French accents

The French, who have always held a somewhat elevated sense of who and what they were in my broadbrush mind, appear to be in the throes of despair about the reconfiguring of some words that employ the circumflex accent. "Laziness!" "Mediocrity!" and other exclamations have greeted the announcement that schools must now accept spellings that both employ (old-fashioned) and no longer employ (new wave) this small chevron:

French linguistic purists have voiced online anger at the loss of one of their favourite accents – the pointy little circumflex hat (ˆ) that sits on top of certain vowels.
Changes to around 2,400 French words to simplify them for schoolchildren, such as allowing the word for onion to be spelled ognon as well as the traditional oignon, have brought accusations the country’s Socialist government is dumbing down the language.
Nothing provokes a Gallic row than changes to the language of Molière, but the storm took officials by surprise as the spelling revisions had been suggested by the Académie Française, watchdogs of the French language, and unanimously accepted by its members as long ago as 1990.

 Like all cultural kerfuffels, this one is most silly to those who are not directly affected. Does a doughnut taste any different because it is labeled a "donut?" This is the 21st century after all.

And yet I sympathize with the French purists ... or anyone who has been through a school system that shoved one culturally-approved spelling or outlook or another down the throats of the culturally untutored. We learned it; we use it; and now, at last, we no longer have to consider it. Our biases and good judgments were based in part on such force-feeding. And now along comes some improvement society that implies all that down-the-throat-shoving was, well, arbitrary, and not at all assured... which means some bedrock understandings are no longer assured.

 It is easy to yawn and observe without much sympathy, "what the hell did you expect." It is quite another to digest the reality.

When I was a news reporter, every now and then the local dictionary company (Merriam Webster) would come out with a new edition and there would have to be an article about what words had been added or subtracted and why. It was always a fun story to write. But when I wrote it, inevitably I would be in touch with the company president in order to get some obligatory quotes. And then the two of us would segue into a whine about the morphing of language. Words, we two linguistic Republicans would complain, should have specific meanings if communication were to be achieved. "Alienation" had a specific, sociological meaning ... it wasn't just some slob word to indicate social malaise or distaste. We'd whimper and growl about the changes that were overtaking our assumptions.

When assumption is shown to be little more than presumption ... well, it's not a happy day. It means I have to think and rethink what I had thought I had already thought through. Aaaarrrrgh! A small, enraged troll would rise from his slumber: "Don't mess with my bias, my home, my understanding!"

Linguistic snobs or linguistic slobs ... what a mess.

I guess it's the price of progress ... whatever that is.

where kindness takes a holiday

I once heard that there was a perfectly legitimate Christian prayer that went, "Dear Lord, please give him/her/them a swift kick in the ass." Usually, of course, spiritual persuasions are dolloped with things like "compassion." No one, least of all monks, nuns and other disciples, ever gets pissed.

And yet they do get pissed. They get enraged. Suddenly, a situation is just too fucking much. And no one is more confused/embarrassed/ashamed than the disciple himself ... and still s/he's pissed.

Yesterday, a Zen Buddhist monk friend sent me an article that had purely enraged him. And when I read it, I could see why. Cruelty masquerading as goodness and even temper is enough to make you puke. Take your "compassion" and shove it up your ass!

The article in question wove together a water crisis in Flint, Michigan -- one in which dangerous levels of lead had been introduced into the public drinking water -- and the treatment of Palestinians by Israel. In both instances, everyone has excuses and explanations and still, children and families are being negatively affected by a public policy that is mindlessly cruel to those who have little or no recourse.

Flint uses budget difficulties to excuse its behavior. Israel uses "anti-Semitism" (as if Palestinians were not Semites) as its cover story. A country that loves to recall the horror of the Nazi Holocaust sees no reason to look in the mirror and recoil.

Dear Lord, please give him/her/them a swift kick in the ass! Cut the "anti-Semitism" crap! Cruelty -- by either the well-heeled or the poorly shod -- is cruelty ... period. "Everyone does it" is a refuge of jackals and jerk-offs.

It's all enough to make even the most kindly-inclined see the virtue of Islamic State's twisted-sister version of Islam.

greeting the day

On a morning as moist and smooth and warm as the water between the waves in the bay -- the word "dulcet" rose softly in the mind -- Tracy came by to deliver the paper today. As usual, I could hear her talking to herself as she delivered across the street and then turned her attention to my house. Shifting conversational gears, she spoke odds and ends of greetings to me as she handed over the paper ... I offered my odds and ends in return ... and then she was on her way.

Later, as I returned from driving my wife to work, I got out of the car just as my Austrian neighbor Hans took off for his farm job at UMass. If we converse once in six months it is a lot. He slowed his car, he stopped and he called out the window, "Thanks for your good writing. You make the Gazette worth reading." And then he was on his way.

I'm never much good at processing compliments, even when I know what the person offering the compliment has in mind. This morning was no different, but the moist and smooth and wet warmth of the enfolding day seemed to file down the uncertainties. My father's throw-away line came to mind: "Well, it's better than the blow of a stick."

Dulcet bits of greeting and life.

photo contest winners

The winners have been announced [and there are some beauties] in an international photo contest from online photography community Photocrowd.com in partnership with the British Society of Gerontology on the theme of ageing.

