tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41231926607227200242024-03-13T20:30:02.510-07:00peregrinations with st. chadrecovering celtic orthodoxyDale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-67932200994231135302023-12-05T09:50:00.000-08:002023-12-05T09:50:31.993-08:00Seraphim Rose and the Church that Never Was <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPC7mZJzPtIeptpxBCk3W50UTycUsV8AAMdC7pT1gt-3EttoA6dEZB1PNytQa64L3ma_EdYSpuh7rN0LzFWSnXG5idQlI9n0T_sUyhNT134PVPxcKRSDTLIqXzta7QLWm5QaQCKuUdm0OnzVGgymCRDmyJwFdHrAZqzMXlGT0tufiCQD_nzrVu80k/s2992/20231204_151123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2992" data-original-width="2992" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPC7mZJzPtIeptpxBCk3W50UTycUsV8AAMdC7pT1gt-3EttoA6dEZB1PNytQa64L3ma_EdYSpuh7rN0LzFWSnXG5idQlI9n0T_sUyhNT134PVPxcKRSDTLIqXzta7QLWm5QaQCKuUdm0OnzVGgymCRDmyJwFdHrAZqzMXlGT0tufiCQD_nzrVu80k/w416-h416/20231204_151123.jpg" width="416" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []" dir="auto">Seraphim Rose and the Church that Never Was</p><p dir="auto"></p><p dir="auto">I have been re-reading Damascene's <em>Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works</em>, and I find it once again encouraging/pushing me towards a much more serious Christian practice. I had for a moment or two last night a vision of trying to rebuild Holy Britain--and did those feet +Our Lady of Glastonbury+Our Lady of Walsingham--in the contemporary Disunited States. I found what seemed to be a wonderful Church of St. Brendan on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. But it was a computer rendering.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqpwIhiiau61LxiK2NHVohA7_UaPArhjSgtutAeCGFT1XG2FJ5lY8V7f4H4lBmiwtgYsOoA0XDdmViyjW8e9wyw7PAosz_ny8sScUBlYKUfImBIJtzD9WR3W0Rd4J23GAIa4D9D3_cDpayBFnKJgTM55q_G4y7bNaNDKMQXlh0QMJ60PNSyW81An4t/s2560/Screenshot_20231204_163205_Chrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2560" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqpwIhiiau61LxiK2NHVohA7_UaPArhjSgtutAeCGFT1XG2FJ5lY8V7f4H4lBmiwtgYsOoA0XDdmViyjW8e9wyw7PAosz_ny8sScUBlYKUfImBIJtzD9WR3W0Rd4J23GAIa4D9D3_cDpayBFnKJgTM55q_G4y7bNaNDKMQXlh0QMJ60PNSyW81An4t/w382-h239/Screenshot_20231204_163205_Chrome.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><p dir="auto"><br /></p><p dir="auto"></p><p dir="auto">Which makes me wonder how much of Seraphim's work was about recreating a Russia that was if not computer-generated, largely memory-generated. I do indeed think that it existed, but whether that kind of Christianity is what might save North America, I'm not sure. I do love the feel of St. Herman's however, and there are many biographies of recent/contemporary saints in that tradition, and that living connection is what seems to be missing in Holy Britain. The closest I can think of at once is Michael Ramsey. Memory is probably a better guide than computer simulation.</p><p dir="auto"></p><p dir="auto">So. Here i sit, at my little flickering screen in a tin can on the edge of nowhere, with rain falling on the roof as I drink another cup of instant coffee and probably think of things much too high for me. I can't help but feel great remorse for a life spent erratically, a life with a scattered vision. Can I do more now than just say 'Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner'? That is of course what I must always say. But what might be the answer in my old age.</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-59692918825866054692023-11-04T07:15:00.000-07:002023-11-04T07:15:31.824-07:00Continuity and Change: Two Coronations<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfQjhsXpplwBtgMKNLA4w-PrPw3_EoHWdf57rf5mCUPjMHZCnNO5PSZvLMGcbel6AEqNZ-Kg6MIpr5ZLPUXeb0JG3czu6rm9jWS_9swR7Pqbzihm2vLgPUws1TPr27PtLWGgXcsYqMixYOLf2GR4A6wxUF5spFLjJFCY0BVvQw1oxEPiODA2YnUg/s960/IMG_0561.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfQjhsXpplwBtgMKNLA4w-PrPw3_EoHWdf57rf5mCUPjMHZCnNO5PSZvLMGcbel6AEqNZ-Kg6MIpr5ZLPUXeb0JG3czu6rm9jWS_9swR7Pqbzihm2vLgPUws1TPr27PtLWGgXcsYqMixYOLf2GR4A6wxUF5spFLjJFCY0BVvQw1oxEPiODA2YnUg/w428-h240/IMG_0561.JPG" width="428" /></a></div><br /> Early on a June morning when I was six years old, I watched a bit of history, although I did not begin to grasp all that was happening at that time. With a few hundred other children and adults, I sat in the auditorium of West School and watched the Coronation of the Queen of England by televison broadcast. If I remember correctly, there were two television sets, one towards each end of the stage, and I sat at the front of the left side. I don't know whether I knew what England was, or a Queen, but television was a new magic. The only one I had seen before belonged to my grandparents, and they treated it with a great deal of awe and ceremony, But their set showed no programs early in the morning, and the broadcasts it did receive, from about three in the afternoon until ten or ten thirty in the evening, were from New York via Memphis, not from London. I could hardly see the screen, and I'm not sure if I even heard any of the music. I have a vague memory that an Elgar march that had been played at my promotion ceremony a week or so before was also played for the Queen, but that might be some sort of Mandela effect.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnwnePgklj1ESpQPZVtX5-818SxJzzzF8O_6O0Km1ECm88fn6zf8AKHcOe1Z9jxmGNxfBwYdxyeIuytsSNVQZEKH52G0NWLA3X17BGTEgbo4LdPw-Wb8HlT8cVFIvLLWQNVWG_FoCocmO178A6wAd_ZMojPphn_gkCJJAdXi5-RsALmKLPGg1ZA/s2992/20230506_083235.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2992" data-original-width="2992" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnwnePgklj1ESpQPZVtX5-818SxJzzzF8O_6O0Km1ECm88fn6zf8AKHcOe1Z9jxmGNxfBwYdxyeIuytsSNVQZEKH52G0NWLA3X17BGTEgbo4LdPw-Wb8HlT8cVFIvLLWQNVWG_FoCocmO178A6wAd_ZMojPphn_gkCJJAdXi5-RsALmKLPGg1ZA/w388-h326/20230506_083235.jpg" width="388" /></a></div><br /><p>This morning, I slept until a comfortable hour, made coffee, and watched the Coronation of a King of England on a tablet computer on my desk. I did not get up at five, but just scrolled back to the beginning of the BBC broadcast. I had no trouble seeing. I could zoom in on details, and ask Google to identify the music playing. Such an experience, which I would not have imagined seventy years ago, is something we now can do anywhere at any time. </p><p>It has become commonplace to describe the many changes that have happened during the Second Elizabethan Era, so commonplace that I suspect a six-year-old watching the Coronation this morning might have found no magic in it at all. But I want to focus on the continuity of the Coronation, of the Monarchy, a continuity which in many ways was both illustrated and orchestrated by Elizabeth, and which will become increasingly hard to maintain during the reign of her son, who one must admit is pretty brave to keep the name of Charles. In our lust for the next new thing, for what we so blithely call 'real change', we often overlook the value of continuity. It is continuity which allows the changes of our lives to merely batter and confuse us rather than destroy us entirely.</p><p>Let me share with you my view of the current era. I suggest that we are still living in the long tail of World War I. To simplify the situation, consider that at the beginning of that War, there were three great empires whose heads were grandchildren of Queen Victoria.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_0RxodNUbsePYBTFQfHVJWFo3vXYD44JFFItiEN3X3SGZInKdOdpV43IRYGea5iosdfYhS5euZIX2wrlmw5oKHs4zZ_XawEzBNnl8Z3sAyGDurpWEJG_AHMOt7gmXrfJrdYriROENevF2ossf6VRZlANBImozOC3PHK8tOKwXadIeuaWgI8DIQ/s2560/Screenshot_20230506_141427_YouTube.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2560" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_0RxodNUbsePYBTFQfHVJWFo3vXYD44JFFItiEN3X3SGZInKdOdpV43IRYGea5iosdfYhS5euZIX2wrlmw5oKHs4zZ_XawEzBNnl8Z3sAyGDurpWEJG_AHMOt7gmXrfJrdYriROENevF2ossf6VRZlANBImozOC3PHK8tOKwXadIeuaWgI8DIQ/w412-h257/Screenshot_20230506_141427_YouTube.jpg" width="412" /></a></div><p>By the Armistice of that war--which was certainly not its end--the Czar of Russia was dead, the Kaiser of Germany was under garden arrest in Belgium, and only the King of England still had a head with a crown. I would further suggest that it is the odd, rather unplanned, usually rather messy, British Constitution which allowed that survival. I need hardly relate the various governmental atrocities which have followed in Russia and in Germany.</p><p>Shortly after the Second Act of the Great War, as the Empire seemed to be crumbling, a young woman became the Queen, and I and millions of other people who were young in 1953 watched her career as one of the few continuous acts of our lives. U. S. presidents came and went, the French put on their seasonal riots, Russia seemed to rise out of the ashes of the USSR to try to become an empire again, and Germany, well, at least the fat lady hasn't sung yet. Perhaps the most amazing development is that the British Empire has been the Commonwealth, to which the Queen was deeply devoted. Think for a moment what a rare way of viewing the world the Commonwealth is. It is an optimistic sort of realism that recognizes that we are all in this together, that our wealth, our health, is indeed common. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3lpPQmRTs_sIopVIULwln5CF9hn1m4IrSUrmrYAhPC8FRigSbbD4PJeeO9Q_fb782wfWUwDnjygj1Jp3hjVWngWP8YUeVS8ncxmP15RBe5Oq5w3pNpcAVrPwyCZFA2XIGoIR0QoqLvUfq0l4cGnWlDvbMoeOM0m4DXgKtJSYjePYwV4pMpTEfYQ/s465/4549.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="465" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3lpPQmRTs_sIopVIULwln5CF9hn1m4IrSUrmrYAhPC8FRigSbbD4PJeeO9Q_fb782wfWUwDnjygj1Jp3hjVWngWP8YUeVS8ncxmP15RBe5Oq5w3pNpcAVrPwyCZFA2XIGoIR0QoqLvUfq0l4cGnWlDvbMoeOM0m4DXgKtJSYjePYwV4pMpTEfYQ/w417-h250/4549.jpg" width="417" /></a></div><br /><p>Consider for amoment the array of flags lining the Mall upon which the marble statue of Victoria cast its stoney eyes as her great-great-grandson was crowned. The sun never sets on the British Commonwealth, and it is, in my humble estimation, an achievement far greater than any previous empire or secret treaty organization.</p><p>And yet, there are many who want to abolish the Crown. It's a new century, a new time, a new day. Well, of course it is. Every day is a new day, as they always have been. It is easy to fall into the gloom of Macbeth, and say that 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, /Creeps in this petty pace from dy to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time, /And all our yesterdays have lighted fools /The way to dusty death.' </p><p>And yet, among the mortal fools that so often strut upon the stage, it seems a better tale at least to strive for something more like Camelot, fleeting as that is. It is reported by the polls and the tabloids that the young are mostly the ones calling for the disolution of the monarchy. As an old man who was once young, perhaps my greatest wisdom is the recognition that what seemed to me wise as a youth was foolish, and that should I live long enough, what seems wise to me now will probably seem foolish. I am grateful that my parents and their generation, confused as they were by the maestrom of change in which they found themselves, tried to pass on some continuity to me and my generation, that they in a sometimes small way were serving the future. That even as they encouraged me in the freedom to explore the new, the changes, they also tried to provide some sort of rootedness in not just the time of the moment but in a continuis stream into which we are dropped, much as Joyce describes, a 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's,' so that we might enjoy the 'swerve of shore to bend of bay' so that it may bring us by a commodius vicius of recirculation back', if not to Howth Castle, at least to some familiar shore, one that perhaps we shall know for the first time.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeHeoAv3G3oE45eqsu4axEzvtjND2Cy21g0E0kqvivZ2ItJ9Jlvfbyuvm-25oleNU-8m45se9XY1CBamBUWj__ArAMqaYOO9bVokUNpD1kILxyVd_Z1cnz06Hb9RpJXCVoj6CWVnUsoTyionKM2SXWH55kcplg3gAtk4zIt34vekeivXNiDZ6P1Q/s2560/Screenshot_20230506_144211_YouTube.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2560" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeHeoAv3G3oE45eqsu4axEzvtjND2Cy21g0E0kqvivZ2ItJ9Jlvfbyuvm-25oleNU-8m45se9XY1CBamBUWj__ArAMqaYOO9bVokUNpD1kILxyVd_Z1cnz06Hb9RpJXCVoj6CWVnUsoTyionKM2SXWH55kcplg3gAtk4zIt34vekeivXNiDZ6P1Q/w417-h261/Screenshot_20230506_144211_YouTube.jpg" width="417" /></a></div><br /><p>So I was encouraged by the beginning of the second Coronation, when the King is challenged by a fourteen-year-old boy who says, more or less, what are you doing here, old man?, and the old man answers, I have come to serve you. Call me a cock-eyed optimist, and I certainly recognize that the ceremony today in Westminster Abbey was a carefully orchestrated advertisement for Himself, but there was a recognition of what continuity is for and why we need it more than we need change. Or perhaps it is that we need to struggle to maintain continuity, because change seems to be self-generating.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8BOlWtalyz1PgowhOdjB2ecaiqPcSflBwTjWaKH3VV4WNrtXl3sOuVSij46rXFlF3FiqF0KW3yR6Z2fRPt9YXf4w4bNGH0sPMwXKVKHNtvPF1vkyT54HZ1d4pwNx2EZIU87rEr0zjF_Zb5vsQTD13o9FxkcGne3UULAHx1Hfy70opJ3_7COItpA/s1240/king-charles_header2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="1240" height="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8BOlWtalyz1PgowhOdjB2ecaiqPcSflBwTjWaKH3VV4WNrtXl3sOuVSij46rXFlF3FiqF0KW3yR6Z2fRPt9YXf4w4bNGH0sPMwXKVKHNtvPF1vkyT54HZ1d4pwNx2EZIU87rEr0zjF_Zb5vsQTD13o9FxkcGne3UULAHx1Hfy70opJ3_7COItpA/w421-h324/king-charles_header2.jpg" width="421" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I mentioned Charle's bravery--or wisdom--in keeping the name Charles, because I tend first to think of Charles I. But of course there was also Charles II, who was not only restored to the throne but who also oversaw the beginning of the restoration of London after the Great Fire, during which he acted heroicly carrying buckets of water to fight the flames of destruction. A statue of Charles II overlooks the turning point of the Royal Procession between Palace and Abbey. <br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-84991043591305485162021-12-21T06:17:00.002-08:002021-12-21T06:18:01.125-08:00How Long, O Lord?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxt-SRUWRa1kZDYfTP_2tuSOxpb9kqIWaP3LrwlYCaZ4u9d8gFKA6Rafh-rU0IdIYY6BkgxekdTH5lSD9XiGGB-8UMl9ybX_7gVkqBnaWobh8lctKN7-g_bcXgzxnAD0371hgpdQYdsm7sDyfflmgl3NtS6r82_AyWXy3x--InofI15lr5n5DemQ=s1920" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxt-SRUWRa1kZDYfTP_2tuSOxpb9kqIWaP3LrwlYCaZ4u9d8gFKA6Rafh-rU0IdIYY6BkgxekdTH5lSD9XiGGB-8UMl9ybX_7gVkqBnaWobh8lctKN7-g_bcXgzxnAD0371hgpdQYdsm7sDyfflmgl3NtS6r82_AyWXy3x--InofI15lr5n5DemQ=w456-h257" width="456" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>It is very early in the morning of the shortest day of the year, and I am awake with my second cup of coffee. My nearest neighbors are a flock of assorted birds, and their assertive rooster woke me, and my moving activated my 'smart watch' which told me that it was nearly time for Legacy Icons to stream Morning Prayer, so I thought, why not? Television church always seems a bit odd to me, but it's an odd time and it has been another odd year.</p><p>So, I boil water and light a candle and hear psalms and troparia and a story of yet another virgin who wa martyred rather than let herself be defiled and a sermon about Elias and his prayers for drought and rain. I am still a little punch drunk from having watched what has become my favourite Christmas movie, Alfonso Cuarcon's adaptation of P. D. James' <i>Children of Men</i>. I had first watched the movie in 2007, when it was first released on DVD. Remember DVD;s. They were a miracle that arrived soon after the radio. I recommended it this year to a friend to watch as the perfect movie for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, but he thought he might have to work that night, so we watched it on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. When first I saw it, in bucolic Eureka Springs, the Seige of Seattle seemed like a fiction, and the Plague that had occupied the Earth by 2027 did, too. Now, not so much.</p><p>Morning Prayer hurries along, as is normal in Orthodox services, a practice I still find a bit odd. Is there really a great reward in heaven for him who can read Psalm Fifty the Fastest? And then I listen to a video of Olafur Arnalds' Morning Sessions II. Somehow I am shocked that Arnalds has become grey-headed. How is it possible? How long, O Lord, have I been enjoying his music, which is certainly as effective prayer as Elias' How is it possible that already fourteen years have passed since I first watched <i>Childreen of Men</i>? How isit possible that it is already another solstice morning, another Feast of St. Thomas, which only yesterday I celebated in the snows of Santa Fe. I t was the deep midwinter of 1991, and I was taken with all things Celtic, and so we said the ThomasMass outside, processing a deep trench in the snow around the altar of cold stone, claiming the record for the coldest mass ever celebrated intentionally in Santa Fe history, before breaking fast at Pasqual's. We of course prayed for peace. Now eveyone from that little congregation is grey-headed or lying under the snow in that church yard where we had processed..</p><p>Arnalds at the piano seems like a grown-up Schroeder and I think that every Christmas is a Charlie Brown Christmas and that the question is always How long O Lord? How long before we childen of men lean to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom? How long befoe we children of men might know the things which belong unto our peace? Still, it seems, they are hid from our eyes. How long, O Lord? How long?</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-35640701322654162542021-12-11T14:38:00.000-08:002021-12-11T14:38:03.106-08:00On Being a Whited Sepulchre<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-je-cxXLyBdq_aQYteLSzwvRsBU7rL_k_4k2M2BkOx1RjTt2Gncy_1Y-e5vbb015RiTG95rhFawu7xrohsHD00c7Hz5FXNDtwmJIfAjvvpWF5ntKwryhzgDlFLyynyT9N3EFvdMuECvqMpwy7ezyBIoriaoguXRJ1u21KaOb97I8cI4734gPYuA=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="431" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-je-cxXLyBdq_aQYteLSzwvRsBU7rL_k_4k2M2BkOx1RjTt2Gncy_1Y-e5vbb015RiTG95rhFawu7xrohsHD00c7Hz5FXNDtwmJIfAjvvpWF5ntKwryhzgDlFLyynyT9N3EFvdMuECvqMpwy7ezyBIoriaoguXRJ1u21KaOb97I8cI4734gPYuA=w323-h431" width="323" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /> December has arrived again, and with the making of lists of biggest hits of the year. Certainly the thing that hit me the hardest in 2021 was the corona virus. In March I did not expect to live to December. I didn't expect to live to April. In April, I was still feeling pretty uncetain about my suvival, and it was the end of May before I was convinced that my survival might be a good thing.<p></p><p>One of the frequently asked questions on Facebook and such is, if this were the last day of yur life, what would you do? I hardly ever consider that question seriusly, but just think that I would go on doing what I usually do. I am, not unhappy. I am seldom ever even grumpy--although there wass that one afternoon last week . . . .</p><p>But over the months since March that I have come to consider bonus months of a sort, I have begun to consider that question more seriously. And I realized that I had become a sort of whited sepulchre. For those of you dear readers who aren't familiar with the image, it is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, where Jesus says:</p><p>Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulches,which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within fullof med men's bones, and of all uncleanness.'</p><p>Now, I ain't claiming that I appeared beautiful ooutward ot other people who saw me, but I was pretty happy with my life when I looked at it. Indeed, I was practiving all of what in traditional morality were considered the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Not so noticeably that I considered myself a grievious sinner, mind you. I wasn't as [choose a sin] as someone I knew. Besides, these attributes which were once considered sinful--that is, damaging to our personnages, to our souls, have become in contemporary society virtues.</p><p>Part of my wake-up call, so to speak, was the attitude my friends had towards my illnesses. I sawy illnesses because the United States had just gone through an election, and I voted against the party most of my good liberal friends thought would be the salvation of the country. And they spared few opportunities to tell me that they thought I must be crazy--is this gaslighting?--because I had erred from the true faith. Well, the party of light won, and nothing they have done has made me wish that I had voted for them. Rather, they have just reminded me of the implications of the name Lufifer. My regret is that I voted at all. I regret that I got distracted from working on my own thoughts and actions and lgave energy to what is basically a cock fight or a pit dog fight Then during the months that I was so ill from the virus, those same friends who were so anxious to convince me that I was mentally ill with wrongthink almost never checked to see how I was doing in my fight with the virus.</p><p>In the long run, however, I consider having had a fight with the virus to have been a blessing, because it reminded me of what St. Paul had said about our real fight:</p><p>'we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.'</p><p>We all will die. If I had died in March, the world would still sing the carols of the Adventt and Christmas seasons, stay up and drink too much on New Year's Eve, complain about the cold and slush of February and hardly notice next March that I was no longer posting cat photos on Instagram or writing occasional contrary blog posts. But . . . .(Am I making a New Year's resolution? I don/t make those. But this is a sort of Advent resolution, and much of the western Church considers Advent the start of a new year, so . . . .) But I hope during the months remaining to me to pay mor atttention to how I live, to recover the order of my life that I once followed, an order or attention and prayer that was designed to keep me connected to the earth and to the seasons, to my fellow human beings and to the other creatures with whom we share this earth, and to the One who created all of us, all creatures great and small and all creatures, as Monte Pythom reminded us, </p><p>'all , things dull and ugl, all things small ad squat, All things rude and nasty . . .'</p><p>We are all in this together, and I am convinced that the tradition of the Orthodox Church is correct, that what one of us does affects us all/ There my be victimless political crimes, but there are no victimless sins. And so, as is the practice at Vespers in the Orthodox Church, I ask you, my brothers ad sisters, to forgive me, for I have sinned.