The State
begins when groups naturally divided
find themselves obliged to live in common.
This obligation is not of brute force,
but implies an impelling purpose, a common task
which is set before the dispersed groups.

Before all the State is a plan of action and a program of collaboration.

The men [and women] are called upon so that they together may do something.
The State is neither consanguinity,
     nor a linguistic unity,
          nor territorial unity,
               nor proximity of habitation.
It is nothing material, inert, fixed, limited.

It is pure dynamism – the will to do something in common
–and thanks to this the idea the State is bounded by no physical limits.

–excerpt The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset p. 162

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It is a little past 8AM here at the Starbucks on 3rd and State Street here in Geneva.  I am surrounded by the buzz and the bustle of a fine late-summer Saturday morning.  The day promises to  be sunny, comfortable for out-of-doors activities.  Unlike the Dallas area of Texas, here, the Midwest has not been ravaged by an unprecedented deluge, overwhelming public works engineering, unleashing devastating flood waters into neighborhoods…  This comes on the heels of a similar disaster in the mountain communities of Appalachia in eastern Kentucky…  Also not forgotten is the heat and seeming endless wildfire season in the West…

Global warming driven climate change is no longer deeply rooted speculation, as we doubled-down with a hyper capitalist hunger for profits, our externalization of waste, of suffering…

In this looming darkness a single point of light……  We must be bound together as homo sapiens, by every means at our disposal, to take measures in common to survive the great dislocation that has begun.

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This tune is a wonderful reminder that we homo sapiens are embedded within nature, we are of nature and ought not be seduced by the illusion that we are exempt from the rhythms around us.  Stone In Love by Journey.

Stone In Love

By Journey

Those crazy nights, I do remember in my youth
I do recall, those were the best times, most of all
In the heat with a blue jean girl
Burnin’ love comes once in a lifetime
She found me singing by the rail road track
Took me home, we danced by moonlight

Those summer nights are callin’,
Stone in love
Can’t help myself I’m fallin’
Stone in love

Old dusty roads, led to the river
Runnin’ slow
She pulled me down, and in clover
We’d go ’round
In the heat with a blue jean girl
Burnin’ love comes once in a lifetime
Oh the memories never fade away
Golden girl, I’ll keep you forever.

Those summer nights are callin’,
Stone in love
Can’t help myself I’m fallin’
Stone in love

Lyrics by Jonathan Cain and Steve Perry