This picture of Agnes from the series Eyes as Big as Plates is a collaboration between Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen and was selected in first place by the judging panel.

 

Second in the Expert vote was this image of men keeping themselves fit early one winter morning at a city park in Kolkata, India by Sudipto Das.

social agreement -- the power and price

I have to admit I am a coward, a fraidy-cat, and a mental wuss, and never more so than when confronted with a broadband social agreement, of whatever virtue, that chews up individuals and spits them out in the name of some ill-defined and poorly examined mental juggernaut. Where the hugs and huzzahs start, the pee tends to run down my leg. I don't feel superior ... I just feel scared. Literally.

The French wit La Rochefoucauld observed approximately that "the intelligence of the group is inversely proportionate to its number." He, of course, had the luxury to be a wit rather than a victim, but that doesn't change the appropriateness of the observation, at least from the vantage point of this dribbling coward.

What brought this to mind was watching the 1999 documentary, "Scandalize My Name" on television last night.

Hosted and narrated by Morgan Freeman, Scandalize My Name: Stories From the Blacklist is a heartbreaking film that shows how the hate and hysteria of the McCarthy era lead to a huge loss in the artistic community. African American actors and musicians particularly were blacklisted for speaking out against racism. Historically speaking, HUAC was not only paranoid about preventing the spread of Communism, it was also incredibly racist and held back the Civil Rights Movement in America through intimidation and blacklisting.

Here is the Xfinity version of the entire film. I'm not sure if others can watch it or not, but I couldn't immediately find a more widely-accessible version.

The movie has to do with black artists (actors, musicians, singers, etc.) but the time frame alluded to -- 1950's -- whispered and shouted all sorts of artists into obscurity and sometimes suicide. What the fear of communism did to 'uppity niggers' it likewise did to anyone of any color. This is not to diminish or demean the depredations -- the new and improved depredations -- suffered by blacks. "Horrific" is not to strong a word ... and even by the time I joined the Army in the early 1960's, "communism" was a powerful persuader.

Around my mother's house from time to time in the 1950's, there was adult talk about who had implicated what friend or acquaintance before the House Unamerican Activities Commission. People were scared ... scared enough to betray any who might seem to need betraying. The conversation ranged from condemnation to understanding of those who squealed or otherwise broke the bonds of kinship.

The crowd gathers and is warmed by its own fervor. "Communists" then as, to some extent, "terrorists" now, deserve everything they get. The fervor rises: If you agree with me and I agree with you then it all becomes true and good and wise and ... fucking scary. We gather. We agree. Gore that ox ... as long as it's not mine ... as long as it is happening to someone else!

The "someone else" turned out, implicitly, to be me when I signed up for the Army. I had thought I still had the row after row of U.S. Attorney General's "subversive" organizations that appeared on my DD 214 and asked if I belonged to any of the below-listed groups. But looking through my files, I can't find that list and so rely on Wikipedia and its severely truncated list to which it appends, "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." As I recall, I fessed up to belonging by signature to one or two of them and fearing that my need for a top secret security clearance would thereby be jeopardized.

The attorney general theoretically represents all Americans and the laws that apply to them. But some pigs are more equal than others. No 'subversives' need apply. No commies. No terrorists. No rabble-rousing thinkers. Against them, the full weight of the group that so warmly endorsed group-think would be brought to bear.

Scared? You bet I was scared. Scared then. Scared now. I am scared of the people who are "right."

List as of 1959

• Abraham Lincoln Brigade April 29, 1953
• Abraham Lincoln School April 29, 1953
• Action Committee to Free Spain Now April 29, 1953
• Alabama People's Educational Association April 29, 1953
• American Association for Reconstruction in Yugoslavia April 29, 1953
• American Christian Nationalist Party April 29, 1953
• American Committee for European Worker's Relief April 29, 1953
• American Committee for protection of Foreign Born April 29, 1953
• American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidzhan Inc September 28, 1953
• American Committee for Yugoslav Relief, Inc. April 29, 1953
• American Committee To Survey Labor Conditions in Europe July 15 1953
• American Council for a Democratic Greece (formerly known as the Greek Amerivan Council; Greek American Committee for national Unity), April 29,1953
• American Peace Crusade
• American Polish League
• Black Dragon Society
• Cervantes Fraternal Society
• Committee to Abolish Discrimination in Maryland
• Committee to Aid the Fighting South
• Committee to Defend the Rights and Freedom of Pittsburgh's Political Prisoners
• Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy
• Committee for Constitutional and Political Freedom
• Committee for the Defense of the Pittsburgh Six
• Committee for Nationalist Action
• Committee for the Negro in the Arts
• Committee for Peace and Brotherhood Festival in Philadelphia
• Committee for the Protection of the Bill of Rights
• Committee for World Youth Friendship and Cultural Exchange
• Committee to Defend Marie Richardson
• Committee to Uphold the Bill of Rights
• Congress of African Women
• Daily Worker Press Club
• Detroit Youth Assembly
• Elsinore Progressive League
• Families of the Baltimore Smith Act Victims
• Federation of Greek Maritime Unions
• Florida Press and Education League
• Freedom Stage, Inc.
• Friends of the Soviet Union
• Garibaldi American Fraternal Society
• German American Bund
• Harlem Trade Union Council
• Hellenic-American Brotherhood
• Hungarian Brotherhood
• Independent Socialist League
• Industrial Workers of the World
• Japanese Association of America
• Jewish Community of Cortlandt
• Jewish Culture Society
• Knights of the White Camelia
• Ku Klux Klan
• Labor Youth League
• League of American Writers
• Mario Morgantini Circle
• Michigan Council for Peace
• Michigan School of Social Science
• Nanka Teikoku Gunyudan
• Oklahoma League for Political Education
• People's Educational and Press Association of Texas
• Shinto Shrines
• Virginia League for People's Education
• Youth Communist League

