I mark all my books these days. LaElu reminded me how my dad marked those that he had read with a little hat symbol. I wonder where that came from?
In local Municipal Court Thursday, I was sitting waiting on a case, and a lady was trying to plead guilty to driving on a suspended license and no insurance and the Judge was concerned but was letting her do it. She kept adding facts about her life - she lives way the hell up a hollow on land owned by her family, and there are three children from 15 down to 9 in the house. Her income is $262 per month, plus food stamps. The Judge was in the process of fining her $800. Honestly, I tried to close my heart, Lord knows I'm swamped already with pro bono shit, but there was a room full of lawyers who didn't even quit quietly gossiping about shit, I got mad, and intervened in such respectful tones as I could, took her on as a client, withdrew the plea, and now will see if I can assist any good things (or at least less-than-totally-miserable things) happening in her life. My point is NOT that I'm a hale and hearty fellow, I'm not. I probably spend more money a month on books that their family receives. The fact that people live like that and are ground up in the legal machinery is a blot on our society. And it is easy to say that she ought to get her ass to work, etc., but simply telling her to do that does no good at all. She needs a boost -- transportation, heating (she's 50 and looks 70, and cuts firewood to heat the house poorly). I asked her how in the hell she would have paid that fine, and she said that she would have to have sold her last calf, but didn't want to, because she has enough pasture that the calf will grow pretty much on his own, and in a year or so, he will represent a big part of the family's food supply for several months. What a hell of a choice. And I do not for one minute think that Obama, Hillary, or Mahatma Gandhi are going to swoop in and make a lot of difference in her life.
This morning, Bro. Dave & I had coffee in the café across from the Courthouse. Dave left for Court, and I remained to finish my coffee and do some notes in my notebook in the quiet. A fellow came in, somewhat grizzled African-American guy, got his coffee and sat down at a nearby table. I noticed one of the few military symbols I recognize, an airborne insignia, on his ball cap and I commented that he obviously had been there and back again. He was somewhat surprised that a non-military guy would recognize that, and we chatted a few minutes. He said that something was on his mind today, he was remembering a "fire-fight" in Vietnam where his buddy earned a posthumous Medal of Honor by covering a grenade with his body. This gentleman credited that with saving his life. I did a quick search when I got back to No. 3, and found a brief account:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_L._Olive%2C_III
Mr. Olive was among the first to "win" that medal in the war. Anyway, I had to get back to No. 3, so I asked if this fellow if I could shake his hand, we did so, he gave me a "God bless," and I left. What’s my point? I’m not sure. Sometimes I get a little ticked off at our local newspaper. In the obits, if the deceased has served in the military at all, s/he has a little flag symbol put on the obit. There have been lots of DAMN fine people, very patriotic people who didn’t happen to put on that uniform who have died without that honor, and others whose service was military, but tame and peaceful (and, in the case of one fellow I just dealt with, thoroughly dishonorable). But it’s a good thing to be reminded that there are and were people like Mr. Olive and this fellow I met this morning who really, really sacrificed a lot for their country. Hokey? I can live with that.
I received an email this morning from my brother (both genetic and Masonic) who visits here and had some comments about my nascent study of Paul’s writings, and I appreciated that. I’m finding that this area is quite complex, and worthy of being called scholarship. The way Pastor Josh is going about it I appreciate. He does not have a "syllabus," which to me is a checklist to fill out, not a system of study, which reminds me of the line out of a Simon & Garfunkel song, ". . . and we note our place with bookmarkers, to measure what we’ve lost." Filing out that checklist may require some learning, but it ain’t scholarship.
I went to a political fundraiser for an extraordinarily conservative justice of our Supreme Court tonight. Our philosophies are remarkably different, but he is taking absolutely outrageous damage from the left which is so morally corrupt that it offends the HELL out of me. I will not be a rubber stamp or knee jerk liberal. Perhaps that's why I piss EVERYONE off now and then.
Yesterday, I was in a small town in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia for a municipal court hearing. This was appalling. I know the judge, and he’s a nice and easy going fellow. I didn’t know the city attorney, but didn’t need to, because in the 20 hearings that went before ours, the city attorney didn’t say ONE SINGLE WORD. Poker players may be familiar with the term "cold deck." This one had icicles hanging off of it. The Judge negotiated the pleas and essentially coerced people to pay big fines in exchange for no points on their driver’s licenses. The Judge and the police present were joking, obviously pleased with the cash cow that the Court gives this City. And they would be deeply offended at my conclusion that this is totally legally and morally corrupt. But it is.
Heard an ad on TV last evening for a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Essentially, someone films drunken college girls flashing & stripping. And they sell this shit. Hey, I like women as well as the next guy, but this stuff is demeaning. We are teaching boys & young men that girls & women are only talking life-support systems for breasts, vaginas, etc. Is it any wonder that they conclude that from society’s context?
Heard a blurb on the news about last night’s eclipse, that it would be good "if the weather cooperates." Sloppy language. The eclipse was going to happen, celestial mechanics mandated that.
I listen to tapes/CD’s in the car on trips. On one I listened to yesterday, the narrator related how "wilderness is therapy." That speaks to me.
I'm going home. Pippa passes.
R
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Eclipse
As I write this, I'm popping outside frequently to watch the developing lunar eclipse, which should reach totality around 10 PM Eastern time. LaElu's house is on top of a ridge (1140 feet, per GPS), and I wonder who has watched eclipses in the past from this ridge, and what they thought. It's embarassing, but I don't know as I sit here what sort of solar system arrangement that early native Americans pictured -- probably heliocentric, but I'm not sure. What would such people make of the curved darkness crossing the full moon?
