various fleas

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Little fleas of concern and interest float around this morning in the wake of a long, long baseball game my younger son played yesterday. His team came away with a disappointing rout, winning by something like 14-6. Games are always less fun when they are lopsided. How can anyone learn anything if the best they can do is trounce the opposition?

But the day itself was astoundingly perfect ... a positive Hallmark calendar depiction of a day. Sunny, cloudless skies, temperatures in the 70's, a mild breeze and the grass so green and lush that it looked like a lawn advertisement. On and on and on and on the game went. Would it never end? Even my son was more worn out than exhilarated by the time it was over.

Of the fleas ...

-- The Minnesota government has shut down in the wake of a budget stand-off that resembles the federal Congress dickering over whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. Republicans stand firm that the tax breaks enjoyed by big business should not be touched in a search for new income. It's tiring to listen to all the excuses politicians can employ.

-- In Afghanistan, site of a decade-long U.S. misadventure in arms, banking/government corruption has been unveiled in quite specific terms. Millions and millions of dollars siphoned off to powerful and politically-connected individuals. It is hard not to imagine that those millions once belonged to U.S. taxpayers. It is hard not to imagine that the projected collapse of the Afghan banking system will be staved off by still more U.S. tax money. In the shorthand of the internet, WTF?!

-- Tomorrow, an "extremely important announcement" is scheduled at Dai Bosatsu monastery in upstate New York. A letter sent to sangha members reads in part,

June 27, 2011
Dear Sangha,
Please come to Dai Bosatsu Zendo on July 2, 2011, at 2 p.m. for an extremely important announcement. Anniversary Sesshin begins that evening. If you are not planning to attend sesshin, you may depart around 4 p.m.

This matter is of no particular general interest, but interests me because it appears to be the latest shoe dropping in the case of Eido Tai Shimano, a Zen teacher whose sexual and financial missteps and manipulations have been detailed on such sites as the Shimano Archive and the Eido Tai Shimano (continued) blog. Will the lack of transparency and honesty continue as it has? Will it be abetted and blurred by some new round of fairy dust? Or will the sturm und drang be somehow dispelled by this "extremely important announcement?" No one outside of the central actors knows. Nor, I imagine, will they ever find out.

-- And I am trying to figure out the best way to present some additional information about my Zen teacher, Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi, on the internet. Luckily, I have some internet support ... but figuring the best way to do it natters like a flea.

I guess most days are like that ... getting up, taking a leak, and then searching out the fleas you would like to bite you.
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