Good-by To Cynicism
RECIPE FOR REMAKING A WORLD Ingredients: ugliness, unfairness, suffering, poverty, terror, rage, sadness, etc. Most of which is no one’s fault, the cause being diffuse, shared, distributed, so that blame cannot be focally assigned. A majority of us are touched by these circumstances, and feel that there is nothing we can do, no one…
Sun and Fabulation
First agenda item of the day: breakfast at Taste of Paris. Its a favorite Cafe and we look forward to the weekly visit. The waitstaff are always welcoming, familiar faces due to our patronage of many months. France has been much on my mind. Today they are holding a national election. At stake is…
The Shield Wall Booms
Yesterday Thorsday, when the news feed came across that the House had passed the Obamacare replacement act, I was palpably nauseated. Predictably the Tribune front page of this morning featured a picture of the President flanked by his fawning palace guard, applauding the event in the White House Rose Garden. Emotionally this seems like…
Making Morality Out Of Nothing At All
THE DIAGNOSIS This generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime and can’t bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. An increasing number of Americans agree that…
Monday With More Rain
Climate change is manifest by extreme weather events. Over the past two days the backyard has soaked up so much water that a footfall instantly produces water welling up around my shoe. It’s 6PM and rain continues to fall. Recently I read that Anglo-Saxon England of the 10th century was also going through a…
VAPNATAK
A comment left by a friend last night reminisced on the Legend of King Arthur. The legend suggests that merry ole England was ruled by a chivalrous king and nobles. This could not have been further from the truth. We love our myths: American exceptionalism, manifest destiny and everyone’s favorite “the American dream.” The…
Of Old Gods
Am reading about England of 1000 AD. The book by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger is an enjoyable read of the conditions of life in the Middle Ages, dealing with Viking raids, settlements by the Norsemen, and the development of Christianity. I imagine the story as a time capsule sent to me from my…
Recipe For Good Luck
Yeah, I know the word “luck” is totally plebeian, tarnished with the soil of ignorance and superstition. We may resist using the term preferring instead gussied up circumlocutions such as “in sync with the universe.” Is there any difference? Does not luck in all of it’s variations touch the finite nature of our knowledge,…
Remember To Remember
The primal law that governs all living: not love not hate not hope but fear Its universality is the cause of every abomination in the shitty chaos called human history. The trick is not to become unbalanced, punished, ruled by it. Any fool can be a pessimist; it takes no imagination, no guts. Remember…
