First thoughts…

230.0

… i am up at 2:30 AM for the bathroom… back to bed… up again at 4:30 AM… a brief check of FB for comments on my post about our first viewing of Love Actually this holiday season… two comments about the same thing… i omitted a hyphen which transformed a comment centered around my second wife into a comment centered around my first wife… the first one to call it out was B, who rarely comments on anything i post… i am slightly annoyed because i think it slightly obnoxious… the second one is a pile on to B’s comment from an acquaintance who also happens to be a word nerd… both are annoying as they bypass the sentiment of the post and go straight to demonstrating how smart they are and (by inference) i am not… except their emotional intelligence is sadly lacking… everyone else ignored, if they even noticed, and dove into the spirit of the post… the hyphen comments have me thinking a little about my first wife and, for some reason, about the abortion we got when we were married… it was a sad day for us… i believe she came to blame me for it… for all kinds of things in the end… i hope she is doing well and found happiness… i have…

… i had a quasi productive day… things didn’t go together the way i hoped and i wound up with a couple of hours of unproductive time in the late afternoon… H needed some cookie tins, we went looking for them at Michael’s… didn’t find them… went to Adams… came home… i also wound up having to invest time in reprogramming my smart fixtures into smart home because it came undone for reasons i don’t quite understand, except an update to the app disconnected me from my account and i had no record of my account in my password app, so, new account requiring that fixtures be reconnected… the upside is that we are one or two lightbulbs short of having the basement lights on voice command… new bulbs are arriving today, along with a new dimmer switch for the dining room which will, i hope, put the dining room on voice command…

… a moment to get my studio lighting reconnected…

… HCR took the night off… on the politics side of things, a comment by Donny Deutsch on the Nicolle Wallace show has been spinning around in my mind… he did an informal survey of the crowd he travels with and discovered that they are not concerned with wether democracy lives or dies, only with how one thing or another hurts or helps them economically… DD travels with the wealthy, so, we know where the wealthy stand… the problem is, i don’t think enough of the rest of us who should care really think there is a major threat to democracy in this country… they either don’t believe it, are sticking their heads in the sand because it is too difficult to contemplate, or, they are part of the 25%-35% of us that think oligarchic/authoritarian/fascist government is what protects their interests and beliefs the best… it should be noted that this is largely the white patriarchal crowd…

… as i read DD’s Wikipedia article i wonder if the man can possibly be in touch with any kind of reality the majority of us live with… i agree with his views generally… at least the ones i know about… but it makes me mindful of “the club” of the wealthy that has a lot to say about how things will go in this country…

First Thoughts…

229.4

… when i weighed myself this morning i thought, we had soup for dinner last night… left over turkey soup… i thought, hmmm, soup, a good way to eat lightly for dinner, maybe i will develop my soup chops this winter… there is lots of variety and one can make lovely stocks to be the base of them…

… our new suitcases arrived yesterday… they seem like the perfect things… now we just need to be able to distinguish them… color coded luggage tags?…

… i listened to podcasts on the way up and back from Woodstock yesterday… one from Believer magazine and one from OnBeing, Krista Tippet’s production which used to be, Speaking of Faith… i have begun to dislike KT… i used to love her, but there is a kind of arrogance that has crept into her work… she has developed herself as a nexus of human wisdom and seems more caught up in that exalted position than in delivering meaningful understandings to people…

… the podcast i was listening to was positing that the key to wellness, planetary and otherwise, was to transform our hatred into love… i thought to myself, John Lennon had that astute observation decades ago, and of course, the New Testament teaches one to love their neighbors as themselves… the two guests on the program, one the Surgeon General of the United States, the other a neurologist and psychologist/psychiatrist… the program came across as a sort of new age babble that appeals to a well off and elitist sort of crowd but is a bunch of meaningless platitudes and politeness being offered up… all this new agey thinking and what does the world have to show for it?… right now, everything looks to be going to “hell in a hand basket” if i may appropriate a cliche… there is so much anger, resentment and outright hatred in the US alone… no wellness guru/program is remotely making a dent in it…

… the question is, how do you make a dent in it?… the people that presently matter… the people with power… don’t seem to give a damn so long as their wealth and power continues to accumulate…

… i have the impression of a volcano getting ready to blow… is it really that it must blow?… that thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people must perish before there is any kind of coming to the senses?… is this the only way to break the white euro-patriarchy (or establish it hegemony once and for all)?… how do we kill the euro-patriarchal beast once and for all?… i am afraid we will find out in the coming three years… why are we unable to stop raping and pillaging the planet and its peoples?… is it really as bad as it looks?…

… just now, the thought comes to me… we are looking at a world built on the mythology of mountain climbing… the mythic ideal of human success built around conquering mountains (literal and figurative) and then dismantling them for their raw materials and starting the next higher climb… i have written before that this is one mythic model that humanity follows… is is the one western civilization is built on… it operates on the principle of unending growth, the greedy and often violent appropriation of resources and the literal or virtual enslavement of people to extract, move and process those raw materials…

