Thursday, October 6, 2011
Current Affairs ...
There’s a cute little advice-column parody at the end of The Atlantic mag, called “What’s Your Problem” by Jeffrey Goldberg. In the October issue, Goldberg presents himself with a mock question about how to come up with a “things I want to do before I die” list, given all the choices that a young, rich person might have. Goldberg’s mock advice was to come up with a reverse list, i.e. things you definitely do NOT want to do during your lifetime. He then posted 25 items that would appear on his own list. I thought I would comment on some of them.
1.) Climb Mount Everest
2.) See any movie or read any book about self-actualizing rich people who climb Mount Everest
3.) See that movie about the guy who cuts off his arm in a ravine that isn’t even on Mount Everest
COMMENT: So far I’m totally in synch with Goldberg. I have no intention of seeing 127 Hours either. I like hiking, but not that extreme stuff.
10.) Collateralize a debt obligation
COMMENT: Best to avoid debt obligations in the first place
12.) Colon cleanse
COMMENT: It just gets dirty again anyway, and fast. Pretty much like house cleaning.
15.) Create a coat of arms for my family
COMMENT: I agree, coats of arms are over-rated.
18.) Play golf
COMMENT: On a nice day, I’d rather be » continue reading …
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Photo ...
I had trouble getting to sleep the other night, so I spent a half hour or so perusing Fr. James “Jeff” Behrens’ monastery photo book Portraits of Grace. Jeff’s photos and his gentle written reflections were a nice calming touch, just what I needed. It felt so good and comforting simply being under the covers, resting against propped pillows with the book in hand, that I probably stayed up a bit longer than I had to. It was one of those cozy moments of life that come along too infrequently.
I guess that I’m still a bit of a ‘monastery romantic’, despite having been to real monasteries and talking to real monks (including Jeff). Their life is just as gritty as anyone else’s. But Jeff’s book helps to feed my illusion, nonetheless. He focuses in closely on quotidian stuff like tools and windows and leaves and dishes and shovels, with just the right sunlight and shadow to make it all seem beatific. Yea, I know it’s not real life, but sometimes real-life is not what one needs.
On page 85, Jeff has a shot of a praying mantis standing on a wet morning glory flower. Quite interesting. The next day, I went out back by my car, where my own morning glory vines are still in bloom, and I noticed that they were still wet from an earlier rain shower (not surprising given how wet the past few months have been around here). So I went inside and grabbed my camera, and here’s what I got. No bug, but still not a bad shot, IMHO. Thanks, Jeff, for the idea.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
History ... Personal Reflections ...
By the time most of us reach our late teenage years, we usually take up some sort of rebellious cause, something to distinguish ourself from the life that our parents and all their friends lived. You want to make it clear that your world is going to be better, that you aren’t going to make the same mistakes and fall into the same traps that they lazily fell into over the course of their lives. I was no different. My cause was pacifism; not exactly a surprise choice for the time, i.e. late 60’s and early 70’s. Me and my generation were going to show the world that you didn’t ever need to kill another human being in order to have a good society where everyone can have a good life.
How did that all turn out for me? I don’t want to talk about it right now. Let’s just say as I proceed through my adult years, I fell into many of the same traps and have made many of the same compromises that my parents and their generation made. Oh well. But I still try to keep the violence and killing to a minimum. In my case, that would be “agentic killing”. I have never directly killed anything larger than a mouse, but I cannot say that I am entirely pure when you ask if anyone has to die in order to maintain the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to. I am a 99% vegetarian (and loving it – just eliminated eggs from my cooking and baking routine). Thus, I don’t take too many animals down to maintain myself, although admittedly I occasionally buy leather shoes or belts (but try to get by as much as possible with faux-leather items from Payless).
However, I do depend upon a car powered by gasoline to get to work, to buy food and clothing, and to maintain my social life. I also » continue reading …
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Outer Space ... Spirituality ...
It turns out that many of the US astronauts who have been up in the Freedom space station for several months have had vision problems. About one third have reported some level of vision impairment after coming home. Most have gotten better over time, but NASA is worried that more permanent damage would be done on a very long space mission, such as a trip to explore Mars.
Likewise, it turns out that 36 astronauts who were on “high radiation missions”, including the Apollo moon astronauts, experienced cataract problems. This was due to their heightened exposure to cosmic rays and other particles from the Sun and from space, given that they spent time beyond the earth’s magnetic shielding. (The space station astronaut problems stem more from brain fluid shifts caused by prolonged weightlessness — they are in low orbit and aren’t as severely exposed to radiation).
But interestingly enough, the deep space missions had another type of “vision” effect — vision in a spiritual sense. It turns out that » continue reading …
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Psychology ... Society ...
As I mentioned earlier in the month (Sept. 10), I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”, a popular book on decision-making. Thirty-eight percent of its reviewers on Amazon believe that it only merits 1, 2 or 3 stars. Even one of the 4 star reviewers says “The book is a series of semi-socio-scientific articles on insight and intuition. It is not a cohesive theory . . . Gladwell fumbles in trying take them into some unified theory that is comprehensible let alone cohesive.” My friend Mary basically agrees with that sentiment (see her comments on it); she finds it to be a desultory mix of topics and a grab-bag of sundry theories.
