Through the Prism

After passing through the prism, each refraction contains some pure essence of the light, but only an incomplete part. We will always experience some aspect of reality, of the Truth, but only from our perspectives as they are colored by who and where we are. Others will know a different color and none will see the whole, complete light. These are my musings from my particular refraction.

11.13.2024

On the Precipice


This is America.

This is the land of xenophobia and robber barons.

This is the land of democracy and liberty and opportunity and this is the land that the Nazi party and South African leaders studied to develop their apartheid caste systems.

This is the land of diversity and downtrodden immigrants and of border walls and internment camps.

This is the land that rejected monarchy and dynasty and that embraces oligarchy and capitalistic aristocracy.

This is the land of religious freedom and of morality laws and cultural homogeneity.

This is the land of independence and of intimidation police, of difference and of hate crimes and gun violence.

This is the land of contradictory, clashing, competing values and concepts of the common good.

This is the land of free individuals and of dominion.

This is the land where half of our neighbors just voted for the most openly racist and hate-based presidential campaign in decades--and where half our neighbors voted against it.

I told my two boys this morning, when they asked if I was upset about the election, that I'm definitely not happy, but that we're lucky to be who we are, because this won't directly impact our lives all that much--and that there are many others who will face much more drastic and negative changes that we need to be paying attention to.




I wrote that the day after the election last week, when Trump was elected president. Now we wait to see if he is going to successfully implement all of the changes he has threatened--and what the country looks like when he is done.

InspiroBot

A couple of other things I shared to Facebook in response to the election:
According to a recent poll about the Age of Monsters, half the world's testable population believes it has definitely ended, while the other half believes it has just begun.

 - Sofia Samatar, Monster Portraits
Now that the election workers and voting machines are out of the building, this morning I finished resetting my library's meeting room for general use--chairs back in the closet, tables in their corner, etc. I also discovered this: in moving the flag and pole around, the eagle atop was broken. This election broke the left wing of the American eagle.



So.

My just-turned-eleven-year-old son is already moving on to Christmas, his school choir having begun preparing for their holiday concert.

"I remembered it all," he said after singing The Twelve Days of Christmas in the car. "I knew it last year, but had to review some today for it to all come back. I thought there was something about 'poison darts,' but that was the pipers piping. And I remembered frogs, but that was for the lords a leaping."

I'm just wondering about the method of delivery the true love chose for the poison darts . . .





We've been busy aside from the election, with a weekend trip to a new city as part of his birthday celebration, among other things. I've also read a few good books. Here's one.

How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil. A description (not mine), followed by my thoughts:
An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check--because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable--the foolishness of allowing 70 per cent of the world's rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020--and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, such that any promises of decarbonization by 2050 are a fairy tale. For example, each greenhouse-grown supermarket-bought tomato has the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel embedded in its production, and we have no way of producing steel, cement or plastics at required scales without huge carbon emissions. Ultimately, Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead?

Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary guide finds faults with both extremes. Looking at the world through this quantitative lens reveals hidden truths that change the way we see our past, present and uncertain future
Smil makes himself hard to dispute because he provides so much data to support his every assertion. Want to know how much steel the world produces each year, how it's used, and what pollution it produces? Smil has an answer. Want to know your average hourly risk of death while driving compared to flying? He has your numbers. He spends much of this book quantifying as many aspect of contemporary life as possible, working to understand the world with numbers.

And what conclusions does he draw that readers may want to dispute? Well, first and foremost, that we can't draw any firm conclusions about the future. That, and that change is generally much slower and more gradual than forecasters of all stripes predict. Most don't consider the multitude of complicating factors impacting how the world works, and thus oversimplify our situation and expectations. Climate change will not be as rapid and immediately life-changing as the common narrative proclaims, yet making the ultimately needed change of eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels is a much more monumental task than almost anyone realizes.

Smil is strident--almost combative--in making his case that the vast majority of futurists are misguided, but underlying that is his assertion that they are fundamentally under-informed. This book is his attempt to help us deepen our understanding. He's not the most engaging or entertaining writer, but his content is certainly valuable. It's a good book that everyone would benefit from reading.

Some excerpts:
Tornadoes kill people and destroy homes every year, and detailed historical statistics make it possible to calculate accurate exposure risks. Between 1984 and 2017, 1,1994 people were killed in the 21 states with the highest frequency of these destructive cyclones (the region between North Dakota, Texas, Georgia, and Michigan, with about 120 million people), and about 80 percent of those deaths took place in the six months of the year from March to August.

This translates to about 3 x 10(-9 power) (0.000000003) fatalities per hour of exposure, a risk that is three orders of magnitude lower than just living. Very few inhabitants of America's tornado-swept states are aware of this rate but they recognize--as do people in other areas subject to recurrent natural catastrophes--that the probability of being killed by a tornado is sufficiently small, and hence the risk of continued living in such regions remains acceptable.

-----

In recent year, lightning has killed fewer than 30 people a year in the US, and when assuming that the danger applies only when outdoors (averaging four hours a day) and during the six months from April to September (when about 90 percent of all lightning occurs) the risk equals about 1 x 10(-10 power), while extending the exposure period to 10 months lowers it to 7 x 10(-11 power) (0.00000000007).