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

 

the best in the world

“He appears to have taken his own life with a firearm,” the Lausanne police said in a statement.

The "he" alluded to in a Guardian story was Benoît Violier, 44, a man whose Restaurant de l’Hotel de Ville in Criessier had recently been named "the best in the world."

Strange diet -- seeking out or aspiring to "the best." Who takes the trouble to parse and assess these two simple words -- "the best." Is "the best" what others call "the best" or is it what individuals lay at their own doorsteps? What is it that qualifies as "best" and if someone had it in hand, what would s/he be holding?

Is there a "better" than "best?" If you reached the top of the mountain, would there be inevitable new heights to scale? If everyone would like to be "best," whose yardstick is employed and how accurate or satisfying is it?

There's no denying the desire. But is the business end of a firearm the best anyone can expect when attaining it?

religion in politics

While I am not much of a fan of the much-touted "separation of church and state" (how many lives can any one (wo)man lead?), still it feels somehow enfeebled and enfeebling to inject religion into political dust-ups. As much as anything, religion in politics feels like a bid for childish irresponsibility ... like dog-walkers who refuse to clean up behind the animals they exercise in the early-morning air. Why should anyone take you seriously if you can't clean up your own shit?

Last night, the 2016 caucuses in Iowa played themselves out. Vast spending, lackluster policy positions, emotive inaccuracies, a media willing to tag along like some younger, please-like-me kid ... endless, endless vapors. And, woven into the swirling dust, was a God which does not, to the best of my knowledge, provide jobs or fix roads or improve education or level the economic playing field.

Cruz was buoyed by evangelical support and thanked God for his win.

Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio claimed the top three Republican slots. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were more or less tied on the Democratic side. All of them hope to run for president. All of them make promises they cannot keep. The election takes place in November.

Jeee-sus!

The Heart Sutra redux

Yesterday, I got sick of whining old-age-fashion about whatever latest thing I might have forgotten and from there, knee-jerk-fashion, to wallow in my dwindling-dwindling-dwindling. OK, I forget whether I had in fact brushed my teeth ten minutes ago or whether I had taken the allotted panoply of pills designated "a.m." on a multi pigeon-holed plastic container created to counter forgetfulness.

There are myriad bits of filo dough like this ... little and unimportant things that shear off somehow and flutter to a floor of forgetfulness ... and it can be dispiriting. It is another way of no longer belonging or feeling like part of the environmental jigsaw puzzle around me.

But yesterday, I got fed up with my whines. If I had forgotten the name of a favored actor whose face I could summon with great clarity, well, at least for the moment, that's that. Such memories sometimes return unbidden, but they can equally easily simply be lost. And the same goes for the 'important' stuff, whatever that may be.

Those with good memory will indulge the forgetful fogies and imagine such a fate does not await them as well, but a home in the fogey basket does not appeal to me. Old fogey:

Origin In 1811, an Old Fogey was a nickname for an invalid, wounded soldier; derived from the French word fougueux (fierce or fiery).

Yes, once fiery and with-it and worthy of attention and now banked and bumbling ... whine, whine. Muscles that remembered their heyday now incapable of cutting the mustard; thoughts once soaring brisk and crisp now soggy and sluggish. But wait....

If loss is the order of the day, what remains? Is there anything left that does not elicit complaint and indulgent, nagging gloom? And, of all things, The Heart Sutra came to mind. Buddhists in the audience may smile an indulgent smile at the wonder and magic and whatever other sort of treacly bullshit they may want to bring to bear. But that's not what got to me. What got to me was the no-effort ability to recite The Heart Sutra -- a lynch pin of some Buddhist rituals. Its uselessness cropped up in my mind with the same force as its usefulness and pleasure. I could recite the whole thing, in a language I did not know, without for a moment stumbling. I tried it. It worked. It wouldn't feed the migrants flooding desperately into Europe from dictator-ruled regimes in the Middle East. It wouldn't do a damned thing for anyone. But I could do it.

As when I first memorized it, I really didn't care what its English meaning might be. English translations never appealed to me. Others may feel "more informed" by a translation. I feel "less informed." A mastery or companionable friendship rested for me not so much in "knowing" as it did in "not-knowing-and-doing." "Form is emptiness/Emptiness is form" -- fuck that ... just chant.

