Just a few thoughts on old age. Here’s where I am — and I’m just getting started! (going for the big 68 soon).
Every day when you get up, you take stock of the situation —
Your time left in this life is limited; the end is not that far out there
You have scraps and bits of broken dreams from younger days lying all around you.
You have a handful of small accomplishments, but they seem tiny and insignificant compared to the debris of past imaginings. » continue reading …
OK, this is about racism; but as with Robin DiAngelo, I am going to be talking to my fellow white Euro-heritage Americans. However, contra Robin, I am going to focus mainly on the “woke”, including Ms. DiAngelo herself. And less-so on the elite-but-not-yet-woke and the not-so-elite anti-woke, i.e. those who Robin DiAngelo would lecture to.
IMHO, it’s time for progressive-minded whites who worry about privilege and “fragility” (as per DiAngelo’s book) to stop the fashionable accusations and the hairshirt exercises, and get serious about the brass tacks of a public policy response to the historic injustices that have been done to African Americans on American soil since 1619. (But no, I’m not buying into the NY Times 1619 Project and its contention the primary inspiration for the British colonization of North America and the following independence of the United States was the preservation and expansion of African slavery – although slavery no doubt had some part in the thoughts and actions of the founding fathers. Even if 1619 is not what America is all about, which I believe, it certainly is the year when African slaves were first brought to American soil by the British – and isn’t that bad enough, in and of itself? Yes, it is bad — but that doesn’t mean that America is irreparably bad and beyond future improvement).
I’m tired of reading CNN articles or hearing progressive white scholars say “Liberal cities such as Minneapolis, and the liberals living within them, » continue reading …
When I was a kid, I hated centipedes, just like most everyone else. Almost all bugs are creepy — ok, so we give lady bugs a pass, and butterflies can be beautiful. But most bugs have odd shapes and all sorts of crazy and vaguely threatening arrangements of legs and tentacles and body plates, they have weird eyes and stingers and other ugly protrusions. They seem like feelingless robots, as they fly with their buzzing sound or dart around on the ground. Centipedes take “buggyness” to the next level.
But a guy at my zendo once told me that centipedes are a good way to practice the Buddhist notion of patiently respecting all life forms, even insects. You’d have to be a really devoted Buddhist to ignore a poisonous spider or to “gently” remove it. And roaches are so overwhelming; they truly push you to the “me or them” point of survival. But as to the average house centipede . . . well, no doubt that centipedes are terribly ugly and creepy. You usually see one darting across the floor or up a wall, and your instantaneous mental instinct is to drop everything else and plot an “intercept vector” in your head, and then kill the dang thing, right now!
But my Buddhist friend told me that most house centipedes are not a threat to humans. They try to stay away from people, and » continue reading …
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