the "shame" card

I wonder if it's true or whether it is just an effort to concoct another fortune cookie:

The corner stone of all religious life amounts to little more than the capacity to be ashamed of personal short-comings. Since trying like fury to cover up and camouflage (praise and blame) doesn't work very well, acknowledging those short-comings is a natural option, which is not the same as saying it's necessarily easy or even possible.

It can be a bit of a bummer: Covering up, acquiring the 'good things' in life, talking the good talk, has a way of going awry and yet meeting failures and bruises doesn't really provide a cure-all either. It seems an endless skein and yet those who cannot or do not acknowledge their short-comings are less human for it. Or maybe I just mean I'd prefer not to hang around with them.

A Zen teacher (can't remember who) once said, "in order to do this practice, you must feel shame." "Shame" of course is one of those fifty-cent no-no's in the culture where I live. Books are written about how deleterious "shame" is, how everyone is hard-wired for a fruitful joy. It's a cottage industry at a minimum. It's probably better not to call it "shame" since knee-jerk fixer-uppers are just waiting to pounce with another tome.

Whatever the negative implications, still I think that those who can stand the gaff of whatever shame assails them have an odds-on chance of being nicer people.

But that may be a bit too facile, a bit too fortune-cookie-esque.

cataract surgery

Today's adventure....

the "non-pretty working classes"

           Kathy  Burke: Self-described "member of the non-pretty working classes"          

Sassy, saucy and very competent Kathy Burke, a British actor and director of whom I had never heard until this morning, makes me wonder, together with other trends, whether the era of pretty-people-on-the-silver screen isn't winding down. I honestly wonder if all those enthusiastic virgins (is anyone a virgin any more?) who set out for Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star are not dissolving. Is it possible that in the near future, wannabe stars will be turned away because they are just too pretty?

Seriously.

Look at the influx of fraught and flawed and pale actresses invading ... esp. movies on the internet. They're such a relief, but when the relief becomes a tsunami of 'real people,' who knows, maybe it'll be same-shit-different-day. Movie makers are too often copy-cats. Bleah. But in the meantime, maybe character development will be dragged into the mix... sort of like the 1940's when movies were 90 minutes long and characters actually changed.

I like this tide -- if tide it be -- quite a lot, but will admit that I am having some trouble keeping up with the fraught and flawed types -- they too have a similarity of looks and caring and fragility. True, it ain't boobs and platinum hair and rugged jaws with five-o'clock-shadow, but the similarities among the lately-evolved breed can flummox this old duffer.

What-ever.... it's fun to know there's a go-fuck-yourself trend out there somewhere. How could anyone not love a woman like Kathy Burke who said, "It’s other people that tell me I’ve got a face like a smacked arse."                                     

add-on's

I would have been 14 when "under God" was appended to the Pledge of Allegiance, a bit of prose recited at the time, often at the beginning of a school day:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation [under God], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (brackets added)

Since "under God" had not been part of the pledge previously, I can remember thinking that it felt sort of lumpy -- kind of like running across an unmashed chunk in otherwise mashed potatoes. Even as a teenager, I thought it was somehow redundant and pushy and ornate to no purpose. I wasn't angry about it. It just felt sort of off the mark and excessive... like an excited teen-aged girl expressing her affections by saying "I really, really, really love Joey!"

1954 was the same year that the U.S. Senate decided to censure Joseph McCarthy, a senator who had held the nation in thrall as his broadcast his speculative accusations about communists infiltrating the government and nation. He was a vile man whose accusations corrupted those who might otherwise have been good people: people ratted each other out often on the flimsiest of evidence. He was rather like Donald Trump by volume and unsubstantiated righteousness.  But I didn't have this context in hand in 1954. That context might have added meat to my understanding of why then-president Eisenhower pushed for the addition of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe the president wanted to wash up or wash away the soiled laundry strewn about by Sen. McCarthy.

No one ever did get around to studying what "communism" was or hoped to be. Communism, like socialism, today was bad and dangerous and threatening ... that's all you need to know.

What brought me to this recollection this morning was munching on the word "adult." The word appears as a censoship marker at the beginning of movies played on TV and I watch some movies on TV.  "Adult language," "adult content," etc. What the fuck does that mean? Is anything really "adult" any more? And yet as meaningless as it may be, it is true that loving parents (presumably adults) will shield their children from certain information and feel that such shielding is warranted.

So ... there are adults and there are kids.

But what constitutes an adult? Violence and nudity and some language seem to provide yardsticks for movies. But when it comes to violence, it's considered "adult" when someone gets shot (I think), but there is no warning about the fact that no one is ever shown screaming in pain and wailing for his mother after being shot in a war movie, for example. What happened to the "adult" here? Further, men's bare buttocks and women's uncovered breasts are creeping into movies. Is it "adult" or not to display nudity -- a characteristic that all human beings share? I await the onslaught of movies with men's penises on full and flowery display. And language ... what 10-year-old does not know all the dirty words that I know?

"Adults" are imagined as people who know, but restrain themselves. Is that right? There are agreed-upon norms for "adults." But who sets the bar? If someone sets it, is (s)he an adult? What social adhesion makes setting the bar necessary or warranted and who mixes that cultural glue?

Once, as a reporter trying to fashion a series about a proposed zoo, I made a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of phone calls to animal lovers in an attempt to find out what constituted a "happy" animal. I heard all the poetry and prose out and the bottom line was that although everyone was OK saying an animal was capable of being "happy," not one could nail down conclusively what the hell "happy" meant. The closest possibility I heard was "maybe a happy animal is one that breeds in captivity." But even that struck me as flimsy grist.

What is an adult -- a happy animal -- and is anyone better or worse off saying simply, "I don't know?"

Oh well, as former radio host Jean Shepherd entitled one of his books, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash."

penis pole vaulting, among others

Back in the age of the "penny postcard" -- i.e. when I was a kid -- aural news was generally delivered on the radio (no TV and no internet) once an hour and frequently only for five minutes. It used to piss me off that I had to wade through so much talk in order to get to "The Lone Ranger" or "The Green Hornet" or whatever other drama I was waiting to hear.

A penny postcard got its name from the fact that the stamp cost a penny and for that you could communicate with friends and family at a distance.

Now, of course, there is all news all the time, and stamps cost 49 cents, assuming someone should remember how to write.