And though I might have forgotten actors and pills, I had not forgotten The Heart Sutra, a snippet of life that pumped like a heart and put the whines to bed. Could I sell its strange recourse to others? Not a chance in hell. But I could rest the whine machine for a while. Imagine that ... remembering The Heart Sutra learned so many years ago and recited with the same soft ease as breathing in or breathing out. Mystical impact or deep importance? ... peddle those wares elsewhere. Wisdom on the hoof? Piffle! Translations? Oh my aching ass! This was the Heart Sutra ... no whiners need apply.

Absolutely useless to anyone else and yet, for a little while, more precious to me than the Kohinoor Diamond.

Here's the liguistic mash-up in which I find pleasure:

MAKA HAN NYA HARA MITA SHIN GYO

KAN JI ZAI BO SA GYO JIN HAN-NYA HA RA MI TA JI

SHO KEN GO ON KAI KU DO IS-SAI KU YAKU

SHA RI SHI SHIKI FU I KU KU FU I SHIKI

SHIKI SOKU ZE KU KU SOKU ZE SHIKI

JU SO GYO SHIKI YAKU BU NYO ZE

SHA RI SHI ZE SHO HO KU SO FU SHO FU METSU

FU KU FUJO FU ZO FU GEN

ZE KO KU CHU MU SHIKI MU JU SO GYO SHIKI

MU GEN-NI BI ZES-SHIN I

MU SHIKI SHO KO MI SOKU HO

MU GEN KAI NAI SHI MU I SHIKI KAI

MU MU MYO YAKU MU MU MYO JIN NAI SHI

MU RO SHI YAKU MU RO SHI JIN

MU KU SHU METSU DO

MU CHI YAKU MU TOKU I MU SHO TOK'-KO

BO DAI SAT-TA E HAN-NYA HA RA MI TA KO

SHIM-MU KEI GE MU KEI GE KO MU U KU FU

ON RI IS-SAI TEN DO MU SO KU GYO NE HAN

SAN ZE SHO BUTSU E HAN-NYA HA RA MI TA KO

TOKU A NOKU TA RA SAM-MYAKU SAM-BO DAI

KO CHI HAN-NYA HA RA MI TA

ZE DAI JIN SHU ZE DAI MYO SHU

ZE MU JO SHU ZE MU TO TO SHU

NO JO IS-SAI KU SHIN JITSU FU KO

KO SETSU HAN-NYA HA RA MI TA SHU

SOKU SETSU SHU WATSU

GYA TEI GYA TEI HA RA GYA TEI HARA SO GYA TEI

BO JI SOWA KA HAN-NYA SHIN GYO

It took me a long time to memorize that back when... 40-odd years ago  ... in the shower, on the couch, over dinner and, of course, in the zendo. But eventually I could do it without peeking at any texts ... and then, somehow, it found a self-sufficient hiding place within and 'meant' something I couldn't name.

And still can't, though I can recite it.

If nothing else, recitation keeps me from whining for a bit.

Rinzai and ice cream

Woke with an odd-ball couple of thoughts joining the dance. They were connected and came as a couple, however somehow bizarre -- like Napoleon Dynamite perhaps -- they were.

First came the burnished observation of the Zen teacher Rinzai ... reasserting with clarion certainty its d'oh: "Grasp and use, but never name." Bright and hot as oxyacetylene fire ... let's say no more of it.

And as its companion, present but unexplained, came the notion that it has been eons since I had some real ice cream ... real, homemade, untouched by swooning hands ... ice cream. Would I like it if I had it? I don't know, but suddenly I wanted to try it an find out ... but where can anyone get real ice cream these days? And no, I am not about to make it.

Fragments ... shards ... Napoleon Dynamite's ice cream... welcome to the dance.

rent a monk

In Japan, as I understand it, there is a saying: "You may be born Shinto, but you die Buddhist."

Shinto is the most popular religious persuasion in Japan, but Buddhists seem to have a lock on the death industry. As anywhere else in 'civilized' society, death can be pricey business so perhaps it is natural that Amazon has begun offering rent-a-monk services at more affordable prices ... a business model that simultaneously helps to shore up the dwindling support that Buddhism is experiencing in Japan. Monks have to earn a living too, after all.

It is hard to suggest that anguished individuals should not be succored in that anguish. Who would not hold the hand of the grief-stricken? But at the same time, there is something tawdry about religion's seemingly invariable leverage that is brought to bear: Death is sorrowful; religion weaves a tale to ease the woe; religious institutions flourish. Nothing wrong with that, right?

And the answer is, probably not. There is nothing so good that it cannot be manipulated and the same, in reverse, goes for anything so bad. But too, institutions have a way of getting lost in their own legends -- touting the institution at the expense of the original message, marginalizing sorrow while claiming to commute or eradicate that sorrow. Theology and superstition take hold. Chinese restaurants are cluttered with good-luck representations of Buddha and the mind is not far behind. It may be childish, but we are all childish when faced with anguish. Get thee behind me, bad joss!

It is no doubt my own arrogance that wonders and writhes and questions the "yoga" students with their buff buns and abs. Don't you want to know what got all this exercising off the ground? And don't the Buddhists likewise want to know what mechanisms nourished the death industry in Japan? What kernel is this? Aren't you curious?

