Beyond the Blue

May 1, 2021 8:30pm

You walk outside on a spring evening. Dusk approaches but the sky is still a vivid blue. It is familiar and comforting. You have seen this same sky all your life. It is an old friend. But today you see beyond this blue that defines a world bounded by an edge accepted by most of your race. You look up knowing that blackness lies just beyond the familiar blue. And spread out among the black empty spaces are trillions of galaxies just like yours…each with millions or hundreds of billions of stars and even more planets many of which likely support beings very much like you. All of them wondering who else resides out there beyond the blue skies. Each with a unique culture, history, literature, Gods, dreams. And all who eventually reach the conclusion that the universe does not care about any of us and goes about its business of obeying the laws of physics with no recognition that we all live, suffer, and die behind the prison bars of those same laws.

Calm

May 2, 2021 8:19am

Following a day of labor, I bathe. I put on clean clothes. I feel clean and cool. In a moment of melancholy, I rest my forehead on my palm. It is cool and dry and this is comforting. It is quiet as I sit like this enjoying the solitude and the calm that descends. All around seems chaos in the world. All vying for more than they have: more things, more rights, more justice. Great crowds of humanity pushing and pulling in opposite directions so there is little progress. And, in the midst, an oasis. I am thankful that fortune has offered me this contemplative moment.

Big Reveal

May 3 2021 10:08am

It seems our leaders have managed to mesmerize a large portion of our people who no longer question authority. Many take every pronouncement to be the word of their new deity given from on high. The fever pitch of this mass hysteria detracts from the real danger of a pandemic that has, indeed, stricken friends and relatives. However, the danger to most has been blown totally out of proportion and now evidence mounts that the vaccine may have introduced complications that may lie dormant before we can learn their true impact. There is a possibility that the credibility of science and government will be questioned for years. All this could have been mitigated by open discussion that would have provided the balance needed for thoughtful action. It feels like there are big revelations building behind dams of denial.

We all pick our way through the minefields of our own minds. Minefields sown in the terrain of battles raging between forces to which we must kneel because in the end, it doesn’t matter who is right….only how many are wrong.

The Gulag of the Mind

May 5, 2021 9:57am

I’m back reading “The Gulag Archipelago” after a detour to Ligotti’s “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”. What machination of the Moirae led to this pairing! The variety of torture methods employed in the camps makes one think that the antinatalists got it right! The horror of life under Stalin most assuredly made millions wish they had never been born and millions of others to question the morality (and selfishness) of deciding to subject their own offspring to the literal meat grinder of Soviet oppression.

Better to never have existed than to be born into a life of grimy hopelessness, leavened with continual mistrust of everyone you know, fear for those you love, and all for what….forced allegiance to an ideology born of an attempt to reform a broken system. But we all know that power corrupts and the new, “enlightened” leaders turned out to be a thousand times worse!

Poor humans – can never find the center but continually turning in widening gyre, go from one extreme to another. And so it shall ever be, and is today: witness the spectacle of your time.

Eden, the garden that is

May 7, 2021 9:38am

Here is a curious parallel. Rousseau, who read escapist stories as a child (L’Astree’), said that such stories, “gave me bizarre and romantic notions of human life, which experience and reflection have never been able to cure me of.”

Now, I seem to recall almost this exact same wording in the diary of Harlan Hubbard who attributed the exact same sentiments to the reading of the Arthurian legends!

I think Rousseau had socialistic/communistic leanings which led to his high regard of primitive people in their natural state. He said that it was immoral of men to claim land for their own use. I see no reason why a man who grows a garden should allow others to claim his produce. He has rightfully assumed responsibility for that plot and earned the return on his investment.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire, whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet

Agriculture

May 17, 2021 7:04pm

The 2021 garden is planted….well almost. We’ll do a second crop of corn after the first one is about 3 weeks along, the pumpkins will get planted in mid-June, and we’ll do another cole crop as a fall garden since we had such good luck with broccoli and cabbage last year….that stuff lasted until a hard freeze got it in November!

People have been tilling the soil for around 12,000 years so getting your hands in the dirt and seeing those seeds breaking ground is a connection to all those who went before. Only 150 years ago, about half the population of the US was employed in agriculture and many of the rest had strong connections to the land. Today (2021), 50-70% of the global population is still dependent on subsistence farming. If you go back to that point 12,000 years ago, when EVERYONE was either farming or hunting, there was very little specialization in human societies. Skilled flint knappers and tool makers probably augmented their own crops/kills with those “purchased” from others with their handiwork. As agriculture improved and herders proliferated, there was increased specialization centered on shelter, and clothing. Textiles became a more important commodity and artisans improved spinning, weaving and sewing.