</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-64617831821577440302021-11-28T13:35:00.001-08:002021-11-28T13:35:23.635-08:00Always I Begin Again, Being a Slow Learner<p><br /> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6aR1sM7aZ0g/YaPk4sBidEI/AAAAAAADoRQ/E5RghNlF1cU4sWqr2EwoBObSsHxEPeMSACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20211128_121527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="2048" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6aR1sM7aZ0g/YaPk4sBidEI/AAAAAAADoRQ/E5RghNlF1cU4sWqr2EwoBObSsHxEPeMSACLcBGAsYHQ/w464-h261/20211128_121527.jpg" width="464" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My home town had a second rate college, which brought a lot of folks who might otherwise never show up in such a place but who couldn't quite manage a job in the ivy leagues. Such folks often seemed like 'characters' to us 'normal' folk. They tended to do things like drive Volvos and entertain strangers, and the town's gossip was juiced with stories of their activities. One of the characters was the wife of a professor from Louisiana, up from the shores of Lake Ponchetrain to the hills of Crowley's Ridge. I remember her name as having been Mylie, but that might be wrong. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One day Mylie heard a knock at her door and opened it to find two nicely dressed women whom she had never seen befoe. 'Oh', she said. 'Do come in. I've just baked some cookies and made a pot of coffee, and I'd love to share them'. The women came in, and it is reported that the conversation centered at first around cookie recipes and then wandered to other topics, before Mylie remembered her manners. 'Oh my', she said. 'I've quite forgotten to ask you why you're here'. 'Well, we've come to ask if you're a Christian.' 'Oh my. Of course not. That would be much too hard, but I'd love to meet a Christian. I've never known one. Have you?'</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Or, as Chesterton said, 'Christianity has not been tried and found lacking. It has been tried and found difficult'. I'm writing on the First Sunday in Advent, when the traditional epistle reading admonishes us to 'walk honestly, as in the dyay, . . . not in chambering and wantonness, . . . But put . . . on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.' I am enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to gentle Icelandic piano music as I write, fulfilling some of my minor lusts of the flesh. I'd best not recount my stories of chambering mentioned earlier in the epistle. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now, most of the time I make no claims to be a Christian nor do I aspire to be one. I have had episodes of such desires and claims, but they seem much too pretentious in the long run. I have spent some time as a fairly serious hermit, and it was actually a very pleasant life, but one that got swallowed up somehow in my desire to understand the world around me. I was distracted not by drunkenness or chambering but by quantum physics and Google. Nor do I find what calls itself 'the church' to be much help. I mean, these days putting up a sign seems to make people a church, with all the attendant tax adantages thereof. Only the strictest orthodox Christians seem to have a real claim on having 'out on Christ'. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And yet, each Advent I back slide. It's the music, mostly. Each Advent I think I won't but I do listen to the music of English choirs singing the antiphons and hymns of the season, and I listen to English voices reading the ringing passages of Isaiah, which were I to quote on Facebook might get me banned for not following community standards, and I am a kid again, coming out of the west front of the church on Christmas Eve, having heard the song of the angels and now finding tthe deep mid-winter. I want to move to Durham and live in a cave and visit the shrine of St. Cuthbert. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Do I 'believe in one God, the father, the almighty, &tc.'? Well, of course not. I mean, why would the creator of the stars of night bother with one specific tribe of wandering Aramaens and one maiden in a small town on the edge of the empire. Why did some other gods reveal themselves to the wanderers of Australia? It makes no sense. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And, of course I do. Because it's a good story, because one needs a context from which to consider events, because even though I was raised in a very watered-down part of the tradition of the western church, those bits of tradition would serve me as herms on a path to try to find the older and deeper traditions of the church, leading me (finally?--I'm not dead yet) to orthodoxy as much as one can find it these days. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Because the image of the king, the sovereign, in today's Gospel is much more appealing than czars and presidents or congressses, all of whom seem to want to fleece their flock rather than to abide with them in the fields. Because in today's gospel 'thy King cometh unto thee, meek' but then 'went into the temple of God, and cast out all of them that sold and bought in the temple'. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Because I love the story of St. Seraphim and the bear, and living out here in the pretend woods I like to think I might have a similar life. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PxrZBdGRAc8/YaPxgkCAwoI/AAAAAAADoRg/ztw0Ja65jugyM8DPYwS1mPF715sJl6JTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s960/St%2BSeraphim%2Bof%2BSarov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="960" height="330" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PxrZBdGRAc8/YaPxgkCAwoI/AAAAAAADoRg/ztw0Ja65jugyM8DPYwS1mPF715sJl6JTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w399-h330/St%2BSeraphim%2Bof%2BSarov.jpg" width="399" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Because I like to think that if the cousins George and Nicholas had been kings of the sort in today's Gospel, they would not have sent their soldiers into the fields of Flanders to slay one another, although of course I don't know of any king except in today's story who wouldn't act like those most christian cousins. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Of course I will get over it. I will make the mistake of hearing some contemporary sermon in which the highly-paid priest tries to remake Christianity in the image of his own political party. I will see how much more excited good christians are by the Super Bowl than by the Incarnation. I will then spend the next eleven months again as a cynic. Cynicism is after all easily confirmed by the data. But for a month, it will once again be my 'care and delight to prepare [myself] tp hear again the message of the angesls; in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger.'</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AHs1_G5_0qE/YaP0T5tpxyI/AAAAAAADoRo/1L_JbUdqZkEZXxnnUgd5h5TmTBNgG2m8gCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/light%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bincarnation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="512" height="278" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AHs1_G5_0qE/YaP0T5tpxyI/AAAAAAADoRo/1L_JbUdqZkEZXxnnUgd5h5TmTBNgG2m8gCLcBGAsYHQ/w407-h278/light%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bincarnation.jpg" width="407" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-76770573366899181182021-07-22T13:01:00.000-07:002021-07-22T13:01:35.750-07:00The Things We Lost<p><br /> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ke1ZGd83FE8/YPnHRZqmwMI/AAAAAAADVBU/qcdvxjyVlOwqsjyY99tj_wC7AG-8lUl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1454/hydra_001_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="967" data-original-width="1454" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ke1ZGd83FE8/YPnHRZqmwMI/AAAAAAADVBU/qcdvxjyVlOwqsjyY99tj_wC7AG-8lUl0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/hydra_001_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Despite having followed all the CDC guidelines, and hardly ever interacting with any other human beings, I had the distinct experience of the Virus. I lost f March. April was a time of recovery so slow I wasn't completely convinced that it was recovery. May was the first month when I began to feel happy that I had survived instead of wondering whether it would have been more pleasant to have died. And even now, five months later, I am just recovering something like my pre-plague stamina, I am still suffering from a pretty serious bout of Deep Vein Thrombosis, a condition I had avoided for nearly two years, and which I now wonder will be my new normal.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I know therefore from personal experience that the virus is not a hoax.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But. I am writing this essay outside of a coffee shop that I once would visit nearly every morning,. Now it is still closed for inside seating. At the beginning of the plague year, I continued to come every morning because i wanted to support the business. It's owned by a young family with two children, and the place has what I suppose most succcincttly can be called a good vibe. The owners don'tt know when that will change. They can't find staff for more service. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The coffee shop is at least still open. Many shops in my little are gone. No more bagels with the picnic tables by the round-about with the view of the port and the mountains. The bagel shop was one of the first to go.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I am not a bit follower of conspiracy theories, and yet . . . . It was Barach Obama's buddy Rahm Emanuel who said that no good crisis should be wasted. And there were calls from such folk as Klaus Schwab who hoped the pandemic might be an opportunity for a reset. And it is yet to be seen whether the United States and other governments who have offered to be the 'saviors' during the crisis will be able to pay for their help. Another round of 'free money' is going out to families with children. I can't help but wonder what country those children will live in as adults.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now, full disclosure of my latest status a a pariah: I have not been vaccinated. I don't know whether having had the virus has given me as much immunity as would result from the jab. And I can't find any consistent data for the likely effect of the vaccine on my DVT. I feel that there was so much disinformation from 'experts' during the early days of the plague year that I no longer am willing to believe anything they say. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The virus probably cost Trump the election. People made fun of him for saying things that he admitted were just guesses, or something he had heard. It certainly didn't seem to me that such statements were very good actions for a head of state. But the same people who made fun of Trump clung to the statements of the 'experts' who were also just guessing, but without the honesty to say so. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have often, during the plague year, thought of the Bastille song, The Things We Lost in the Fire. I have no idea what the results would have been if the 'officials' had told people not to panic, bu to go on as much as possible with business as usual. But somehow I doubt that the results would have been worse than they are now. I suspect the economy will recover sooner than will trust in experts.</div><p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-30990476593326099192021-07-09T13:48:00.001-07:002021-07-09T13:50:39.381-07:00What an Odd Thing Is a Life<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJUwk6AlQ-c/YOik_sA--KI/AAAAAAADSlk/qW5-ZuO1NmYyOyQ44ALsHk5Az5VkhH7fgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/o.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="278" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJUwk6AlQ-c/YOik_sA--KI/AAAAAAADSlk/qW5-ZuO1NmYyOyQ44ALsHk5Az5VkhH7fgCLcBGAsYHQ/w371-h278/o.jpg" width="371" /></a></div><br /><div>Today would have been my mother's 97th birthday, so today seems a good time to think about her. Of course, the memory is an odd faculty, and I can never be sure what is real and what is memorex. Besides, and this is one of the odder things about my memories of her, we had very few conversations from the time I started to school until she was a little younger than I am now. She was in failing health and I moved back in with her to try to take care of her. I say try, because I could see no reason she shouldn't be enjoying life and she was looking for some reason to die. </div><div><br /></div><div> For about a five year period, I would go back to Jonesboro to find her not eating, and I would start cooking for her and trying to take her places, but she would say that she had some sort of deadly disease, and she wasn't afraid to die, and that she didn't want the treatments. She would eat less and less until she really did feel sick, and then she would decide that maybe she should get some treatment. So, we would go to the doctor, who would say there was nothing wrong with her except that she was starving herself. And she would start eating again, and feeling better, and start going out. And she would tell me there was no reason for me to be there, and kick me out. So I would go about my life, my now rather segmented life, which mostly consisted of kayaking explorations, until I got a phone call from either her or my brother asking me to return. (I bought my first cell phone so I would be available on more or less 24 hour call.) I think what happened is called rinse and repeat.</div><div><br /></div><div>In retrospect, I think she would have been happier had I just left her to starve the first time But during those period when I was saying 'just one more bite', I learned for the first time really about her early life. It was a much more impoverished life than I had ever imagined. One easily forgets how recently electricity and indoor plumbing had come to rural Arkansas, or even to some of the towns. It made sense of mother's delight in keeping the temperature at about 80 in the winter, when she wore summer dresses, and around 55 in the summer, when she piled on sweaters. And why washing her children was almost a fetish. She had grown up with no cooling, and wood stove for heat and cooking in the the kitchen, and baths in a tub in the back yard or the porch.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was very romantic person, and also a sort of fatalist. She believed that each person had one true love. For her, that person had been my father, who was two years younger than she but who had been accelerated in school. He had a car when he was a teenager, even though it was a model T Ford, and he had seen her when she and her family first moved to Jonesboro. He told his friend was was with him in the car as they drove past mother's house with outdoor plumbing that she was the girl he would marry. And he did, in the midst of World War II. He was sent to the Pacific, where he probably would have been killed during the invasion of Japan since he operated some sort of top-secret radio/radar apparatus that would direct landing ships, but the bomb saved him. He returned to San Diego, where my mother was waiting for him in a boarding house full of navy wives, and where I was conceived in December of 1945.</div><div><br /></div><div>As far as I know, her (their) marriage was pretty near perfect. I never heard them argue, although she would get angry over his flying and pout for a few days. I could hear their passionate making up through the air conditioning vents. She found her dream house, with total climate control and a steady stream of ever-changing decor, he started a successful business, they had three sons, &tc. Then my father managed to crash his airplane and kill himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then began a very difficult time in her life, although I hardly knew of it. She was having much more trouble with number two son, my brother who was four and a half years younger than I, and who was very disturbed by our father's death. But she never really spoke about it, and I was off at school, thinking about my own imagined future as whatever it was I was going to be if the Vietnam War hand't entered the mix.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oddly enough, since my mother didn't want to let anyone think that my brother was mentally ill, or perhaps because she didn't, she took a job after my youngest brother was out of the house and married off, as a recreational director at a mental health hospital. There, her co-workers set her up with one of the staff, a man younger than she from Paragould, the town where she had been born. There was some sort of party, and they arranged that mother and Alex would end up alone at the end of the night. Not much later, they were married. Alex was a much less interesting person than my father, with no hobbies that took him away on hunting trips or into the air. It was a pretty placid affair, one that mother enjoyed after some rather tumultuous years with my brother and his problems. Then Alex died. </div><div><br /></div><div>One of the reasons she had married him, she would tell me later, was that she was sure he would outlive her. She didn't want to be widowed again. When he died, she kept a photo of him beside her bed for just a few days, and then replaced it with one of my father. She had divorced Alex, she told me, because he had died on her.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the years that I was basically prolonging her death, I kept trying to find things that would amuse her. Glenn Miller and Andrews Sisters recordings, for instance. (She wore her hair in an Andrews Sisters style nearly until her death.) A video player and Mickey Rooney and James Stewart movies. And I bought a laptop and a subscription to Arkansas Net. She was a little bit curious about the laptop. I tried to explain the growing wonders of the world wide web to her, encouraging her to explore the world beyond her bedroom and Lazyboy. Could she see the Officers Club in San Diego, she asked. The young Google brought up photos of a newly-restored San Diego Naval Station Officers' Club. Yes, she said. That's it. She remembered being surprised that Cokes cost twenty-five cents. What else would she like to see? Nothing. That's enough. That't what it was like.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mother never quite forgave me for not being a daughter, a status she had expected for her second child. She had been very devoted to her mother and wanted a daughter who would have the same devotion to her. She seemed a bit embarrassed that her son was shopping and cooking for her. Eventually she hired the daughter of a friend to do those chores, and she would even occasionally go to the store with her. But she was putting the meals, uneaten, in the garbage. We never quite noticed how odd it was that she always took out the garbage herself, given her usual difficulties with such tasks. We should have seen the clue.</div><div><br /></div><div>Each bout of starving herself made her weaker, and eventually she moved into a nursing home, the only one she trusted, where she had for a while been on he staff. Sometimes she thought she was still working and would start to run the charts and prepare meds. One morning in February of 2003, she was in the hospital from a fairly minor procedure and the nurse brought her breakfast. I don't think I will eat again, she said, and with those last words, turned towards the wall and died.</div>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-23789099127242403572021-06-04T11:07:00.001-07:002021-06-04T19:12:19.843-07:00Life on the Web<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mbN_Mz_CBHw/YLpX5CUJUJI/AAAAAAADNI8/wR9TYi30I4MyWKi1dhGsTwjfLv8i4C8WACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/littlecritter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1931" data-original-width="2048" height="391" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mbN_Mz_CBHw/YLpX5CUJUJI/AAAAAAADNI8/wR9TYi30I4MyWKi1dhGsTwjfLv8i4C8WACLcBGAsYHQ/w414-h391/littlecritter.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A few moments ago, I looked up from my computer screen to see a little, nearly transparent spider hanging on a bit of web in my window. It had been a rather average morning in my little tin can I pretend is a space pirate ship, the Arcadia.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nx5dsmRnhvg/YLpYaIPb1_I/AAAAAAADNJI/xTI0Snbwp1MWkzARNFyjYDoKJAKUTAsPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/img_2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="1024" height="220" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nx5dsmRnhvg/YLpYaIPb1_I/AAAAAAADNJI/xTI0Snbwp1MWkzARNFyjYDoKJAKUTAsPgCLcBGAsYHQ/w435-h220/img_2.jpg" width="435" /></a></div><p>While still in bed, I had reached across to my bedside table and wakened a tablet to read the blog of a friend who teaches history in North Carolina and who has similar interests to mine, but who also has more discipline, since he blogs every day. Often I find them a nice way to get my brain and body adjusted from what may be dreaming to what may be the real world. Then I opened GMail to see if the USPS had made any progress on delivering an EBay order which they have been holding hostage for more than two weeks. It was beginning its sixth day in Chicago.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hCUwqiwEzk0/YLpalEQRaHI/AAAAAAADNJw/ccI6YAbwlWwLnDULobHT2Xg8CyxeCiMVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/20210604_094824-COLLAGE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hCUwqiwEzk0/YLpalEQRaHI/AAAAAAADNJw/ccI6YAbwlWwLnDULobHT2Xg8CyxeCiMVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20210604_094824-COLLAGE.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p>I then asked my Google Home Hub, which I call Toshiro because that's the name of the space pirate Harlock's sidekick, and who is the literal brains of the Arcadia, to play some music while I made coffee and poured a bowl of raisin bran flakes.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5TQ-YQHfGc/YLpb7I84kiI/AAAAAAADNKM/6Vqj8OuPo-UwiOToe6z1jK_7SVkOiKQdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20210604_095427_HDR%257E2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5TQ-YQHfGc/YLpb7I84kiI/AAAAAAADNKM/6Vqj8OuPo-UwiOToe6z1jK_7SVkOiKQdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20210604_095427_HDR%257E2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>But while I ate my cornflakes, I turned again to my tablet to watch videos about architecture, specifically spaces nearly as small as my tin can.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EdKP6MUQL6Y/YLpdePlv8jI/AAAAAAADNLA/lAPx6Sgf0aUjysA0tHewiGw02d17X36IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.05.48.