Asking others to be curious because I have been curious is arrogant. But I sit here feeling fortunate to have been curious and willing to take a swing at some sort of answer. Hatha yoga is more than a good ass ... or is it? Buddhism is more than hand-holding ... or is it? As spiritual persuasions dwindle and wisp away, I feel fortunate to have taken a shot at it. Insisting that others might be well-advised to take a similar shot at it ... well, hell, I could have been a Christian if that's all I ever wanted.

Dwindling away.

Rent a monk.

It's a curious business but I suppose that sunsets are likewise curious.

shark feasts on shark

It ain't Walt Disney's version of nature as a shark makes a meal of another shark at a Seoul aquarium.

going home

It's hardly a new observation, but it popped up this morning in the form of one of the touchstones of my trained and tamed youth: "Comparisons are odious."

What occurred to me as a result was that, no matter how exciting the adventure may be, still, there is no reason to travel to the Hindu Kush or some other exotic clime -- wherever you are is an entirely adequate starting place on the journey home. The only requirement is that the spirit be willing to examine and examine and examine some more. "Comparisons are odious" -- where will that take you? Answer, anywhere -- but most notably home to a place where the palm is emptied of all it held, all it examined, all it learned from.

The emptiness is inevitable as the traveler moves from the wise or merely slick "comparisons are odious" to the experience that informed the words. No one can hold experience. Experience is no man's lap dog, however much palaver is brought to bear.

If you want to to home, then start anywhere ... literally. Don't imagine that there is or even could be any improvement. Just gather up your spiritual skirts and go ... home.

I gotta admit the idea of the "Hindu Kush" is pretty alluring.

Oh well.

adult police work

Police in the Netherlands kicked in a door in response to an emergency call - only to realise the "terrifying screams" that had been reported were actually the sound of a man singing along to opera....
Police released details of the incident in a Facebook post. They said everyone concerned had laughed about the matter.

happy endings

The other night, I found myself watching a version of "Cinderella" on the TV. My channel-surfing just paused as the age-old fairy tale unfolded. Yes, I knew the ending and yes, I could remember most of the particulars on the way to that ending, but I paused anyway and let the story unfurl before my eyes. There was a happy ending in the offing and lately I have been drawn to happy endings: What the hell, they're part of the potential too and besides, they make me feel good even if my widest experience suggests that crediting happy endings is frequently a fool's errand.

I didn't much care if I were immersing myself in a lie. Every now and then it's pleasant to be lied to and warmed: Most of the subjects I imbue with "truth" are quite fabulous as well, so why shouldn't I at least wring a little contentment out of this lie that doesn't pretend to be a truth?

I like feeling happy. I am tired of feeling sad.

Go ahead and lie to me.

Someone will be along shortly to disabuse the treacly and convinced. And in the meantime I can lay down the burden of a sharpened set of wits. Happy endings -- literally -- are getting the best of me lately. I am unlikely to lie down and spread my legs to those who sell me treacle (or terror either, for that matter), but when I'm doing the selling, well, that is increasingly OK with me.

Who said "dotage" was a bad thing?

brought down, raised up

A friend wrote yesterday to say that a totally paralyzed right leg and a partially-paralyzed right arm had laid her up in the hospital for several days but that now she was on the mend, comparatively speaking.

What is there to say about a life that visits such circumstances upon its actors? "Benevolence" and "malevolence" may produce income for churches and other tale-weavers, but at some point there is a let's-cut-the-crap moment, even for those jerking off in the breeze as they intone, "it is what it is."

I am sorry when I hear or see that others are afflicted. I guess that derives from feeling sorry when I experience my own weights and freights. But who cares where it derives from? It's what I feel and that's just my business.

Brought down by sorrows.

Raised up by joys.

Pass the Dramamine.

artificial intelligence beats Go champ

An artificial intelligence program has beaten the European champion of the board game Go. The program beat the champ five games to nil.

As for Go:

The rules are simpler than those of chess, but a player typically has a choice of 200 moves compared with about 20 in chess.
There are more possible positions in Go than atoms in the universe, according to DeepMind's team.
It can be very difficult to determine who is winning, and many of the top human players rely on instinct.

Wowsers!

perfect memory

The idea of having a perfect memory makes me edgy on the one hand. What an incredible burden. But, on the other hand:

Veiseh even thinks his condition has made him a kinder, more tolerant person. “Some say ‘forgive and forget’, but since forgetting is a luxury I don't have, I need to learn to genuinely forgive,” he says. “Not just others, but myself as well.”

I wonder if there would be less bloodshed if those promoting a resort to war were endowed with the ability/necessity of remembering previous horrors.

Also I wonder what such a capacity would do to "time."

bullfighter in hot water

A Spanish bullfighter has ignited a minor firestorm of criticism for posting a picture of himself as he practiced fighting a bull while holding his five-month-old daughter.

Said Francisco Rivera Ordóñez:

There is no safer place for her to be than in my arms. This is Carmen’s debut, the fifth bullfighting generation in my family. My grandfather did the same with my father, my father with me and me with my daughter Cayetana, and now Carmen.

Child safety and a general distaste for 'fighting' unarmed animals makes up the bulk of the criticisms. Of his style and expertise, one Spanish critic said, "Rivera’s faced a lot of bulls, and for that he deserves credit. But he’s boring to watch; he has no aesthetic merit."