-----

Modern economics will always be tied to massive material flows, whether those of ammonia-based fertilizers to feed the still-growing global population; plastics, steel, and cement needed for new tools, machines, structures, and infrastructures; or new inputs required to produce solar cells, wind turbines, electric cars, and storage batteries. And until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No AI, no apps, and no electronic messages will change that.

-----

Informed looks at the three existential necessities of life--breathing, drinking, and eating--concur: there should be no unavoidable apocalypse by 2030 or 2050. Oxygen will remain abundant. Concerns about water supply will increase in many regions, but we have the knowledge and we should be able to mobilize the means needed to avert any mass-scale life-threatening shortages. And we should not only maintain but improve average per capita food supply in low-income countries, while reducing excessive production in affluent nations. However, these actions would only reduce, not eliminate, our reliance on direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies in the production of food for the global population (see chapter 2). And, as I explained in the first chapter, moving away from fossil fuels cannot be done rapidly. This means that, for decades to come, their combustion will remain the principal driver of global climate change.

-----

We value now more than later, and we price it accordingly. . . . This universal inclination to discount the future matters greatly when contemplating such complex and costly undertakings as pricing carbon in order to mitigate global climate change, because there would be no discernible economic benefits for the generation of people that would launch the expensive quest.

-----

Being agnostic about the distant future means being honest: we have to admit the limits of our understanding, approach all planetary challenges with humility, and recognize that advances, setbacks, and failures will all continue to be a part of our evolution and that there can be no assurance of (however defined) ultimate success, no arrival at any singularity--but, as long as we use our accumulated understanding with determination and perseverance, there will also not be an early end of days. The future will emerge from our accomplishments and failures, and while we might be clever (and lucky) enough to foresee some of its forms and features, the whole remains elusive even when looking just a generation ahead.
I didn't love it, but I'm glad I read it.




Something I wrote a long time ago:
Rhythm is more than just percussion instruments. We can make banging sounds by stomping our feet or clapping our hands or grunting our throats, of course, and that is where he started, but he made me open my eyes to even more. He showed me how to hear rhythm in everything, from the cycles of the moon and changing of the seasons to walking on the road and listening to a busy kitchen. It was only when I could appreciate the music of the unnoticed and mundane that he started teaching me how to make my own music.
Context in a bit.


Another book:


A fascinating and joyous celebration of sound.

Henderson coined the word auraculous, in the subtitle, as a combination of aural and miraculous, and defines it as "wonder for the ear." In this book he takes a trivia-heavy deep dive into as many different types of auraculous as he can identify, from the sounds of the cosmos and deep space through the noises of thunder, volcanoes, and other natural phenomena to the calls and hearing of animals and humans. The echolocation of bats and whales, the history of bells, the mythical sounds of Hell according to our famous works of literature, and so much more.

It is a work of wide-ranging exploration, appreciation, and fun.

Excerpts:
The rhythms of night and day, season, tide and long-term change inform our own, and the way we perceive and live. There is a vast, pulsing harmony--its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.

-----

It has also been found that when bees bump into each other they go 'whoop!'. At first, researchers thought that this was a signal to the other bee to stop, but it now appears they are merely surprised.

-----

Evolutionary processes give rise to forms and capabilities that few if any of us would have been able to think up. Evolution is not only smarter than you; it has a stranger imagination.

-----

Tupa, the first father of the Guarani people, stood up in the middle of the darkness and, inspired by the reflections of his own heart, created the flames and the thin fog, the beginning of a song.

While he still felt inspired, he created love, but he had no one to give it to. He created language, but no one could hear him speak it.

So Tupa recommended the gods to build the world and take care of the fire, fog, rain, and wind. And he handed them the music with the words of the sacred hymn, so they could give life to the woman and man. Now the world would not be in silence at last.

So love became communion, and language took over life, and the first father redeemed his solitude in the company of the man and the woman who sing, “we are walking this land. We are walking this shiny and beautiful land.”
Another one I enjoyed but didn't love. I particularly like the excerpts I pulled out, though.




I especially like this bit from A Book of Noises . . . 
The rhythms of night and day, season, tide and long-term change inform our own, and the way we perceive and live. There is a vast, pulsing harmony--its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.
 . . . because it reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago:
Rhythm is more than just percussion instruments. We can make banging sounds by stomping our feet or clapping our hands or grunting our throats, of course, and that is where he started, but he made me open my eyes to even more. He showed me how to hear rhythm in everything, from the cycles of the moon and changing of the seasons to walking on the road and listening to a busy kitchen. It was only when I could appreciate the music of the unnoticed and mundane that he started teaching me how to make my own music.
That was part of the creation of Degolar, my blogging pseudonym, before I was a blogger. According to my Blogger profile I've been doing this since August 2005, which is about what I would have guessed.