Is this musing mysticism or genuine and justified human wonder? Honestly, I don't know. (Wait a minute - justified to whom? Who do I need to justify this sense of wonder to?)
Pippa passes.
R
Is this musing mysticism or genuine and justified human wonder? Honestly, I don't know. (Wait a minute - justified to whom? Who do I need to justify this sense of wonder to?)
Pippa passes.
R
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Country duality through the lexicon lens
I just got home from a very busy day. In the late afternoon, it included running up the Interstate to Morgantown to the weight loss clinic for medical stuff and a class. At the end of the class, Torri, a Master's level educator/counselor, asked what I had gotten out of class. Ever the enfant terrible, I responded with total candor, I got a set of notes for a kickin' discussion of where Captain Reality meets Duality. (My wryness there usually is directed at my own silly past.)
Do I play with words? I'm not sure. Certainly, I play with ideas, and we have this clumsy device called language with which to do so. I find when I'm talking to various intimates that we argue a while and then figure out that we are really using different words to express very similar thoughts. The words that drop-started my thoughts (drop-started? Is that reference understandable? I know a hell of a joke where that's the punchline, but you need to know timber and EMS to get it. That's a touch esoteric.) (Don't these parenthetical phrases in the middle of a damn sentence get distracting?) was the idea of "momentum" for weight loss. That is, if one is doing well, does that give one "momentum" which makes it easier to continue tomorrow and the day after without problems? Well, we talk about momentum all the time. If a politician or a football team is behind but gaining, we say that they have momentum, meaning that their trend to increase their share or points will continue and surpass their competition. Is that a valid concept or is it simply the result of random grouping of events? In any event, "momentum" when applied to future behavior is a null concept to me. With respect to weight loss, you make a conscious decision when you get started every morning, and you probably will have "opportunities" (i.e., temptations) to revisit that decision occasionally throughout the day. To be successful, you must make a positive decision nearly all the time. (Here, maybe my opinion of momentum falters -- does screwing up once make it easier to do in the future? I think so. It's illogical, but I still think so.) But making a positive decision yesterday does NOT cause me to make a positive decision today -- I revisit it anew. Every damn day, EACH of us confronts what is, to us, a metaphorical demon. Like Room 101 from Orwell's 1984, that demon is different for each of us. For Friend JC, it's alarm systems. For a former partner, it's snakes. For some, it's ethanol. For me, it's fucking doughnuts. Every day, we have the opportunity to bring fear and failure into our lives. Is that fair? Is that healthy? By avoiding the demon or fighting the demon or ignoring the demon (the latter what I try with mixed success to do), do we build up "momentum"? Does it exist in the social or mental world in the same manner it exists in the physical world? I wonder - Maybe we NEED to believe in momentum, like some say that we need a "Higher Power."
And if we have "momentum," then we have to do better and better ("Every day in every way, I become better and better."), and we will NEVER get to the point of being good enough. When is it OK to "just keep on keeping on"? The idea of needing constantly increasing goals sets us up for certain failure at some point. We are people. We have finite capacities. Maybe we have capacities far above what we actually use (I certainly buy that), but at some point they are finite. Somebody can high jump 7 or 8 feet these days. (I can't.) They aren't going to get to, say, 12 feet with the current development of our species. There is a finite limit. That certainly applies to weight loss. Your calorie intake can go lower and lower - until it reaches zero, then you cannot do "better". Theoretically, your physical activity calories can keep increasing, but that too is subject to some finite limits. And yet we are urged ALWAYS to have "our reach exceed our grasp," according to Robert Browning. When is what we do "enough"? When do we get to go to bed and say, "Hey, I did great today, I did GOOD ENOUGH." I'm not the world's best at anything. Likely, neither are you. We don't need to be. All we need to be is the best at being US.
Everything in our society ends up a competition. Take the frisbee for example. It's a simple plastic disc that one throws with a spinning motion which makes it an airfoil that is spin-stabilized, so it goes slowly through the air and goes a longer distance and stays up in the air longer than we can make it do if we throw the same weight if it were not a spin-stabilized airfoil. It's great, if you haven't tried it, you need to. You get to be outdoors. You can play with your dog. The nicest dogs I ever met were my former partner's, Libby the German shorthair pointer, and Friend JC's Bucky the Dalmation, both of whom LOVED to play frisbee with me or anybody else they could con into a game. It's formless. There are no rules, there is just throwing and chasing and fun and petting the dog and taking a break for water or a (lite) beer and then playing some more. Then, along comes "Frisbee Competitions." Who can throw the frisbee the farthest or most accurately, and keep the dogs off the "field of play," because they'll interfere with the serious competition, and interfere with determining who is the ONE person who "wins," and who the myriad "losers" are. Must EVERYTHING be a zero sum game? Are we not permitted to just have fun, to be happy to be the best at being US?