But the news math is strange. Five minutes per hour leaves 55 minutes for something else. But instead of getting more news during the all-news-all-the-time era, what I hear is merely a loop tape of selected stories that might easily be wrapped up in five minutes. So many news stories plant the seed for an interesting, deeper look, but what is planted as a seed is rarely seen as anything resembling fruit ... on news stations among others.

Why does the U.S. hate Iran -- how much is real and how much is manufactured? What's happening in the rest of Russia or Africa or South America or the Pacific Ocean islands? Did chop sticks precede the fork and why didn't forks gain more traction in the Orient? Is penis pole vaulting a possibility and what implications might that have for sexual stimulants that warn users to "call a doctor if you have an erection that lasts more than four hours?" A gazillion questions, not all of them weighty, might bring depth and color to the 55 minutes that has a hard time mustering a good action drama.

I guess if no one can get a 60-minute hour -- it's an 'hourly' rate dontcha know -- with his or her psychologist, there's no reason to expect the news business to be more honest.

trouble in Buddhist paradise

For more than 15 years, Tenzin Dhonden has stood between the Dalai Lama and multitudes of US philanthropists, celebrities, scholars and officials eager for even an instant in the revered Buddhist leader’s presence. In his red and saffron robes and gleaming bald pate, the smiling Tibetan monk, widely known as Lama Tenzin, has introduced himself as the Dalai Lama’s “personal emissary for peace”.
Yet the monk has now been suspended as secretary and trustee of the Dalai Lama Trust, a charitable organization chaired by the Dalai Lama, pending an investigation into allegations from a prominent Seattle-based technology entrepreneur who claims that, between 2005 and 2008, the monk abused his role to extract unjustified payments from him.

silver bullet

Where The Lone Ranger used silver bullets to wound his enemies, the rest of us are probably stuck using them (or anyway imagine using them) to wipe some flummoxed situation out of existence. Marriage, money, flat tires, weakened conditions, hunger, war etc. etc. etc. are all open to the mental template of the silver bullet.

Donald Trump was elected president in part because he promised to "drain the [political] swamp" of congressional gridlock and do-nothing-ism. As former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was fond of saying in another election cycle, "How's that working for you?"

The question may have issued from the mouth of someone whose intelligence genes could use some scrutiny, but that doesn't change the poignancy of the question.

Yo, Buddhists! Enlightenment -- how's that working for you?
Draining the swamp -- how's that working for you?
Hit the lottery? How's that working for you?
Married the mate of your dreams? How's that working for you?

The silver bullet is everywhere and everywhere it has an unwritten footnote that says, "no investigation beyond this point!"

I wonder how much lighter life's load might seem if the world of silver bullets were consigned exclusively to comic books.
 

invisible weeping

One of the aspects of old age -- and I stress for the comprehendingly-challenged, ONE -- is that what was once a background aspect of personality no longer has a contrasting foreground against which to place itself. If a background has no foreground, it becomes, perforce, foreground of its own.

And so, since I no longer use eight hours a day at some socially-designated job, there are background habits and assumptions that have more breathing room. It's as if everyone EXCEPT the drunk at the bar had gone home.

For example, I didn't really realize that I had a mental tableau of sorts that boiled down to "my country and the assumptions I make about it without thinking." In the past, when the working male worked and interacted and went to bed in order to get up and go back to work, my country was there in the background. Now it no longer is background and I am forced to see that I care about my country.

Another example is more longstanding. I grew up in a time when "boys don't cry" and I didn't much. Now there is time and room and I find myself seeming to make up for lost time -- weeping within about a country (among other things) I am growing increasingly invisible to.

And that's another aspect. Invisibling. Growing invisibler and invisibler because I am not in the flow any longer. Also, be it said, I haven't got the energy to do all those well-intentioned and somehow insulting exercises suggested by younger people who want to 'care' about those growing invisibler. No, I don't collect stamps, volunteer, travel extensively or have grandkids on whom to lavish attention. And there is a crankiness as well: Take your treacly empathy or ranging bits of what looks like wisdom to you and stuff it!

OK -- the background (my country, eg.) becomes foreground.
Among tears saved from an earlier era.
And I am invisible-invisibler-invisiblest.

Against this somewhat winky backdrop, I realized yesterday that one habit I have not surrendered is the desire to sum up people and situations and create a brief -- sometimes one-word -- description that covers a wide terrain.

Specifically, President Donald Trumps loud-mouthed approach to ruling the country offers no stability -- no one-word tab I can use to nail him down and leave him in the read-view mirror. Or couldn't until recently when I realized I am satisfied more or less with the word "coward." Since everyone has a reservoir of cowardice about something and since cowardice has a poor rep, I felt nervous about applying the word. Now I am no longer nervous. There is time and space and foreground.

And in this foreground there is something within that is simultaneously weeping like a baby and infuriated as a Donald Trump voter that my country is ruled by a "coward" -- a man who lies and camouflages and takes no responsibility and hangs others out to dry when the shit hits the fan. A coward hurts others and has nothing positive he is willing to stand behind.  He is small and vile and, in the end, stupid.

Yes, I have my arenas of cowardice. And surely Congress has its cowards if the United States' longest war is allowed to move forward in Afghanistan without a congressional declaration. And I imagine my friends and neighbors have their reservoirs of cowardice. But there are counterpoints that flare up. They may not be precisely "courageous," but at least they are not so unremittingly craven and self-absorbed.

Imagine what it might be like if all that analysts grinding out a daily guessing game of what Donald Trump "meant" if they simply stopped and waited to see what actually occurred on the basis of the Coward in Chief's latest chorus. My country is ill-served and diminished and, yes, I cry.

What is weeping (outside the fact that every mother's son seems to have taken lessons if TV news is any guide) if not an expression of knowing that something that "ought" to change cannot be changed? There is no un-cowarding a coward and my country is ruled by a coward... and, of late, I weep.

But I am invisible and perhaps it is my own wraith-like wispiness that I am weeping for. I don't care what may cause these saline outbursts. I am interested that once upon a time boys didn't cry, but now there is time and foreground and motive ... and who could possibly know?

Donald Trump is a coward.
My country is ruled by a coward.
I dislike cowardice as a guiding principle.
Bring on the tears.