A year or so before that, some friends and I started a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that lasted for years (both in-game and out). We all became really close friends, socialized much aside from the game, and extended the game beyond game nights. To help us stay connected, we started a shared blog for the game where we each used our character names. Then some of us branched out into other blogs. And that's where this blog came from and why I'm still Degolar, even though the game ended a long time ago.

At the very start of all of that, we began by creating our characters for the game. We each came up with a backstory for our characters to explain their origins and guide us in playing their motivations and personalities. I was the party Bard, and came up with a lengthy story. It was my attempt to personalize this general concept:
In the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers.

The greatest strength of bards is their sheer versatility. Many bards prefer to stick to the sidelines in combat, using their magic to inspire their allies and hinder their foes from a distance. But bards are capable of defending themselves in melee if necessary, using their magic to bolster their swords and armor. Their spells lean toward charms and illusions rather than blatantly destructive spells. They have a wide-ranging knowledge of many subjects and a natural aptitude that lets them do almost anything well. Bards become masters of the talents they set their minds to perfecting, from musical performance to esoteric knowledge.
I have no idea if a digital version of this exists any longer, but I still have the paper I printed for sharing and have transcribed that. Here is how Degolar began, some 20 odd years ago.


Degolar

Appearance

He is a youthful adult with short, brown hair and a slight beard. His skin is darker than most half-elves, but his eyes are the distinctive green one would expect. He is an athletic 5'1", with obvious grace, strength, and bounce in his step. He wears well-used leather armor and traveling clothes with many pockets and pouches. For the most part the garments are practical browns and grays, but there are flashes of orange and green here and there. He carries a metal-tipped quarterstaff, has a short sword and dagger at his belt, and has a drum flung over his back. He also wears an easy-going smile, and seems open and quite approachable.

Degolar's Tale

Lia was an especially independent and willful child. Though her family was often exasperated with her, they knew she was good at heart and would eventually find her place in the community. That's why they were caught so completely off guard when she ran off with a human. She was in her 90s, it was true, and a little rebellious and immature as all Elves are at that age right before they reach full adulthood, but they never expected her to be that rash. Raegar was his name. He was part of a group of traveling adventurers who were spending some time recuperating in the town on the edge of their lands. Lia and her friends would often spend time in the town to get some space away from the protective eyes of their families. It was a common practice. It was not so common, though, to not return from the town. Lia had a friend help provide a cover story, and it was a couple of days before her family realized she wasn't coming back. When they finally uncovered the truth, they learned that Lia had fallen in love with Raegar. Knowing that her family would never approve, she had decided to secretly join him when he left town. And she was right, they didn't approve. It took almost a month, but they finally caught up with the couple. Lia was brought forcefully back home and Raegar was warned never to come near their community again.

Everyone tried to return to life as it had been before, but there were problems. Lia was heartbroken, of course, and blamed her family. Then there was the fact that she was pregnant. Lia's family may have been firm about wanting her to stay at home, but they weren't heartless. After the worst of her grief was over, they gave her a special place in the community and tried to raise me as one of their own. Even though Lia was a good mother to me, I knew from the earliest age that there was something different about us. She was younger than all of the other parents and lacked a husband. She never really had an answer when I asked about my father. And it didn't take long for me to realize that I was different than my playmates. The community did its best to make us feel included--I do believe that--but we finally came to realize that I wouldn't ever feel completely accepted and a part of things. When I was in my early teens, Lia decided we should try to find my father to see if he could give me a happier home than she had been able to provide. No one stopped her from leaving the community on her second attempt.

The road has been my only home ever since. We wandered all over the country, traveling from town to town; Mother told me she was following hints and rumors that were leading us closer to finding the man called Raegar, but I don't believe she ever had any real hope. We were in our third year of searching when we began sharing the road with a traveling troupe of performers. There had been musicians in my Elven home, of course, and all manner of storytellers, minstrels, and the like in the various cities and villages we had seen, but none had ever captivated me quite like this lot. Oh, don't get me wrong, I probably enjoyed entertainments more than the average boy--the bold deeds and fantastic adventures gave me dreams to fill the void where my father should have been--but these performers were different than any I had seen before. They had traveled through all kinds of exotic lands and had collected members wherever they went. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and more, light and dark skin and everything in between, clothes that ranged from outlandish to simple. They were the oddest mix of cultures, languages, and styles, yet they somehow made it all work. The very different-ness of it was a strange attraction to me. It was not only their performances, but their company on the road. I couldn't get enough. My mother sensed this, and decided that our journey should parallel theirs for a while.

We never spoke of it explicitly, but Lia and I both gradually came to realize that I was feeling more at home with this nomadic troupe than I ever had in our stable community. I was especially drawn to the music of Kand, a percussionist. The primal harshness of the drums was alien to the Elven music I had always known, but it spoke to me. And I soon learned that the drums could be subtle and melodic, too, and that there were other percussion instruments besides the simple banging of drums. While the storytellers and acrobats should have been much more exciting, the hypnotic simplicity of Kand practicing was more enticing to me than even their best performances. Kand seemed pleased with the attention and took more note of me than any adult other than my mother ever had. I don't know if Lia had never had any real hope of finding Raegar, had given up during our years of wandering, or had come to feel that Kand was a good enough substitute, but she decided that her quest was at an end. After observing my growing relationship with him, my mother asked Kand to take me on as an apprentice. He accepted, and I surprised myself by agreeing that it was a good decision. Lia left us to return to her home not long after, her face happier and her step lighter than I had ever known.

