Vincennes

May 27, 2019

Spent the weekend at Vincennes participating in the Rendezvous. This is one of the largest Revolutionary War reenactments in the mid-west. It is a commemoration of George Rogers Clark’s Northwest Campaign.

Blue skies and puffy clouds when I left home about 1pm on Friday. Hot Saturday but bearable. We camped with Culpepper’s and had 8-10 guys. Steve with Culpepper’s and I talked leather work a lot and I’m getting some 3-4 oz material to make a bag to replace the incorrect oil tanned leather hunting pouch, I made in the beginning.

What is heroism? A return to normalcy effected by a brave person. But normalcy is fleeting and the heroism, or its results are temporary – delaying for a time the inevitable.

By Sunday noon, radar was showing the possibility of strong storms so we all packed everything away just before the rain started so most of us had dry canvas when we left about 2pm.

I read last night about Nietzsche’s break with Schopenhauer and want to understand that better.

Baby Bird

May 29, 2019

Raccoons come for the mulberries and stay for the ether.

We were supposed to go canoeing on Harrod’s Creek today but I’m watching the thundershowers right now. Cleaned the garden a little before ethe rain stated and planted all the remaining/excess tomatoes in the burn circles left in the fields. I may throw out some pumpkin seeds just to see what happens.

Went to the Honor Flight with Dad last night. Most vets were in wheelchairs. I am daily more skeptical of the patriotic/nationalistic mindset. At the very grassroots level, it is genuine and heart-felt but it is used to manipulate the masses by those at the top of the food chain.

Rain is pouring now and will wash out the garden which was still damp from the last rain. I don’t see how farmers will get their crops out with all the flooding in the mid-west this year. The trade war with China is ramping up, so we could be in for interesting time. China has threatened to halt exports of rare earth elements if Washington persists.

Who knows what will happen? Not me…I stupidly thought that 2008/2009 was just the beginning of a much longer cycle and missed out on the biggest increase in the stock market in history.

Today we found a baby bird out by the garden. It obviously fell out of a nest but we didn’t see one in any of the surrounding trees. I just went out to check on the garden after we got 2″ of rain and found it dead under the little blue spruce where we left it. The cruel God of the wild claims another victim; its small legs splayed out from the tiny body. Did it drown in the rain, get too cold, or starve to death…or a combination? What is the reasoning behind this creation?

Reinhold Niebuhr

May 30, 2019 12:50pm

I ran across a quote from Niebuhr today. Here’s the gist:

He viewed sin as a social event – pride as the root of evil. It is found especially in those who feel good about their conduct. He saw a tendency to corrupt the good which he articulated in “Moral Man and Immoral Society” in 1932.

He hated hypocrisy, pretense, and self-righteous illusion. Niebuhr interpreted original sin as self-love which leads us to focus on our own goodness and conclude that we can achieve it on our own. Thus, man mistakes his partial ability to transcend himself for absolute authority over his own life and world.

And, if this description fits, you may be a pompous ass – like me.

Cioran

May 31, 2019

Something lingers yet in me that needs to break. I feel this fracture that started a lifetime ago; it creeps through my soul, finding every weakness and following those fault lines around the edges of the tectonic plates of belief, memory, and hope. When the quake comes, will there be destruction of the old or realignment – a new world?

I stumbled upon Emil Cioran while reading about Nic Pizzolatto’s inspiration for the TRUE DETECTIVE Rust Cohle character whose philosophy of pessimism is an underlying theme of the series.

Cioran’s world view is startlingly bleak and it actually scared me as I read his words and realized that I have come to the same conclusions.

“Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that we alone pursue the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear. ” – Emil Cioran

“A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity….” – Emil Cioran