And to those who say, "you can do something," I invite you to go out and do it.

smartphone heads-up

And, in an effort to slow the irreversible trend towards idiocy:

Our smartphone obsession has reached a new low. The Hawaiian city of Honolulu has resorted to fining people up to $99 for staring at the devices, to try and force people to look up from their phones while crossing the road.
The new law gives police the power to fine people up to $35 (£26.41) for their first offence, $75 for their second and $99 thereafter, perhaps expecting it to take quite some effort to get people to take notice....
Other cities have tried physical adjustments in an effort to change pedestrians’ behaviour. London’s Brick Lane installed padded lampposts in 2008 to help those walking into them while texting. Last year, the German city of Augsburg went as far as embedding traffic signals into the ground near tram tracks.

“You can’t make everything that’s stupid illegal”

A group of men photographed swimming into a baited croc trap near the scene of a fatal attack in Queensland appear to be vying for the “idiots of the century award”, a local mayor has said.
Photos of the men swimming around and even climbing into the trap at the Port Douglas Marina have surfaced online, leaving the mayor of Douglas Shire, Julia Leu, stunned.

“I was absolutely gobsmacked, this is incredibly stupid and dangerous behaviour. I’m wondering if these fellows are vying for the idiots of the year award or the idiots of the century award,” she told ABC radio.

"Good morning" : you're under arrest

Artificial intelligence and human intelligence seemed to have gone awry in close harmony after a Palestinian was questioned by Israeli police for posting "good morning" under a Facebook picture of himself next to a bulldozer. Facebook's AI translator allegedly screwed the pooch by translating "good morning" as "hurt them" or "attack them." Why do I suspect that this screw-up would never beset an Israeli?
In an apparent rewrite of the Independent, The Guardian's version read, in part, like this:

The man, a construction worker in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, near Jerusalem, posted a picture of himself leaning against a bulldozer with the caption “يصبحهم”, or “yusbihuhum”, which translates as “good morning”.

But Facebook’s artificial intelligence-powered translation service, which it built after parting ways with Microsoft’s Bing translation in 2016, instead translated the word into “hurt them” in English or “attack them” in Hebrew.

Police officers arrested the man later that day, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, after they were notified of the post. They questioned him for several hours, suspicious he was planning to use the pictured bulldozer in a vehicle attack, before realising their mistake. At no point before his arrest did any Arabic-speaking officer read the actual post [boldface added].

Police work used to include a decent capacity to check facts. If you don't check the facts, people get deprived/marginalized/killed -- which is even more telling in Israel's version of de facto apartheid.

PS. And, oh, by the bye....

Israeli MPs will this week consider two initiatives that critics say are aimed at shutting down one of the country’s most high-profile anti-occupation groups, Breaking the Silence, which records the testimonies of Israeli soldiers operating in Palestinian territories....
Breaking the Silence collects and publishes accounts of the actions of Israeli soldiers, in their own words, both in combat and in the day-to-day business of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories....
[Tourism Minister Yariv] Levin has said the election in the US of Donald Trump, whose administration has rarely criticised the Netanyahu government, has made the proposed legislation easier to promote.
“It wouldn’t have made it through in the period of the Obama administration,” Levin claimed this year. “They were very uneasy about the bill. The present administration has no problem with it.”

sweating blood

Some speculate that researchers may have shied from the condition because of the willingness of religion to lay claim to it. Now, with an implicit concession that the condition is not just mythological, the number of people who actually do sweat blood is slowly rising.

Duffin then delved into the medical literature, managing to turn up more than two dozen similar cases reported around the world in the past 15 years or so.
In many of these, researchers had carefully documented the tests they had carried out to eliminate the possibility of other bleeding disorders and the evidence they had found to suggest the presence of blood in the sweat ducts. “I came to the conclusion that it’s plausible and that it’s possible,” said Duffin.

It seems that so far what is known is largely outweighed by what is not.

Banzai!

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has secured a strong mandate for his hard line against North Korea and room to push for revision of the country’s pacifist constitution after his party crushed untested opposition parties in Sunday’s general election.
Abe’s Liberal Democratic party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner Komeito were on course to win 311 seats, keeping its two-thirds “supermajority” in the 465-member lower house, an exit poll by TBS television showed. Some other broadcasters had the ruling bloc slightly below the two-thirds mark.

Who needs a pacifist constitution when there is so much need for a diversionary focus provided as the nuclear cleanup/fallout at Fukushima Daiichi continues to be so unrelentingly fucked up.

Does anyone else have the same whispering suspicion I have -- that in the nuclear chess game between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, I am glad to think that at least one party is relatively sane ... and I don't mean Trump?

'social media' rip Chinese social fabric

China vs. the internet.

On the one hand, there is the moral purity and uprightness of the past. On the other, there is so much glitz and so...much...money. It's hard not to imagine Chinese ideologues wishing they lived in North Korea.

While China’s resurgent Communist Party once pushed its policies on an unquestioning public, it now struggles to compete for attention with the country’s booming entertainment industry and the celebrity culture it has spawned.
“Chinese people are increasingly ignoring party propaganda and are much more interested in movie stars, who represent a new lifestyle and more exciting aspirations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong....
A recent commentary in The Global Times, a party newspaper with a nationalistic stance, railed against such celebrity worship, saying China had now surpassed the West in that regard.
“It’s unfair that these stars accrue such glory, unimaginable to those who have made a decisive contribution to the country,” the commentary said.

"Unfair????" Isn't that the whine most often associated with battered liberals and not stick-straight bureaucrats?

more than just a horse's ass

WARNGAU, Germany (AP) — Townspeople and farmers in the small Bavarian town of Warngau have donned traditional costumes for their annual procession in horse-drawn carriages to a local church in honor of St. Leonard, considered the patron saint of horses and livestock.
The “Leonhardi pilgrimage,” which was revived in the town south of Munich in 1983 after an 80-year break, takes place every year on the fourth Sunday in October.
In wet weather on Sunday, participants huddled under umbrellas in their carriages.
Similar processions are held in several other southern German towns.

Spam on the lam

HONOLULU (AP) — Cans of Spam have become a common item that’s being stolen from Honolulu stores and then sold on the streets for quick cash, according to authorities.
Ra Long, who owns a convenience store in the city, said shoplifters have typically targeted alcohol in the past, but recently more cans of Spam have gone missing, Hawaii News Now reported .

ex-presidents join disaster fund-raiser

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — All five living former U.S. presidents will be attending a concert Saturday night in a Texas college town, raising money for relief efforts from Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria’s devastation in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Republicans George H.W. and George W. Bush are putting aside politics in contrast with President Donald Trump, who has vowed to help Texas and Florida for as long as it takes but has criticized Puerto Rican leaders while suggesting aid there won’t be unlimited....
[Spokesman Jim McGrath] didn’t answer a question about whether Trump was formally invited.