I have only seen one bullfight. With luck, I will never see another. While I dislike white-whiny complaints about bull fighting -- in about the same measure as I dislike mojo-laced defenses of the activity -- I found watching an actual fight so viscerally repugnant that I had to leave the arena where I had hoped to sense a bit of what Ernest Hemingway et al. could go on and on about.

Man contrives a situation in which he faces death and feels that much more alive... grow up!

Besides the taking of a life after goading an animal with the help of several other armed men, I dislike the implicit and explicit demand that this activity should be honored and acclaimed. Sure, it takes more balls than I've got but, on the other hand, I don't want my courage defined by such contrived means. A storied and honorable profession? Sorry, I can't buy it. Killing as a means to eat I can see. But killing as a means of flonging your dong...?

If someone were to open a sunny arena and introduce one bull and one man and invite them to interact as a show of honor or worship or skill ... that strikes me as possible, if still a bit self-centered.

Author Mary Renault wrote a novel called "The King Must Die" in which the bull-leaping of Crete played a heart-pounding role. Now that struck me as ballsy -- if a bit looney -- and honorable.

farewell, book-reading

As the books on my shelves take on an undeniable and yet mysterious irrelevance, here comes the BBC Magazine to take a stab at parsing and particularizing the dwindling, dwindling, dwindling of paper volumes. What, if anything, does it portend? Naturally there are still enough people who were weaned on paper books to cry out, "the sky is falling," but since it's actually happening ... well, what about it?

The first thought into my mind is that if information is widely available on the Internet ... who cares? The answer to me is, how will anyone know anything if the electricity goes off? But perhaps that's a minor concern. I do sense a dumbing down, a lack of critical thinking that has fallen off into well-heeled bias and belief, but I haven't got the energy to find out if my bias and belief holds water.

What was that John Fowles novel in which a small segment is devoted to a future time in which a shopping list is unearthed and becomes a kind of Rosetta Stone to the past ... replete with ordinary comestibles like balogna? Or did I make that up?

I can't really enter this fray with much gusto. I do know I'm glad I won't be around for the denouement.

Wikipedia ... hurry up and ... know?

As a teenager, I can remember going to the library as a means of doing a particular history (or whatever) homework assignment. There I would dig out relevant volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia Americana  and perhaps one or two other more family-oriented encyclopedias as a means of amassing data. I would read them all and then let the information percolate in my mind before attacking the homework assignment. It was not always easy, but I was under the impression that research required sweat and varying points of view were my responsibility.

Of course, I was more of a believer when I was a teenager. As such, the Encyclopedia Britannica was the gold standard -- a set of volumes which had an unresearched reputation for bringing together the best researchers available and then vetting their product to a fare-the-well. If the Encyclopedia Britannica said so, you could more or less take it to the bank, however viscous the writing might be. The Americana was not far behind. And behind that there were the World Book or Colliers or other home-library reference works ... more accessible, perhaps, but more dubious as well. Just because something was accessible did not mean it was true ... or anyway that was my thought. It did not really cross my mind that just because something was difficult, the information was therefore more credible or true.

Information in these encyclopedias came from on high. There was no Internet and an encyclopedia's sales rested on the kind of credulity I was willing to offer ... whoever was writing these things were the top of the heap, the smart guys, the guys and gals who had spent years combing the topic at hand.

Today, of course, there is one part of me that snickers at my naivete. But another part of me longs for that credulity that was once: I might not know something, but there was someone who had spent long hours and did know. It was possible to get an answer worth knowing. Someone, somewhere had expended the blood, sweat and tears to which I was becoming privy. They were not feather merchants.

Nowadays, there is Wikipedia -- the Internet encyclopedia to which all and sundry are welcome to contribute and correct. The doofus and the dandy are as welcome as the meticulous researcher.

Those who can access the site can edit most of its articles. Wikipedia is ranked among the ten most popular websites, and constitutes the Internet's largest and most popular general reference work....
A peer review of 42 science articles found in both Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia was published in Nature in 2005, and found that Wikipedia's level of accuracy approached Encyclopedia Britannica's. Criticisms of Wikipedia include claims that it exhibits systemic bias, presents a mixture of "truths, half truths, and some falsehoods", and that in controversial topics it is subject to manipulation and spin.

When I look something up on Wikipedia -- and look it up, I do -- there is no knowing if I am receiving the benefit of arduous hours or beer-pitcher conclusions. True, the measurements and other concrete factual data may not be open to manipulation, but the impact and meaning -- and the sense that I am getting the straight skinny -- is ... well ... wobbly. If anyone can contribute, and if a democracy of thought-equalities is asserted ... well, what sort of answer is that? I want an answer; I do not want a democratic answer.

Like anyone else, I imagine, I love Wikipedia and its easy access and quick rejoinders. But I also have a hunch that to the extent I put my faith in what I get, I am descending into a watered-down realm where agreement is the yardstick of truth. If everyone says so, what has that got to do with the truth?

The good think about my uncertainties is, of course, that I have learned to be uncertain -- a lesson I was not capable of when going to school. Schools rely heavily on answers. First the answers, then the ambiguities.

I guess I am just wondering to what extent Wikipedia lends its wonders to a widespread dumbing down. Dumb and dumber ... and the question, as always, becomes, how much research am I willing to exercise in the search for whatever truth I may seek.