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EdKP6MUQL6Y/YLpdePlv8jI/AAAAAAADNLA/lAPx6Sgf0aUjysA0tHewiGw02d17X36IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.05.48.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>As I chewed and sipped, my mind wandered from the images of a kit house in Sussex to my next YouTube video. The missing package is schedule to be the star of next Tuesday's release. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LxjXykRRinE/YLpebd_dMYI/AAAAAAADNLU/ma0_RlHShI80dF0tO5hIbKkFOXzQpVDZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.07.21.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LxjXykRRinE/YLpebd_dMYI/AAAAAAADNLU/ma0_RlHShI80dF0tO5hIbKkFOXzQpVDZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.07.21.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Having completed my potentially messy activities, I reconnected the keyboard to my tablet to write my morning journal entry. As always, I looked through my recently downloaded or photographed images to see what I might want to include in today's journal entry, and it was then I realized where I was, where I am.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TT8lMzqi1qo/YLpfUZ8dKUI/AAAAAAADNLo/1MpA-4fHmygKA5D2U7lYDcgYNF6lTsbQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.12.42.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TT8lMzqi1qo/YLpfUZ8dKUI/AAAAAAADNLo/1MpA-4fHmygKA5D2U7lYDcgYNF6lTsbQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-04%2B10.12.42.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I am, like the spider, suspended in a web, the web of noosphere, a concept made famous mostly by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a vision of the future that has become my present.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TmiyHqpyPX0/YLpldRMi0sI/AAAAAAADNMk/8KKWfRAbZiQZ5NHJ47zZSoSLGkCvsP_NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1433/3-spheres_new.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1433" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TmiyHqpyPX0/YLpldRMi0sI/AAAAAAADNMk/8KKWfRAbZiQZ5NHJ47zZSoSLGkCvsP_NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/3-spheres_new.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p> Looking back in my journals from four years ago, I found myself moving from Port Townsend, where the tin can is settled in the cedars and firs, to the Ozarks, where I would be surrounded by maples and loblolly pines. (I am going to post this photo of my next door neighbors when I lived in Eureka Springs because I like the sound of loblolly pines so much:)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DzQfOAWggow/YLpiOgcPs2I/AAAAAAADNME/Z6KMAyUKYM8JqKymUoZmpVT_ImCmqikrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Eureka-Springs-Cabins-at-Tall-Pines-Inn-9-1200x600.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1200" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DzQfOAWggow/YLpiOgcPs2I/AAAAAAADNME/Z6KMAyUKYM8JqKymUoZmpVT_ImCmqikrQCLcBGAsYHQ/w433-h216/Eureka-Springs-Cabins-at-Tall-Pines-Inn-9-1200x600.jpg" width="433" /></a></div><br /><p>What happened, that I am back in a tin can amongst the firs and ferns?</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-01eQ_Vd3ubY/YLpjYHoCktI/AAAAAAADNMY/FYu-W9th5BwjaDIKsh6SSjcVyeXVkjM_wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20210524_171628_HDR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="340" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-01eQ_Vd3ubY/YLpjYHoCktI/AAAAAAADNMY/FYu-W9th5BwjaDIKsh6SSjcVyeXVkjM_wCLcBGAsYHQ/w255-h340/20210524_171628_HDR.jpg" width="255" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Well, several things, of course. I lived for about eight weeks in a beautiful yellow tent that I called the Versailles, under a maple tree, in the back yard of some friends in Fayetteville while I looked for the perfect place to resettle.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzqmZoEBb-ica4owq_rj3XvXvOLVYl7-BWflC4CJf1gQ23pbVN8oGZkw10YaerSzvWlMyq7nf_s3TQJYd6yEQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><p>The tent had a fan, and lots of windows, but it was just too damn hot for a fat old man who rides a bicycle. I took a bus to a train, and the train to a ferry, and I came back to Port Townsend, where it was cool. But the real reason, I suspect, is that I had subconsciously realized that I lived more on the world wide web, as a minor ganglion in the nervous system of he noosphere, than I did in either Arkansas or Washington. Before climbing out of bed, I received and reacted to information from another human in North Carolina, and traded information with another human in Spain and one in Texas. </p><p>The noosphere is actually, if T de C is at all correct, a really new deal, although it is just also just a continuation of the sort of the evolution of how data is organized that has gone on since the big bang of the creation of universe. It is easy to notice the glitches, fake news on Facebook and shit-posting on Twitter, for instance, without noticing how huge the change that is taking place will be and has already been. To take those glitches as representing the noosphere as a whole is like condemning the biosphere if one stubs one's toe on a tree route.</p><p>I am a fat old man, who has no or at least few illusions about the innate goodness of us humans, but who is nevertheless optimistic, at least about the possibilities. I am acutely aware of how different my 'golden years' are from those of my grandparents, but I am also acutely aware of how much that difference is still unevenly distributed, as William Gibson noted. Along the way to writing this rather lengthy and rambly blog post, I found this <a href="http://humanenergy.io/projects/what-is-the-noosphere/">essay</a> that I thought might be worth sharing. Among other things, the authors show us how far we still have to go before Teilhard's vision is realized. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying having lived long enough to have at least a glimpse of it. My router takes me places, and brings places to me, that trains, planes, and automobiles can't.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-we_EwZggIdM/YLprrr_LnKI/AAAAAAADNNE/lbYdkwPWmewKzOrIADiv6-PX_F3r1Sm7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20210604_105708.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-we_EwZggIdM/YLprrr_LnKI/AAAAAAADNNE/lbYdkwPWmewKzOrIADiv6-PX_F3r1Sm7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20210604_105708.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-23834783815272613012021-05-21T09:49:00.004-07:002021-05-21T16:06:07.905-07:00Everyone Needs a Hobby, I Guess.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pzVsui58v2g/YKfcv6XsuzI/AAAAAAADLvU/a6CWYeJ3wtU0Jv1MUoORZaA44w1Gv2ePQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-05-21%2B09.13.31.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pzVsui58v2g/YKfcv6XsuzI/AAAAAAADLvU/a6CWYeJ3wtU0Jv1MUoORZaA44w1Gv2ePQCLcBGAsYHQ/w426-h266/Screenshot%2B2021-05-21%2B09.13.31.png" width="426" /></a></div><br /> For a while I had a YouTube channel called FOM+T (Fat Old Man Plus Tech), which I enjoyed doing and which, after maybe two years, had nearly 400 subscribers. I had posted a few videos to YouTube over the years randomly, but I thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts on the contemporary world, a world I think was pretty well described sixty years or more ago by Teilhard de Chardin, Alvin Toffler, and Marshall McLuhan. So, encouraged by a couple of friends, I bought a cheap tripod to hold my phone and started a new adventure. What I had to say about the modern world, that the modern world is pretty much the same as it's ever been except that we're on a time line with an exponential curve, and that can be disconcerting, really didn't take too many videos, and I started delving into the popular genre of unboxing and review videos. Now, I like a good bit of kit,<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DaHZz657gOE/YKffGWcnE7I/AAAAAAADLvo/3_x5fMCieAk6_mwyP-2iegZfA0aByVCTACLcBGAsYHQ/s750/nerds.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="563" height="375" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DaHZz657gOE/YKffGWcnE7I/AAAAAAADLvo/3_x5fMCieAk6_mwyP-2iegZfA0aByVCTACLcBGAsYHQ/w281-h375/nerds.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br /><p>so it was convenient to have an excuse to buy some of the big and small new things and to share my thoughts and feelings on camera. It was a pretty laid-back channel, with coffee and the occasional cigarette disrupting the seriousness of it all.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ffd6OXjqOeQ/YKffs5OOWNI/AAAAAAADLv4/yk-6xTWjPuUT-pUI4dcJvkQIktS80FSlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1184/Screenshot%2B2020-03-02%2Bat%2B16.24.16.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="1184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ffd6OXjqOeQ/YKffs5OOWNI/AAAAAAADLv4/yk-6xTWjPuUT-pUI4dcJvkQIktS80FSlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2020-03-02%2Bat%2B16.24.16.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Then came my adventure with the virulent virus, and I spent hours lying in bed thinking I was thinking although mostly I was delirious. When I read my emails or journal entries from those days and nights, I can't recognize what I was writing as English. But I thought I was re-evaluating the things in my life, and I filled a big box with stuff that no longer served me. For the most part I was right about those things, although the friend who was taking the stuff to the free store pulled a few things out that she knew I would regret losing, and she was right. I won't miss the boots that were too small.</p><p>One of the things I thought I would quit was my YouTube channel. After all that time, I still didn't have even a thousand subscribers. I had made only about $5 with the Amazon Affiliate Program, and I thought that if I quit YouTube I would have more time to read and write and draw or something, to do things that were more 'productive'. So I deleted the Fat Old Man and his Tech unboxings.</p><p>Except, I didn't find the things I did instead to be more productive. I made a rather desultory blog about some of the folks I have known, a project that is a result of the memories I had while I was under the spell of the virus. I have drawn a bit more. About reading, I guess McLuhan was right. I do still read, but I spend more time watching videos of authors discussing their ideas, a medium in which I can see their faces and hear their thoughts directly. And, I found that my ponderings as I prepared for a video were some of my most productive times, even if no video resulted.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--z9JAdKdEwM/YKfiBQ7tmAI/AAAAAAADLwE/CDcH4JRNmMk4VxWBKjbnDZG4Cs1coEKYACLcBGAsYHQ/s1364/IMG_0728.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1364" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--z9JAdKdEwM/YKfiBQ7tmAI/AAAAAAADLwE/CDcH4JRNmMk4VxWBKjbnDZG4Cs1coEKYACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_0728.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>So, I have forgiven myself for not being a wonderfully serious and productive fat old man and accepted that is alright to make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1BvArqZWYSIZEETfdlnevQ">videos</a>t that are less than Fellini quality if I enjoy it as a hobby. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B_nXMx6t9MA/YKfjh_SBadI/AAAAAAADLwM/jpH2-o_fgW8f7Nom7NhpuE7YRmncr65ZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-05-21%2B08.53.20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B_nXMx6t9MA/YKfjh_SBadI/AAAAAAADLwM/jpH2-o_fgW8f7Nom7NhpuE7YRmncr65ZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-05-21%2B08.53.20.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p> I have a friend who makes furniture from discarded lumber as a hobby. His hobby is more useful than mine, I suspect, but his takes up more room, and I live in a tin can. I like to pretend it's a space pirate ship. Waking and sleeping delusions get confused in my old mind. So what? You're only old once.</p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-43423599409854473172021-05-16T11:19:00.000-07:002021-05-16T11:19:03.470-07:00Crazy Irish Monks<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lLK9Yz12s0A/YKFYElIdrEI/AAAAAAADKv8/-Quux9AnAxU1mbCc_LSJcm877KlaZKJYQCLcBGAsYHQ/s666/scs-brendanus-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="666" height="329" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lLK9Yz12s0A/YKFYElIdrEI/AAAAAAADKv8/-Quux9AnAxU1mbCc_LSJcm877KlaZKJYQCLcBGAsYHQ/w447-h329/scs-brendanus-.jpg" width="447" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>Not all of my peregrinations have been on foot, following the example of St. Chad. Twenty-one years ago today, someone who now seems like another person in another lifetime naively settled into a 15-foot long skin-on-frame kayak and started what would be a three-year-long exploration of the waters of Northwest Washington. That person, whose descendant is writing this story, had no idea what he was getting into as he began a journey that would go from Anacortes to Seattle and Olympia and Port Angeles and Neah Bay and parts of the west and south coasts of Vancouver Island and past the submarines to the end of the Hood Canal.</p><p>The voyage started innocently enough, as many voyages do, in an armchair with a book. The book was Tim Severin's <a href="https://amzn.to/3w9WA13">The Brendan Voyage</a>, and the earlier version of me was intrigued, to say the least. I had begun to explore rivers by kayak, inspired by Rat in <a href="https://amzn.to/2SUnJH7">The Wind in the Willows</a>, which is certainly one of the best books ever written. I had paddled the Rio Grande and the Chama and a few other rivers in New Mexico, and many rivers in Arkansas, including the entirety, almost (I skipped parts of the impounded lakes and a bit of the lower river where it is contained by levees) of the White River, one of the most sacred rivers I have ever known. I would almost certainly have had a wonderful life if I had continued to explore those streams. But the idea of going forth on the salt in a skin-on-frame boat was romantic, and I found online a crazy German-American, Ralph Hoehn, who imported Pouch kayaks. They are narrower and more manoeuvrable than the more famous Kleppers, and faster. They're not so fast as the 17- 18-foot fibreglass boats that are also very popular, but at 15-feet, Brendan, as I called my soon-faded Pouch, had a hull speed I could maintain, and skin-on-frame boats are also more compliant and less tiring in rough water. I paddled that little wonder as many as 55 nautical miles a day, and we went through some very rough water together.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pgOmCjXvkgw/YKFc8MXr21I/AAAAAAADKwE/7qPJghLsZhsxSanxOo8FU8LnnA6fFLm1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s534/pouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="534" height="254" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pgOmCjXvkgw/YKFc8MXr21I/AAAAAAADKwE/7qPJghLsZhsxSanxOo8FU8LnnA6fFLm1ACLcBGAsYHQ/w452-h254/pouch.jpg" width="452" /></a></div><br /><p>Little did I know that what I had thought would be a vacation of a few weeks would lead to years among the firs of the edge of the world.</p><p>It would be nine centuries before any other Europeans would cross the Atlantic. Some say Brendan and his companions were looking for 'the Isle of the Blessed' or even the Garden of Eden, but even though I found several very blessed isles in my imitation of Brendan and it might be argued that I live in a very edenic garden, I prefer the story that he set forth just to see what was there. There has certainly been a lot to see out here in the corner of the country.</p><p>Will I ever go back to Arkansas' rivers? Well, I don't really expect to, but I ain't dead yet. If I could find another red boat, a Wilderness Systems Shaman like the one I paddled the White to the Mississippi, I might be lured to go forth again. There ain't nothing so good as messin' about in boats.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4S9VH8F6piw/YKFhGpO91QI/AAAAAAADKwc/bjagWA2lwZ0Px9BwQNIBHoDXVbBqAjEigCLcBGAsYHQ/s800/186F1849-D6DD-44D2-AA54-E4818E2E8E41-229-0000000A691A66ED.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4S9VH8F6piw/YKFhGpO91QI/AAAAAAADKwc/bjagWA2lwZ0Px9BwQNIBHoDXVbBqAjEigCLcBGAsYHQ/w360-h480/186F1849-D6DD-44D2-AA54-E4818E2E8E41-229-0000000A691A66ED.jpg" width="360" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-89622267594103869212021-05-04T11:30:00.002-07:002021-05-04T11:30:32.857-07:00Searching for lost times.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IoEMzRfFchM/YJGPwOeyE8I/AAAAAAADIjE/TM8JrG4I9gUvFcgudcCAXLK2Esm1A0T_wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2021-05-03%2B20.38.51.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IoEMzRfFchM/YJGPwOeyE8I/AAAAAAADIjE/TM8JrG4I9gUvFcgudcCAXLK2Esm1A0T_wCLcBGAsYHQ/w405-h228/Screenshot%2B2021-05-03%2B20.38.51.png" width="405" /></a></div><br /><p>I don't usually share my journals, but this seemed like a good post for Peregrinations, and I was too lazy to write it up any other way. So:</p><p>I was up past my bedtime last night looking at YouTube Videos of places where I spent my life in the past. Rivers. Mountains. Monasteries. Many of the videos were made by idiots, people who made no effort to learn about the places they were videoing, but at least the visuals were good. Although one video of hiking along the Buffalo River Trail, was kinda pixely and green, I choose a screen catch from it of the waterfall that was for years my favourite rettreat and camping site for my journal, because it kinda shows how such memories work'. </p><p><br /></p><p>The best videos were of 'natural' places. The Buffalo is still green. The Chama is still brown. The Edisto is still black. But Christ in the Desert has been improved beyond belief. The austerity of the desert has been replaced with garish 'icons'. But they are not icons, they're bill boards. I remember being shocked when Philip, the abbot by the time I got there, and someone who had and has had a very different vision from Aerled's, started using a little Mattel keyboard to set the pitch for the chants. Lore and I were both appalled. Now there's an organ. Everything is much more normal, and there are solar panels everywhere. Sheep are back, which I find particularly nostalgic. I can't believe I gave the poncho that Aerled wove for Lore to Cassidy for his baby. Oh well. YouTube says Signma males value their friends.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RX_eBb3Ob7g/YJGQzTs4r0I/AAAAAAADIjU/5ks8KrQihyU2RwooybUqAz7NCF_Derk8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/Guests8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="1000" height="251" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RX_eBb3Ob7g/YJGQzTs4r0I/AAAAAAADIjU/5ks8KrQihyU2RwooybUqAz7NCF_Derk8ACLcBGAsYHQ/w387-h251/Guests8.jpg" width="387" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>The challenge for me is to make sense of how much I have changed. The changes pretty much parallel what has happened at Christ in the Desert. I ordered a tent yesterday. The temptation is to move back into a tent, with candles for light and maybe just my phone and a solar charger But then there's my OV-Z. Where do I draw the line? Do I need to draw a line? </p><p><br /></p><p>The rivers lookedt the same in the twenty minutes or so of YouTube videos, But iI know from even the short time I spent on them that they are always changing. I was particular intrigued by one White River video of the upper river, between Boston and Fayetteville, where there has been very little effort of control it. I hadn't ever seen anyone else on that stretch of the river, which is a meandering and wild thing. Lower down, beginning at Lake Sequoia in Fayetteville, we feeble folk have tried to control it at least since the time of steam boats. Our efforts are often washed away. Actually, they are always washed away, if we could only see them from a longer time scale. The Bull Shoals dam, the levele at Augusta, the lock and dam at Montgomery Point where the sacred White River joins the Mississippi, all these will be washed away. They have no choice. Time, like an ever -rolling stream, bears all its sons away.</p><p><br /></p><p>Those structures along the sacred White River may have a consciousness that I don't understand, and they may think they have some choice in how they spend their time. before they join the flood of lost times. I (cue Puck or Zorba) think I do.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thirty or so years ago, when I spent time at Christ in the Desert Monastery, there was no electricity. The guest rooms had wood stove and kerosene lamps. On winter evenings in room 6 of the guest house, I would shiver as I wrote and drew in paper journals. Winter Matins in Nakashima's austere church had only one lamp in a corner.; one of the monks threw another log into the wood stove to mark the hours. There were no solar-powered electric lights on the cliffs above to compete with rosy-fingered dawn, mirrored on the sandstone. There were no clumsy attempts at iconography on the walls. It was Christ in the Desert, not Christ in the Glam.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now I write about those times on a computer, and think about sharing my thoughts about those times on the internet, and I wonder two things: whether I would really gain anything by trading my computer for ink and paper in an effort to regain the sort of wildness of a river without levees and dams; and whether the real attraction I find thinking of those times past is that then I still thought I had a long future. Were I forty-five again, and going to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, it might seem just as magic as it did in 1991. And were I forty-five again, I might find the changes just as disturbing when I reached seventy-five again. </p><p><br /></p><p>I would love, I think, to be able to go back to the Monastery and talk to Father Christian, one of the monks who was there at the founding, now the abbot, and ask how he feels about the changes, but I probably won't. I no longer have a car, and I'm too old to hitch hike from Santa Fe to north of Abiqui and then to walk the 13 miles along Forest Road 151 to the bell, which I could pull to summon the guest master.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oh well. Please, pass me a madeleine. </p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-24606439676836744672021-04-15T09:44:00.001-07:002021-04-15T09:44:34.530-07:00I need to be nagged, it seems.