Donald Trump...

We made it through George W. Bush. Remember? I wouldn't call that a guarantor for Trump.

PS. 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former presidents are shedding a traditional reluctance to criticize their successors, unleashing pointed attacks on the Trump White House and the commander in chief - but without mentioning him by name.

Remarks on the same day by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama raise the prospect that more dissenters will follow in defiance of President Donald Trump and his policies.

George Carlin reprise

If there were ever one man who could sell me a philosophy or a flat tire, George Carlin is that man. I know I have run it before, but I watched it again today, perhaps as reinforcement:

"universal" health care in Canada ... sort of

Ah, health care in Canada is free.

Except for the meds.

This is an issue because meds are the new-ish method of treating patients. Big pharma may gloat and doctors relax, but patients get caught in the cross-hairs.

“It’s a big issue, a big problem,” Danielle Martin, a Toronto doctor, told Sanders in a recent podcast. “I have patients who take their pills every other day, or who take them for a few weeks and then have to wait until the cheque comes in to fill it again.”

Americans may salivate at the "universal" health care enjoyed by their neighbor to the north, but when the patient can't afford the meds, how universal is "universal?"

the expense of what's free

A frequent burr under the saddle of those busy falling in love with spiritual practice is the costs associated with retreats and other ritual adventures. Many of those starting out have little money and feel that anything as grand as "enlightenment" or "heaven" or whatever ought to be free ... and then the price tags come into withering focus. "Where am I supposed to scrounge up $500 for a retreat?!"

A Zen teacher (Yasutani, maybe?) was once asked about what such newcomers might feel were onerous-if-not-downright-greedy demands. He laughed and said approximately, "Oh yes! Charge them a lot! That way they'll think the Dharma/enlightenment/heaven is worth something."

Strange how accumulating wealth and possessions can elicit enormous effort. It's an expensive business -- the car, the house, the family, the art work, the status ... pricey. What is costly costs a lot. Sacrifices must be made when achieving success.

But whereas success is often costly, the only thing more expensive -- the only thing that costs more -- is what is free. What is free requires more effort, more expenditure, more attention, more blood, sweat and tears than anything with a price tag.

If paying for a $500 retreat is expensive, not-paying for it will suck you dry.

The Zen teacher's comment is one of those slightly sneaky nudges that takes the ordinary sense of acquisition and success and puts it to some fruitful use. Most newcomers haven't yet got what it takes to accept what is free ... so let's pretend it costs a lot, the more ordinary approach.

This slightly-sneaky nudge opens the door to a lot of chicanery, of course, and helps to make the Vatican the richest corporation in the world, but it's a pretty good gambit, corruption and all.

What is free is expensive and requires a savings plan that some spiritual practices can provide... muscle building so that when what is free comes around and kicks you in the ass, there is no need to whine and whimper and wax wise.

Of course, if you've got a spare $500 burning a hole in your pocket, you could always send it to me. I need a new stove. Stoves aren't free.

Bush critiques Trump

You can get a sense of how rock-bottom low things have fallen when a speech by former U.S. President George W. Bush -- a speech critical of current President Donald Trump's self-serving antics -- brings a sense of applause and appreciation and amen! to the heart.

George W Bush sharply condemned bigotry, conspiracy theories and lies in American politics on Thursday, in what seemed to be a coded attack on the presidency of Donald Trump.

George W. Bush ... you've GOT to be kidding! All I can think is that someone paid him a passel to go out there and, as earlier in his dim career, play the front man.

George W. Bush as torch-bearer .... JEEE-SUS!!!!!

coupla fortune cookies

Strutting around my mind this morning:

-- The real coward is not the man who cannot face others. The real coward is the man who cannot face himself. This is no joke ... and it's not easy.

-- It's a good idea to remember that Jesus was a brown man. The myriad limpid representations on Hallmark calendars hanging in kitchens across the country are understandable, but the fact remains that if Jesus had been white/pink, he would have had a hell of a suntan, coming as he did from a sunny part of the world. Remembering that Jesus was brown can help take the racist taint off many holy encouragements.

insect disaster

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.
Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society....
“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

Maybe there's something to be said for, "the better things get, the harder they become."

feeding Vyacheslav Molotov Toffee

The cat's name was Vyacheslav Molotov Toffee, a name that will suggest a time frame (1940's) for those old enough to remember. Affectionately known simply as "Toffee," it was this cat that offered me one of my first remembered lessons about the distinction between my own, thoroughly-convinced logic and the way the world goes around.

I was in kindergarten or some similar grade at the time and one day, I conceived the notion that, since I loved the cat, since I loved Toffee, therefore I should give him something to eat. I knew he liked eating, so I went out to the kitchen to find something to give him. All I could find was an onion.

No worries: Toffee liked food. I liked Toffee. An onion was food. I would give Toffee some onion.

My problem was, I didn't know much about onions.

No worries. I sat on the kitchen floor, peeling the onion and trying to lure Toffee closer to something I was utterly convinced he liked. Tears began to drizzle down my cheeks, at first because onions can do that and only later in the frustration that erupted when Toffee resolutely shied from my kindness.

"What was the matter?" I yowled within. My logic was impeccable. The outcome should have been assured. Everything within me said "yes!" But everything outside my universe said "no!"

Perhaps, these days, it could be called a Donald Trump moment. But even leaving Trump out of it, the object lesson was far from the last time I learned that impeccable and irrefutable logic has little or nothing to do with the smiles on a summer breeze.

If only my logic could have zipped up its fly when I was in kindergarten.

"The Balfour Declaration"

Where in London it's going to be held and who, precisely, will attend is a bit vague as yet, but on Nov. 2, a select group will sit down for dinner festivities marking the 100th anniversary of what came to be known as The Balfour Declaration -- England's backing, with provisos, of the state of Israel. Security will be tight and protesters will be kept at a distance.

I hesitate, based on my ignorance of history, to come out swinging too hard at the genie let out of this regal bottle, but I think it's fair to say that the Palestinians did not fare well under England's largesse. And it seems equally fair to suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not a man to let a political prop go unused.