As with all apprentices, I was frustrated with the pace of my training. Kand did not start by teaching me to make music with the instruments, but to take care of them. He was a craftsman for our troupe. He not only made and maintained his own instruments, but all percussion instruments for the group. And wherever we stayed for more than a day or two he would find local work to supplement his performances. Under his tutelage, I learned to love and care for all manner of instruments from the many lands we saw. Each had its own unique sound, and he made sure I knew how to appreciate them before he ever let me bring music forth from them. He also taught me that rhythm is more than just percussion instruments. We can make banging sounds by stomping our feet or clapping our hands or grunting our throats, of course, and that is where he started, but he made me open my eyes to even more. He showed me how to hear rhythm in everything, from the cycles of the moon and changing of the seasons to walking on the road and listening to a busy kitchen. It was only when I could appreciate the music of the unnoticed and mundane that he started teaching me how to make my own music. But eventually he did. Kand taught me to use his drums as well as every instrument we worked on. Like him, I eventually became a full-fledged percussionist who could craft and use instruments from many lands.

My life with Kand was more than just a musical apprenticeship, however. We were part of a troupe that was seeing the world, and it seemed I picked up skills and knowledge from everyone I encountered. I learned many of the songs and tales from the other performers in our company, as well as the craft of presenting my own. Sometimes I would exercise with the acrobats when I got restless at night. At Kand's urging, I even spent time practicing every day with the stick-fighters. He wanted me to be able to protect myself if needed, but we performers didn't have the military skills of swords and bows like my Elven community had. We had to take care of ourselves with less flashy weapons like daggers, slings, and staffs. So I did. And, of course, I learned from the road. I learned how to survive as a stranger in town, how to pick up useful bits of information in a tavern, how to read a crowd and make use of its mood, how to go unnoticed when necessary. In short, I grew up to become a full-fledged member of the troupe.

After years had passed, I was finally invited to take my place among the performers. I was to the point that the only way to keep improving my craft was in front of an audience. I was ecstatic. I still played second to Kand and the other percussionists in the troupe, but I was one of them. It was only after I had been playing with them for a time--after the initial excitement had worn off and I started really paying attention--that I realized we made more than ordinary music. When we really performed well, we made magic. We could reach more than an audience's ears; we could speak to its hearts and souls. I began to understand why we never lacked for money, and why the life never got old. We could make actual magic, the same as any wizard with years of study, but our magic came from our music and craft instead of dusty books.

Kand taught me how to channel my newfound power and give it a practical use, then told me my apprenticeship was finished. He had taught me all he could, and I knew enough to continue developing my skills on my own. I stayed with the troupe after that, enjoying the life I had grown into, but I never felt as content after Kand's pronouncement as I had when I was still his apprentice. The magic had stirred something in me. I wanted to explore my potential, see what else I could learn outside of our normal performances. I wanted to experience adventure and heroic deeds instead of simply telling of them. My restlessness grew over time, until the day came that I said my farewell to Kand and the troupe that had been my home for years.

We had come across a group much like, I suspect, the one Raegar had been in. They, like me, were in search of excitement and new experiences. When I said farewell to Kand, it was only because I had found a place in a new company. We left the city and well-traveled paths to find adventure, and we found it. I won't go into all of the details, but I will say I learned many new things. I put my performing skills to use in ways I never imagined. I improved my stick-fighting skills by using them to keep myself alive in combat. And I found I had a greater affinity for magic than any of the other performers I had known. I can even make some magic now without music or stories. I have tried to learn from all of my encounters, just like I did from my troupe and the road, and have found I'm still an eager student. I want to keep learning more magic, create more heroic tales, and find more adventure. I want to become skilled in the ways that only a life of excitement can teach.




I was also glad to rediscover this bit of what I wrote, because in many ways it is a foreshadowing of one of the major themes that has developed over the years on this blog:
These performers were different than any I had seen before. They had traveled through all kinds of exotic lands and had collected members wherever they went. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and more, light and dark skin and everything in between, clothes that ranged from outlandish to simple. They were the oddest mix of cultures, languages, and styles, yet they somehow made it all work. The very different-ness of it was a strange attraction to me. It was not only their performances, but their company on the road. I couldn't get enough.
As I shared, for example, just last post:
On my drive to school a recent morning with the boys:

[Older]: "Ugh, our neighbor put his big 'Trump' banner back up."

Me: "Yeah, he did, and that's okay. We want to be able to put up the signs we like, so we want him to be able to put up the signs he likes."

[Older]: "What matters is that everyone has the right to have their own beliefs, even if we don't like them."

Me: "Exactly. We want people to be allowed to be different than us. That's what's most important."
Diversity makes us better.



Finally, one other thing I've read recently: The Book of Stolen Dreams by David Farr.