Read the label, it says right there (in the book of Deuteronomy?) that life IS duality, yin and yang, good and evil, boy and girl, black and white, blah, blah, blah. DUALITY IS A SHAM. It's a concept which provides refuge for the intellectually weak or lazy, the unscientific, the morally fearful, and for all those many people who are, to a greater or lesser degree, scared to death of Captain Reality. They are afraid of ANYTHING except that which has a high-contrast weltanschaunge. They lose soooo much. They are unable to appreciate the subtlety of a sunset or the uncertainty of the wind, they appreciate Norman Rockwell (so do I) but not Monet. When I was in school, LaElu and I lived in an old, old mansion that was divided into apartments. We had the unit on the side by the street, with the huge old porch. My law school buddies and I used to love to sit on the porch in the warm weather and drink cheap wine (Nectarose was my favorite, haven't seen it for years) and hassle the drug dealers across the street. Nearly every night, a fellow from the neighborhood took a walk. He would bundle up warmly even in warm weather, and walk with a measured step and pointed a flashlight 3 feet in front of him the whole way. He missed the bats and squirrels and drunken law students, and his world consisted of a pool of light in front of him and "here there be dragons" everywhere else.
Nothing is yin or yang. Nothing is good or evil, in the moral world, the philosophical world or the physical world. The vacuum of deep space is only vacuum relative to high density places like suns and planets and atmospheres -- there is approximately one molecule of Hydrogen per cubic meter of "space." We have widely accepted beliefs. Some of those are relatively precise. The accelleration due to gravity on Earth ("G") is approximately 9.8 meters per second squared. But G is just a little different on Mt. Everest than it is in Death Valley. As happy as we would be with absolutes in any area of thought, there aren't any. Are there moral absolutes? OK, let's try one. It is a bad thing to physically damage people. Wait a minute, we arm police officers. We expect them (rarely) to harm others. But, we say, that's OK, there is an EXCEPTION. Absolutes have no exceptions. Where there is an exception, there is no absolute. Abortion. Capital punishment. Is it good or bad to terminate what is or will be a human life? Oddly, people who say yes to either one say no to the other. Exceptions, not absolutes, rule us. I oppose capital punishment. I have met 2 individuals in my life who I would honestly like to see executed. (Would I do it personally, or is that an exception, too?) (Oh, only one of them is legally eligible for the death penalty.) We watch The Godfather (several Academy Awards, constantly replays on AMC), and we root for the Corleone family, which pimps, runs gambling, extorts money from honest people, kills their enemies in Italian restaurants, but oh, they are a FAMILY and they hang together, and wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of closeness, even if a family member or two gets whacked at times. We all fear the "Dark Angel," old Thanatos, the spectre of Death, s/he is BAD. Wait a minute, why do we then speak of death releasing someone from great pain as "God's mercy." Would God do something bad? We talk about the weather: Is it GOOD or BAD today? Must it be one or the other? And what is "good" weather? Sunshine? What if you are fair-skinned? Warmth? What if you like to ski? (What slides down hills: Avalanches and fools.) Relative, all relative. We pooh-pooh old Sherlock Holmes, for he used "merely" deductive logic, while according to one of the unexpectedly wise writers of the last century, Robert A. Heinlein, inductive logic is far better because it "can produce new truths." Bushwah. There is no inductive, there is no deductive. We find facts, we develop hypotheses, we call on past hypotheses and proofs, we find more facts, we make conclusions and if we are smart, we will always be willing to revisit those conclusions. (My executing the two who I think deserve it, though, would make revisiting that conclusion a tad tardy.) Why must we describe everything and have a totally consistent world view or FAIL? Why is it a bad thing that Special Relativity and General Relativity aren't consistent for the present? Perhaps it just means we haven't gotten there yet. Perhaps it means that the Universe is not simply stranger than we DO imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine.
Religion, we find absolutes there. I think. Oddly enough (and the better you know me, the odder it seems), we are studying the letters of Paul at Bible study at the church. Hey, THERE is duality, THERE is yin and yang. Wives, SUBMIT to your husbands, all of you, it doesn't matter is your husband is a drunken, shiftless idiot. (Pastor Josh may visit here at times - hey, Josh, feel free to post a dissent in the comments, I love dissent.)
All is relative. But we don't take that to reductio ad absurdum, where there the lack of a yin-yang duality becomes a moral homogeneity. There is often an agreed-upon PREPONDERANCE of dual thought, and I feel just fine believing that and acting on it in such a way as to impose it on others. It IS "bad" to hurt people, and the exceptions (e.g., self-defense) make sense to us as a whole. The edges are not clear, that's where the moral-certainty crowd gets confused, but the trends are there. Polluting the Earth - bad, to most of us. A certain discreet segment of society disagrees. I think they are nuts. They think I'm a tree-hugger. Well, I am. My favorite tree is an old gnarled oak at the farm, and she always welcomes me. Meanness - bad. But admired, particularly in my profession. Caring - good. But don't "nice guys finish last"? No, generally they don't. Stengel disagrees. OK, I can live with that.
It's all relative.
Hey, I'm down 180. I've got momentum, don't bother me.
Pippa passes. Mizpah.
