Time well spent organizing the home office today. I’m tired of the dining room table and I need the additional flat screen.
Threw out a lot paper. Too much paper. Sorted some books I forget I had. Old photos. Old tech.
Some dormant projects I might revive. I wish I knew what I was thinking when I started some of it. Barely makes sense now.
No real money found (about 42 cents). But I turned up some interesting artifacts.
Could really use the money.
Back to Michigan tomorrow after a brief sojourn home in St. Louis. Much has changed. A lot of people are missing. A few among the living. It’s strange how important it still is after all of these years to reconnect with familiar surroundings.
I wonder if the context will remain after those remaining have passed on or passed out of sight.
And I realize that it is presumptuous of me to assume that I’ll be the last one standing.
On Monday of this week I dropped my car off for service. It was time for regular maintenance – oil change and tire rotation – and my car’s blower motor was making noise. It rattled on the low setting and it sounded like a prop airplane on high. The dealership informed me that a new motor had to be ordered and that I’d have to wait until today, Tuesday, for repairs to be completed.
I received a call this morning that the root cause of the problem was that a rodent, likely a mouse, had built a nest in and around the blower. Fortunately, after a good cleaning, the original blower performed as quietly as always, which is fortunate, as I’d would have had to pay out of pocket for a replacement. Rodent nests are not covered under warranty. This comes about a month after I had to pay to my sewer line cleared, likely due to tree roots. And with the weather turning cold, we’re beset by earwigs … again.
Nature is invasive and assertive. It’s constantly trying to make us ill, grow into our space, nest where we don’t want it, bite us, sting us, flood us out, poison us, kill us. Nature wants us out of the way. Nature wants us dead so that it can feast on our rotting carcass. There’s always a virus, a spore, a rodent, a storm, a predator, an invasive species waiting to take advantage.
And it really doesn’t matter if we care, if we’re paying attention, who is in office or whether we’re getting along with each other. Nature is just waiting for us to slip up, wait too long, take it for granted.
You’d think we’d learned by now after years of fighting malaria and foot rot and bed bugs and fleas, mold and plague and floods. And earwigs.
But no, we continue to undercut one another, jostle for political position and power while all the while the rodents are moving in.
So I’m watching HBO’s Deadwood again for the umpteenth time. I’m a sucker for good dialogue and Deadwood has some of the best. Not only good scripting but some of the cleverest, and unexpected, word usage I’ve ever experienced, utilized in a Western no less.
Ian McShane is a gift as Swearengen. Ruthless, profane, complicated, and the most self aware and discerning of all the characters. He doesn’t commit sin. He inhabits it. But he doesn’t kid himself about it.
Besides McShane, Brad Dourif’s Doc Cochran is my next favorite character. Like Swearengen, Cochran is self aware, but he has limits on how far he’ll go. He’s a conscience of sorts to Swearengen. And while he isn’t particularly kind, he is the most humane character on the show.
Humanity seems to be in short supply these days. Self awareness has evaporated into the ether. Our leaders would rather cling to some modern form of Manifest Destiny rather than admit that they don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing. That they’ve steered into a dead end. And that it’s time to admit that we’ve made a grave electoral error.
I’m not particularly hopeful that this ship will right itself any time soon, if ever. No one seems to be willing to take any real risk in the effort.
Meanwhile I’m content to watch McShane and Dourif ply their trade. Nobody in Deadwood ever kids themselves.
Meeting new family can be challenging. What do you talk about? There is no shared history. And current events being what they are, no one is really in a hurry to start in on the news. The first black president has moved on to greener pastures and his successor is continually mired in a scandal a week while simultaneously inspiring America’s most racist impulses.
So you’re left with brief periods of small talk – the weather, traffic, the few friends you may have in common (which you really don’t) and then silences punctuated by sighing and staring off into the middle distance.
And then the meal starts. Tongues loosen, shirt sleeves roll up, collars unbutton and the stories flow. By the time the pots and pans are done, everyone is laughing and backslapping and trading phone numbers. Good food has that effect. Raises blood sugar and communal spirit. Puts people at ease. Sets everyone on a common path.
My great aunt had such a meal today with a branch of her family I know little to nothing about. And I’m still not certain of the connection. But who cares? We have now shared food and have hopefully started our own history.
“Personal attacks have no place in civil discourse” or so I was taught in high school by Mr. McCollister. He labeled it “Wallowing in the quagmire of ignorance.”
According to my grandfather, somewhere in scripture it says “… if you fall, don’t wallow.” His rejoinder was, “but sometimes wallowing just feels good.” I’ve found the highest expression of this philosophy in the blues.