Intrigue and adventure abound in this skillfully told tale of young teen siblings caught up in the resistance efforts against a repressive regime. A fictional setting with a slight bit of magic, but otherwise quite grounded in reality. Farr is a gifted storyteller with excellent pacing and plotting and a light, witty touch. I was entirely transported into Rachel and Robert's world, the worries, hopes, and fears, and delighted in their successes. Top notch.

I share because I particularly like this bit of description:
She had some inner quality, a contact with the mysteries of life that lay hidden beneath the certainties of science and road maps. It meant she sometimes got lost in the real world, of course, because her brain was somewhere else. She was, he thought, a bit of a poet, touched by magic.
In contact with the mysteries of life, a bit of a poet, touched by magic.




10.29.2024

Embracing the Bittersweet Joy of Impermanence


Nothing particularly profound today, just a compilation of recent thoughts, words, and images.


The natural light from the sun in the last part of each day is when light and color are often their most vivid. The angle through the atmosphere combined with longer shadows have led photographers and artists to call it "the magic hour."

The sunlight near the end of the year seems to be the most wonderful. All the more precious for its growing rarity combined with the abundance of autumn leaves and other fall colors make it often feel like the magic season.

I recently shared this picture with the following caption.
October 22 . . . 85 degrees . . . October 22 . . . 85 degrees . . . yes, that's where we are, right in the middle of this picture, stuck between seasons . . . 

Then shared it again on a work chat in response to the teambuilding question, Are you enjoying any fall or Halloween books, TV shows, or movies right now? followed by:

I don't really go for proper horror, which is why I'm posting pictures, because I'm not consuming anything for the season right now. However, I do like things dark and twisty of a couple of different varieties, which I'll offer in two links:

  • Creepy and unsettling - Book List: What Did I Just Read? - I seem to enjoy books that fill me with confusion and existential dread - just like life, except the comfort of pretend. Unusual or experimental writing, unreliable narrators or narrators in unreliable situations, strange and off-kilter or simply unique. Often creepy. These are some I have particularly enjoyed.
  • True horror - Book: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming - It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible.
But to me fall is all about embracing the bittersweet joy of cool weather, encroaching darkness, and the ephemeral beauty all around, a sad happiness on the threshold of the stark coldness of winter. Life made all the sweeter due to being confronted by its impermanence. It has an ambivalent, liminal quality. And I love it.
 
It is a season best spent outside.
“To love nature and to hate humanity is illogical. Humanity is part of the whole. To truly love the world is also to love human ingenuity and playfulness. Nature does not need to be cleansed of human artifacts to be beautiful or coherent. Yes, we should be less greedy, untidy, wasteful, and shortsighted. But let us not turn responsibility into self-hatred. Our biggest failing is, after all, lack of compassion for the world. Including ourselves.”

“We crave rich variegations of light. Too much time in one ambience, and we long for something new. Perhaps this explains the sensory ennui of those who live under unchanging skies. The monotony of blank sunny skies or of an endless cloud ceiling deprives us of the visual diversity we desire.”

 -- from The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
A screenshot of thumbnails of the pictures I took during my hike at the park on Monday:



[Younger, age 9] walks into the room, angry and exasperated.

"Is [Older, age 10] pushing all of your buttons?"

"I don't have any buttons to push. I have levers to flick. And [Older] is flicking all of them."

What results when you have parents with pedantic, contrarian, sarcastic tendencies. It comes out even in the midst of fighting with your brother while being nagged by your parents to stop fighting and get ready for school. Mornings at our house.


In place of Rock, Paper, Scissors, [Younger] has created Slash-and-Burn, Voodoo Magic, Horns based on his favorite BattleBots machines. Sawblaze beats Minotaur; Minotaur beats Witch Doctor; Witch Doctor beats Sawblaze.



I like this article.

Many adults do away with the unhurried hangouts and imaginative play that make youthful friendships so vibrant. Though friendships naturally evolve as we grow up, they don’t need to lose that vitality. Continuing to embrace a childlike approach to friendship into adulthood can make for connections that are essentially ageless. . . . 

Kids’ time together is often dedicated to play. For many children, all they need to entertain themselves is shared space, the right companions, and their imagination. But this is not just a pastime; it’s a vulnerable way to connect with someone, Jeffrey Parker, a psychology professor at the University of Alabama, told me. After analyzing more than a decade’s worth of recorded conversations between children and their friends, Parker noticed a common dynamic: If one kid introduces an unexpected idea, the other must riff to make it work. Doing this with a new playmate is a “high-risk strategy”—maybe they’ll shut you down—but when your ideas mesh, you get to invent something new together.

Spending so much creative time together can produce intense ties. . . . 

Kids’ overarching approach to friendship: Keep one another company for large stretches of time without a preset agenda. . . . 

Parker, the psychology professor, told me he’d find it hard to call up a friend and say “Wanna go throw some stones in the river?” because he senses that adult get-togethers should have a clear purpose. “We know what to expect of something like a dinner party,” Liming said. But, especially with someone new, just hanging out is more confusing. “There’s this open feeling about, well, how long is it going to take? And what are we going to do? And what am I supposed to wear?”