Aside from anything else, I am astounded at the sweeping brevity -- all 67 words -- of the declaration.

Just because it's 20/20 hindsight doesn't mean that something doesn't suck.

Trump as "soulless coward"

Not only does the over-prescribing of antibiotics tend to lessen the beneficial effects of those antibiotics (some call it a crisis), but there has yet to be invented an antibiotic that will effectively mitigate plain old stupidity. Nor is education an adequate measure of the rising tide of just plain stupidity and its solution: Plenty of the best-educated minds seem to be affected by a better-camouflaged-but-nonetheless-rampant stupidity. Is there a pill for that? I don't know, but the rise of stupidity can get under my skin. On the other hand....

Gregg Popovich has called President Donald Trump “a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others” in response to Trump’s comment Monday that former President Barack Obama and other commanders in chief “didn’t make calls” to families of fallen soldiers....

San Antonio Spurs [basketball] coach
Popovich has been an outspoken critic of Trump, but tells The Nation magazine that Trump’s comments Monday were “beyond the pale” and “as low as it gets.” He calls Trump “a pathological liar in the White House, unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it.”

Stupidity, however, is not daunted by even the most atomic criticism.

A 325-pound (150-kilogram) Florida woman is charged with killing her 9-year-old cousin by sitting on the child as punishment [while the parents looked on].

Veronica Green Posey, 64, was arrested and charged with homicide and cruelty toward a child, The Pensacola News Journal reported. The Escambia County Sheriff's Office report identified Posey as the girl's cousin.

Paramedics and deputies responded to the family's Pensacola home following a 911 call Saturday. Posey told deputies she sat on Dericka Lindsay as discipline "for being out of control."

A female comic whose name I've forgotten once proposed assisting in the return of a direct assault on stupidity by using the question, "what the fuck's the matter with you?!" It won't act as an antibiotic balm, but it feels somehow appropriate as it rolls off the tongue.

Stupidity is just so damned tiring after a while. And when you throw into the equation the fact that stupidity can and does cause death, well, compassion can take a holiday: "What the fuck's the matter with you?!"

Yes, I know: Explosions and epithets don't penetrate the cladding of the sociopath so everyone bends over backwards analyzing and soliloquizing about the poor, benighted creatures of this earth. Oh, if only they had gone to Harvard of Stanford! But then, the antidote loses its clout.

A "soulless coward." Mad dogs need to be put down. 

learning what you do not know

Is it possible to learn what you do not already know? I'm not sure.

On the one hand, the nabobs of wisdom would be out of a job if it were true. All the sweat and confoundations of learning might be thrown into a cocked hat and implied idiocy might rule the roost.

On the other hand, how could it be otherwise?

I guess it doesn't matter much. The thought just crossed my mind.

Trump's astonishing incoherence

I have to admit I was gob-smacked to read Donald Trump's answers to reporters' questions about his neither calling (ten days after the fact) nor writing letters of condolence to the families of America's fallen soldiers in Niger. It boggles the mind. It's lunatic asylum talk. Admittedly, condolences have to be hard for anyone, let alone a man who never takes responsibility (he's commander in chief, remember) for the bad stuff. Nevertheless, something makes me want to say "blasphemy." But can something so plainly idiotic and incoherent rise to the level of blasphemy?

“I’ve written [the soldiers’ families] personal letters,” Trump replied. “They’ve been sent — or they’re going out tonight but they were written during the weekend.”
“I will at some point during the period of time call the parents and the families because I have done that traditionally. I felt very, very badly about that; I always feel bad. The toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens, soldiers are killed. It’s a very difficult thing. Now, it gets to a point where you make four or five of them in one day, it’s a very, very tough day. For me that’s by far the toughest.”
“So, the traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it. They have made the ultimate sacrifice. So generally I would say that I like to call. I’m going to be calling them — I want a little time to pass — I’m going to be calling them. I have, as you know, since I’ve been president I have. But in addition I actually wrote letters individually to the soldiers we’re talking about and they’re going to be going out either today or tomorrow.”...
The president admitted that Obama may very well have made calls after all.
“I don’t know if he did. No no no. I was told that he didn’t often,” Trump replied. “A lot of presidents don’t; they write letters. I do a combination of both. Sometimes — it’s a very difficult thing to do, but I do a combination of both. President Obama I think probably did sometimes and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told. All I can do is ask my generals. Other presidents did not call. They’d write letters. And some presidents didn’t do anything. But I like, I like the combination of — I like, when I can, the combination of a call and also a letter.”

It's... it's ... gob-smacking is all I can think of. Read the Washington Post article and the focus becomes sharper. I hesitate to criticize anything so lame. It's pitiful ... the dunce in the dumb kids' class.

"the cabriolet"

An unheard susurus of joyful expletives erupted when the old man opened and then stood in the door. Little and large, they all knew he would come at sundown and finally, there he was, their talisman and troubadour. He opened the door quietly and stood looking at the bounding silence that greeted him, then walked to the chair they knew he would sit in, the one near the fire.

He began, as often, like a man standing in an open and untended plain.

"The cabriolet," he started and then stopped. He had them all, all of their all, in that single word, at the waning of the day. Butterflies of wonder flitted and swooped from old and young as the sun went down. Surely butterflies must make noise in flight, but their noise is silent. Jeee-sus-fucking-Christ! How does that work?

I don't know and neither did they. Their backbones eased downward where they sat -- against chair backs and wall plaster ... eased ... easier ... easiest. The floor beneath them was confirmed. The wait was over and the warmth was to begin. Warm and silent as a herd of winging butterflies:

"The cabriolet..."

Oh, oh, oh ... lepidoptereforous!

nag, nag, nag

Again yesterday, the nag came nagging and I set out to reflect on what so much effort had been all about -- spiritual life. I guess, in the end, it doesn't matter much what field of endeavor anyone chooses as long as s/he 'goes the distance' -- i.e. digs in long enough and far enough so that, in the end, enough is enough.

I haven't really satisfied my own curiosities, so I keep writing this over and over. "Goes the distance," but what is THE distance? People like me get old and fat and lazy and, hey!, how long can you expect satisfaction when picking your nose? Death and sleep beckon -- isn't it time to leave things to their own devices? I suppose there are those who cling more tightly still to a given spiritual persuasion as age encroaches, but that strikes me as the wrong tack. Let God worship God, assuming God-stuff is your inclination. Stop fussing. Time used is seldom time wasted so ... let things alone.