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7iEn0teKYmc/YHhoIyYrzAI/AAAAAAADHUc/ZcRO67BuJGgx-6BcPyUekSydqgFYUZOAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20210414_181223_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7iEn0teKYmc/YHhoIyYrzAI/AAAAAAADHUc/ZcRO67BuJGgx-6BcPyUekSydqgFYUZOAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20210414_181223_HDR.jpg" /></a></div><br /> It is a lovely and soft and warm and sunny April morning and I am having my second cup of coffee after a little walk in the early light. It's part of my learning to live again in what I call my post-plague life. I, alas, had a very close encounter with the Virulent Virus and I am more or less learning to walk and talk again. Sometimes my eyesight is still a little fuzzy, which may be part of the reason the morning seems soft.<p></p><p>How did I, who lives out here on the edge of nowhere and never sees anybody up close and who hasn't been in a crowd for years, catch the plague? Well of course the obvious answer is that I breathed in some of the little beasties, and they found my lungs a happy home and soon I was coughing and sore all over my body and had a fever and could hardly move. But there is I think a more important reason, and that is not so much the availability of the virus as the unavailability of human interaction linked with a general languor brought about by the lock down.</p><p>In my 'normal' life I go out into the big world every day, and hang out at coffee shops where I can sit in the window and watch the beautiful people go by while I sip my espresso. During the lockdown, all I could do was buy a paper cup of not-very-good drip coffee and take it far away from the other people, ugly or beautiful. In my 'normal' life I ate out a lot. I'm lazy, so when I remodeled my little tin can nearly four years ago, I just didn't put in a kitchen so I would never have to clean a stove again. During the lockdown, what food that was available to eat out was over-priced--I mean, the restaurants still have their normal expenses--and in styrofoam containers with plastic forks. So, gradually, I went out less and less and became lazier and lazier, often just having cold cereal for brekkers instant ramen for dindin. But for most of the Covidian Captivity, I still got in a bit of exercise every day. My smart watch, an LG until last January and then and Apple Watch for two months, would nag me into just moving another thirteen minutes and nine seconds to close some wonderful ring for another merit badge. Annoying, but probably life-saving. And then I got tired of all things Apple, and I sold the watch. And no one nagged me to go that extra 267 yards. And it rained. And I quit my usual walking circuit of duck pond and building sites and probably even worse, I quit riding my bike to buy more Cheerios and ramen, because of the mud, and took the bus. Which is probably where the virus found my lungss.</p><p>So, post-plague, I have a nice bright new nagger, a made-in-China TikWatch something or another. And it nags me delightfully well. This morning, no sooner had I finished my first cup of coffee and eaten my Cheerios--Cheerios with bananas and cranberries and cottage cheese and milk--but it told me it was time to move around a bit. So, I went out into the top of the morning and walked .45 miles and enjoyed the budding plants along the way. </p><p>I do not intend to host the Virulent Virus or any other inconvenient disease again if I can help it. And since I am by nature a lazy bum, I will put up with a bit of nagging along the way.</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-20506074907913871672021-04-10T11:54:00.001-07:002021-04-10T12:41:50.328-07:00Is good the enemy of the best, or is more the enemy of enough?<div class="separator"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-suAiQPpl2l8/YHHo4XjkJSI/AAAAAAADG_E/86k0-VJwxj0-ZGQ-5JAQb4098bn5COZ1wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2460/Screenshot_20210110-155212.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2460" data-original-width="1080" height="405" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-suAiQPpl2l8/YHHo4XjkJSI/AAAAAAADG_E/86k0-VJwxj0-ZGQ-5JAQb4098bn5COZ1wCLcBGAsYHQ/w177-h405/Screenshot_20210110-155212.png" width="177" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>Please bear with me as I share a very first-world problem. But since you, my constant readers, almost certainly share in my first world, I hope for some understanding.</p><p>My dilemma has its roots in my starting a YouTube channel. A couple of friends thought I had something to share with the world, so I eagerly agreed. What I had to share were the insights I had gathered many years ago from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alvin Toffler, and Marshall McLuhan. Material for maybe five videos, which I more or less made and which quickly gathered me maybe eleven subscribers. And then I fell into the black hole of unboxing.</p><p>I think I started with a video about unboxing the unboxing phenomenon. And then I actually started unboxing stuff. I dare not add up how much money I spent (look at it as stimulating the economy, stupid) buying stuff I didn't really need because it would make videos. I even unboxed books, but of course it was the unboxing of electronics that, over maybe two years, brought me about 350 subscribers. And a good YouTuber who follows tech has to keep up with all the developments on all the major platforms, right, so soon I had a pile of devices all nicely unboxed and videoed and stacked.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_X9tTUqaJk/YHHqwJh7qrI/AAAAAAADG_M/Zs5-2b3bzCgdlaOdjhg2_-87m_S3kVg6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3724.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_X9tTUqaJk/YHHqwJh7qrI/AAAAAAADG_M/Zs5-2b3bzCgdlaOdjhg2_-87m_S3kVg6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3724.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Now I have long been an Android kinda guy. I guess maybe because I'm old, since it seems that teenagers only buy iPhones, but whatever, I thought I should try the most orthodox of Android experiences and buy a Pixel Phone. But when I got to the store, I didn't like the way it felt. What I did enjoy in my hand was a shiny new iPhone, which I bought in projectRed, fighting aids and my own prejudice against all things Apple in one convenient purchase.</p><p>So I explored the iPhone, and--more unboxings--all the wonders of the 'Apple ecosystem'. I must confess I liked something about most of the devices except the MacBook. It was a pretty little thing, but to someone accustomed to using a Chromebook, Mac OS just seemed a clutttered fuck. I sold it. But as time went by, I found myself feeling that the Apple devices were using me rather than my using them, and because all good YouTubers have at least two phones, I bought another Android phone, a nice and inexpensive LG Stylo 6. Short story short, within a month I had sold all my Apple devices because I really preferred having electronics that work for me instead of my working for them.</p><p>And I have loved using the Stylo 6. It's a little slow opening the camera app, but no slower than the time it took to remove the lens cover on the Nikon I had when I was a 'real' photographer. It has kinda big bezels, but they allow me to get a good grip on the phone without instigating something happening on the screen. And the LG done gone and gone out of the smart phone business. I haven't felt so orphaned since Saab got bought by GM. </p><p>Enter the first-world problem of choices. (One of which I confess remains ditching everything electronic and moving into a cave with one big book and maybe a small bear.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h5sAld58bsc/YHHvNSHb61I/AAAAAAADG_s/88cllZUCijsLmp3-xMgCWhwvjopz3u9TgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20210410_112423_HDR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h5sAld58bsc/YHHvNSHb61I/AAAAAAADG_s/88cllZUCijsLmp3-xMgCWhwvjopz3u9TgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20210410_112423_HDR.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Unfortunately, caves are relatively hard to find on-line and new electronic wonders are easy, so I was seduced by T-Mobile's offer of LG's ultimate phone, the Velvet, for half-price. I pushed all the little buttons, and now it's on its way to my little tin can in the woods. It was like offering an Edesel lover a 1961 Edsel for $1000.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But I am feeling like a traitor to my faithful Stylo 6, which is not nearly so flashy as the Velvet, nor will it likely be supported for so long, but which has been my faithful friend in sickness and in health and which does everything I ask it to do and it's paid for.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Which finally, constant reader, brings me to my point, if I have one. Why is adequate not considered sufficient? Or, to put it in McLuhan's terms of our devices as extensions of ourselves, why, when I am perfectly adequately extended by my Stylo, which is a bit slow and dated in appearance, but which more or less matches my <i>sitz im leben</i>, want to put on airs with a stylish and flashy Velvet? Or, to put it in Toffler's terms, am I just feeling too much future shock?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is of course a small thing, this deciding whether to accept delivery of a new phone or to keep the old wineskin. But it is, I think, an example of the sorts of decisions that make living in the first world so stressful. Do any of you constant readers know of a good cave, preferably with air-conditioning and high speed internet? I have a nice big book.</div></div>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-2120319476269501222021-01-16T15:34:00.000-08:002021-01-16T15:34:04.809-08:00Back to the Woods<p><br /> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VIuhnQ8yAxM/YAI7LPzQHbI/AAAAAAAC-QI/irTbnRDdzTMUEdP41x5CLURrgZVqZYjTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s269/IMG_3173.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="187" height="353" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VIuhnQ8yAxM/YAI7LPzQHbI/AAAAAAAC-QI/irTbnRDdzTMUEdP41x5CLURrgZVqZYjTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w245-h353/IMG_3173.JPG" width="245" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For many years I did not vote in elections. My motto was that it just encourages the sons of bitches. And, I think that every choice one makes is a vote, often about things of more importance if of less pomp that voting for a president or some other claimant of power. For most of the past twenty years, I have lived more or less as a hermit in the woods, something of a madman, and concerned with things fringier than politics. I have occasionally offended someone, mostly by rejecting the gospels of Gene Roddenberry and Christopher Nolan. Mostly I think people were amused or confused at best. Presidential candidates seemed to me to be twiddle-dee and twiddle-dum, and I expected that none of them would do anything particularly good, and I could only hope that they wouldn't be too bad. For politics I had little to no passion.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In 2016, it became more difficult to ignore the commotion, as the two major parties nominated one person disqualified and one unqualified for office, or so it seemed to me. I public supported Gary Johnson, and even registered and voted. Living in a firmly 'blue' state, it mattered little for whom I voted, since the outcome was strongly Calvinistic. I was fascinated by how much vitriol my choice received. I was told that I was all sorts of things other than a free moral agent, who could make a fool of himself if he wanted to, but only in the prescribed ways. I was surprised when Donald Trump was elected. He had seemed like a bizarre cross of Il Duce and Oliver Hardy. I suppose that what I had been missing was how many other people have as little faith in politics as usual as I have, and the politics of Trump was not usual. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Slow forward to 2020 and the democrats nominated folks with even less qualities that I admired than they had in 2016, and I made clear why I found that saddening, and admitted that I would vote for Trump., who also had few qualities that I admired, but who had dropped (relatively) few bombs He was no less a buffoon, but he had not done the horrible things I had been told he would do. I was still allowed the satire of having a holy water pistol, and I still had my mostly useless Obama Care. But.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But I was amazed again and again by how people I had known for years began treating me. They expected me to justify my every statement, claiming I was being mean-spirited or illogical or worse. I had never thought of saying things like that about them. because they said they were going to vote for Biden. About some of their conclusions, yes. Logic is a fascinating method, having nothing to do with truth. One can proceed quite logically from false premises and arrive at a completely valid but false conclusion.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Slowly what I have come to realize is that many people have replaced the sort of passion once reserved for religious beliefs with political passion. When there is nothing left to render to God, everything is rendered to Caesar. Personally, I have never been one to put my trust in horses, and I am still enough of a Christian or whatever to hope with Locke and Jefferson that governments are formed to protect our natural, god-given rights, not to decide which rights we are allowed. But to be honest, I do pretty much whatever I think is right, without checking with the civil code. I suspect that most of us actually operate on a day to day basis like that, occasionally speeding or committing some small act of sedition. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The truth is I just don't have as much concern about politics as many of my friend have, and I don't find my time spent pursuing the nuances of politics rewarding. In general I think the big advances in human achievements have come more often in spite of the state rather than because of it. If any of my dear readers think I am wrong and want to prove me wrong, go for it. But please be advised that I will mostly likely not read their arguments. I am returning to spending my time pursuing the nuances of quantum physics and sacramental theology and other esoterica, like aged Merlin, although it is unlikely that I will be visited by Nimue. Perhaps that's a pity. I will continue to try to be amused by the actions of the state when I can not ignore them, recognizing that many of the Bard's best lines were spoken by a mischievous sprite. Indeed what fools.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XK1CZgMFog4/YAN2MdQQrtI/AAAAAAAC-Zs/Vbj6AUGRLjci8O7mxrlywPRYF4ggea0cACLcBGAsYHQ/s793/puck-midsummer-nights-dream.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="793" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XK1CZgMFog4/YAN2MdQQrtI/AAAAAAAC-Zs/Vbj6AUGRLjci8O7mxrlywPRYF4ggea0cACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/puck-midsummer-nights-dream.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Meanwhile, I can do perhaps no better than to share Puck's request for forgiveness, being so unwoke as I am:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">'If we shadows have offended/ think but this and all is mended/ . . /If you pardon, we will mend./Else the puck a liar call./Give me your hands, if we be friends,/and Robin will restore amends.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Or, it may be that I am not a good fellow at all. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-50312502599827875912021-01-11T11:38:00.000-08:002021-01-11T11:38:09.821-08:00Seregation is back.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WZEstNrQeq0/X_yc6LcVeLI/AAAAAAAC9zs/ciNQsP12MtYIMYb5SBR-eJotgp6l5AJOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/refuse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WZEstNrQeq0/X_yc6LcVeLI/AAAAAAAC9zs/ciNQsP12MtYIMYb5SBR-eJotgp6l5AJOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/refuse.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have been watching two sorts of time travel stories over the past few days. The first is the second season of The Umbrella Academy, in which our intrepidly diverse family finds itself in the Dallas of 1963. One of the family, Allison, is a black woman, and she quickly finds herself caught up in the racial division and unrest of the times. She marries a man who is an organizer in the civil rights movement and takes part in a sit-in at a segregated restaurant. She works at a racially segregated beauty parlor. When the rest of her family find her and things get really weird, she finally tells her husband that she has come from the future, and that there really were going to be better times ahead.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The second is the rush to re-segregate as practitioners of right-think act as quickly as possible to segregate themselves from any suspicion that they were ever attracted to any idea except the official story, and to banish the tainted from any opportunity to spread their wrongthink. (It's kinda like the scene in The Umbrella Academy when the hard-working white male who is doing what he has been taught to think is right by the morality of his fifteen minutes compares the lesbianism of the woman (I'm not supposed to say that actually, as the character to whom he is speaking, Vonya, is played by someone who self-identified as a lesbian in the first season, and since she was then a lesbian playing a lesbian, everyone was happy, but not she self-identifies as a homosexual man and has a male name in the credits. And I thought what happened in the series was weird.)--anyway, Ray tells Vonya about hoof-and-mouth disease, and how any taint of it must be eradicated before it spreads to the whole herd.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One of the hefers to be killed first, if I may continue to use Ray's analogy, has been Parler. Parler is (was) a social media platform sworn not to censor its users. When it first started, I signed up, because I want to avoid living in an echo chamber. I have 'friends' on Facebook with as diverse a range of ideas as Facebook allow, but I wanted to see what was happening elsewhere. I didn't always remember to post my cat photos to Parler, but I did make an effort to copy every even vaguely political post I made on Facebook and to paste it on Parler. In many cases those posts were quite critical of President Trump, for whom my preferred pronoun is 'the fucking moron'. Such posts often got 'likes', even 'hearts', on Facebook, and sometimes reasonable discussion on Parler. When, however, I would post something approving of an action of the fucking moron, or critical of President-elect Biden, for whom my preferred pronoun is 'Mr. Potatohead', I was called a variety of rude names by my good loving liberal, come-together friends on Facebook. If I were to be taken to Room 101 and say that Parler is (was) a hate platform, I would have to say, at least until the rats were let loose, that O'Brian must have been thinking of Facebook.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The racial segregation of the 1950's is quickly being replaced by intellectual segregation. Mr. Potatohead's cabinet is touted as being very diverse, but it's a diversity of appearances, not a diversity of ideas. Of course it is not even discussed in anything like those terms by the faithful. Just as many groups consider people of other races not to be human, the Party denies that anyone who disagrees with them can even be an intellectual. At least that has been my experience. After years of being considered an intellectual, I have lately been called just about every kind of stupid because I voiced my opinion that Mr. Potatohead is not worthy candidate for the presidency, and that Harris is even worse.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is, not surprisingly, no room for nuance. (Cue the case of Brett Weinsten.) I have made clear my opinions about the fucking moron's failures. He was not someone I would have chosen for the presidency. But now I am supposed to shut my mouth and say nothing counter to the wonders of the winter of our discontent made glorious by the rising of the son of Scranton. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">At least during the days of racial segregation there were efforts, at least in mid-nowhere where I grew up, to provide separate but equal accommodations for the race that wasn't quite human enough for common discourse. So in mid-nowhere, the first ancient school building to be replaced with something modern was Booker T. Washington. In the new day of intellectual segregation, those who are not quite human are simply denied any platform possible.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What could go wrong? (In The Umbrella Academy, segregated for years from the rest of her family, Vonya destroys the world.)</div><p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-46632852279072801042021-01-02T17:12:00.000-08:002021-01-02T17:12:02.467-08:00R. Mutt, Identity Politics, and Sexual Dysphoria<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TrO708aUYvk/X8a5XM5NJDI/AAAAAAAC3iE/zGFtAUObWr0fyaSSwPoN9JNXfbz5yV17wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/mutt.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="319" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TrO708aUYvk/X8a5XM5NJDI/AAAAAAAC3iE/zGFtAUObWr0fyaSSwPoN9JNXfbz5yV17wCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h319/mutt.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If you have been a faithful reader of this rambling since the beginning, or if you have dug through it to see what indiscretions against the required thoughts of this fifteen minutes I have committed in my past, you may remember that forty years ago I chose St. Chad as my patron because he had been educated in a great tradition that was making way for the big new thing, and he made his way through the birth pains of an entirely new world. In Chad's case, his education had been in the oral tradition of the Celtic monks, and the big new thing was books imported from Rome. In my case, my education had been in the bookish tradition, and the big new thing is instant electric connectivity. I am trying to make my way through the birth pains of another entirely new world, but the changes have been greater, as often have the pains, that I could imagine forty years ago.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My other guide, Virgil through what sometimes seem eight layers of the inferno, sometimes Beatrice through what seems like at least potential levels of paradise, has most often been Marshall McLuhan. I have tried to pay attention to McLuhan's advice that to understand the future, we need to look at art. The past few days I have been reading Pierre Cabanne's <i>Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp</i>, and I have come more than ever to appreciate McLuhan's guidance, and to realize that we indeed are living in Duchamps's 1917 future.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Q1vxoVWIrc/X8a-YkKh6_I/AAAAAAAC3iQ/QN1RopH3DE87fPLVJmz9KjWqT2TbZyCDACLcBGAsYHQ/s1344/art%2Bis%2Banything.