all of the magnificent grace of God is mine through the glorious atonement by the Cross of Christ." - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest
Saturday, June 23, 2018
Friday, June 22, 2018
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Things And Things Of Value
This past weekend, on a whim, I went through my Amazon list to see what was on it and total things up. The sum total of thing I have identified is somewhere around $550. Which sounds like a lot, of course - until I considered over time the change in my income. Which made me look at the larger list of things I want in general and figure out that for a not incredible sum of money, I could have all of them.
It is odd, really - I can remember a time where my material desires seemed to stretch as far as the horizon. I wanted this, I wanted that - to explore, to try, to test, to enjoy. But over time, the list becomes less and less, the things either less in amount but greater in value or simply not there at all.
The things I have come to value - solitude, freedom from having to do that which I do not enjoy, perhaps seeing places I have never been - are all thing which are really immaterial in manner and for which there is not really any "thing" to acquire. But in point of fact they are coming to mean more and more to me. And the money that was or could be spent on those things now represent the very sort of things that will allow me to acquire more of these new things of value.
A man can have enough books, enough swords, enough house, enough land. What a man cannot have enough of - time, freedom - are almost suddenly revealed to be the greatest things of value that I never really considered.
It is odd, really - I can remember a time where my material desires seemed to stretch as far as the horizon. I wanted this, I wanted that - to explore, to try, to test, to enjoy. But over time, the list becomes less and less, the things either less in amount but greater in value or simply not there at all.
The things I have come to value - solitude, freedom from having to do that which I do not enjoy, perhaps seeing places I have never been - are all thing which are really immaterial in manner and for which there is not really any "thing" to acquire. But in point of fact they are coming to mean more and more to me. And the money that was or could be spent on those things now represent the very sort of things that will allow me to acquire more of these new things of value.
A man can have enough books, enough swords, enough house, enough land. What a man cannot have enough of - time, freedom - are almost suddenly revealed to be the greatest things of value that I never really considered.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
A New Windshield
For my birthday/anniversary/Father's Day, I got a new windshield.
My windshield has been cracked for going on 4 years now. Originally it started out as a rock chip, one of those bits and pieces flying off a truck proudly marked with "We take no responsibility for broken windshields from flying debris". Over time and temperature it expanded until I had a lightning strike stretching across the bulk of my windscreen.
I just lived with the issue - after all, it did not impact my ability to see through the windshield at all and to repair it would cost money. There was also that nagging voice that told me that if I got it repair, surely it would be immediately re-chipped and eventually re-broken. So I just continued to drive along.
Life with a broken windshield is not as bad as one might thing. Yes, it is a little bit embarrassing (if such things bother you) and it does make your car look like it should not be parked by (on the other hand, who wants to steal it). You reach the point that it simply becomes part of your daily existence.
And then, one day, it was suddenly gone.
Rather odd how everything looks without a crack running through it.
My windshield has been cracked for going on 4 years now. Originally it started out as a rock chip, one of those bits and pieces flying off a truck proudly marked with "We take no responsibility for broken windshields from flying debris". Over time and temperature it expanded until I had a lightning strike stretching across the bulk of my windscreen.
I just lived with the issue - after all, it did not impact my ability to see through the windshield at all and to repair it would cost money. There was also that nagging voice that told me that if I got it repair, surely it would be immediately re-chipped and eventually re-broken. So I just continued to drive along.
Life with a broken windshield is not as bad as one might thing. Yes, it is a little bit embarrassing (if such things bother you) and it does make your car look like it should not be parked by (on the other hand, who wants to steal it). You reach the point that it simply becomes part of your daily existence.
And then, one day, it was suddenly gone.
Rather odd how everything looks without a crack running through it.
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