This pursuit of efficiency and the safety of following norms can come at the cost of pleasure. Liming told me that an efficiency mindset risks making friendships feel transactional, as if each meeting should be “worth it.” But squeezing hangouts into short, infrequent slots is unlikely to feel fulfilling. If you haven’t seen each other in a while, focusing on catching up is natural. Ticking through life’s headlines, however, can feel like exchanging memos, whereas joint adventures create memories—the foundation of close friendship. As the sociologist Eric Klinenberg told The Atlantic, “You tend to enrich your social life when you stop and linger and waste time.”

Even if more adults were willing to ask friends to skip rocks or loll on the couch, our grown-up minds can sap the improvisational fun from these gatherings. To enjoy the rewards of play, you have to take risks, but adults are often too consumed by self-consciousness to run with someone’s silly idea, let alone suggest one. . . . 

This summer, adults flocked to theaters dressed in suits and fedoras or in fluorescent outfits for doubleheader screenings of Barbie and Oppenheimer. It’s a recent, popular example of adults embracing fun with friends, though there are plenty of others, whether Dungeons and Dragons groups or elaborate fantasy-football leagues. Clearly, adults don’t completely stop creatively connecting with friends. The challenge lies in foregrounding play and inefficiency, making these features of hanging out more common.
Of course, I appreciate the call-out for D&D.

Pursuit of efficiency and the safety of following norms can come at the cost of pleasure.




[Younger] told me the other night that he hates Einstein because Einstein is so overrated and gets solo credit for all these ideas that were joint projects, and everyone else who contributed gets forgotten.

He also told me he already knows everything in this book due to his nightly habit of watching episodes of PBS's Nova.


A thought of my own.
The Subatomic world is Movement and Space
Subatomic . . .  a world smaller than an Atom
Molecules are made of Atoms
Cells are made of Molecules
All Living Beings are made of Cells
Bacteria are the smallest Living Beings
Bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea, and other microorganisms are part of the microbiome of the Human Body
Humans are part of the microbiome of the Earth
The Earth is part of the microbiome of the Milky Way Galaxy
The Galaxy is part of the microbiome of the Universe
The Universe is Movement and Space

n. the state of being simultaneously entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the cosmos, which makes your deepest concerns feel laughably quaint, yet vanishingly rare.

From galaxy, a gravitationally bound system of millions of stars + agog, awestruck. Pronounced “gal-uh-gawg.”
 . . . think globally, act locally?


On my drive to school a recent morning with the boys:

[Older]: "Ugh, our neighbor put his big 'Trump' banner back up."

Me: "Yeah, he did, and that's okay. We want to be able to put up the signs we like, so we want him to be able to put up the signs he likes."

[Older]: "What matters is that everyone has the right to have their own beliefs, even if we don't like them."

Me: "Exactly. We want people to be allowed to be different than us. That's what's most important."


It was interesting working the main desk at the library on Saturday, watching a multitude of people come in for our first day as an advanced voting location. Many were eager and friendly, excited for the opportunity to vote. Some were tentative and unsure, like they were anxious about the experience. And some looked like they were braced for a fight, ready to assert themselves in the face of expected hostility. Needless to say, all they encountered was welcoming hospitality.


Speaking of libraries and welcoming hospitality . . . 

After a period in which libraries were labeled as obsolete, there’s growing agreement that they play a vital role in the community. 

Past budget cuts led to closures and the consolidation of library services, but as libraries continue to evolve, city leaders have recognized the vital role that they play. 

As more people start to see them as essential for education, public safety and access to information, libraries are seeing an influx of capital spending. The recent push to complete the Wichita Public Library’s long-term building plans underscores this shift. . . . 

Along with each budget document, the City Council adopts a Capital Improvement Program, laying out infrastructure goals for the next decade. This year’s plan put a focus on crime prevention, including how libraries can improve community health.

Quality of life improvements provided by places such as the library can help decrease crime, according to the Capital Improvement Plan. 

A study by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency based in Washington, found libraries are “positively associated with multiple dimensions of social well-being – in particular, community health, school effectiveness, institutional connection and cultural opportunity.”

Wichita libraries have embraced their status as a “third place,” a space outside of work or home.  Third places have been recognized as boosting community health and reducing loneliness in young adults. 

“What I love about what’s happening with the libraries is they’re trying to expand who they can reach and how they can improve safety in the community,” Hirsh says. “Libraries can be used to help people that might be seeing cuts in other parts of their lives.”
Connection.


Speaking of the looming presidential election, I shared this the other day on Facebook.
"A Vast and Permanent Underclass"

In his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Colin Woodward writes about the founding of the American colonies that became the southern states and the philosophies driving their economic systems, a heritage we still see clearly today:

"From the outset this was a society of a few haves and a great many have-nots. At the top a small cadre of increasingly wealthy plantation owners quickly came to dominate the economic and political affairs of the colony. At the bottom was an army of bound laborers who were effectively without political rights; they were expected to do as they were told and could be subjected to corporal punishment if they did not. It was a pattern that would carry on well into the twentieth century. . . . 