Anyway ... here is yesterday's effort-manqué ... for the file-box, I guess. "If only..." is a young man's sport and looking back, I don't think I made a mistake ... or made a mistake exactly. All bullshit is good bullshit and yet is simultaneously bullshit as well.

SPIRITUAL DRAFT

I don't want to get into a kerfuffel with some clipped-lip Brit, but after 50 years of sometimes intense immersion in spiritual life I honestly wonder whether all those years were worth the price of admission.

A psychologist friend of mine, an ex-Jesuit who quit the Roman Catholic priesthood, once pointed out that no baby ever slid down the maternal chute burdened with belief. "Babies only know how to suck. End of story."

The anti-religious crowd may whoop and applaud the observation, but they are too often immured in their own belief system, and too seldom make room for the frailty like my own -- the need to believe in something bigger than a bread box.

Fifty years ... settling at last on Zen Buddhism as a vehicle. Today, at 77, I look back with delight on the fact that at the monastery I flunked out of there were valuable lessons to be learned and chief among them was that it is possible to eat oatmeal with chop sticks. More seriously -- by which I do not mean solemnly -- there is the approach of death and the question, "Of what importance is 50 years of failure and success? In death, won't it  dissipate like a film played in reverse ... back up the maternal chute perhaps into ... into ... into ... will someone please tell me into what."

You might think that death would create a capstone to all that study, all that intensive, meditative effort, all that reading that never quite managed to answer the question, "If I'm so smart, how come I'm not happy?" Isn't spiritual life largely a relaxing response to the unknown that is called death? Believers and non-believers smile knowingly, but what the hell do they know?

It all started easily enough when I was about 35, the sole offspring of a college professor whose own father had been a Presbyterian minister, and a very good writer of fiction and non-fiction. Both relied, with differing amounts of courage, on the religion of the intellect. Any child who has been subjected to the catechisms of intellectual life may sympathize with the child who seeks out love in the above-and-beyond-it-all.

As I dipped my toe in the spiritual waters and determined I wanted to get wet, I had a couple of provisos: 1. I wanted to find out if spiritual life were verifiable but not in order to convince or convert anyone else. In terms that suited my leanings I wanted to know, "Is it bullsh*t or not?" and 2. if my spiritual adventures could not step up to the clamor of a raucous beer hall, it was useless. Outside of that, I was willing to dive.

I read. I did the ecumenical schtick. I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop cussing. Hinduism was lovely, not least because its age gave it the capacity for laughter. But its ornamentation outstripped my capacity to love bright lights. The Abrahamic persuasions -- Judaism, Islam, Christianity -- were top-heavy with the separation of man and god and hence riddled with unspoken doubt and I wasn't after what ladled out more doubt.

My first entry onto a zendo or Zen meditation hall, scared the hell out of me. Forty or fifty people sat facing a wall. They didn't move. They didn't speak. They didn't rely on each other in socially-recognizable ways. They sat still and, at the sound of a bell, they got up and walked. Then they sat down again. End of story. Yes, it scared me to death and yet somehow felt right. Put up and shut up.

I wasn't wrong. Which is not to say I was necessarily right.

The first nine years were full of hope and belief. Hope and belief inspire, but as a teacher would later tell me, "For the first four or five years (of meditation practice), belief and hope are necessary. After that, they are not so necessary."

Experience trumps hope and belief. All anyone has to do to verify this is to sneeze. Where do belief and hope go in the midst of a sneeze? What is left?

Fifty years of sometimes-zealous, sometimes-laggard practice and now I wonder, where does the accumulated experience go when the film is reversed? Heaven? Get a life! Hell? Get a life! Enlightenment? Get a life!

I practiced through times of bright openings and rock-solid sorrows. I kept on and kept on and kept on. But now is a time to consider the possibility of not-keeping-on. The understandings came and went in full accordance with Buddhism's observation or fact-checker that "everything changes."

The years rolled by. I got married. Three kids came down the chute. We moved out of New York City an into Massachusetts. I built my own zendo in the backyard and invited others to come and sit. Few did. I put spaghetti on the table as a 'copy editor' at a nearby newspaper. It was dreary work. Every Sunday, I would get into my robe and go out to the zendo to sit for an hour or two.

The same priest-turned-psychologist I knew once told me when I asked about his own post-exit approach to spiritual life, "I have done with the eternal."

With death on the doorstep, how and why should I complain or fret? When I was a kid, I had an array of cap pistols with which to play cowboys-and-Indians. Racism on that front had yet to raise its apt objections. But today, not a single cap pistol remains. As I have a soft spot for children's games, so I have a soft spot for people seeking an easier way of life, something less tear-stained and full of doubt. Spiritual life is a possible approach.

It's bullsh*t of course, but life is full of bullsh*t that helps the flowers grow. Stinky, but rich. I have a soft spot, but not soft enough to remain silent about the bullsh*t. I might have stuck with cap pistols as a focal interest but, well, it's too late now.

The cap pistols of my heart.

cornerstone of greatness

Is there any wondrous thing in which (wo)man might participate, any at all -- from art to math to sports to philosophy to religion to science to sex to history to music to love to language to laughter to birth to death to whatever-all-else -- whose cornerstone or defining molecule does not read:

GET OUT OF THE WAY!

no "niggers" in the classroom

When is it inappropriate to teach the truth? How long must babies come from storks? When do those once routinely referred to as "niggers" no longer receive that white man's lash?

"To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee’s classic novel about racism and the American south, has been removed from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district because the language in the book “makes people uncomfortable”.
The Sun Herald reported that administrators in Biloxi pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week.
Kenny Holloway, vice-president of the Biloxi School Board, told the newspaper: “There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books. It’s still in our library. But they’re going to use another book in the 8th-grade course.”
Published in 1960, Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winner deals with racial inequality in a small Alabama town, in the aftermath of an alleged rape of a white woman for which a black man is tried....
An email to the Sun Herald from a concerned reader referred to the book’s use of the word “nigger” when it said the school board’s decision was made “mid-lesson plan”. “The students will not be allowed to finish the reading of 'To Kill A Mockingbird',” the email said “… due to the use of the ‘N’ word.”...