I have yet to find the scripture he quoted but I did find this:
“Simpletons! How long will you wallow in ignorance? Cynics! How long will you feed your cynicism? Idiots! How long will you refuse to learn?” – Proverbs 1:22 (Message translation)
A less than ringing endorsement of our current level of public discourse. But there it is. Our most striking example being the very public twitter feud between our current sitting president and Senator Bob Corker. President Trump consistently degrades Corker with the appellation “liddle” and Corker famously compared Trumps Whitehouse to “an adult daycare center.”
If we’re honest about it, most of us don’t mind when someone we don’t like is personally attacked. We enjoy seeing our “enemies” brought low. TV talkshow hosts Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers (to name only a couple) do it regularly and they do it well. They make fun of Trump’s tan, Kelly Ann Conway’s hair, Sebastian Gorka’s beard. The humor is pointed and it’s usually quite clever and it seeks to bring low those who would set themselves over us. It makes powerful people look ridiculous.
But I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve wallowed long enough. Mr. Mac used to caution that slinging barbs at one another makes us “feel good” but does little to enlighten or illuminate discussion and it closes off dialogue.
Not that people like Trump, Conway, or Gorka would be likely to listen. And talk shows are not the proscribed venues for “civic discourse”.
But the rest of us need start listening to each other if we’re going to get anywhere.
Because even though I hate to admit it, as much as I love Colbert’s monologue and as much as I agree with Corker’s assessment, I have neighbors that believe that Donald Trump is telling the God’s truth.
… Romney… is he really the modern personification of Thurston Howell III or is he employing some bizarre campaign rope a dope? – originally posted here
Originally posted here: http://tmblr.co/ZG6b4yLCi76F
I get that many of the GOP/Libertarian stripe are all for personal responsibility and freedom. Hell, I am too.
But I can’t really get behind a party that’s just short of full bore nativistic, while ignoring the fact that many of their own are only 2nd or third generation “natives” (I won’t even go into the smear job foisted on the real natives). Whatsmore they seem to just blow by the fact that without “government intervention” a huge swath of the population would be denied freedoms they so dearly espouse.
Not that the loyal opposition has my undying fealty either. I’m still waiting for someone to make education a real priority. And both parties continue to be willing parties to the monyed classes. Originally posted here: http://snollygoster.tumblr.com/post/30870699593/a-very-short-political-manifesto
I turn 50 on December 29th.
Several months ago, it occurred to me that I should find some way to mark the occasion. But I was uninspired. The other day, a childhood friend gave herself a big blow out birthday party. Another is taking a trip early next year. Still another is launching a book of poetry in a about a week.
Alas I am broke and uninspired. And in no real mood for a party. Nothing to do with my age mind you. It’s just that my birthday falls right in the sweet spot between Christmas and New Years. In good times people are nearly broke this time of the year, full to the brim with commitments, and generally lurching to the end of the holiday season and into the new year. Adding another “thing” to the already burgeoning list just doesn’t make sense. We’re in pretty lean times right now. Attempting a big blow out party during times like this would be be an act of reckless extravagance.
So what to do?
A couple of weeks ago, I came up with the notion of “Fifty-Fifty”. Put simply I will attempt 2500 minutes of exercise overthe next 50 days. I’ve been looking for a way to accelerate my weight loss. I’m pretty fit now, or at least a lot more fit than I was a couple of years ago, but I’ve plateaued after losing roughly 20 lbs. So, in concert with changing my eating habits, I’m going to attempt to exercise 50 minutes a day, 7 days a week, for the next 7 weeks in hopes of jump starting my weight loss. I’m also hoping to build a more consistent habit of exercise. Right now I work out about 4 days a week. I’ve read recently that to lose weight, one must exercise at a moderate pace for an hour a day, 6 days a week or 360 minutes. My total will be 350 minutes. I’m not particularly worried about the missing 10 and for the sake of symmetry, I’ll keep it at 50. Besides 50-50 sounds better than 60-50.
My current regimen burns anywhere from 600 to 1400 calories an hour. I do not intend to maintain my that intensity for all my workouts The article I referred to suggested 450 calories as a target (exercising at a “moderate pace”). Depending on time available my “added” workouts may just entail walking on the treadmill (“at a brisk pace”) for 50 minutes. But I also look forward to coming up with some more creative ways to fill the time.
Today when I mentioned my impending half century of turns around the sun, a colleague remarked, “I never would have guessed you were that old.” Assuming he wasn’t blowing smoke, I’m hoping that my birthday challenge will help keep up the facade.
I’ll be tracking my progress, and generally whining, here. Feel free to follow along.
Snollygoster 