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Q1vxoVWIrc/X8a-YkKh6_I/AAAAAAAC3iQ/QN1RopH3DE87fPLVJmz9KjWqT2TbZyCDACLcBGAsYHQ/s1344/art%2Bis%2Banything.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1344" data-original-width="1344" height="407" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Q1vxoVWIrc/X8a-YkKh6_I/AAAAAAAC3iQ/QN1RopH3DE87fPLVJmz9KjWqT2TbZyCDACLcBGAsYHQ/w407-h407/art%2Bis%2Banything.jpg" width="407" /></a></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">R. Mutt's Fountain was entered in The Society of Independent Artists' show that year at the Grand Central Palace in New York, but was never actually seen at the show. Duchanp later said he thought that was the best thing that could happen to it. Duchamp was, or claimed to be, a fan of chance. But Fountain was famous enough to be photographed by Alfred Stieglitz, and 'duplicated' for the Tate Modern. And in an interesting but perhaps prophetic twist, some critics have claimed that it was really the 'work' of an unknown female artist, because of course it must have been. Duchamp said it could be considered art because he had 'chosen' it, but he signed it with a pseudonym because it came from the Mott Ironworks, and also because it was a kinda of play allusion to Mutt and Jeff, since Duchamp was tall and thing.</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">Whatever the origins of Fountain and the other 'ready mades' that made Duchamp readily famous, they made the way for an understanding of art as 'chosen' rather than 'made', of function rather than ontology, of accident rather than essence. </div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">There are few things new under the sun. Christian sacramental theology had long worked with such changes in categories, changing the ontology of a man by ordaining him priest, changing the substance of wine to the substance of blood, even though the accidents remained the same. Just as Christians had undergone a catechesis to be able to receive the sacrament,so art critics and collectors needed some initiation to understand the new art. Like theater, it sometimes required a certain suspension of belief.</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">Who now is an artist? Some one who either makes or chooses art. (Duchamp abandoned art and played a lot of chess.) I have had a little experience in this game myself. For years I was a serious journaler, and I illustrated my journals with a lot of different media. I usually worked in coffee shops, and people would ask me if I were an artist. I would say, no. But then I would occasionally want some money, and I would make 'art' and sell it as an 'artist'. I'm no Duchamp, but he sometimes did the same thing. And some of his works were done with the pseudonym Rrose Selavy, which sounds in French like 'eros, such is life.' (Few things in my life have been so confusing as eros.)</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">The road from 'choosing' a urinal and declaring it art has had many branches. Few are so weird as that taken by Gordon Matta-Clark, who cuts up buildings. But we are in a post-modern, deconstructionist time, aren't we? Or is it that we were until a few moments ago?</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pYGfuYVF1No/X8bJI08EYQI/AAAAAAAC3ik/1occLWxxQu0xxHPfIy0B8wrFXPX9RvBAwCLcBGAsYHQ/s610/gordon-matta-clark-splitting.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="610" height="319" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pYGfuYVF1No/X8bJI08EYQI/AAAAAAAC3ik/1occLWxxQu0xxHPfIy0B8wrFXPX9RvBAwCLcBGAsYHQ/w397-h319/gordon-matta-clark-splitting.jpg" width="397" /></a></div><br /><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">Once water becoming wine and urinals becoming fine art were part of a fairly small category of transformations. But now one pretty much choose to transform anything with no discernible change in function. I have friends who on Facebook are 'activists'; their activities consist of choosing memes to post. In the new global village, tribalism is once again important, but people are no longer born into tribes. They choose them. It's an odd thing that the tribes with the loudest chants are not those who add anything to the world, not the Mott's who actually make useful plumbing fixtures, but the Mutt's who make lists of the injustices their tribes have suffered, of signaling virtue by claiming oppression.</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">The more Virgil side of McLuhan said that in the electronic age we would once again become tribal. It's, I suspect, rather dangerous to speak of tribalism glibly, since there have been and are so many complicated variations of tribes. I don't want to be so presumptuous as many 'anthropologists' have been, but I would suggest that one of the major differences between electronic tribalism and pre-modern tribalism is choice. One needed to be born into or adopted by the Ojibway, or at least that's what one of my favourite childhood books, <i>Ojibway Boy</i>, claimed. I liked to pretend when I was ten that I was an Indian, but it was only a pretense. No one would lose his job if he said that I wasn't a real Ojibway even if I chose that as my preferred identity/pronoun. In the electronic age we choose tribes, often oddly enough on the levels of presumed oppression they have as their privilege. (Oddly enough, there was a bit of that sort of thinking in <i>Ojibway Boy</i>. The Ojibways were oppressed by the Iroquois, and that seemed to make the Ojibway boy more noble. I had hoped to find it and reread it, but it doesn't seem available at the usual sus outlets.) Alas,despite what some anthropologists have said about tribal societies, they are very often very warlike. Like deadly warlike. Like liking on Twitter or burning on Twitter warlike. </div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">Many folk claim that we now live in the world or Orwell's <i>1984</i>. But Big Brother has been atomized, replaced by thousands of droplets ready to report anyone who lets his mask down, especially if that one is from another tribe. Lilliputian fact checkers made it a Brave New World.</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">And what a Brave New World it is indeed. Dr. Moreau would be impressed. Now we not only 'choose' art, and 'choose' tribes, we 'choose' gender. I am not in any way dismissing or condemning people who really feel that they are another gender than what they appear outwardly. Indeed I have some very dear friends who are 'trans'. But it is important, I think, to recognize that they feel their gender is not a choice. But in the Brave New World, it is a choice. One can choose a chemical concoction to become whatever one wishes. It brings a whole other level of complexity to the question of nature versus nurture, or of free will versus determinism. It makes for many interesting questions to ponder, among which is if a woman won the olympic gold medal for the decathalon in 1976.</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C4vKRaDvggc/X_D7zpP6MZI/AAAAAAAC89A/w_UyVjhCYJYoXemWwAUaQY_eF6rk6dRLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Jenner-Bruce-16x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C4vKRaDvggc/X_D7zpP6MZI/AAAAAAAC89A/w_UyVjhCYJYoXemWwAUaQY_eF6rk6dRLwCLcBGAsYHQ/w384-h216/Jenner-Bruce-16x9.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div>According to some online sources, including history.com, 'Caitlin Jenner--who was playing as Bruce Jenner--. . . [won] gold in the men's decathalon at the Montreal Olympics. . . . The secret to Jenner's success was preparation.'</div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">I included the part about Jenner's preparation because I suspect it points to what can so easily make our participation in the Brave New World in which we find ourselves: a dystopia, guided by Virgil, a noble understanding from the past, rather than in a paradise, guided by Beatrice. The past of Virgil has a sort of reality and universal accessibility that is not available for the potential future of Beatrice. </div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">While writing this I have had a conversation with the parent of a young trans-gender friend who has always thought that his outward appearance as a female did not match his inward nature, but who is not anxious to add chemicals or surgery to the mix. I admit to having enough insufficient for much of an opinion about our brave new world. I keep trying to look at that world from a variety of perspectives. (Cue Cubism.) But if I have an opinion, it is that my opinion should not be forced on someone else. I can see R. Mott's urinal as a urinal, and I can see R. Mutt's Fountain as at least one of the most important art works of the twentieth century. This sometimes gives me a tribal dysphoria for which I am poorly prepared. Once again, the modesty of St. Chad, who did not choose to impose his privilege on others, nor to complain about the injustice imposed on him, seems to be as important a guide as any. I might choose to be the Archbishop of York. History might not even recognize me as the bishop of Litchfield. <br /> </div></div><p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-15504633430182701732020-12-22T19:01:00.000-08:002020-12-22T19:01:21.357-08:00All Things Go<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NQKCicNWMUk/X-KS4M97HJI/AAAAAAAC7XU/n3gUggWOxJUMwcflDH2KlNeRRXsVARCQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20131225_001038.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="230" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NQKCicNWMUk/X-KS4M97HJI/AAAAAAAC7XU/n3gUggWOxJUMwcflDH2KlNeRRXsVARCQgCLcBGAsYHQ/w408-h230/20131225_001038.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>My father smoked Camel cigarettes. I was the oldest of three sons, and one of my Christmas joys was that, after I was admitted to the mysteries of Santa Claus, Daddy would let me stay up with him until the younger brothers were asleep and it would be safe carefully to arrange the presents under the tree. We would drink black coffee and smoke Camels together. These days the Department of Human Services would probably come and take me away, but those were wilder times.</p><p>For many years after I left home I continued to smoke Camels. Other cigarettes just don' taste nearly so good, and besides, the others didn't have the same provenance. After a long while, I have more or less quit smoking but I have for many years continued to buy Camels for <a href="https://cyclesofpraise.blogspot.com/2008/02/16-year-sunday-burst-its-spiced-tomb.html">the big eight festivals</a> of the Christian Year. Camels have had a role in my celebration as the incense of <a href="https://studybible.info/Coverdale/Psalms%20141">Psalm 141</a>. I have occasionally not had Camels for some of the feasts, but I have not skipped a Christmas in a very long time, because of the tradition of smoking with my long dead father.</p><p>This year, however, I am skipping the Camels. I have not heeded the warnings of the State of California nor have the memories of those few Christmases when I was no longer a child but not yet an adult faded. It's just that I no longer feel the need for prompt for those memories. Perhaps I will buy frankincense for the Nativity Feast this year.</p><p>Wondering about my Christmas Camels as I wandered out under the sky today, I was both overwhelmed by the richness of the memories and surprised by how many of them were from times in winter and linked to sharing cigarettes. And always they featured people who were immensely important in my life. It seems that what is said about the sense of smell's provoking memories is true. There have been other smells in my past, but smoking with someone makes a literal conspiracy, often a quite intimate conspiracy.. And today's smoking memories all involve lovers, men with whom I had become, either briefly for extended periods, one body. I mean, Jesus did rather suggest that that was the purpose of leaving one's father and mother, right?</p><p>The first big memory chronologically is of a deeply cold and clear night in Memphis after the first Christ Mass shared with a wonderful man who was my lover for several years. We had gone to St. James Episcopal Church on Central Avenue and were walking home to a little apartment we were 'gentrifying' in the Cooper-Young neighborhood. It had not felt like gentrification to remodel the crumbling structure in which we occupied the top floor. It had felt like the dust of old plaster and of things one would rather not name. But now we had everything more or less in place for our second Christmas together and our first Christmas in our new home. We stopped somewhere along the way and looked at the stars and smoked Camels, which made a particularly wonderful incense in the crisp winter air.</p><p>The next July we moved to Santa Fe. It was a sort of liberation for both of us. He stopped smoking. I tried to be supportive but I cheated sometimes by smoking with other people. One January night , I came back from dancing at a lesbian night at a club where I was friends with the owner/dj . She let me be an honorary lesbian so I could enjoy the beats, and I bummed a Camel from one of the women there. People could still smoke in public then. He was offended and that became the ultimate reason for us to pursue different paths. We still see each other from time to time, but there are no more intimate cigarettes.</p><p>Santa Fe was, well, a self-proclaimed center of 'spirituality' whatever that is, and therefore the cigarettes made there were called American Spirits. I was blessed to have series of lovers with whom I smoked American Spirits. Most of them were rather wonderful artists of some sort or another. (Santa Fe was like that.) One was a quite talented painter who had intrigued me for some time. He and I were at the same club where I had smoked the lesbian's Camel. It was a cold night, again, and I offered him a ride home. He invited me in and offered me an American Spirit. We were not together long, but I still remember the smell of his house, a mixture of American Spirits and nag champa.</p><p>With the exception of one very dear friend with whom I lived several times over the years, whom I believe may still smoke Camels in Berlin, the co-conspirators of the years to follow all seemed to have smoked American Spirits. One of my briefest conspiracies was with a Mohawk--a steelworker Mohawk-- who was visiting Santa Fe for Christmas from New York. We had flirted at a club, and I had invited him to an after party at my house, which was often rather crowded in those days. We left the main party so I could show him my room, and afterwards we went out under the winter stars and shared an American Spirit.</p><p>Thinking about those days keeps bring back more memories of manylovers, many conspiracies, but I don't want this essay to be so much about the objects of memory as abut the triggers of memory, so I will pass over an architect and a monk and a deacon and such to share one particular memory of another painter, because that memory involves both winter and American Spirits and also music. </p><p>I first saw Stephan at a Japanese bath house. He was a magical sprite. We met again at a Halloween party, and danced together. We did not share cigarettes then. He left the party early because he had glued horns to his head with super glue, and one had come loose and was hurting his eyes. I went by his apartment a few days later to check on him, and he invited me to spend the night. It was a very cold November. He cooked, and we had coffee and cigarettes afterwards--American Spirits--and the next morning I lay in bed watching him cook breakfast. He put on a tape or disc or whatever we used in those days, of the Indigo Girls singing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRuDUBU4DkE">Secure Yourself</a>--'Fasten off your earthly burdens; you have just begun.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jxmsSWKAlBY/X-KkHJIddfI/AAAAAAAC7Xg/QZw3C7SMijweKuWKsWPdUJaGIggjbl3GwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20201222_121845_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="463" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jxmsSWKAlBY/X-KkHJIddfI/AAAAAAAC7Xg/QZw3C7SMijweKuWKsWPdUJaGIggjbl3GwCLcBGAsYHQ/w347-h463/20201222_121845_HDR.jpg" width="347" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Music remains the other big door of memories for me, and that song remains very meaningful even if I seldom listen to it these days. So, when winter's cold and the memory of conspiratory smoking is linked with music, I am carried away. One of my dearest past lovers was Tom, who wanderer only briefly through this world. He came over a hill one Holy Innocents' evening as I was preparing for a service at Saint Bede's Episcopal Church, and he was living with me in a few weeks. We would lie in bed on cold winter nights and listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTOhsKHG6WM">Therese Schroeder Sheker</a> singing as the wind made counter-melodies around the corners of the old adobe. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Time like an ever-moving stream has born all these people from my lives . whether by age or aids or aireplanes. The only one I even occasionally see now is the first Camel smoker. I am friends on Facebook with one of the American Spiriters. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A much younger friend with whom I have an occasional cigarette asked me not long ago how I get over the separations in life. I said that I don't. Although the separations are painful, I try to rejoice in the conjunctions. I am a rather promiscuous lover. I never stop loving someone, even when I also love others. The truth is that if I had stayed 'faithful' to only one person my whole life, if I had stayed at the home of my parents or at the home of my first lover, my life might have been less painful,, but it would have been less rich. For a while I would keep mementos of past lovers, even if the memento were as vaporous as the smoke of a cigarette. But now I find that I am rather like the old woman, Rose, from The Titanic.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sm567uroaRg/X-KqEMbfwSI/AAAAAAAC7Xs/29uLFCY7aMQacmYQb6Konp7G8O9iVCtvwCLcBGAsYHQ/s480/rose-1509484431.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="480" height="175" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sm567uroaRg/X-KqEMbfwSI/AAAAAAAC7Xs/29uLFCY7aMQacmYQb6Konp7G8O9iVCtvwCLcBGAsYHQ/w350-h175/rose-1509484431.jpg" width="350" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>I am myself becoming more and more vaporous, perhaps, but I no longer need to hang on to the necklace. I am beginning to understand my mother's fullness in her old age. I would invite her to some adventure or another, and she would say that she had had adventures enough. I am not so adverse to a new adventure as she was, but I also feel quite full.My big holiday memory with her is of drinking eggnog. I don't really like it very much because it makes my teeth feel furry, but it's a memento of our holidays together. This year, I will just ponder those holidays and the wonderful cold winter nights with so many wonderfully, lovely people, in my heart. I hope those same people who are still alive get some pleasure from remembering me as well.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lkxz9KiZqnY/X-KukZ7s6ZI/AAAAAAAC7YA/h263nNT5m0UoupOz9e2gU1taa7yklmtYACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20131224_122057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="222" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lkxz9KiZqnY/X-KukZ7s6ZI/AAAAAAAC7YA/h263nNT5m0UoupOz9e2gU1taa7yklmtYACLcBGAsYHQ/w394-h222/20131224_122057.jpg" width="394" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p></div></div>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-23903640504749310712020-11-28T12:16:00.002-08:002020-11-28T12:16:53.643-08:00No Country for Old Men<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LezQlW9cMGI/X8KNsRjvIlI/AAAAAAAC3C8/8G18iQMO2LMKKC8H2wJTHMZCZ8vv-52gQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2020-10-11%2Bat%2B14.50.11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="284" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LezQlW9cMGI/X8KNsRjvIlI/AAAAAAAC3C8/8G18iQMO2LMKKC8H2wJTHMZCZ8vv-52gQCLcBGAsYHQ/w455-h284/Screenshot%2B2020-10-11%2Bat%2B14.50.11.png" width="455" /></a></div><br /> Whenever I am in the mood for regrets, which is seldom, because I recognize it is for the most part of fruitless mood, I regret that in 1966 I moved to Chicago rather than to New York. I had been accepted by the New School, but somehow I decided against it. (I sometimes wonder if that decision extended my life, because had I moved to the Village in 1966, I might have been caught up in the AIDS crisis.) I went instead to Roosevelt University in Chicago, where I had some very good teachers, met some wonderful people, and fed myself as often as not with the little sandwiches at the Members' Tea each afternoon at the Art Institute. <p></p><p>What I most regret about that decision, however, is that I missed an opportunity to have known, perhaps, Nam June Paik, Ironically, I dabbled around the edges of some of the things he was doing in New York while I was at Roosevelt, but I never met anyone else who was at all interested in such dabblings. What also happened while I was in Chicago was the beginning of what Zorba the Greek called 'the full catastrophe'. Marriage, family, golden retrievers, mini vans. It would take me more than twenty years to escape Then no longer a young man, I nevertheless went West, to Santa Fe. I took Super Highway 40 to Clines Corner where there is a cut-off to Santa Fe, to a world unimaginably different from Memphis or Chicago or New York.</p><p>Santa Fe and the surrounding hills and gullies are about as artsy-fartsy as one could hope for, and again I met some wonderful people. I fed myself with the mountain air and hosted my own teas ,on Sunday afternoons, or brunches on Sunday mornings. I even indulged in a bit of artsy-fartsyness myself,and was able to make enough money to wander around a bit. If I had good sense, I might be writing this in a cafe in Santa Fe--if there is a cafe open in Santa Fe during the Great Fear--instead of in a tin can on the edge of nowhere. But I have never had good sense, so I wandered back to Arkansas, to Fayettevile and the University of Arkansas. It was an odd move. When I lived in Memphis and told people I wanted to move to Santa Fe, their response was almost always 'Oh. I want to move to Santa Fe. How can you move to Santa Fe?' I would answer, 'Go west on Interstate 40 and turn right at Clines Corner'. When I told people in Santa Fe that i wanted to move to Fayetteville, they would almost always respond, 'Oh. I want to move to Fayetteville. How can you move to Fayettevillle?' I would answer, 'Go east on Insterstate 40 and turn north at Fort Smith.' My move to Fayetteville had a few more detours than that, but I got there eventually, and I found the Purple Chair.