R
Do I play with words? I'm not sure. Certainly, I play with ideas, and we have this clumsy device called language with which to do so. I find when I'm talking to various intimates that we argue a while and then figure out that we are really using different words to express very similar thoughts. The words that drop-started my thoughts (drop-started? Is that reference understandable? I know a hell of a joke where that's the punchline, but you need to know timber and EMS to get it. That's a touch esoteric.) (Don't these parenthetical phrases in the middle of a damn sentence get distracting?) was the idea of "momentum" for weight loss. That is, if one is doing well, does that give one "momentum" which makes it easier to continue tomorrow and the day after without problems? Well, we talk about momentum all the time. If a politician or a football team is behind but gaining, we say that they have momentum, meaning that their trend to increase their share or points will continue and surpass their competition. Is that a valid concept or is it simply the result of random grouping of events? In any event, "momentum" when applied to future behavior is a null concept to me. With respect to weight loss, you make a conscious decision when you get started every morning, and you probably will have "opportunities" (i.e., temptations) to revisit that decision occasionally throughout the day. To be successful, you must make a positive decision nearly all the time. (Here, maybe my opinion of momentum falters -- does screwing up once make it easier to do in the future? I think so. It's illogical, but I still think so.) But making a positive decision yesterday does NOT cause me to make a positive decision today -- I revisit it anew. Every damn day, EACH of us confronts what is, to us, a metaphorical demon. Like Room 101 from Orwell's 1984, that demon is different for each of us. For Friend JC, it's alarm systems. For a former partner, it's snakes. For some, it's ethanol. For me, it's fucking doughnuts. Every day, we have the opportunity to bring fear and failure into our lives. Is that fair? Is that healthy? By avoiding the demon or fighting the demon or ignoring the demon (the latter what I try with mixed success to do), do we build up "momentum"? Does it exist in the social or mental world in the same manner it exists in the physical world? I wonder - Maybe we NEED to believe in momentum, like some say that we need a "Higher Power."
And if we have "momentum," then we have to do better and better ("Every day in every way, I become better and better."), and we will NEVER get to the point of being good enough. When is it OK to "just keep on keeping on"? The idea of needing constantly increasing goals sets us up for certain failure at some point. We are people. We have finite capacities. Maybe we have capacities far above what we actually use (I certainly buy that), but at some point they are finite. Somebody can high jump 7 or 8 feet these days. (I can't.) They aren't going to get to, say, 12 feet with the current development of our species. There is a finite limit. That certainly applies to weight loss. Your calorie intake can go lower and lower - until it reaches zero, then you cannot do "better". Theoretically, your physical activity calories can keep increasing, but that too is subject to some finite limits. And yet we are urged ALWAYS to have "our reach exceed our grasp," according to Robert Browning. When is what we do "enough"? When do we get to go to bed and say, "Hey, I did great today, I did GOOD ENOUGH." I'm not the world's best at anything. Likely, neither are you. We don't need to be. All we need to be is the best at being US.
Everything in our society ends up a competition. Take the frisbee for example. It's a simple plastic disc that one throws with a spinning motion which makes it an airfoil that is spin-stabilized, so it goes slowly through the air and goes a longer distance and stays up in the air longer than we can make it do if we throw the same weight if it were not a spin-stabilized airfoil. It's great, if you haven't tried it, you need to. You get to be outdoors. You can play with your dog. The nicest dogs I ever met were my former partner's, Libby the German shorthair pointer, and Friend JC's Bucky the Dalmation, both of whom LOVED to play frisbee with me or anybody else they could con into a game. It's formless. There are no rules, there is just throwing and chasing and fun and petting the dog and taking a break for water or a (lite) beer and then playing some more. Then, along comes "Frisbee Competitions." Who can throw the frisbee the farthest or most accurately, and keep the dogs off the "field of play," because they'll interfere with the serious competition, and interfere with determining who is the ONE person who "wins," and who the myriad "losers" are. Must EVERYTHING be a zero sum game? Are we not permitted to just have fun, to be happy to be the best at being US?
Read the label, it says right there (in the book of Deuteronomy?) that life IS duality, yin and yang, good and evil, boy and girl, black and white, blah, blah, blah. DUALITY IS A SHAM. It's a concept which provides refuge for the intellectually weak or lazy, the unscientific, the morally fearful, and for all those many people who are, to a greater or lesser degree, scared to death of Captain Reality. They are afraid of ANYTHING except that which has a high-contrast weltanschaunge. They lose soooo much. They are unable to appreciate the subtlety of a sunset or the uncertainty of the wind, they appreciate Norman Rockwell (so do I) but not Monet. When I was in school, LaElu and I lived in an old, old mansion that was divided into apartments. We had the unit on the side by the street, with the huge old porch. My law school buddies and I used to love to sit on the porch in the warm weather and drink cheap wine (Nectarose was my favorite, haven't seen it for years) and hassle the drug dealers across the street. Nearly every night, a fellow from the neighborhood took a walk. He would bundle up warmly even in warm weather, and walk with a measured step and pointed a flashlight 3 feet in front of him the whole way. He missed the bats and squirrels and drunken law students, and his world consisted of a pool of light in front of him and "here there be dragons" everywhere else.