"Whether highborn or self-made, the great planters had an extremely conservative vision for the future of their new country: they wished to re-create the genteel manor life of rural England in the New World. . . . 

"The Greek and Roman political philosophy embraced by Tidewater gentry assumed the opposite: most humans were born into bondage. Liberty was something that was granted and was thus a privilege, not a right. Some people were permitted many liberties, others had very few, and many had none at all. The Roman republic was one in which only a handful of people had the full privileges of speech (senators, magistrates), a minority had the right to vote on what their superiors had decided (citizens), and most people had no say at all (slaves). Liberties were valuable because most people did not have them and were thought meaningless without the presence of a hierarchy. For the Greeks and Romans there was no contradiction between republicanism and slavery, liberty and bondage. This was the political philosophy embraced and jealously guarded by Tidewater’s leaders, whose highborn families saw themselves as descendants not of the “common” Anglo-Saxons, but rather of their aristocratic Norman conquerors. It was a philosophical divide with racial overtones and one that would later drive American’s nations into all-out war with one another. . . .

"While they were passionate in defending their liberties, it would never have occurred to them that those liberties might be shared with their subjects. "I am an aristocrat," Virginian John Randolph would explain decades after the American Revolution. "I love liberty; I hate equality."

"While the gentry enjoyed ever-greater liberties—including leisure (liberty from work) and independence (liberty from the control of others)—those at the bottom of the hierarchy had progressively fewer. Tidewater’s semifeudal model required a vast and permanent underclass to play the role of serfs, on whose toil the entire system depended."


I was reminded of that this morning reading the latest from Heather Cox Richardson about the competing economic visions of the two candidates running for president. She delves into the history of the country, how things developed after the founding that Woodward describes:

"Trump has indicated his determination to take the nation’s economy back to that of the 1890s, back to a time when capital was concentrated among a few industrialists and financiers. This world fits the idea of modern Republicans that the government should work to protect the economic power of those on the “supply side” of the economy with the expectation that they will be able to invest more efficiently in the market than if they were regulated by government or their money taken by taxation. 

"Trump has said he thinks the word “tariff” is as beautiful as “love” or “faith” and has frequently praised President William McKinley, who held office from 1897 to 1901, for leading the U.S. to become, he says, the wealthiest it ever was. Trump attributes that wealth to tariffs, but unlike leaders in the 1890s, Trump refuses to acknowledge that tariffs do not bring in money from other countries. The cost of tariffs is borne by American consumers. 

"The industrialists and Republican lawmakers who pushed high tariffs in the 1890s were quite open that tariffs are a tax on ordinary Americans. In 1890, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World complained about the McKinley Tariff that raised average tariffs to 49.5%. “Under the McKinley Act the people are paying taxes of nearly $20,000,000 and a much larger sum in bounties to Carnegie, Phipps & Co., and their fellows, for the alleged purpose of benefiting the wage-earners,” it wrote, even as the powerful companies slashed wages.

"Today, on CNBC’s Squawk Box, senior economics reporter Steve Liesman noted that the conservative American Enterprise Institute has called out Trump’s proposed tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers of as much as $3.9 trillion. 

"Together with Trump’s promise to make deep cuts or even to end income taxes on the wealthy and corporations, his economic plan will dramatically shift the burden of supporting the country from the very wealthy to average Americans, precisely the way the U.S. economy worked until 1913, when the revenue act of that year lowered tariffs and replaced the lost income with an income tax."

I'm trying not to think about the election because it induces crippling anxiety, so I'll say no more for now.



I don't remember what prompted the thought, but the other day I told someone one of the things that confirms I'm truly white is that the cologne I've found meshes best with my body's natural chemistry is the scent Banana Republic: Classic. The company whose very name says "these are the clothes and items of colonialism."



I recently enjoyed reading Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe. Here's my review.
I'm not arguing for some facile idea of "positive images," though such a desire, not mine, certainly does index power. I am arguing for reading and watching critically, acknowledging the desire to see Black lives in all their complexity, and knowing the complex representational terrains in which we move and on which we struggle. (from Note 58)
It's only in recent years that the word "normalize" has become a part of my vocabulary as its use has trended in media and discourse. "Normalize" as in "to allow or encourage (something considered extreme or taboo) to become viewed as normal" (Merriam-Webster) and "to start to consider something as normal, or to make something start to be considered as normal" (Cambridge Dictionary). I'm pretty sure Sharpe never uses the word "normalize" in this book, but it in many ways describes her endeavor in writing it.

I've often heard The Cosby Show, that 80s staple I grew up on, described as significant because it was revolutionary in its mainstream portrayal of a Black family as, well, mainstream. Its representation of "Blackness" worked to "normalize" Blackness. It showed that "Black people" were just like the rest of us.

However.
White people are always extended grace--and the grammar of the profoundly human. They are the human. (from Note 61)
With one little phrase, I just negated any framing of Black as normal. "Just like the rest of us." Us. My phrasing indicates that "us" does not include Black people. The default human, the universal "normal," is white. Black is somehow different. Other. Lesser.