And of course all this led to fiat currency, central bankers, hedge fund managers, collateralized debt obligations, and pandemics which increased the net worth of a handful of billionaires by more than the bottom 90% of the US population earns in a year. (Ed. Note – I’m making up numbers as I go because I’m too lazy to look up the exact figures but the fact remains that there’s a slight imbalance and you get the point that it’s….well, let’s use gentle language and say it’s “unbecoming” – and this from a staunch capitalist!)

And so to return to the matter at hand….the garden. Uh, the fiat currency thing has addled my brain and uh, oh, the garden. Yes. So we have a big crop of potatoes, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, beets, radishes and of course, the big three: corn, beans (roma), and squash. This is all more work and expense than it’s worth if you put the produce on one side of the balance and the work, tractor, implements, tillers, etc on the other side. But…..but, if you have not pulled a few ears of corn and dug your own potatoes and had them on the table within a couple of hours, well, then I’m afraid you don’t know what “good” and “fresh” really means.

So anyway, the garden is planted and I included some sorghum which I originally grew to make syrup. Now don’t make a common mistake and call it “sorghum molasses”; these are two distinct products from two separate plants. Sorghum comes from sorghum and is lighter and sweeter; molasses comes from sugar cane and is dark, thick, and has a bitter edge. The syrup thing didn’t work out but I grow the sorghum for fall decorations. Corn shocks, you see, disintegrate rapidly….especially with coons crawling through it thinking they’ll find a left over ear. Sorghum, on the other hand, lasts all through the winter and most people don’t realize that it’s not corn.

This ends today’s lesson on agriculture and modern monetary theory…..

Winesburg vs. Carthage

May 21, 2021 9:13pm

I’m reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson who experienced a “fugue” episode like that of Walter White in “Breaking Bad”. Winesburg is interesting but Anderson is not a particularly good writer. The secret motives of the inhabitants of Winesburg reflect the lives of all of us and reveal the meaninglessness of our existence. I particularly liked “The Adventure” and the details of small town life in the early 1900’s appeal to the historian in me.

While working on the gate that I’m building for a historic site, I’m able to think – a lot. Hand tools slow you down and allow for deep reflection. When you are chipping away wood with a hammer and chisel or using a rasp to file a tenon down to fit a mortise, your mind is free to range over any subject. So, while my hands do the work, my head may be in the far reaches of the universe, or crossing the Rubicon with Caesar, or watching the battle of Zama, or seeing the first manifestation of human consciousness in early man. Sometimes these reveries become an almost spiritual experience.

Ohrdruf

May 23, 2021 ?am

Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp liberated by the allies on April 4, 1945. Eisenhower heard about the camp and visited on April 12 along with Patton and Bradley.

Eisenhower: “….the most interesting although horrible sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha….The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up 20 or 30 naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.” – Dwight Eisenhower

Estimates of Democide (deaths caused by Governments) range as high as 262 million in the past century. If citizens are disarmed, we may save some lives but run the risk of more lost by tyrannical authorities. I prefer to take my chances with criminals rather than a despotic government. Can’t happen here/now? Tell that to the 262 million.

Set the Stage

May 23, 2021 9:14pm

Let’s set the stage: I am sitting in my dream chair (suspended below a frame that allows me to swing freely….usually in a slightly elliptical orbit). I am facing southeast and the pasture grass I have watched grow is now head high. Beyond the grass, in the twilight, I see the pines I planted 23 years ago. They were savaged by a weak tornado a couple of years ago but are still standing defiantly. The moon has risen and I watch it climb the southern sky while I read “Winesburg, Ohio.” Birds are chirping and Canadians honk in the distance – an apparent internecine problem. The occasional duck whizzes by intent on some errand that only a duck would understand. I am calm as I watch the moon rise and I think, “we’ve been there…We’ve walked on that satellite.” We did remarkable things almost 52 years ago.

The southern sky is still blue at the zenith but rosy at the horizon. I continue to read Winesburg which is getting better…..but Anderson is still an amateur with the vision of a pro. I could have written “Tandy”. The stories highlight all the missed opportunities. We are all such sad creatures – never reaching our potential.