As to myself, I am also scratching my head, wondering why I don’t see what seems obvious to Gladwell, i.e. a big idea that will change how we and our leaders make decisions, big and small, and for the better. Not that Blink is devoid of all worth. There are a number of small ideas that have some value.
One such idea was elegantly presented recently in a short article on the Scientific American web site, » continue reading …
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Personal Reflections ... Photo ...
I took a little drive this morning, stopping at a handful of places that had meant something to me in the past. It was a late summer/early autumn trip down memory lane. The coming of autumn always makes me nostalgic.
One of my stops was at the church where I got married way back in the mid-80s, St. Joes in East Rutherford. While walking thru the parking lot looking for a photo angle, I came upon this little scene. A dumpster and some garbage cans — friars only. Hmmmm, makes you consider that St. Francis was born wealthy but voluntarily became a mendicant, trading luxurious clothing and sumptuous meals for what ever he could garner from begging and sifting thru trash heaps (or where ever they put their garbage back in the 13th Century — but is garbage mostly a modern concept, a luxury of affluence?).
Well, I doubt that any modern OFMs had sifted through these bins. And more ironically, the friars are now gone from St. Joes, having given the parish back to the local diocese not long ago in order to conserve their dwindling manpower. So, this sign is a double anachronism, another memory of things that are no more. Which is just what I was searching for this crisp, cool morning.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Current Affairs ... Society ...
I heard a report on NPR the other day about the band of elderly Japanese people who are volunteering to do work at the Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down, in place of younger people whose lives might be shortened by the high levels of radiation there. The government and the utility company have not taken them up on this yet, but they might.
Wow, the Kamikaze spirit lives on in Japan! At least amidst the older generation, those who grew up during WW2 or not long after. This is quite an honorable thing, the notion of older people willing to cut short whatever years they have left, so as to keep younger people from losing a decade or two due to radiation-induced cancer.
Practically speaking, these old codgers are going to suffer if Tokyo Electric sends them out to nuclear hot spots » continue reading …
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...
I didn’t go to any of the 9-11 memorial services today marking the 10th anniversary of the attack, although I was listening to the live radio coverage from the Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. Instead, I went to a “tombstone uncovering” ceremony at a Jewish cemetery, to remember a fellow from my Zen group who passed away back in January. He lived to age 87 and had a long, full life including marriage, combat service in the Army during WW2, running a successful accounting firm, on-going involvement with his synagogue, and regular attendance at our zendo.
While at the cemetery, I was looking around at the writings on the other “memorial stones”. I’m used to tombstones from Christian cemeteries, which don’t usually say much other than a short quote from the New Testament. The Jewish stones I saw today had a lot of interesting sayings on them, by contrast.
The saying that I would like to share here today is actually my own mis-reading of what the stone actually says. Let’s start with reality; the stone says: “Do Not Remember Me With Tears But With Smiles”. My own misreading of it goes like this: » continue reading …
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Current Affairs ... Politics ... Psychology ...
A friend at work recently loaned me a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” and I’ve been cruising through it over the past few days (it’s a fairly easy read, with lots of anecdotes; interestingly, a movie is being made about it, to be released later this year). Gladwell’s main point is that we humans are built to make snap judgments about things and people that we see or encounter for the first time, based upon initial impressions; and that such judgments are generally more accurate than you might expect. He calls this the “thin slicing” technique of decision making.
But Gladwell also points out that “blink” judgments are sometimes wrong, and offers some conjectures about what can throw us off when we start judging books by their covers. To be honest, Gladwell doesn’t really leave you with much to help decide whether and when to trust your gut instincts, and when to re-think them. He gives a few examples of the many overt and subconscious prejudices that people harbor, but doesn’t say how to detect when these are blinkering your blink. This book is kind of “blinky” in itself, actually; various critics have said that the evidence for Gladwell’s contentions is usually quite thin. But the stories in it are interesting enough.
One of Gladwell’s stories regards Warren Harding, 29th President of the US and arguably the worst one ever. This was an instance when the “thin slicing” of a first impression let us down. According to Gladwell, » continue reading …
Monday, September 5, 2011
Photo ...
It’s the Labor Day holiday here and I’m trying to have a calm, restful day. I’m still been a little jittery from the big storm last week (Hurricane Irene). Even though I weathered Irene rather well, my body went into “Defcon One” status for it, and it doesn’t just throttle down right away once the crisis is past. Perhaps I have a miniature version of PTSD. So a nice peaceful day would go a long way to getting me back in the groove.
And so I slept late (8 am is late for me) and had a leisurely breakfast, then went to the bathroom to begin my daily ablutions. Things were going well, and then it was time to pull off some toilet paper. But there was a little surprise waiting for me …
Ah, life; always some unexpected surprise awaits!
