Saturday arrives. Brilliant with sunlight, a retention pond just outside Starbucks is full with recent rain, the surface dances white light, a plate of diamonds.

Today stands to be a full one. The “big event” will be the pig-roast late in the day. A family member (who constructed the roaster over 20 years ago), supervised the roast over night. I assume our pig lived well, – plenty of food and sufficient shelter, without the existential angst about “the meaning of life.” The image is of my son holding the pig…

We celebrate our grandson who graduated from Wheaton North High School, with honors. The party is a timeout. He is bound for university in the fall, where academic work will begin once  again.

My last post, provoked some push-back from a good friend. Criticism is often valuable. Push-back forces a reconsideration of the point one attempted to make. I criticized the institution of professional sport. I wrote that the teams and venues hosting the spectacles are a contrived misdirection, an ill-advised mental and emotional “break” from the growing shit-storm of disintegration, of implosion of our institutions. I just said it again. 

The reader is provoked to ask, “what do you suggest?” I suggest we have extended conversations among ourselves, how we’ve been taught directly, and by seduction – to value the wrong things. Self care, as well as cultivating kin ties, ought to be priority obligations, and following that, a circle of friends, then acquaintances, etc., etc.

You will intuit that I suggest that life lived well amounts to concentric circles of giving and receiving care through being present with others, to risk saying-out-loud our “truth” and to hear differing views. Never mind hearing from media, – to purchase this or that product or experience will “fix” our worries about my aging body, or a less than ideal body-type. 

Aside from the personal, the intimate work which we are obligated, we ought to consider organizing a general strike, a shut down of the economy for a while. The gesture that would matter. We resist behavior which is nihilistic, violent and cannibalistic of society.

An authentic act of resistance is to live well, to cultivate what matters most. In addition to side-step, to ignore as much of the “noise” as we can. What that means for you, is your business alone.

Enjoy the photos!