Gawd, laziness is comforting and delicious and experts are more appealing that five-dollar whores.

And it's not as if just because everyone says so, they are necessarily wrong.

glass bridges

Architect Keith Brownlie, who was involved in a glass bridge for The London Science Museum, said that the appeal was "thrill".
"It is the relationship between emotionally driven fear and the logical understanding of safety," he said. "These structures tread the boundary between those two contrasting senses and people like to challenge their rational mind in relation to their irrational fear."

a lucky rabbit's foot

I haven't seen one in a long time, but for some reason, the good luck conferred by carrying a literal rabbit's foot seeps into memory. What an odd oddment it seems, vaguely grotesque on the one hand and yet perfectly understandable in a world where talismans still hold a wispy sway. What is this need for good luck ... or bad luck either, for that matter? A crucifix, a coin, a rabbit's foot ... all of them and more like them can act as touchstones that suggest a rebalancing the scales of good luck and bad. What's that about?

Wikipedia says among other things:

In some cultures, the foot of a rabbit is carried as an amulet believed to bring good luck. This belief is held by individuals in a great number of places around the world, including Europe, China, Africa, and North and South America. It is likely that this belief has existed in Europe since 600 BC amongst Celtic people. In variations of this superstition, the donor rabbit must possess certain attributes, have been killed in a particular place, killed by a particular method, or by a person possessing particular attributes (e.g., by a cross-eyed man)....
Humorist R. E. Shay is credited with the witticism, "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit."

Unless I've got it wrong, there is no proving that a talisman confers positive good luck. But the important part seems to be that there is no proof that such talismans do not. So ... "what the hell" seems to be the order of the day: Carrying a talisman may not help, but it doesn't seem to hurt either, so why not? No one can prove that there's life after death, but they can't prove that there isn't either, so why not carry and be faithful to, for example, a crucifix? Why life after death might be unquestioningly thought of as somehow "good luck" is not a topic for investigation.

In nosing around this subject, I am not inclined towards the narrowed and superior eyes of the brilliant onlooker who can do no better than to say, "superstitious piffle!" The brilliant too have their talismans, but there are agreements not to mention the talismanic facets of their brilliance.

Talismans ... what would you do without them? On the other hand, what would you do with them? If the talismans dropped away, would my ass fall off? If they didn't fall away, would my ass be any more surely affixed?

I guess what brought this to mind was that an interest in spiritual life has talismanic components ... or at least at the beginning it seems that way. But over time, and with investigation, if religion is seen as a talismanic warding off of death's incomprehensible reaches, there are at least two possibilities: As death nears, grasp the talisman more tightly for good luck; or, as death nears, feel the talisman slipping away ... did you ever really need it? Is there really a demarcation between good luck and bad?

What the hell -- incomprehensible things deserve a place in a sunshine that does not attempt to interfere with something called "good luck" or "bad."

the downside of "mindfulness"

With so much money to be made in the "mindfulness" realm, you can sort of see why employers and individuals alike have granted it a growing cachet. In one way, it's an embellished version of the quick-and-easy "take a chill pill." Who wouldn't like to be more at peace, whether at home or on the job?

But together with the upside potential, there is a definite downside aspect and, to my mind, neglecting the latter is dangerous. Yes, I'm aware of the hordes of people who would like to reduce spiritual life to an explicable, psychological direction. That's just one of the attempts to remain in control and talk pretty. But there really are negative aspects as this Guardian article points out.

I know there will be a hundred yes-but's with which to address the problems raised in the article. Nothing that's any good doesn't have a serious potential for something bad. But the willingness to concede the downside aspects can sometimes be drowned out in the desperate effort to heal many wounds. [I once knew a fellow who tried to commit seppuku when he found that he could no longer sit cross-legged in meditation ... he was found on his bed in a pool of blood and was, luckily, saved.]

Spiritual adventures really can be very good tools. But they are not toys that make children feel better or workers more serene. They have the power to clarify and the power to immerse in darkness and an unwillingness to concede either potential is no joke.

I'm posting the article not as a means of 'debunking' mindfulness or spiritual practices, but by way of what I consider a good reminder.

FWIW.

Bernie Sanders ad

So much of what passes for conversation rests on what pisses people off that it's sometimes hard to slow down enough to realize how wearing it is to be pissed off. It is more pleasant to be pleased, to love something. And all of this may account for the vociferousness of those who are deeply in love with sports teams: Somehow, however sappy it may be, it's acceptable to love and rise up for a baseball or football team. Even manly loud-mouths who hate the socialists they could not define on a bet are willing to allow for the passionate pleasure that has no meaning and yet can mean so much.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders loosed the above political ad a day or two ago. It is aimed at  early-primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. And after the implicit and explicit pissed-offed-ness of other political ads, there is something ballsy about it ... a willingness to invite people to love something despite the fact that politics, by definition, is bound to come around and bite you on the ass... the ad suggests you can love America, perhaps, without finding someone to disparage.