Nothing is yin or yang. Nothing is good or evil, in the moral world, the philosophical world or the physical world. The vacuum of deep space is only vacuum relative to high density places like suns and planets and atmospheres -- there is approximately one molecule of Hydrogen per cubic meter of "space." We have widely accepted beliefs. Some of those are relatively precise. The accelleration due to gravity on Earth ("G") is approximately 9.8 meters per second squared. But G is just a little different on Mt. Everest than it is in Death Valley. As happy as we would be with absolutes in any area of thought, there aren't any. Are there moral absolutes? OK, let's try one. It is a bad thing to physically damage people. Wait a minute, we arm police officers. We expect them (rarely) to harm others. But, we say, that's OK, there is an EXCEPTION. Absolutes have no exceptions. Where there is an exception, there is no absolute. Abortion. Capital punishment. Is it good or bad to terminate what is or will be a human life? Oddly, people who say yes to either one say no to the other. Exceptions, not absolutes, rule us. I oppose capital punishment. I have met 2 individuals in my life who I would honestly like to see executed. (Would I do it personally, or is that an exception, too?) (Oh, only one of them is legally eligible for the death penalty.) We watch The Godfather (several Academy Awards, constantly replays on AMC), and we root for the Corleone family, which pimps, runs gambling, extorts money from honest people, kills their enemies in Italian restaurants, but oh, they are a FAMILY and they hang together, and wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of closeness, even if a family member or two gets whacked at times. We all fear the "Dark Angel," old Thanatos, the spectre of Death, s/he is BAD. Wait a minute, why do we then speak of death releasing someone from great pain as "God's mercy." Would God do something bad? We talk about the weather: Is it GOOD or BAD today? Must it be one or the other? And what is "good" weather? Sunshine? What if you are fair-skinned? Warmth? What if you like to ski? (What slides down hills: Avalanches and fools.) Relative, all relative. We pooh-pooh old Sherlock Holmes, for he used "merely" deductive logic, while according to one of the unexpectedly wise writers of the last century, Robert A. Heinlein, inductive logic is far better because it "can produce new truths." Bushwah. There is no inductive, there is no deductive. We find facts, we develop hypotheses, we call on past hypotheses and proofs, we find more facts, we make conclusions and if we are smart, we will always be willing to revisit those conclusions. (My executing the two who I think deserve it, though, would make revisiting that conclusion a tad tardy.) Why must we describe everything and have a totally consistent world view or FAIL? Why is it a bad thing that Special Relativity and General Relativity aren't consistent for the present? Perhaps it just means we haven't gotten there yet. Perhaps it means that the Universe is not simply stranger than we DO imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine.
Religion, we find absolutes there. I think. Oddly enough (and the better you know me, the odder it seems), we are studying the letters of Paul at Bible study at the church. Hey, THERE is duality, THERE is yin and yang. Wives, SUBMIT to your husbands, all of you, it doesn't matter is your husband is a drunken, shiftless idiot. (Pastor Josh may visit here at times - hey, Josh, feel free to post a dissent in the comments, I love dissent.)
All is relative. But we don't take that to reductio ad absurdum, where there the lack of a yin-yang duality becomes a moral homogeneity. There is often an agreed-upon PREPONDERANCE of dual thought, and I feel just fine believing that and acting on it in such a way as to impose it on others. It IS "bad" to hurt people, and the exceptions (e.g., self-defense) make sense to us as a whole. The edges are not clear, that's where the moral-certainty crowd gets confused, but the trends are there. Polluting the Earth - bad, to most of us. A certain discreet segment of society disagrees. I think they are nuts. They think I'm a tree-hugger. Well, I am. My favorite tree is an old gnarled oak at the farm, and she always welcomes me. Meanness - bad. But admired, particularly in my profession. Caring - good. But don't "nice guys finish last"? No, generally they don't. Stengel disagrees. OK, I can live with that.
It's all relative.
Hey, I'm down 180. I've got momentum, don't bother me.
Pippa passes. Mizpah.
R
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Point, counterpoint
I'm wondering about kindness and courtesy to strangers elsewhere. Note that I am EXTREMELY poorly traveled, and I know darn little of the day-to-day customs of other parts of the country, let alone the world. How do strangers treat one another where you are? Last evening, my mother went with neighbors to dinner (without me, which is GOOD because I can't become some sort of brooding omnipresence in her life, that would be bad for her) and as they were coming out of the restaurant, she and her 91 year old neighbor had to descend a couple of steps. She said that a big, hairy, tattooed guy came up to them and offered to "help you ladies down the steps," and did so. Is that common everywhere? Generally speaking, you hear a lot of "hello," "sir," "ma'am," "miss," "buddy," and so forth here. I met a lawyer informally in Baltimore last week, on a Sunday afternoon at a big office, and he chuckled when I called him "sir." I look at this as casting bread upon the waters or as showing the respect that any human being deserves, always have. I'm just curious if this is universal -- if it is, my opinion of humanity needs an update.
A minor theme related is calling others by more familiar names or without formalisms. This is something that I'm observing in myself as I age. I've seen harried fathers of young children at times, and nowadays I'm likely to say, "Spend time with them now, dad, they grow up soooo fast." Is that rude? Presumptuous? Lots of guys I call "buddy" (and I think I "inherited" that from my late friend, Fred) unless they are Masons, in which case it's "Brother." I avoid calling wait staff "honey," or something of the sort, because that's disrespectful -- but when I'm in a courthouse dealing with ladies I know well, I often use endearments, honey, darling, sweetie, etc. I must one day get smart enough to write a comprehensive work on the dimensions of human relationships. I feel like I know most of the rules, but there are too many dimensions to picture a representation of them in a physical form. What do you do?