Strange to think that the word "nigger" might grate on an adult ear and yet mean little or nothing until an eighth-grader hears it from an adult mouth or mind.

Trump-impeachment inducement

                   Larry Flynt’s ad in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post is hard to miss.

For one, it takes up a full page. And there are no pictures — just bold, all-caps text dominating the top third of the page:
“$10 MILLION FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL FROM OFFICE OF DONALD J. TRUMP.”

No pictures. With one boob meister throwing down the gauntlet to another, it seems downright naked not to include, well, you know, a little artistic relief.

"fucking moron"

On July 20, 2017, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described President Donald Trump as a "fucking moron." The news first leaked out in a format that had Tillerson calling Trump a "moron." But when that report was challenged, NBC News doubled down ... Tillerson didn't just call Trump a "moron," he called Trump a "fucking moron."

The observation came in the wake of a presentation of nuclear armaments around the world. The U.S. was/is miles ahead of anyone else, but Trump was apparently alarmed that the U.S. might be outgunned. Aides walked him back from his alarums.

Reading the news wires just now, I was struck by the number of stories that related to Trump and one or more of his improved bits of braggadocio. Story after story after story, often with a picture of the man who specializes in making bad-boy, attention-grabbing waves. Think back for a single year: Can anyone imagine the secretary of state's being caught out/quoted calling the president a "fucking moron?" Can anyone remember a time when circumspect -- and yes, often lie-laden -- language was the language of politicians and diplomats?

Everything has grown crass and, yes, stupider.

Now it's not just the forgotten who are caterwauling for attention. It seems to be everyone -- a majority where once it was a minority. Bit by bit by bit, whatever decency was aspired to, or even just lied about, is left like a candy wrapper in the gutter. News wires are awash with analyses suggesting this action or that puts Trump on the cusp -- the very cusp -- of political demise. But over and over again, that demise is not forthcoming. The moment I think of a new epithet to describe this foul and self-centered little man, I am outflanked by some new and improved bit of bullying, some new way of tearing down a country and its standing in the world, however fragile that standing may be.

The bad boys have created nothing of substance since Trump ascended the throne eight months ago. No laws. No policy. No statements of purpose that can last for more than a day or two. Health care, tax reform, infrastructure, jobs, environment .... The movers and shakers move and shake and nothing gets done outside hurting even those who adore the likes of Donald Trump. To the extent that top positions in the administration are filled -- and a lot are not -- they are filled with business men and military men and others who may be beholden to a commander in chief who sees them as the scowling pawns they seem to be. Quality candidates seem to be conspicuously missing.

It's exhausting and dispiriting.

"Fucking moron."

I guess that will have to do since nothing seems to make much difference.

presenting the afterlife

For the Torajan people of Indonesia, death is part of a spiritual journey: families keep the mummified remains of their deceased relatives in their homes for years – and traditionally invite them to join for lunch on a daily basis – before they are eventually buried. Even then, they are regularly exhumed to be cleaned and cared for.

Todeng died in 2009. A young relative of his, Sam, lights him a cigarette and changes his glasses.

Photograph: Claudio Sieber

In contrast to Western norms, Torajans people, who live in the mountains of Sulawesi in Indonesia, treat their beloved relatives as if they are sick –not dead. In this picture, a grandchild stands next to her deceased grandparents. Yohanis (right), was 77 years old and passed away two weeks ago; his wife Alfrida Tottong Tikupadang (left), was 65 years old and passed away five years ago. In Toraja, it’ is customary to feed the deceased every day and to keep the corpses cozily bedded in a separate room of the family house until the family can afford a proper funeral.

Photograph: Claudio Sieber Photography/www.claudiosieberphotography.com

on edge

Curious how many people may feel themselves "living on the edge."
The edge of "out there."
The edge of "in here"
The edge of "joy."
The edge of "sorrow."
The edge of "yesterday" or perhaps "tomorrow."
The edge of "never" or again, "forever."
The edge of "blasphemy" or "exultation" or "sunshine" or "rain."
The edge of "sane," the edge of "crazy;" the edge of "energetic," the edge of "lazy,"
The edge of "ab-," the edge of "-surd."
The edge of "the edge."

Curious how many people may feel themselves  "living on the edge" and yet this world is plainly a place devoid of edges. There are, as anyone can testify, no edges, and yet, and yet....

stupid news

A man returning from plague-plagued Madagascar appears to be responsible for an outbreak in the Seychelles. Clothing designer Gucci has announced "game-changer" plans to dispense with furs in its duds. The Pentagon said it had no plans to spiff up its nuclear arsenal, which is currently the largest in the world, in accordance with U.S. president Donald Trump's announced inclination to 'modernize' the mushroom cloud industry. The holocaust of wildfires in California is so out of control that searching for the missing is all but impossible. Caribbean destinations walloped by hurricanes not so long ago are still shuffling (esp. Puerto Rico) towards an uncertain recovery. Paris plans to ban all but electric cars by 2030. And pickup truck owners -- the guys I always thought had tattoos and growly faces, are demanding more luxury in the new trucks they buy.

In the U.S., the presidential wannabe, Donald Trump, keeps pissing on others' (Iran, North Korea) parades in an apparent effort to divert attention from the fact that none of his stated campaign promises (walling off Mexico, repeal-and-replace Obamacare, replacing coal mining jobs, tax reform, etc.) has yet to become even close to law.

There's too much news for me. Likewise there seems to be too much news for news outlets.

Last night, a woman who helped cobble together a nuclear deal with Iran (a country George Bush Sr. put in America's cross hairs for reasons never forthrightly announced) implied it would be incredibly stupid for America to go back on the deal. First, who could trust a country that made a deal only to break it at the drop of a sociopathic hat? Second, all credible measuring tools indicate (six or seven times to date) that Iran has lived up to its part of the bargain to contain nuclear development and hence (I guess) stop scaring the pants off Israel ... which has nuclear weapons no one seems worried about even with Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini put the insanity of Trump's bluster about Iran in the light.

Still there's too much news for me. Most of what is called news is news organizations wasting time correcting or purely speculating about what Donald Trump said -- often without evidence or decent argumentation -- as a means of gaining the spotlight ... but not raising up the country he claims to lead. Corrections ... over and over and over again and Trump is never wrong. If he is wrong, it's somebody else's fault. He's the Shock Jock president ... and he reeks like an unwashed jock strap.