Sanders has made his agenda pretty clear in the past. The willingness to post an ad that doesn't twist or mangle some social difficulty and present a solution to it is somehow a relief ... and a smart move ... however smarmy or treacly it may be. By comparison, the ad hardly mentions the candidate, let alone his opponents. It mentions the people who are going to vote ... the ones who may be baseball fans and fans of their country and the potential to live life in some moderately happy way. Whatever mention of Sanders is made is trumped by the ordinary actions of ordinary people ... people who are not happy to be pissed off at every turn.

It's a risky ad, I think. But worth the risk: It outflanks the political process without complaining about it. There are no sly jibes or righteous poses ... now that's ballsy.

Not to mention the fact that this old, smarmy fart likes the Simon and Garfunkel music.

a W of sorts

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) unlawfully retaliated against workers who participated in strikes in 2013 and must offer to reinstate 16 dismissed employees, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled on Thursday.

 Labor-sympathetic minds may delight, but my memory of the National Labor Relations Board is that its structure is such as to defend management, not labor.

with the queen's consent....

"Fusilier Llywelyn has completed basic training under Goat Major Fusilier Matthew Owen, from Anglesey, and his first duty will be to lead a parade at an event to commemorate the 1879 Battle of Rorke's Drift."The regiment said he was chosen following an "arduous survey" of the wild herd and he had stood out after demonstrating "more promise than the others"....

"The Royal goat tradition began in 1844 when Queen Victoria presented the Royal Welch Fusiliers with its first one, but it is believed the animals have been part of parades since the 1700s."

passions at a wedding

It's not entirely clear to me what this gone-viral video of  Maori haka dance at a wedding is about but it is full of heart. The accompanying story leaves my brain addled and looking for context.

Wikipedia says: "War haka were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the opposition, but haka are also performed for various reasons: for welcoming distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions or funerals...."

Oh well, something magnetic on my mind's dinner table.

looking for my lamb bone

Perhaps because nothing has edges, I like to think I can drive the point home in my own life -- run a reality check and come to some easy terms with what is easy.

And it was in this regard that I wondered this morning where my lamb bone was. Someone in future will find it and pitch it on the scrap heap, but to me, that lamb bone is important. I wonder where it is.

No doubt it is in some sloppily-saved collection of tools ... in the basement, maybe, or at the bottom of a tool box. The lamb bone is around somewhere and even if I knew where, I would be unlikely to use it as in the past. Still, it was a good friend once and spoke to the matter of edges that don't exist.

The lamb bone is precisely that -- a lamb bone saved up after a roast long ago, boiled to clean away any clinging meat and then placed among the chisels and hammers and files and sandpaper. I used it in some of my less-than-perfect carpentry adventures. I never was a very good carpenter, but I built several tables and I built the zendo and I built shelves and ... well, I enjoyed it and the lamb bone was part of the mix.

The bone itself is about ten inches long and knobby at each end with a shaft of bone between those knobs. It was something I used as a finishing tool. A ninety-degree edge on a piece of lumber; is "perfect:" But run a lamb bone over it and that razor-sharp perfection moves towards age and grace and warmth and, in my mind, a realistic beauty. The bone and its residual oils do what others might attempt with sandpaper: Run the bone along that edge and it presses the 90-degree "perfection" inward. It is rounded in the smallest and most smooth way.

Ninety-degree perfection is merely perfect. A lamb bone can perfect that and, in my eyes, dovetail with the edgelessness.

These days, there seems to me to be too much perfection and not enough edgelessness.

I wonder where my lamb bone has got to ... not that I have the energy to use it any more. 

digesting the obvious

Sometimes I wonder how many times what has been obvious all along needs to become apparent once more and finally, finally enter the heart.

Some 10,000 years ago a woman in the last stages of pregnancy met a terrible death, trussed like a captive animal and dumped into shallow water at the edge of a Kenyan lagoon. She died with at least 27 members of her tribe, all equally brutally murdered, in the earliest evidence of warfare between stone age hunter-gatherers.
The fossilised remains of the victims, still lying where they fell, preserved in the sediment of a marshy pool that dried up thousands of years ago, were found by a team of scientists from Cambridge University.
The evidence of their deaths was graphic and unmistakable: the remains, which include at least eight women and six children, show skulls smashed in, skeletons shot through or stabbed with stone arrows and blades, and in four cases, hands almost certainly bound.

Slaughter, warfare, violent death ... and all of it in a Kenyan landscape rich with food sources for all. Nevertheless, there was slaughter in that day even as there is slaughter today. The tender heart is appalled and repulsed and yet it is hard not to wonder -- however difficult it may be -- if the sentiments are a half a step off the beaten path of what is more obviously human.

The study’s co-author, Prof Robert Foley, is marginally more optimistic about the human condition: “I’ve no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving. A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin.”

song from the movie "Babe"

It probably won't mean much either to those who once saw the 1995 movie "Babe" or to those who didn't, but I ran across this clip in which the normally-reticent farmer lets loose a song that expresses his silenced love for his sickened pig -- a pig, like other animals in the movie, that speaks and is trained by the farmer to herd sheep. The movie sounds sappy when described, but because it was not churned out of some Walt Disney smarm factory (the Aussies know how to make movies), it's just a wonderful, go-ahead-and-be-a-kid adventure.



Even today the lyrics get to me: "If I had words/To make a day for you/ I'd sing you a morning/ Golden and true...."