The latest school shootings are renewing the same tired argument about firearms, where neither "side" recognizes that their pure solution won't work over the near or medium term without serious glitches. On the one side, disarm "everyone." The hoods won't be lining up to go into the police stations to turn in their guns, so for a time, the criminal/violent element will be even more disproportionately armed than the public. As it is, drug guys make enough money to have the option of something better than the old-fashioned "Saturday Night Special," a derogatory term for a cheap handgun. "Something better" these days consists of semi-auto or illegal full-auto weapons, large capacity magazines and specialized ammunition. One kind of ammo that I was referred to recently will never go "through & through" a body, but will create such unspeakable injury that the "laws of war" forbid it. (Having laws of war forbidding certain kinds of ammunition but sanctioning killing with bombs seems hypocritical to me.) Other ammunition now available can defeat lower classes of ballistic material (inaccurately named "bulletproof" material.) In a crisis of personal confrontation, calling 911 is a responsible thing for citizens to do, but very seldom do the police have the ability to respond so quickly that they can intervene in a violent confrontation. Throwing more money at police and jails hasn't really improved the point of the spear, where the services are delivered. The other side says, arm everyone (except felons, drunks, druggies and crazies.) In the pure sense of stopping or reducing the number of victims in some of these mass killings, that would work. But I don't know a hell of a lot of people with judgment that I'd feel comfortable with concerning when to introduce a gun into the mix. Sometimes, it is far better judgment to take an ass-whuppin', rather than pull a gun. After the gun laws were drastically changed in West Virginia (I represented the NRA in the case that scrapped the old ones), licensure became relatively easy. And some of the goofiest, most irresponsible (and in some cases, unconvicted criminal) people now may carry a concealed weapon. Here, one of these is a known nut who built a bomb to try to kill a prosecutor, but he was incompetent in bomb-building and the police made a pig's breakfast of the search, so conclusive forensic evidence was thrown out and the case was dismissed. Thoughtful discussion about crime, violence and guns is very difficult, perhaps as much so as with abortion, because people are wedded to extremes. (I know a good bit about weapons law. However, I'm no more than ordinary in skill with the use of weapons. In my 4 person household, I'm a SOLID 4th in marksmanship. That's OK re Son Tim, because his eye-hand coordination is positively spooky, and he could aspire to being in the class of Brother Dave in the future. But the fact that both LaElu and my mother have always been better shots than I am has to violate some sort of macho ethic.) How can we satisfy a "Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment," which is quite liberal in West Virginia, without arming those who reasonable people wouldn't want armed? Guns cannot be quickly drawn out of circulation, because they work for years and years and there is a remarkably robust underground economy in them. Beating one's breast about the violence and sad state of affairs isn't very helpful. I very, very reluctantly believe that some level of armed citizenry is the best alternative right now, but in implementing such a policy (which we have), people are going to get killed and wounded. A gunshot wound is not a pretty thing, and there is seldom such a thing as a "flesh wound." The hero doesn't manfully ignore the bits of blood and the sting of pain, get a band-aid and fight on. In some instances, the hero is going to be in a wheelchair or in a nursing home.
What the hell is the matter with me? I've started listening to Country music. Dammit, it tells a story and often is a good bit more morally uplifting than other genres. Why am I looking for moral uplift? Why do I seem to need it? In my mind, it is a counterpoint to the morass of moral swill that is so prevalent elsewhere.
I have work that has to be done tomorrow, but there is a block of time that is sacrosanct. No, not church, even though I'm going. Tomorrow is the Daytona 500 Nascar race. If you are a fan, I needn't explain the attraction. If you are not, I wouldn't bother.
I just finished The Appeal, by John Grisham. I'll review it anon in the canon. The first 33 chapters were gripping and so skillfully written that I can only admire the guy with the envy that the merely competent hold for the truly gifted. The last 4 chapters sucked, and I'll never, never read another Grisham.
Pippa passes.
R
A minor theme related is calling others by more familiar names or without formalisms. This is something that I'm observing in myself as I age. I've seen harried fathers of young children at times, and nowadays I'm likely to say, "Spend time with them now, dad, they grow up soooo fast." Is that rude? Presumptuous? Lots of guys I call "buddy" (and I think I "inherited" that from my late friend, Fred) unless they are Masons, in which case it's "Brother." I avoid calling wait staff "honey," or something of the sort, because that's disrespectful -- but when I'm in a courthouse dealing with ladies I know well, I often use endearments, honey, darling, sweetie, etc. I must one day get smart enough to write a comprehensive work on the dimensions of human relationships. I feel like I know most of the rules, but there are too many dimensions to picture a representation of them in a physical form. What do you do?
The latest school shootings are renewing the same tired argument about firearms, where neither "side" recognizes that their pure solution won't work over the near or medium term without serious glitches. On the one side, disarm "everyone." The hoods won't be lining up to go into the police stations to turn in their guns, so for a time, the criminal/violent element will be even more disproportionately armed than the public. As it is, drug guys make enough money to have the option of something better than the old-fashioned "Saturday Night Special," a derogatory term for a cheap handgun. "Something better" these days consists of semi-auto or illegal full-auto weapons, large capacity magazines and specialized ammunition. One kind of ammo that I was referred to recently will never go "through & through" a body, but will create such unspeakable injury that the "laws of war" forbid it. (Having laws of war forbidding certain kinds of ammunition but sanctioning killing with bombs seems hypocritical to me.) Other ammunition now available can defeat lower classes of ballistic material (inaccurately named "bulletproof" material.) In a crisis of personal confrontation, calling 911 is a responsible thing for citizens to do, but very seldom do the police have the ability to respond so quickly that they can intervene in a violent confrontation. Throwing more money at police and jails hasn't really improved the point of the spear, where the services are delivered. The other side says, arm everyone (except felons, drunks, druggies and crazies.) In the pure sense of stopping or reducing the number of victims in some of these mass killings, that would work. But I don't know a hell of a lot of people with judgment that I'd feel comfortable with concerning when to introduce a gun into the mix. Sometimes, it is far better judgment to take an ass-whuppin', rather than pull a gun. After the gun laws were drastically changed in West Virginia (I represented the NRA in the case that scrapped the old ones), licensure became relatively easy. And some of the goofiest, most irresponsible (and in some cases, unconvicted criminal) people now may carry a concealed weapon. Here, one of these is a known nut who built a bomb to try to kill a prosecutor, but he was incompetent in bomb-building and the police made a pig's breakfast of the search, so conclusive forensic evidence was thrown out and the case was dismissed. Thoughtful discussion about crime, violence and guns is very difficult, perhaps as much so as with abortion, because people are wedded to extremes. (I know a good bit about weapons law. However, I'm no more than ordinary in skill with the use of weapons. In my 4 person household, I'm a SOLID 4th in marksmanship. That's OK re Son Tim, because his eye-hand coordination is positively spooky, and he could aspire to being in the class of Brother Dave in the future. But the fact that both LaElu and my mother have always been better shots than I am has to violate some sort of macho ethic.) How can we satisfy a "Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment," which is quite liberal in West Virginia, without arming those who reasonable people wouldn't want armed? Guns cannot be quickly drawn out of circulation, because they work for years and years and there is a remarkably robust underground economy in them. Beating one's breast about the violence and sad state of affairs isn't very helpful. I very, very reluctantly believe that some level of armed citizenry is the best alternative right now, but in implementing such a policy (which we have), people are going to get killed and wounded. A gunshot wound is not a pretty thing, and there is seldom such a thing as a "flesh wound." The hero doesn't manfully ignore the bits of blood and the sting of pain, get a band-aid and fight on. In some instances, the hero is going to be in a wheelchair or in a nursing home.