Too much news for me. Last night and not for the first time, I switched from news to something more palatable... a drivelous romcom. If Donald Trump wanted to make me stupid, well, I guess it's working.

Hey! The sky's blue and the air's crisp.

fuel pump repair

The car's fuel pump gave up the ghost on the way to a lab test yesterday and the rest of the day was involved with that waiting helplessness that comes with a broken vehicle. Cars, in the current era, are such an assumption/requirement that it was strange to read the other day that automobiles were likely to be things of the past in the future.

Owning houses, driving cars, handwriting ... who knows what other assumptions of daily life will fall away in times to come? It all strikes me as a good reason to take up a hobby or some other tangible, creative outlet, something for which there are no excuses and the results might make you smile.

Well, the car is 'fixed' now and Donald Trump is still president.

The car, at least, has potential.

drug use

From "Reefer Madness" to this morning's local front-page announcement, marijuana has come a long way, baby. Or anyway, in my consciousness. The perfectly-awful cautionary celluloid tale that warned of the dangers of cannabis in the late 1930's, turns a corner with this morning's headline noting the installation of four medical-marijuana billboards Massachusetts where I live. What was once inexpressibly evil in some minds now has some benevolent attributes ... not the least of which, I suspect, is taxes.

Drugs, taxes... my mind lounges still further into the past when the dangers of cocaine were memorialized in a turn-of-the-20th-century folk song whose refrain was:

Listen to me
Listen to me
Drink corn liquor,
Let the cocaine be.
Cocaine gonna kill my honey dead.

In between folk song and morning headline, of course, was Prohibition (1920-1933) -- the outlawing of alcohol that proved such an undying flop that it was subsequently repealed and alcohol was legalized ... leading to its being the leading cause of drug addiction in my country. Without the criminal gains Prohibition encouraged, John F. Kennedy would never have become president, I suspect: His dad, Joseph, made a bundle off booze.

And of course drugs have a longer history than my meager consciousnesses.

Still ... drugs.

These days, the buzz fear is "opiod addiction," the use and abuse of opiods to take the edge off life's sharp edges. Doctors care, I imagine, not least because their malpractice insurance rates have gone up ... or anyway, that's what I imagine. Pain killers are ... well, pain killers ... and there is a lot of of sub rosa pain to be had these days when the wealthy hope to become wealthier.

What is it that makes a change or reconfiguration of consciousness so attractive? Is it just the sheer fun? The step back into a more cozy time? The re-invigoration of a much-battered "me?" The demand to see things through expanded rose-colored glasses under cover of a wide-wider-widest mind? The longing not to be afraid or flawed? Somehow, what is is just not good enough, pleasing enough, fulfilling enough. Perhaps drugs offer the potential to unlock locked doors.

Marijuana now has a toe hold. It's medicinal ... just as opiods and alcohol once eased the aches. But it is hard not to think that a toehold today is a foothold tomorrow. That is not a judgment, just an observation.

What can anyone learn that they don't already know?

time to make time

Puffs of wind ruffle the leaves of the Japanese maple across the street with the same careless possessiveness of a parent touching the hair of a thigh-high child ... aimless, gentle and intimate while ignoring intimacy. A mark of fall.

As are the blue jays clattering in the aluminum gutters above the porch, searching out morsels from the twigs and leaves that will need to be removed -- or ignored -- depending on energy levels.

And a second flight of Canada geese honked by this morning. I couldn't see them in the clouds and rain, but it was like being greeted by some fellow teen-ager while lounging on the fender of a much-buffed auto ... on Main Street ... on Saturday night ... praying to the very-god of very-gods that that one special girl would materialize out of the mists and be enticed to lounge against the fender as well. The geese knew the game and wished me good hunting, somehow, as autumn closes in.

Why fall should be a 'favorite' season is beyond me. It's just a fact -- fall's my fave ... a swipe of magical Windex and all that artful effort is released. Time to prepare for another time.

I read the news wires and skip over the pundits trying to say something sane about Donald Trump and thanking god for the latest bit of spaghetti on the dining room table. There's Vanessa Redgrave at 80 -- a woman with what my father used to call "sand." Old enough to smile. Old enough for balls. And Ernest Hemingway, another of the 'greats' conflicted by fame ... yearning, yet hoping to appear modest ... and bearing arms ... and somehow sand-less in my mind.

Time to make time for a new time. Either one is preferable to more newsworthy disquisitions.

Another Sunday.

Angus in Georgia

Angus, my son, is getting his feet wet as a track coach in Georgia. I don't think he has mastered the accent after a week, but he is out at one of the tracks in his neighborhood.

Accent comes later, I suspect. :)

American sentiment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just 24 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction after a tumultuous stretch for President Donald Trump that included the threat of war with North Korea, stormy complaints about hurricane relief and Trump’s equivocating about white supremacists. That’s a 10-point drop since June, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The decline in optimism about the nation’s trajectory is particularly pronounced among Republicans. In June, 60 percent of Republicans said the country was headed in the right direction; now it’s just 44 percent.
The broader picture for the president is grim, too. Nearly 70 percent of Americans say Trump isn’t level-headed, and majorities say he’s not honest or a strong leader. More than 60 percent disapprove of how he is handling race relations, foreign policy and immigration, among other issues.
Overall, 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Trump is doing in office, including about one-third of Republicans.

Worse than "mad," it's "sad."

"justice"

"Justice" is an interesting and coveted word. But try looking it up.

I grew up thinking justice was more or less and equation: Do something wrong and there was an agreed-upon penalty after which the wrong would be considered righted. An eye for an eye according to current social standards. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

But people who get out of jail these days are penalized beyond the agreed-to penalty. In my neck of the woods, for example, sex offenders' names are transmitted into whatever neighborhoods they choose to inhabit after the jail term is complete. Sounds like double-jeopardy to me. And then there are other dangling modifiers (can they vote, drive, etc.) that seem to exceed the agreed-to and "just" penalty.

So justice may be an equation, but it's an equation on a sliding scale. Justice is not exactly blind.

Under sharia, I understand, a thief's hand shall be cut off. But do you penalize the thief who stole in order to feed his family in the same way you penalize a man who stole for selfish gain? I don't know.

I just wonder if "justice," a word so freely bandied about, has any nail-it-to-the-wall meaning ... or is it purely social Jell-O?

I don't know.