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yirbY2Uk9DI/X8KWQe91z9I/AAAAAAAC3DM/vbzwCMB8J_0aYAKogPfzXE33rWR3_qk2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20170619_094547_Film4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yirbY2Uk9DI/X8KWQe91z9I/AAAAAAAC3DM/vbzwCMB8J_0aYAKogPfzXE33rWR3_qk2QCLcBGAsYHQ/w404-h303/20170619_094547_Film4.jpg" width="404" /></a></div><div><br /></div>The Chair is Eero Saarinen's Womb Chair. Yes, that Eero Saarinen, who also designed the TWA Terminal at what was once Idlewild, now JFK, airport in New York. It sits in the northeast corner of the Fine Arts Library in the Ed Stone's famous Fine Arts Building at the University of Arkansas. Yes, that Ed Stone, of the MOMA in New York. In fact the Fine Arts Building has a courtyard that rather replicates the Paley Garden at MOMA.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pURlhXo_tIY/X8KZuITzguI/AAAAAAAC3Dg/WdJtm9daIwQ3PtvggrsxzqkchH_rXWiwACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/20140615_201209.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="214" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pURlhXo_tIY/X8KZuITzguI/AAAAAAAC3Dg/WdJtm9daIwQ3PtvggrsxzqkchH_rXWiwACLcBGAsYHQ/w381-h214/20140615_201209.jpg" width="381" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><p>So, as a no longer even middle-aged man, I could sit in that chair and feel connected to the lost opportunities of my wasted youth. That chair is right by the stacks holding the books about Korean art, and in my old age I became at least a bit acquainted with the missing piece of the artsy-fartsy understanding of the world I had been seeking a bit in Chicago and Santa Fe. If I had good sense, I would might be writing this essay in a coffee shop in Fayetteville--if there are any coffee shops open in Fayetteville during the Great Fear. (The coffee shops in Fayetteville are so good that when I got back here to the edge of nowhere, where coffee is a major god, there being no other gods left, people asked if I had gone to Onyx. When I said I often had breakfast there, they wanted to touch the hem of my garment.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DmwpK1ixd20/X8KcQ70qSjI/AAAAAAAC3D4/2_uhdqQPNfE4U6BifpNRBhhEy9oyeDWaACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_20141203_122303.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1516" data-original-width="2048" height="276" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DmwpK1ixd20/X8KcQ70qSjI/AAAAAAAC3D4/2_uhdqQPNfE4U6BifpNRBhhEy9oyeDWaACLcBGAsYHQ/w373-h276/IMG_20141203_122303.jpg" width="373" /></a></div><br /><p>But I don't have good sense, and besides, the summers in Fayetteville are hot enough to make one want to move to hell for relief, so I came back to the edge of nowhere. Here I make do with a chair that's an Eames kock-off. (It's actually more comfortable for long periods than the Womb, which like all wombs, is a little cramped for old men.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MRf7_Hguu-I/X8KfPxbzMLI/AAAAAAAC3FA/YSAUmHTF4tUz3Yu493gyuDMbpIHuZO4rwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3489.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MRf7_Hguu-I/X8KfPxbzMLI/AAAAAAAC3FA/YSAUmHTF4tUz3Yu493gyuDMbpIHuZO4rwCLcBGAsYHQ/w348-h261/IMG_3489.jpg" width="348" /></a></div><br /><p>And I just have a little pile of Nam June Paik books. (Although some of them are not in the UofA Fine Arts Library.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-5B9uLDuwI/X8KfjM-docI/AAAAAAAC3FM/dTz2Tl8woD8tFFwCaz5nu6c7QrYq3wRMwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3488.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-5B9uLDuwI/X8KfjM-docI/AAAAAAAC3FM/dTz2Tl8woD8tFFwCaz5nu6c7QrYq3wRMwCLcBGAsYHQ/w346-h260/IMG_3488.jpg" width="346" /></a></div><br /><p>I'm hoping to add to the pile in the future (if I live so long):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MT8csVktbeA/X8KgSUk4ZSI/AAAAAAAC3FY/QhQVwF93aH8raVqkxd5R1OTEbZnZjq34ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2020-11-28%2Bat%2B11.08.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="214" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MT8csVktbeA/X8KgSUk4ZSI/AAAAAAAC3FY/QhQVwF93aH8raVqkxd5R1OTEbZnZjq34ACLcBGAsYHQ/w342-h214/Screenshot%2B2020-11-28%2Bat%2B11.08.00.png" width="342" /></a></div><br /><p>Why, you might be wondering, am I sharing too much information with the world. I am sharing it because a friend back in Arkansas posted today on Facebook about 'having a hard time understanding how our currently frustrating and unhealthy political and cultural state has come about'. I thought, as I always do, because we have become, as McLuhan predicted, retribalized, and it is, as Toffler described, shocking beyond our ability to adjust. (Is it any wonder that Zombies walk among us, at least in our popular art? And didn't McLuhan tell us that if we wanted to understand the future, we should look at art?) But there is another reason I have been revisiting my past about which regrets are fruitless. It is because I enjoy revisiting hope. (You know, that thing that springs eternal in the human breast, because the human breast is a slow learner. Or maybe it just has Patience and Fortitude, to borrow an image from another library of my past.)</p><p>In 1966, I was a young man full of hope. Hope that I could understand the world. Hope that my generation would get it right. (Generational hubris is a thing.) The International Style in architecture still held out an idea that we could build in ways that transcended our tribal differences. (Even though the nations among which that style was inter- were mostly found in northern Europe.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oBDKnaLNBO8/X8KlWLST36I/AAAAAAAC3F0/v-hElWWF9doVt7BpL8L9MIS0u9DfxrvfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s998/un.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="998" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oBDKnaLNBO8/X8KlWLST36I/AAAAAAAC3F0/v-hElWWF9doVt7BpL8L9MIS0u9DfxrvfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/un.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>And in my past, or present, no one has held up hope more clearly than Nam June Paik, whose life occupied all the great warring powers of the modern world. His Korean family took refuge in Japan to escape the Chinese. He then made his way to Germany. and then to the United States. He hoped that the tools of the modern world would allow all of us to enjoy personal sovereignty but with cooperation. Nowhere perhaps is this better shown than in <a href="https://youtu.be/SIQLhyDIjtI">Good Morning, Mr. Orwell</a>.</p><p>That is a hope which I am not yet willing to abandon. The human breast may be a slow learner, but it is a learner. Although the scale of modern warfare seems horrible to us, and it is, a smaller percentage of young warriors die in combat, even in the 'world wars' of industrialized nations, than died in the combat of the idealized tribes of the our past</p><p>As an old man I recognize, admittedly with some regret, that 'An aged man is but a paltry thing/A tattered coat upon a stick'. And yet I hope. I take a sort of wry solace in the reaction to Nam June Paik's first major exhibit, one which he enjoyed remembering in his old age. It was at a small private gallery in Wuppertal, much less glamorous than, say, his installation at the Guggenheim. He exhibited works that would predict most of what he would do later, works that were quite revolutionary in 1963, but which were almost entirely unmentioned in the mainstream media. What caught the attention of the media was that Joseph Beuys took an axe to a piano in the entrance to the exhibit, and that Paik hung an ox head over the door of the gallery.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fiCkuXpYR84/X8KsldVsjII/AAAAAAAC3GM/_fgETyTGwzs0lDuF8uruDai6oFvHFXmxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2020-11-28%2Bat%2B12.01.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="245" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fiCkuXpYR84/X8KsldVsjII/AAAAAAAC3GM/_fgETyTGwzs0lDuF8uruDai6oFvHFXmxQCLcBGAsYHQ/w391-h245/Screenshot%2B2020-11-28%2Bat%2B12.01.08.png" width="391" /></a></div><br /><p>Hanging an ox head over the door was a tradition, it seems, in feasts in Paik's homeland. It was all many contemporary visitors to the show saw. Now a Google search of Nam June Paik Wuppertall Oxhead brings up no photo of it at all. </p><p>As McLuhan reminded us, we travel into the future looking into the rear view mirror. Even Nam June Paik couldn't resist hanging an ox head over the door of what would be a very futuristic exhibit. I hope I live long enough to see what comes when we emerge from the Great Fear. I am certain it will be much more interesting, much more hopeful, than what is in the rear view mirror.</p></div>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-64573195271160827872020-11-24T18:35:00.000-08:002020-11-24T18:35:10.366-08:00Political Science? I Don't Think So.<p> Lately I have heard a lot of people supporting, often demanding, political actions based on 'the science'. Ah, if there only were such a thing as 'the science'. Consider, if you will, the men in these two photos:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IfhgeWz5x0Y/X7QwCT9cjXI/AAAAAAACzR0/xajOKINrd_knyF1pn_9fzM-5mF_SPuA0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s804/nielsbohr.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="804" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IfhgeWz5x0Y/X7QwCT9cjXI/AAAAAAACzR0/xajOKINrd_knyF1pn_9fzM-5mF_SPuA0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/nielsbohr.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8RA8c9VSM7o/X7QwS0PRKtI/AAAAAAACzSA/4P0DAVKi-MkjvBKCy4RyhlacZ3qRHTQ1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/einstein.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8RA8c9VSM7o/X7QwS0PRKtI/AAAAAAACzSA/4P0DAVKi-MkjvBKCy4RyhlacZ3qRHTQ1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/einstein.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Which of them was a scientist? Well, actually they both were. (In addition, they both were pipe smokers, a habit I adopted for a while during my college years, thinking it would make me look wiser. ) I'm guessing many more of you dear readers will recognize Albert Einstein than Niels Bohr, but both men's work is critical to our understanding of the universe and how it works. Both developed theories that could be rigorously tested by predictive experiments and also by something vital to the scientific method, experiments that would disprove them. The outcome is that both men's theories have been proven correct. The problem is that so far their theories haven't learned to play well together. More scientists will have to do more work before we begin to understand the stickier bits, and even then it would be premature to say that there is 'the science'. Rather, there are folks using the scientific method to try to understand the world.</p><p>Physics has pretty well established itself as a useful scientific discipline, with demonstrable advantages in our everyday lives. Such achievements made some other academicians jealous. How could they receive the recognition and respect given to the sciences? Well, they would start being sciences, too. The social studies became Social Sciences. The venerable philosophical tradition of Politics was in many schools replaced with Political Science.</p><p>I had the privilege of taking two courses in political science. The first was as I guess a sophomore at Memphis State University. The woman teaching it gave the most boring lectures I think I ever heard, but when the first test arrived, I quickly learned that her multiple choice questions telegraphed the answers, so I started only going to class when there was an exam. I got an A in the course. I learned a lot from that experience, but none of it had anything to do with politics. The second was as a junior at Roosevelt University. Ah, the exciting sixties. My professor was Stokley's personal attorney. (No one would have been so gauche as to say Stokeley Carmichael, although I had never met the man.) My professor had I think a law degree, not one in politics, but were radical unpackers, not scholars. I got a C in the course, not because of to my work, but because I was white. All the white kids got C's. All the black kids got A's. It was to teach us about white privilege. None of us unpacked the oddity that most of my black friends got A's in their classes with white teachers. (I had mostly smart friends.) I learned a lot from that experience, but none of it had anything to do with politics.</p><p>All the above is a long-winded introduction to why I am hoping to be less dogmatic in voicing my expectations for the next four years of what will pass for politics in the United States. When I finally got around to taking a physics class in college, we did little experiments with measurable data, calculated what we expected would happen, and compared the results to test our hypotheses. A small but real use of the scientific method.</p><p>In 2016 I was a sophomore all over again. I accepted as data about the incoming regime the statements of my friends who watch CNN and get the paper edition of the New York Times. They were nice people. Why would they mislead me? And they 'liked' it if I made some remark about Trump that reinforced our fore-gone conclusions about him.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yovSDK7akIw/X73A7rt3pII/AAAAAAAC2sU/jX02ziqmtscrLzi7k9f7XMKn58-zim5ygCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/B604032A-D4CC-4949-86CC-B319A071E36F.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1236" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yovSDK7akIw/X73A7rt3pII/AAAAAAAC2sU/jX02ziqmtscrLzi7k9f7XMKn58-zim5ygCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/B604032A-D4CC-4949-86CC-B319A071E36F.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Certainly that post from my 1 February 2017 Facebook page is an example. And, it was pretty correct from my viewpoint. Besides being rude and non-presidential, he had torn down Bonwit's Art Deco Facade, put a really ugly building right where Michigan Boulevard crosses the Chicago River, and had terrible taste in drapers. But, hey man, here's the thing: when I, to continue my sophomore metaphor, when I listened to the lectures, so to speak, he hadn't done so bad. If politics were a science, the data would have proved that the theories about Trump were wrong. I was wrong.</p><p>Now, in 2020, I would suggest that Joe Biden and perhaps even more so, Kamala Harris, have done everything they could to prove they are unfit to be president. I certainly understand why people might not think Trump has been ‘presidential’, but the democrats have failed t, in my opinion, to provide desirable alternatives either.</p><p>I am going to try to hold judgment based on the ‘data’ available now. (although there is a lot more record of Biden the politician than there was of Trump.) I am expecting nothing good from the new regime, but I am going to wait for results before I conclude that my theory is correct. </p><p>However, that will not keep me from having a bit of fun with the Harris-Biden circus. It seems that the party , whoever they really are, have chosen Mr. Potatohead as Big Brother. I expect that Jack Dorsey will continue to exercise his role as Minister of Truth. Perhaps Kamala Harris will be Minister of Plenty, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the Minister of Love, and Andre Maginot Minister of Peace. (If dead men can vote, they can certainly serve as Minister Heads.)</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-17726626609683951772020-11-14T14:42:00.001-08:002020-11-14T14:42:05.519-08:00Fear not. (It may take a while.)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekitt9uDco4/X4kPEuqfbvI/AAAAAAACu0k/5a0YHnJGhRk9bI3s2lpG118Al5VlAwaqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s250/IMG_2075.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="250" height="337" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekitt9uDco4/X4kPEuqfbvI/AAAAAAACu0k/5a0YHnJGhRk9bI3s2lpG118Al5VlAwaqgCLcBGAsYHQ/w448-h337/IMG_2075.jpg" width="448" /></a></div><p><br /></p>I have never actually counted the instances myself, but it is said that there are 366 occurrences of the admonition to 'fear not' or its equivalence in the Christian Bible. I have often shared that bit of legendary biblical scholarship, and from time to time in my life I have actually followed that advice. Whenever I have, my life has improved and I have felt good about myself. But, far too often, I have cowered hidden in the crowd. There's not need to be brave or honest if one is not seen.<p></p><p>Sometimes I suspect that there are worthwhile reasons to be unseen. One of the saddest memories I have of being a father was when I overheard my son telling my daughter. 'never let them know you're smart'. School is pretty much a gauntlet at best, and that happened when they were going to Memphis public schools. What was I thinking? </p><p>Having feared being known as a homosexual, I had married, and then divorced, something which is I suspect is always hard on children. It was certainly hard on my children. Giving into fear has collateral damage. But then I 'came out', and I felt good about being honest. I did not want to have extra-marital affairs. I didn't even want a divorce. I just wanted to be honest. But there is often a bias against honesty if it keeps up appearances. My wife did not want to allow that honest, so, we divorced.</p><p>However, as important as sexuality is, as essential as trying to understand one's own sexuality is, sexuality is not something uniquely or even particularly human. What does differentiate humans from goldfish, among other things and perhaps most importantly, is our intellectuality. (Is a word? I think its meaning is at least clear.) And coming out intellectually can often be much more difficult than coming out sexually.</p><p>Like most folks, I kinda like to have friends, and as I have wandered through life, I have drifted into lots of different groups of people. It's easy either to agree or at least not disagree with them. Folks have a lot of crazy ideas, and to call those ideas crazy makes friendship difficult. A lot of crazy ideas aren't worth the effort to even question. </p><p>And yet. A lot of not just crazy but harmful ideas become so widespread as to be hardly noticeable unless one disagrees with them. I have two degrees in history, one from a private university and one from a state university, and (surprise!) both schools were almost entirely Marxist. Most of my professors could have transferred to the University of Moscow with no changes in their lecture notes. I can remember four exceptions. One was a philosophy professor at Memphis State. One was my advisor at Roosevelt University, who was data-driven in a time when data was much harder to find than it is now. The other two were in my graduate studies at Arkansas State. One was just an all-around skeptic from the University of Colorado, and one was perhaps the most helpful teacher I ever had after high school, with a degree from Claremont, who taught politics. I flunked one of my graduate essays. Why? I wrote my answer from a classical, Aristotelian viewpoint, thinking it would be read by the guy from Colorado. It was read by a Marxist, and I had posited the outrageous idea that some men (and women, although the actors in the question were men) could act from their concepts of virtue rather than from economic determinism. What did I do? Well, I took that question over, writing it in the politically correct vein. It was a sort of 1984 moment, when I said something I knew was not true, but I did it and didn't even notice. Thus one looses one's integrity.</p><p>Lately, most of my friends are very left-leaning democrats, who seem most often to think that the highest human value is 'free' health care. They read the New York Times and find Donald Trump disgraceful. Now, full disclosure, I find Donald Trump outrageous. I also find Bernie Sanders outrageous, and Hilary Clinton demeaning of her 'followers' for whom she wants to be a 'champion'. What feminist allows for champions these days? So, in the 2016 election, I voted for Gary Johnson, but I also swallowed the blue pill. </p><p>I remained in the matrix of fear that the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post and my democrat friends concocted about the dangers of Donald Trump. He was going to put kids in cages. (Never mind that Saint Obomber's administration had built the cages.) He was going to destroy gay rights. (Never mind that one of his Supreme Court nominees supported the decision to extend the Civil Rights Bill's protection to gay people.) I looked at the news each morning to see where there was a new war. (Never mind that President Trump has consistently been the least war-making president in recent history.) In other words, I let the little fears spread by the sort of intellectually mushy folks who had been my teachers continue to influence my thinking, because it was easy. I could post something on Facebook critical of 'the fucking moron' and it would get lots of likes. I was on the side of the angels. I was on the side of the smart people. What was it that Hilary Clinton had called Trump supporters? A basket of deplorables?</p><p>For three and a half years those angelic folks the non-deplorables, milked a false narrative that somehow Trump was a Russian agent, that he was a racist. Meanwhile, Russia hasn't moved back into Poland,the economy has boomed, and unemployment rates for non-white folks fell to the lowest levels in decades. I kept waking up to find that the things the democrats would tell me would be the end of the world as we know it if Trump were elected, hadn't happened. </p><p>Now the fear machine is being cranked up again, and I am told that I must be mentally ill because I didn't vote for a demented old man who will almost certainly be manipulated if not replaced by one of the meanest women ever to enter US politics. I was told just days ago by one of my 'liberal' friends that I had gone around the bend because I that police should protect private property rights. I put 'liberal' in quotes because property rights have long since been abandoned by many main stream leftists.</p><p>And now that the folks who spent the past four years calling half the country every sort of nasty name Twitter would allow, and that was just about anything so long as the person being attacked seemed conservative, those folks are calling for unity. One of my 'friends' posted this on Facebook a few days ago:</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwzuRa9DDdY/X7BMS09JL6I/AAAAAAACzDA/whU42SQbwoAnS_Vt_j12Qxr44eyE5gSuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1075/poland.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="981" data-original-width="1075" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwzuRa9DDdY/X7BMS09JL6I/AAAAAAACzDA/whU42SQbwoAnS_Vt_j12Qxr44eyE5gSuQCLcBGAsYHQ/w439-h400/poland.jpg" width="439" /></a></div><br /><p>Except that the population of Poland was down to about 24 million after World War Two, it could have been one of the propaganda posters used by the Soviets as they improved Eastern Europe after their victory.