What the hell is the matter with me? I've started listening to Country music. Dammit, it tells a story and often is a good bit more morally uplifting than other genres. Why am I looking for moral uplift? Why do I seem to need it? In my mind, it is a counterpoint to the morass of moral swill that is so prevalent elsewhere.
I have work that has to be done tomorrow, but there is a block of time that is sacrosanct. No, not church, even though I'm going. Tomorrow is the Daytona 500 Nascar race. If you are a fan, I needn't explain the attraction. If you are not, I wouldn't bother.
I just finished The Appeal, by John Grisham. I'll review it anon in the canon. The first 33 chapters were gripping and so skillfully written that I can only admire the guy with the envy that the merely competent hold for the truly gifted. The last 4 chapters sucked, and I'll never, never read another Grisham.
Pippa passes.
R
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Re: Motivations, or What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I will not tell you what my "heart" thinks of it, I'll merely describe my actions in the physical world. A couple of days ago, I went to the card shop and bought a shitload of Valentine cards - about $100 bucks worth. I've sent them to numerous valued ladies (perhaps sometime I'll do an essay about the myriad varieties and dimensions of relationship experiences) and also, under Amy's & my name, to numerous ladies we deal with professionally, e.g., court personnel, etc. (And there's also some delightful overlap there.) So, here is the connundrum - why did I do this? Crass commercialism? Silly sentimentality? Genuine feelings of love for these people and/or for humanity in general? (At least the female half of humanity - our Magistrate Court system has 7 ladies and 1 man, and I put a postscript on their card that I'll call him "Your Honor" and all that, but I sure as hell won't send him a Valentine.)
Assume for the purposes of this question that I know my own motivations, but either am not telling or, if I were to tell might not tell the truth. What ARE my motivations? Is that even knowable by me? Or by you, or by anyone? For some reason, asking this question amuses me a great deal. I think one Shelfer knows why.
We went to a no-kidding Bible study tonight. Rather a strange experience, considering my practices approximately since birth. The question of the alleged divine inspiration of Paul's writings came up, Pastor Josh answered in a forthright manner, and I'm still quite confused. It would be nice to get at least the basic structure of this new-found spiritual system (assuming again for the sake of argument that it's genuine and not a ruse, and I likewise cannot prove that, and probably wouldn't bother to if I could), and the details can then have places to live. A fundamental question is in my mind that I've mentioned before, the need I seem to have to coordinate Sagan and Christ. A recent statistical study estimated that there are 70 sextillion stars in the observable Universe. Is all but old Sol just window dressing for our one species?
My mother is having to adjust to the reality of permanently impaired health, and that is quite worrying.
Pippa passes.
R
Assume for the purposes of this question that I know my own motivations, but either am not telling or, if I were to tell might not tell the truth. What ARE my motivations? Is that even knowable by me? Or by you, or by anyone? For some reason, asking this question amuses me a great deal. I think one Shelfer knows why.
We went to a no-kidding Bible study tonight. Rather a strange experience, considering my practices approximately since birth. The question of the alleged divine inspiration of Paul's writings came up, Pastor Josh answered in a forthright manner, and I'm still quite confused. It would be nice to get at least the basic structure of this new-found spiritual system (assuming again for the sake of argument that it's genuine and not a ruse, and I likewise cannot prove that, and probably wouldn't bother to if I could), and the details can then have places to live. A fundamental question is in my mind that I've mentioned before, the need I seem to have to coordinate Sagan and Christ. A recent statistical study estimated that there are 70 sextillion stars in the observable Universe. Is all but old Sol just window dressing for our one species?
My mother is having to adjust to the reality of permanently impaired health, and that is quite worrying.
Pippa passes.
R
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
God as ticket taker; and I gotta buy a new car
I spent the weekend in wicked, wild Baltimore doing tittillating tax accounting. And yes, tax accounting is just exactly as much fun as you think. Fortunately, Friend JC is a total whiz at it. Me being a country bumpkin, and that being (to me) a hell of a big town, I've quite a few notes from which to write a little essay or two. Not much this morning, though.