In this collection of 248 "notes," Sharpe explores that dynamic. Exposes all the ways, like my turn of phrase, that our cultures makes Blackness different, other, and lesser. Makes Blackness not ordinary. And illustrates ordinary life as a Black person living in such a culture. It is a book about representation and perception and cultural power. How racism rests in all the little, everyday, "ordinary" moments that "otherize" Blackness.
Note 190
A positioning tool

It is July 2020, many long months into the pandemic, and in the US already over 100,000 people have died.

My friend S and her family are in Western Massachusetts. S tells me that she is working in her garden when a young whiteman approaches her. He is clearly lost. He wants directions. But white supremacy is gyrocompass. White supremacy is GPS. Whiteness is property. So first, he asks her if the house belongs to her.
Some of the "notes" are anecdotes like this one. Many are recollections from Sharpe's life. Some are a single sentence while others are academic essays that go for pages; see the excellent Beauty Is a Method for a prime example. Prominent throughout is art in its many forms, written and visual and performing and more. Who they represent. How they represent. Who they assume is the generic, "ordinary" audience--and, necessarily, who is not. Who do these works intend "us" to identify with? Who do they "normalize?"
Note 25

Every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure.
Because those enterprises assume the perspective of the perpetrators and inherently reinforce the victims as "other." And because victims often experience them as reliving the trauma.
Note 43
We are called to different things

What if the project that white people took up was to locate each of the white people who appear in the crowds of those lynchings, those who posed for photographs and those others who appear in the background? What if their project was to identify them and their families and to link their present circumstances to the before of those photographs and the after? That is, what if the work was to draw a line or to map new or continued wealth, accumulation of property and status, access to education and health to those mass murders--a Legacy of Lynching Participants database--that would join the past and the present in the same ways that the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project laid bare the "slave owners"--their strategies of accumulation of wealth and power, evasion and disavowal, that have continued into the present.

The demand is uneven. We are called to different things.

What if white visitors to a memorial to the victims of lynchings were met with the enlarged photographs of faces of those white people who were participant in and witness to that terror then and now?

What if they had to face themselves?

Might that not be a different endeavor? Might that not hit a different note?
Each note offers its own bit of insight and analysis, shares perspective and a bit of the experience of being Black. Together they accumulate and layer and build into something extraordinary.
Note 242

I write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under these brutal regimes.
Extraordinary.

And a few extra quotes I marked, because, well, you know.
There was a time when I would answer people's questions largely with quotations from plays, novels, poems, and nonfiction works. What I wanted to say had already been said and said better than I could have hoped to say it myself.

-----

There are many books that produced in me a feeling I needed or wanted to feel. Some of them are books that I love, and others are not. But love is beside the point. What these books share is that they produced in me the feeling that I needed.

-----

Books--poetry, fiction, nonfiction, theory, memoir, biography, mysteries, plays--have always helped me locate myself, tethered me, helped me to make sense of the world and to act in it. I know that books have saved me. By which I mean that books always give me a place to land in difficult times. They show me Black worlds of making and possibility.
Gotta love the book love.




Finally, a poem.
Eric Kocher


Now we are on the ferry we flew to drive to,
Its enormous engines vibrating
 
Every molecule, spreading out,
A family of ducks getting out of the way.
 
My wife claims there are fish jumping,
But every time I look up
 
They are gone, or she is lying.
I have become suspicious of my pursuit
 
Of remoteness, of seeking out places far away
And difficult to get to,
 
Places with fewer people, more trees.
I am suspicious
 
Because I know it’s at least somewhat
Insincere, that I very deeply need other people
 
Around me to feel safe, to feel important,
That part of my departure is the performance
 
Of departure, the making of the image of one.
This departure is certainly
 
Not about being alone.
My wife and I are here as a way of being
 
Even more together than we normally are,
Or maybe being together
 
In a way that we used to be all the time
Before our daughter was born.
 
Her birth made us closer, for sure,
It made our little story seem
 
Impossibly big and important,
Like we were conducting the soundtrack
 
To our daughter’s grand entrance
To being with other people, to being with herself.
 
But it also made certain parts of ourselves
And each other seem far away,
 
Like one of those distant places
I am always interested in going.
 
I tell my wife that, of all the places
On the planet, the place I want most to be
 
Is the North Pole, that I feel the Arctic calling me
As if from inside of a dream.
 
A smaller boat passes by and I’m surprised
When we are unmoved
 
By its little wake, that the waves,
Regardless of their size,
 
Should rock us, however gently.
But now we are on this gigantic boat
 
Looking for those people we used to be,
Trying to remember them without erasing
 
Each other, without erasing
The people that they have become
 
And all the ways they are growing still.
We also came here looking for whales,
 
I should add, that we bought tickets from people
Who promised we would see them.
 
And now that we are out here looking
For ourselves among them,
 
I have no idea why. Or, maybe,
I’m worried what might happen if they see me.
 
—from Sky Mall
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
Looking for those people we used to be, trying to remember them without erasing each other, without erasing the people that they have become, and all the ways they are growing still.