</p><p>Now,, I must confess to being a slow learner. Or perhaps, more importantly, I should confess to being someone who allows himself to ignore empirical facts when doing so makes life more pleasant on a daily basis with others who are ignoring empirical facts. It's easy to yield to the fear that one's friends will think one queer if one disagrees with the beauty of the emperor's new clothes. Besides, there is the wonderfully convenient crisis of the corona virus, a virus so deadly one may never know one is infected unless one is tested. Imagine, all those cases walking around thinking they are healthy when they could be a statistic to frighten us all on the nightly news. Obviously the only thing to do is to close down the economy and rebuild it better.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Lk4I1eVXGM/X7BPUuCNyaI/AAAAAAACzDM/7pLpXlesGRgh0y2jp56IttWbDeOnYt4pgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/EZkvXfSWsAYuGUL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="380" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Lk4I1eVXGM/X7BPUuCNyaI/AAAAAAACzDM/7pLpXlesGRgh0y2jp56IttWbDeOnYt4pgCLcBGAsYHQ/w380-h380/EZkvXfSWsAYuGUL.jpg" width="380" /></a></div><br /><p>In my last blog post, I explained how as someone who leans towards being a libertarian, even an anarchist, I found Trump a much less dire choice for president than Harris/Biden. Now as someone who has long advocated a post-national view of the world, I want to explain why I don't think Klaus Schwab's view of that world is one I want to support. The post-national world is possible because , with the emergence of what Marshall McLuhan called the Electric Age and what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere, communication between people unmediated by states is possible on a scale unimaginable before. But despite the vision of one my favourite artists, Nam June Paik, that that world might be different from what Orwell had envisioned, there are certainly many folks who have grasped the Orwellian possibilities of being mediators. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q8L42zJWm0c/X7BSvklYyZI/AAAAAAACzDc/CLPP-v-_fk0LUplI7R78Iiiz5W5K5mKAQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1050/Googlag-Hero.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="1050" height="155" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q8L42zJWm0c/X7BSvklYyZI/AAAAAAACzDc/CLPP-v-_fk0LUplI7R78Iiiz5W5K5mKAQCLcBGAsYHQ/w417-h155/Googlag-Hero.png" width="417" /></a></div><br /><p>If personal freedom is to survive in Airstrip One, and there is no guarantee that it will, we must first conquer our own fear of being taken to Room 101, because if one deviates at all from the Truth as the Ministry describes it this afternoon, someone will take you to Room 101. (I wonder if Orwell chose that number because it so often designates the first course in the official story as it is taught in colleges?) I have long found it ironic that in many ways the world of Twitter was foretold by Jesus: 'whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.' And as Nietzsche foretold, we have found ourselves stuck in the cycles of Christian theology with no way out. We have inherited the concepts of guilt, sin and shame,but without the means of redemption (thanks to Douglas Murray, <i>The Madness of Crowds</i>, p. 211). Once one makes one step away from RightThink, one is doomed to the outer darkness.</p><p>I have found it particularly interesting that one of my friends who has cast me into the outer darkness is someone with whom I became friends on Facebook and later in meatlife because he thought I was 'authentic'. I think he means that I have not tried to present someone whom I am not. (Indeed, one of the things that made Facebook attractive for me before absolutely power had corrupted absolutely, or nearly so, was Zuckerberg's ideal of 'one identity'.) As always, Shakespeare had it right in Polonius' advice to his doomed son. I want to be true to my own self, but it can seem dangerous. But as Winston would learn in Room 101, to do otherwise is to lose oneself.</p><p>Or, again, as Jesus said: 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' </p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-830713990932852332020-10-30T16:13:00.000-07:002020-10-30T16:13:00.219-07:00Hey man, here’s the thing.<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-38Ak54F70Z0/X5yOh1wbXOI/AAAAAAACwgw/T5nbYQBwrUIUeNUruYidPI9t-iZsuLpxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/7E606C75-6C14-49EA-9819-F6109CA23F2D.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="777" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-38Ak54F70Z0/X5yOh1wbXOI/AAAAAAACwgw/T5nbYQBwrUIUeNUruYidPI9t-iZsuLpxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/7E606C75-6C14-49EA-9819-F6109CA23F2D.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>A friend whom I quite respect, and who still speaks to me even though I have come out as someone who is voting for Orange Man Bad, is surprised that I seem to have abandoned my tendency towards being an anarchist to risk being drenched in the stench of the republicans. Although I wrote a blog post about ‘Why I’m Voting for the Fucking Moron’, and the reasons I included there still apply, more has happened since then. Biden has ‘chosen’ Kamala Harris as his running mate and Bernie Sanders has exulted in the compromise to make Biden the most progressive president ever., and the democrats have made it quite clear that they want to ‘extend’ the Supreme Court and make the District of Columbia a state.</p><p>I think I made it very clear in 2016 that I was not supporting Donald Trump. I was horrified by the idea that Sanders might be the democratic nominee, and I said to several friends that between the two, I found Trump the lesser of the two evils. But, the democrats nominated Clinton, and I had the luxury of living in a state where my vote counts very little, Washington, so I could vote for Gary Johnson. It was only after the election that I read Clinton's <i>It Takes a Village</i> and I realized how glad I was that she hadn't been elected, but still, I was not expecting a Trump administration to be a good thing. I still listened to the sky-is-falling forecasts of the major news sources, who were pumping out fear of the Orange Man as fast as they could. I have friends with gay and trans kids who were worried about sending them to school after the Trump election. But, guess what? Trump didn't send anyone around to round them up or try to add some sort of ideological curricula to the schools. Instead, Betsy de Voss, whom my progressive friends most often call a witch or worse--even those who proudly call themselves witches--go figure--has actually worked to give parents more choice in the education of their children.</p><p>As the Trump years wore one, even though I had expected the worst--I mean, shucks ad golly, I'm a gay man who is appalled enough by his choice of draperies--I began to notice that the sky was not falling, that I approved of a lot f his policies, and that often he was being condemned most harshly for policies that had just continued from the Obama administration, I found it rather unlikely that Trump was actually anti-semitic when he had so many Jewish grandchildren. I found it hard to believe that he was racist when he was trying to get so many black prisoners released and so many black folks employed. But then neither Obama nor Trump were judged by the quality of their character, but by the color of their skin: Brown Man Good; Orange Man Bad.</p><p>Now, it's 2020. I'm not at all unhappy about reduced regulations--remember I am perceived as an anarchist by many who know me--nor by possibilities for peace in the Middle East, nor by a booming economy, nor by the US' having with drawn from the Paris Climate Feel-Good, because I actually do try to follow the science. I am not unhappy that the United States hasn't gotten into any more wars and has actually begun withdrawing from some. Still, there are certainly many things Orange Man Bad has done that I don't approve. In fact, he hardly ever even asks me for my approval. And still, I would rather there were a candidate for president in 2020 who were less divisive, who didn't call so many people names in 3:00 am tweets.</p><p>But hey man, here's the thing. Trump has said nasty things about the New York Times, but he hasn't censored it. It's the democrats who seem to censor free speech. Coming to power at a time when the presidency has been given and taken more power than ever before, he has been quite reticent to abuse his power. Not innocent, but compared to previous presidents, reticent. He has actually respected the rights of states, even when they have taken positions he vehemently and clearly finds repulsive.</p><p>Now, it's 2020, and although I might wish the democrats had nominated some reasonable alternative to Trump, I don't find that to be the case. Because hey man, here's the thing. I didn't vote for Trump because I 'support' Trump. I voted for Trump because I want to continue to enjoy 'the Blessings of Liberty', which, along with 'Justice, domestic Tranquility, . . . the common defense, [and] . . . the general Welfare' for which the Constitution was ordained and established. It is, I think, of great importance that the Oath of Office for not just the presidency but all national offices, is 'to support and defend the Constitution'. It interestingly enough is not to the people who ordained and established it. Should the people wish to change it, there are methods within the Constitution to do that. Now, I am I confess mostly disgusted when any politician, Orange Man Bad, or Clinton the would-be Champion or Sanders the Socialists, tells us that he is 'fighting for the people'. That is not the job of the president. The job of the president is to support and defend the Constitution. And, I suspect often in spite of himself, Orange Man Bad has done that better IMHO than a lot of presidents.</p><p>But, hey man, here's the thing: the democrats are pretty much running against the Constitution. The unfortunate thing about the Constitution, the feature that would-be-tyrants find a glitch again and again, is that it slows down change. It set up a Republic, which as Ben Franklin more or less forecast, we would often choose not to be wise enough to keep. It guards against the tyranny of the majority. It makes the president rather like a tennis judge, who no matter how much he may like one player, is expected to enforce the rules of the game. Were I a tennis judge, I would be tempted to judge for Rafa every time, not that he needs it. But then a different judge, who didn't like Rafa, could judge against him every time. And there would no more be anything to call tennis.</p><p>I am not, you see, a perfect anarchist. Then there would be no rules. I enjoy tennis, and I enjoy rules that respect the dignity of all the players of the game. One of the things that really convinced me to vote for Orange Man Bad this time, rather than for Jo Jorgensen, besides the fact that I though Gary Johnson would have been a better president thatn Jorgensen, is that watching the Democratic National Convention I saw speaker after speaker act as if the only way anyone could accomplish anything was at the pleasure and with the approval of Big Brother. Then I watched the Republican National Convention, with speaker after speaker expressing their belief in the dignity of persons as individuals, not just as citizens of Oceana. </p><p>So, hey man, here's the thing. I'm gonna do something I don't usually do, and invoke the flag. Oddly enough, we now live in a time when if one flies the flag--and I still fly the Jolly Roger--if one flies the American flat, it is assumed that one is a Trump supporter. After almost four years of the Orange Man Bad, the star-spangled banner still waves o'er a land , compared to any other land, free, and the home of at least some folks who are still brave. I don't trust that would be true under a Harris-Biden four years.</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-43828330235346657752020-09-24T17:18:00.000-07:002020-09-24T17:18:34.845-07:00Evidence? What evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6gh5ydk_Xz8/X20kl5l066I/AAAAAAACpek/XfAa4cPSdpwdAbS459dMhlZIhhHR-RV3wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/march%2Bfor%2Bscience.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="973" data-original-width="1920" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6gh5ydk_Xz8/X20kl5l066I/AAAAAAACpek/XfAa4cPSdpwdAbS459dMhlZIhhHR-RV3wCLcBGAsYHQ/w489-h216/march%2Bfor%2Bscience.png" width="489" /></a></div><br /> Many years ago, when I was still living in Mid-Nowhere, I was a crony capitalist. I did not think of myself as such, but it's what I was. I bought a failing bookstore because I liked books, and I thought that if I tweaked the business model, it could make money. I didn't even know the term 'business model', but in retrospect, that's what I thought. Enter the cronyism. A reasonable bank would not have lent me the money I needed to make my foolish purchase, but I had family connections at the bank. For a while all went well. I was the sole proprietor and sole employee, and I worked hard. Early in the morning, I was cleaning my windows and rearranging the displays. Late at night I was doing the books and taking out the trash. Enter more cronyism. There's a college even in Mid-Nowhere and most of my customers were from that august institution. One day the head of the History Department asked me if I would like an MA in history. He had an assistantship open but didn't like any of the applicants. Would I like to apply? I said that I had to work. He said he had a solution. I could hire his wife. Her salary would be just a bit less than the assistantship and I would get an MA in the deal. So, I became an employer.<p></p><p>Having even one employee is a lot more work than doing all the work oneself. To make matters worse, the professor in charge of my thesis said that she could only find time to work with me if I hired her son. The wife of the department head was a great employee. The son of my supervising professor couldn't even take out the garbage. But for a while the business was growing and I had a few other employees from time to time. Also from time to time a little man named Mr. Green, who reminded me of no one so much as a shorter Sam Lowry from Brazil, would come by with form 27b-6, and I would give him a cup of coffee while we computed the payroll tax I owed the Great State, and I would write him a check until the next time he arrived.</p><p>Alas, the Bible page-thin margin dwindled to nothing during the recession that came with the Carter administration. I ended up selling the bookstore to a wealthy woman who could use the debt as a tax offset, giving the books to libraries, and moved to the Big City to try to find work to support my growing family and pay my bills. The economy seemed to improve dramatically when Mr. Carter retired from the presidency and went into volunteer carpentry.. It was a bit of a rocky transition, from entrepreneur to employee, and I worked two jobs for a while, sending my then-wife to law school and eventually even getting--did I mention that I am a slow learner?--another Masters and most of a Doctorate, myself.</p><p>But there was one particularly rocky moment, one Sunday morning at about 2:00 am, when there was a very loud knock on the door accompanied by two policemen yelling POLICE! Silly me. I never thought about shooting at them. In fact, I didn't even have a gun. They handcuffed me and put me in the back of a Chevrolet with a grill dividing the passenger seat from the command station, and with no door handles in the back seat. I was finger-printed and mug-shotted for the offense of fleeing across state lines to avoid taxes. Without Mr. Green, I had forgotten form 27b-6. I think I was the only sober person in the cell, which was made entirely of stainless steel, but not in a Mies van der Rohe kinda way. One baloney sandwich later, I was out on bond. The affair was actually quite easy to settle, especially because it seemed that the reason I had been arrested in the middle of the night instead of having been sent a bill was that someone in the County Clerk's office had a grudge left from high school. </p><p>Fast forward a few years and a few lifetimes, and I found myself at the edge of the country where all my friends drink chai lattes made with almond milk. We were told that science was going to end after the 2016 election, that Richard Feyman would no longer have money for chalk, and that we should take to the street carrying signs saying 'hooray for our side'. Now, I had taken to the streets with signs when I was even younger and more delusional than when I had thought I could. afford both to own a bookstore and buy books. But I 'liked' the Facebook Page from The March for Science. Shucks. Those were the days when I still thought that 'most trusted news source' might imply 'a reliable news source'.</p><p>The March for Science came and went. Science did not die nor get defunded, as I just ascertained by a bit of diligent Googling. That is, I thought The March for Science had come and gone, until last night. All of a sudden it was back with a call to march in protest of the Kentucky Grand Jury's presentation of the evidence in Breonna Taylor's death. I made the error of suggesting that sleeping with a drug dealer might not be the best way to assure a long and happy life. One would have thought I had killed Santa Claus.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oqNE9CcKslU/X20vUzm8cnI/AAAAAAACpfA/j6A2DaCpSR0TKpnSPm4-CapkkObpPv8JwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Screenshot%2B2020-09-24%2Bat%2B05.09.25.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oqNE9CcKslU/X20vUzm8cnI/AAAAAAACpfA/j6A2DaCpSR0TKpnSPm4-CapkkObpPv8JwCLcBGAsYHQ/w466-h291/Screenshot%2B2020-09-24%2Bat%2B05.09.25.png" width="466" /></a></div><br /> One of the things I found most amusing about this excerpt of the things I was called for suggesting that the Kentucky Attorney General might be more reliable than the propaganda of BLM is that I have often been critical of Trunp's foreign policy because I think it strengthens Russia. (Not that he listens to me any more than Mr. Obama listened to me when I suggested that bombing weddings and funerals is not a good way to win the hearts and minds of the people.) But, the outflow of vitriol made me a bit more curious about 'March for Science', so I looked at their website. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yf90jVda9Xg/X20y9Ro_q2I/AAAAAAACpfs/vpxS0bsvUVczwkV8VCwIIiQVMEfe5PXigCLcBGAsYHQ/s1919/marforsci.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1149" data-original-width="1919" height="272" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yf90jVda9Xg/X20y9Ro_q2I/AAAAAAACpfs/vpxS0bsvUVczwkV8VCwIIiQVMEfe5PXigCLcBGAsYHQ/w453-h272/marforsci.png" width="453" /></a></div><br /><p>Surprise surprise surprise. Lots of feel-good buzz words. Lots of claims that opposition to what they are advocating is a conspiracy. But despite their nod to 'evidence based' public policies, they are calling for protests--mostly peaceful, I'm sure, because that's the only kind newspeak allows--against a public policy based on evidence. Odd, perhaps, that there is no explanation of how they conclude what 'The Science' is, or about the scientific method. Just a wonderful neo-puritanism of the sort so popular amongst folks in what I only semi-humorously call The Third Great Awakening. I was, I confess, a bit amused when many of my friends who marched 'for science' in 2017 had no real regard for science in their daily lives unless they thought it agreed with their prejudices and fears. One of them sleeps with crystals to channel more chi. But I had thought that they were probably had good intentions. One must always remember where good intentions most often lead. </p><p>I should have just shot the two policemen who came to arrest me. I could have been a folk hero by now.</p><p>Welcome to Brazil. Please keep your form 27b-6 with you at all times.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-73634256819555762852020-08-29T14:16:00.001-07:002020-08-29T14:16:49.961-07:00Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNanyC9xO2k/X0rDu_JqtKI/AAAAAAACk2Q/nI-3RGdo7MMGXmSCJSHrGZ4AtJPviiS4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s926/confession.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="926" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNanyC9xO2k/X0rDu_JqtKI/AAAAAAACk2Q/nI-3RGdo7MMGXmSCJSHrGZ4AtJPviiS4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/confession.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p><p>I suppose it's useful if one can learn from one's sins, so although I'm repentant, I'm not remorseful. I committed one of the most common sins of the internet and social media, but I hope not to do it again, and by not doing it again, I hope my posts might be more effective. But probably not, because of another thing I learned from having sinned: there is a very selective sort of neo-talmudism that occurs on the internet.</p><p>For a long time I have been distressed that many Americans, including many of my friends, have chosen ignorance of history and ignorance of context, and have claimed the contemporary moral high ground of victimhood rather than responsibility. Let Lenin convince me that I'm the victim of the Czar and I will likely soon become the victim of Lenin. Lenin's propoganda didn't mention collecting my land and sendig me to the gulag. Propoganda's kinda like that somtimes.</p><p>So, when a friend whom I generally consider a very good person posted one lament that capitalism is not supporting families well enough and that the government should step into the gap, and followed it with a nice virtue-signal of himself in a BLM parade, ironically while living in a town where the university was shut down for a bit of re-education when it was alleged that someone on one of the Vikings sports teams had made something someone considered a racial slur on an actually rather obscure site, resulting in demands, thankfully not met, that the name of the sports teams be changed from Vikings, I sinned. I Googled BLM and families and saw an <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/16/how-black-lives-matters-hatred-of-the-family-feeds-its-desire-for-revolution/">essay</a> from an organization called The Federalist.com which outlined why the author, Auguste Mayrat, thinks the Black Lives Matters movement is opposed to families. I posted a link to the essay on my Facebook page. It seemed to me an unfortunate irony that someone who thinks families need help would expect to find it in an organization that is dedicated to disrupting families. Common to both of my friend's posts, I suppose, was a not-unusual disapproval of capitalism. </p><p>(Sorry. I can't help myself)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8_c5q7I6XuA/X0qme-WtR4I/AAAAAAACk1s/L6wFQaWCehQ3qwL2AeOO6DIetu_uZXkcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s301/FB_IMG_1512527020928.