Tim came home from a midnight shift in a very rural station at 8 AM. A 30-something with an acute infectious illness arrested, and they worked it a long time. As most such events go, it ended with a transport to the morgue. He was fairly upset, because it's just not an understandable thing in the Universe to see a young person otherwise healthy get on the train. But as I reminded him (as we were driving back from the auto repair shop - he hit a curb on the ice and bent a rim), when God punches the ticket, you're staying on the train.
In a bit of an outing, we went to something called a "car show" at the Civic Center downtown Saturday night. This was essentially a multi-manufacturer car lot, indoors and carpeted. However, this was a concentration of advertising and marketing, and I finally got the message which, upon reflection, is the one which car manufacturers have been trying to get through to me for years. I have concluded that if you buy a new car, you immediately will be wrapped in the embrace of a Beautiful Young Person (gender your choice), who will ignore your poor dentition, questionable personal hygiene and lack of intelligent conversation, and who will then proceed to screw your brains out. Moreover, if you buy a convertible, and you are a guy, they seem to guarantee that your penis length will increase by at least 30%. I conclude all of this from the knowledgable salespeople who were in attendance. They were all Beautiful Young People. I would have thought that older, scarred and stained shadetree mechanics would have known more about automobiles than they do, but apparently that's not the case. Surely, the manufacturer's selected only the most knowledgable people to represent their wares. The Beautiful Young People gushed about the cars and trucks, cajoled, coyly smiled or manfully strutted, and showed absolute interest and affection when answering the questions of idiots. Dear me. We got downtown in JC's "new" car, and I thought that it was nice -- a 1990 model in perfect condition, immaculate, acceleration out the wazoo, and very comfortable on the road. But it wasn't purchased new, so the Beautiful Young People weren't on the job. How sad!
There were couple of odd things, though. The Cadillac display touted a new "green" engine, called the "Partial Zero Emission Vehicle" engine. How's that again? Partial zero? Would Clorox sell if it made your clothes "nearly whiter than white"? How about if I could get a result of "mostly not guilty"? Well, these are sophisticated folks, so perhaps "partial zero" is a new wave of technology. Also, several vehicles had small LCD screens mounted right outside the driver's side window, connected to cameras of some sort which showed the view behind the vehicle. What a marvelous idea. Hmmm - Although if you wanted to save a little money and have a more fool-resistant system, I guess you could mount a mirror there. Nah, for reasons that my mind cannot fathom, the camera's got to be better. Oh, and none of the vehicles had knobs screwed onto the gearshift levers. Perhaps that's an option.
Mizpah.
R
Tim came home from a midnight shift in a very rural station at 8 AM. A 30-something with an acute infectious illness arrested, and they worked it a long time. As most such events go, it ended with a transport to the morgue. He was fairly upset, because it's just not an understandable thing in the Universe to see a young person otherwise healthy get on the train. But as I reminded him (as we were driving back from the auto repair shop - he hit a curb on the ice and bent a rim), when God punches the ticket, you're staying on the train.
In a bit of an outing, we went to something called a "car show" at the Civic Center downtown Saturday night. This was essentially a multi-manufacturer car lot, indoors and carpeted. However, this was a concentration of advertising and marketing, and I finally got the message which, upon reflection, is the one which car manufacturers have been trying to get through to me for years. I have concluded that if you buy a new car, you immediately will be wrapped in the embrace of a Beautiful Young Person (gender your choice), who will ignore your poor dentition, questionable personal hygiene and lack of intelligent conversation, and who will then proceed to screw your brains out. Moreover, if you buy a convertible, and you are a guy, they seem to guarantee that your penis length will increase by at least 30%. I conclude all of this from the knowledgable salespeople who were in attendance. They were all Beautiful Young People. I would have thought that older, scarred and stained shadetree mechanics would have known more about automobiles than they do, but apparently that's not the case. Surely, the manufacturer's selected only the most knowledgable people to represent their wares. The Beautiful Young People gushed about the cars and trucks, cajoled, coyly smiled or manfully strutted, and showed absolute interest and affection when answering the questions of idiots. Dear me. We got downtown in JC's "new" car, and I thought that it was nice -- a 1990 model in perfect condition, immaculate, acceleration out the wazoo, and very comfortable on the road. But it wasn't purchased new, so the Beautiful Young People weren't on the job. How sad!
There were couple of odd things, though. The Cadillac display touted a new "green" engine, called the "Partial Zero Emission Vehicle" engine. How's that again? Partial zero? Would Clorox sell if it made your clothes "nearly whiter than white"? How about if I could get a result of "mostly not guilty"? Well, these are sophisticated folks, so perhaps "partial zero" is a new wave of technology. Also, several vehicles had small LCD screens mounted right outside the driver's side window, connected to cameras of some sort which showed the view behind the vehicle. What a marvelous idea. Hmmm - Although if you wanted to save a little money and have a more fool-resistant system, I guess you could mount a mirror there. Nah, for reasons that my mind cannot fathom, the camera's got to be better. Oh, and none of the vehicles had knobs screwed onto the gearshift levers. Perhaps that's an option.
Mizpah.
R
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Either too tired or too bloody lazy to write this evening
. . . besides, dear old Emerson said it so much better in a compact form than I could were I to write steadily all night:
Brahma
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
You realize, of course, that I seldom have any original thoughts.
Mizpah.
By rote,
R
Brahma
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
You realize, of course, that I seldom have any original thoughts.
Mizpah.
By rote,
R
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