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="236" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8_c5q7I6XuA/X0qme-WtR4I/AAAAAAACk1s/L6wFQaWCehQ3qwL2AeOO6DIetu_uZXkcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/FB_IMG_1512527020928.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p>Mr. Mayrat's essay wasn't perfect. A friend said that it was unlike me to have shared it if I had read it. (Indeed, I had read it. I miss the pithiness of someone like Bill Buckley, perhaps, but sometimes I take what I find.) Disappointed friend said 'It's flawed in so very many ways and written with a obviously biased agenda. I'm kinda shocked.' Well duh. Of course it's written with a biased agenda, but unlike many publications (I'm looking at you, Good Gray Lady), it doesn't pretend to be unbiased. The Federalist is a conservative publication, and doesn't pretend to be otherwise. In a long telephone conversation that followed, my shocked friend went on to decry the nuclear family as a myth, to argue that one does need a village to raise a child, and to pounce on Mr. Mayrat's claim that BLM hates families, based on the actual text of the BLM website. The discussion reminded me of nothing so much as Talmudic arguments, which in this case centered around Mr. Mayrat's use of the word 'logic'. He said that the logic of the BLM website's statement suggested (I must confess that at the time of the discussion, I was sitting on a park bench and didn't have my Mishna with me, or I would have pounced on the word 'suggests'.) 'that children do better without parents and outside the home.'</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hoA_ZrH-X8c/X0rFD4aQQYI/AAAAAAACk2g/Irp4lgIDqCseC88SD2rRav-Og5Iw0F5LACPcBGAsYHg/s900/talmudonline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="900" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hoA_ZrH-X8c/X0rFD4aQQYI/AAAAAAACk2g/Irp4lgIDqCseC88SD2rRav-Og5Iw0F5LACPcBGAsYHg/s640/talmudonline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Now, I realize that by openly admitting to having any conservative notions at all, and even to commit what is probably larger than a micro-agression by quoting a conservative source is enough to disallow most arguments, so I was actually honoured if a bit amused by my shocked friend's extensive discourse. I also think that his use of BLM's conception of a village to raise children (and of Mrs. Clinton's use in her book advocating passing our children over the fire of Moloch, which I did not read until after she lost the election, but which made me less unhappy that she had lost) is double speak. If the Black Lives Matter movement were concerned about families and children, we might find folks with BLM signs patrolling the neighborhoods of Chicago to provide a safe environment for children rather than burning the businesses of black women in Brooklyn or torching mattress factories in Kenosha. (I found that one hard to understand for a while. I realize that it might be argued that the sister in Brooklyn had sold out to capitalism, but mattresses? And then I realized that they're just a symbol of bourgeois luxury. Real workers, I guess, sleep on a thin mat on the floor. As I do.)</p><p>So, in the future I will be much more careful about posting anything in which I haven't counted every jot and tittle. But I would also encourage my friends who find the BLM website enticing consider that it is written by folks who claim to be Marxists, and then to consider the role Marxists give to propaganda. </p><p>And, finding myself as a sheep in the midst of wolves, I shall strive to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.</p><p>And, in this age of miracles and wonders, the Talmud is available online. But I'll let you Google it for yourself.</p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-11779711680572891022020-08-27T19:34:00.003-07:002020-10-19T17:34:04.099-07:00Going beyond the Self-Evident<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WkpNZVEBZTY/X0hkqYpr53I/AAAAAAACkxk/8TTz1HPNEDEbCuzxmn6yhBJaCDahD7cEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1076/Screenshot%2B2020-08-27%2Bat%2B18.56.14.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="1076" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WkpNZVEBZTY/X0hkqYpr53I/AAAAAAACkxk/8TTz1HPNEDEbCuzxmn6yhBJaCDahD7cEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screenshot%2B2020-08-27%2Bat%2B18.56.14.png" width="640" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>The screen shot above is part of one of billions of interactions that occurred today on the internet. It's not a bit deal, but it has given me food for reflection all day, and I want to share some of those reflections. </p><p>There are three clauses in that interaction, and I want to discuss each of them, but I will save the first one, about the democrats, for last.</p><p>I have known Dan Krotz for about twenty years, since he owned a bookstore from which I bought and then sold and then often re-bought many years. He's a minor but rather brilliant author, and someone for whom I have much respect. Indeed, the cover photo on his Facebook page is one I took of a book he wrote that I bought and have recommended to many. And Dan said that Trump is simply and openly a pig. That doesn't seem too remarkable, does it? And yet, in the history of the world, it's been a rare thing that someone can call the leader of one of the world's most powerful nation a pig with no fear of retribution. When Trump was elected, I remember being told by many friends that all our rights would be taken away, even that I perhaps should get a burner phone. But in fact the times I have personally been under scrutiny and censorship by the government was under democratic regimes. Dan said that without even getting any dislikes on Facebook. (It's a good thing he didn't call a fat black female actress a pig, because then he would have been put in social media jail or banned for life. (At least he would were he a conservative comedian.) </p><p>Thinking about that remark, I am struck by how much Dan's remark about Trump resembles some of the things Trump says on Twitter about people he dislikes. Yet, somehow, I still respect Dan.</p><p>Now, of course, there are things about Dan's statement that are self-evident. I mean, I have yet to forgive Trump for destroying the facade of Bonwit-Teller. He's often crass, calling people things like 'pig'. And yes, there is, I'm aware, corruption in the Trump administration. But, alas, I'm afraid that is not unusual. Mr. Obama is somehow now a poster child for good presidenst, but I rented an apartment from the Chicago Democratic Party back in the 1960's when the Johnson administration was tapping my phone , and when somehow my building escaped enforcement of the Chicago building code. I doubt things have changed much since. (And, if I may borrow a phrase from the democrats' nominee for likely the true leader of the nation, 'are you aware that there's a perception' that people around some politicians are likely to commit suicide?)</p><p>So, yes. Trump is a pig. His faults are pretty self-evident. But, the alternative, about which Dan sadly agrees, the democrats and their program to dismantle western civilization, is carefully covered in banal feel-good phrases like hope and light and love. If putting up with Trump's self-evident piggishness for another four years will delay the arrival of the full-on Animal Farm, I'm willing to risk it.</p><p>Yup. Trump's a self-evident pig, and he hasn't been given an Nobel Peace Prize. But I would suggest that it is not enough to just rely on the self-evident appearances of any situation, it is not enough to be seduced by slick intentions, but look for results. I'm fond of fewer wars.</p> <p></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4123192660722720024.post-62610711808640761842020-08-26T18:07:00.006-07:002020-08-26T19:54:15.817-07:00Why I Have Decided to Vote for the Fucking Moron<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4aDsbMOZg_s/X0BRTCkXYXI/AAAAAAACkYY/55V2U86F4R8MLhkqN7slVs7kCdvBb_32wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/trump-cartoon_fb.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4aDsbMOZg_s/X0BRTCkXYXI/AAAAAAACkYY/55V2U86F4R8MLhkqN7slVs7kCdvBb_32wCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/trump-cartoon_fb.webp" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>Like many others, I was shocked on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. I would not have been pleased had Hilary Clinton won the election. I thought her a dangerous hawk whose primary qualification was overweening ambition. But the polls . . . I had voted for neither of them. It had seemed that Gary Johnson was the only adult in the room. He may not have known where Aleppo was, but he didn't need to know because he wasn't going to bomb it. He may have forgotten the name of Mexican President Vicente Fox, but then so had I and I had worked in Mexico when Fox was first elected, and it seemed very unlikely that Johnson would waste millions of dollars building a wall along the Mexican border. I had no illusions that Johnson would win the election, but it seemed a good thing to at least mark my position, kinda like pissing on a fire hydrant. I live in western Washington, and I'm surrounded by Pavlovian progressives who haven't thought critically since they had to write a compare-and-contrast essay in eighth grade English class.</p><p>Like many others, I was horrified on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. He shared Clinton's ambition, but seemed even less likely to choose good advisors. He seem to obey neither the laws of grammar, nor of the United States. I confess I have broke both from time to time, but truthfully I more often consider grammar. Of course what should have been obvious to anyone who has listened to people talk for more than five minutes or has read any novel written since 1900, communication does not obey the laws of grammar, either. And when I had talked to supporters of the most enthusiastically supported democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, it quickly became apparent that law, especially constitutional law, has very little respect from anyone in the current political climate change. Nevertheless, I posted a long string of memes describing the president a a fucking moron, posts which garnered likes on Facebook.</p><p>Like many others, I expected some great catastrophe to follow after 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. My progressive friends told me so. CNN told me so. And they both told me that Fox News was in cahoots with the devil. I had been rather appalled by what a pansy Anderson Cooper had been in his reactions to the Trump during the debate he failed to moderate. (Yes, I know one isn't supposed to use terms denigrating someone's sexuality, but I'm a pansy, too, so I get a pass, like a rap singer using the Nword.) I had been impressed by how the only moderator during the debates who did reel in Trump was Chris Wallace, whom I had been told worked for the devil himself. So when the Fucking Moron attacked false news, I thought of that in terms of an attack on freedom of the press, despite that never has the press reported anything about me accurately, and despite that I in general recognize that the true centers of power are now more the big media/tech companies and not Washington.</p><p>Like many others, I found that following 8 November 2016 Donald Trump did one outrageous thing after another, and not only did he fail to appoint particularly brightest and best staffers, he fired them as quickly as he had done on the Apprentice. It seemed like the presidency as a reality TV show. It was interesting to me that the things my liberal/progressive friends condemned mostly loudly about his policies were things that Mr. Obomber had been doing all along. It seemed to me that the best way to keep from even considering putting kids in cages would be to keep the out to begin with. But they had hope with Mr. Obomber, and they had horror with Mr. Trump. Mr. Obomber had been Nice looking, while the fucking moron didn't need to be caricatured. He always looked like a cartoon.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FHW6vVi98Mo/X0BdpQUE2hI/AAAAAAACkY0/hfb2eA6lwPwy32tDcENvXwZ3upWmnb2NQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1100/caricature.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FHW6vVi98Mo/X0BdpQUE2hI/AAAAAAACkY0/hfb2eA6lwPwy32tDcENvXwZ3upWmnb2NQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/caricature.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>And, can you imagine what Jackie K-O would think about the way he redecorated the White House? At least he had the honesty to brag about having sex with that woman, so long as she was nice looking. </p><p>Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, I like many other people was reminded that we in live a post-moder of alternative facts. I learned that some massacre somewhere in Kentucky had occurred in an alternative universe and that covefe is a thing. I was introduced to government by Tweet, which if one considers it, is really much more appropriate for the contemporary political climate change than fire side chats. Unlike my progressive friends, I was pretty much pleased by a lot of the early actions of the administration, although they seemed to have been the program of Paul Ryan, who I noticed abandoned the swamp after two years, putting a bit of distance between himself and the new American Greatness.</p><p>Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, the world didn't end. No new nations were bombed. Bombing and targeted attacks were not ended, but hay, America is great right. I mean, one of Clinton's claims to glory as the assassination of Mumammar Khaddafi, an act which has made life miserable for an awful lot of Libyans.</p><p>Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017 the wold didn't end. Things pretty much chugged along as they would have anyway. People continued to invent things. Wages went up. Prices went up, but mostly slower than wages. Because I am what a friend of mine calls a 'god-damned one worlder', I have been very saddened that the United States has disengaged from China, and indeed from much of the world. It never seemed to me, for instance, that the Fucking Moron understood that NATO was established for the benefit of the United States. On the other hand, I must realize that the world in which NATO now exists is quite different from what existed in 1949. I don't think that the presidency has much power for good, and a lot of power for bad, but still I was disappointed that the Fucking Moron's pastiche of tweeted ideas that might better have been saved to examine in the cold light of dawn, often been to strengthen Russia and China. I don't think he has been alone in working up the electorate by triggering their-our--fears, The Democratic National Convention has been a Fear Week. And no one seems more anxious to race bait sooner than Nancy Pelosi, a woman whom I confess I find a bit difficult to take seriously because she reminds me so much of an aunt who lived much of her life in California and who tended to spike heels and pant suits and a shrill voice. The only thing Pelosi lacks is my aunt's Chiwawa named Oogie.</p><p>But, four years is a long time, and following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, I have been collecting a bit of random data. The loyal opposition--is irony still allowed in 2020?--has carefully cultivated the Trump derangement syndrome. Time and again when I have asked my progressive friends, who are about the only sort there are here in western Washington, so I may have a skewed viewpoint, why they support some activity, from such things as the Green New Deal to the looting being perpetrated in honor of George Floyd, their answers have nothing to do with my question but quickly become 'I don't like Donald Trump'. As he said himself, maybe it's his personality. I, however, find most of the ideas of the loyal opposition arebboatahto6bopposed to the ideas that have made America great in the first place: classic English liberalism, free trade, and capitalism. I doubt the fucking moron understands classic English liberalism, but he hasn't overtly attacked it. He has done nothing much to help free trade, alas. But he doesn't attack--always; I mean, his tweets do seem to be random--the capitalists like Tim Cook who stand up to him on free trade.</p><p>But, of course, the Virus.</p><p>The Big Black Swan.</p><p>It is far too early to pretend to know all the results of the covid pandemic, but I will say that it's foolish to blame it on China, as the Fucking Moron does, or to blame it one the Fucking Moron, as the democrats do. One needs to avoid derangement syndromes of every sort, I suspect.</p><p>So, here's the deal: Much to my surprise, and largely because of his incompetence and tendency to chase every squirrel, the United States hasn't been doing badly for the past four years if one looks at reality rather than the news. The United States has not been the worst nation in its response to the virus, as we were repeatedly told by the DNC. nor has it been the best nation, as the Fucking Moron claims. What makes the United States' situation difficult is of course that it is a union of states, something which Trump has mostly noticed and honored during the pandemic, despite the many calls for one-size-fits-all measures from Pelosi & Company. As Rahm Emanuel, home boy of Mr. Obomber said, no good crisis should be wasted.</p><p>Unfortunately, although the democrats seem firmly in the depths of Trump derangement syndrome, powdered Biden mixed in with one's organic vegan smoothie is not a cure for the virus. I have seen nothing from the loyal opposition to suggest that their 'belief' in science will actually change the facts for the many scientists all around the world who are working for a cure and/or preventative already.</p><p>Unfortunately, I have seen no signs that the democrats would recognize the achievements of Regan and Nixon in bringing Russia and China into the sphere of American influence and build on it. Rather it seems that the democrats would embrace the notion that Trump and Sanders have in common, the notion that 1953 or thereabouts was some sort of golden age that can be brought back by presidential fiat. Meanwhile, the policies that the democrats do seem to embrace would be catastrophic to the classic liberal freedom of the individual, of free trade, and of capitalism. </p><p>Like many others, I was shocked on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president. But I was wrong to think that the United States was so fragile that it could not survive the presidency of a guy who is only slightly, if much more bigly loudly, incompetent than the norm. The New York Times still prints all the news it pretends is fit to print, even when it's often fake. Rachel Maddow still says things about the head of state that would lose her her head in many Muslim countries. The people who are being censored are those more conservative than the leaders of Twitter or Google or Facebook. </p><p>Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election. He remains a sort of Cardi B personality, loud and outrageous. And his opponent, Joe Biden, is--what?-- a sort of retired crooner performing in a casino. Mr. Biden, whom I can't help but think of as a return of Mr. Potatohead, a person with no real personality or ideas of his own, on whom a sardonic smile can be hung by the instructions on the teleprompter, might seem to be a return to a calmer presidency. But he comes with a lot of baggage. Many people do not expect him to survive one term, making Kamala Harris very likely the real president. And the others who would almost certainly be members of a Biden presidency are not people I trust to protect my freedoms or the United States Constitution.</p><p>Now, four years later Donald Trump is up for re-election, and it has been four years of continuous attack on him by the democratic congress, nearly all of which has been proven baseless. Again and again the willingness to accept the truthiness of the 'evidence' of the Mueller investigation and the dossier of allegations has proven to be wishful thinking of a bunch of folks who are sure they know better than the electorate. I find myself as surprised by how Trump has really governed as has John Yoo, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, who wrote a fascinating book entitled <i>Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power</i>. In it he writes, 'If friends had told me on January 21, 2017, that I would write a book on Donald Trump as a defender of the Constitution, I would have questioned their sanity. I had not voted for him in the 2016 primary or general elections. His many personal and professional flaws repelled me.' But Yoo brilliantly explains the struggles between Trump and the democrats in terms of the checks and balances and expectations of the federal constitution, not claiming that Trump even realized what he was doing, but that the founders of the constitution created a system in which the struggles of individual persons for their own power would be channeled for the common good.</p><p>Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election, and I find myself in position I could not have imagined four years ago. I would have been unhappy with a Clinton but I expected her administration would have been pretty much a return of the normal blundering incompetency we have come to expect from the presidency. I hope, in case Biden is elected, that I am wrong, but I expect a Biden administration would to be a targeted attack on the principles of western civilization that underlie the founding of the United States and that have made it a destination for thousands, whether they were 'huddled masses' or others who 'were yearning to breathe free.' </p><p>Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election. I would certainly prefer a calmer candidate, some less ego-centric, someone whose voice I enjoyed hearing, someone who is handsome and doesn't have an absurd hair-cut--the list could go on. But the United States has survived four years of Trump, and I expect that it will survive another four years, that we will recover from the blows of the virus, and that we will flourish. There has been nothing in the actions of the loyal opposition to make me think they would encourage recovery or flourishing. </p><p>Because I live in Western Washington, my vote mostly doesn't matter. One of my friends will likely call my opposition to Biden/Harris/Pelosi/the Squad/Sanders & Co. mental masturbation. But I consider it marking my position. I have enjoyed the privilege of living in a society that is heir of English Liberalism. I will do what little I can do to share that privilege. To do otherwise I would consider cowardice. A small cowardice, of course, but at my age, one does what one can, even if those acts are small. </p><p><br /></p>Dale Caldwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796571335940604153noreply@blogger.com0