… another mythic principle we could operate on is the tail devouring snake… the ouroboros… the tail devouring snake… the ouroboros model is one of the continuous replenishing cycle of, birth, life, death, birth, life, death… a continuous cycle of consumption and replenishment… the ouroboric system is one of local economies, living in mutually beneficial relationship to the land and to other people…

… the odd thing is, we know we have lost our way, but we can’t help ourselves… something there is about a human being that doesn’t love regenerative cycles… we wish, above all other wishes, to escape them… prefers… prefers baubles, bangles, and power…

… and yet… and yet…

… i have the nagging feeling that humanity is inconsequential to the plans the cosmos has for intelligence… that we are a way station on the journey to some higher form of being… fodder really… some alternative and superseding intelligence… is that possible?… is my despair one that is trapped in the limitations of my species?… is it possible for me to understand what comes next as it may well be a level of intelligence that i can’t know, being composed of the billions of minds slinking around the planet?… is it that the choice is between annihilation and subsumption which is itself a kind of annihilation?… whither humanity?…

This Past Wednesday…

… i was coming back from grocery shopping and arrived at the intersection of uRoute 52 and Main Street, Beacon, NY…

… there was a commotion of vehicles and people going on at the opposite side of the intersection and i made out a human figure lying on the road as i turned the corner and continued on my way…

… as i drove slowly down Main Street thinking about what it was i had seen, the police, and then a fire truck, with sirens going, raced by…

… the following day H read to me from an article on the incident… a woman had been hit by a jeep making a left turn as she crossed in the crosswalk… she later succumbed to her injuries…

… this morning i passed by the intersection and this bouquet of flowers was stuck into the utility pole between the buttons one pushes to cross the road… i have no idea if she had pushed one or not before she crossed… as often as not, pedestrians don’t push the buttons…

… i was sad thinking about a woman who’s life was prematurely ended… saddened by the thought of loved ones mourning rather than celebrating this holiday season…

… the cosmic unwinding of forces is cruel sometimes… not from its point of view, but from ours… it is we who must receive and cope with its unyielding dispensations…

… i have had my own near misses at this intersection… i don’t believe in pedestrian controlled crossing lights… i believe they promote bad behavior in motorists… my own experience has shown that some motorists assume that when the walk signal isn’t lighted, pedestrians don’t have the right of way… NYS law says otherwise… pedestrians always have the right of way regardless of the disposition of traffic lights… pedestrian crossing lights should be automatic… i don’t know if the woman had pressed the button or, if not, whether it would have made a difference… i do know that motorists can be quite aggressive to pedestrians in their way…

What I Read Today…

• Letters from an American, December 02, 2021: the government got funded last night and Heather Cox Richardson explains why that strengthens our hand on the international stage…
• Ridley Scott’s Dyspeptic Disposition: a review of Ridley Scott’s film making career… a promise that Raised by Wolves will be released winter 2022…
• my journal entries from weeks 5 & 6 of 2021… i am trying to review my journal for the year… two weeks a day should get me through the entire 2021 journal by Christmas… certainly before the new year… i am making sure everything is tagged so that i can filter content into significant people, reading and thought trends… in weeks 5 and 6 i continue to make my way through Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex…
• Dinaya Waeyaert Come Closer: i read the review, written by Brad Feuerhelm and glean that it is a photobook about two women who love each other… one is the photographer… it is a book about intimacy which BF’s hyper-intellectual style barely is able to crack into… i go to the photographer’s website which has a full presentation of the project, opening with a short film… it is a beautiful testament of one young human being’s love of (obsession with?) another young human being, with it’s all enveloping sexual attraction, action and reaction bubble… how well i remember those days in my own relationship with H… this appears to be a beautifully done project… i put it on my to get list…
• A Conversation With 10x10 Photobooks: in which i am reminded of a book i would like to own, What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, which Colberg points out was in part put together to address the dearth of women in The Photobook: A History, volumes 1 and 2, which i own copies of… what they saw is also on my to get list…

First Thoughts…

… our evening came to an abrupt end last night when, as H put it, a puff of wind came through and knocked out the power… we scrambled around a bit reorienting ourselves… i replaced the battery in the gas fire stove, found the camp lantern and determined it’s battery was not dead and thought to myself that i needed to do an inventory of preparedness for storm outages…

… when i got up this morning the lights were on again… the oven clock showed the power had been out for only 15 minutes… but not sure how that could have been… H came to bed saying the gas stove was not reigniting as i had hoped it would… it is our heat source when the power fails… it is our main heat source for most of the winter…

… this morning i will drive up to CPW to help them pack… they are moving from Woodstock to Kingston… one wonders if they will have to change their name as a result… i will work for about five hours helping them pack boxes and earn some credit towards future programming…

… the coffee tastes good this morning… it doesn’t always… more the result of a variability in my taste bud’s willingness to receive coffee than a variability in the coffee itself, which is made the same way with the same beans every morning…

… our new luggage system will arrive today… a couple of carry on bags from Timbuk2 and a couple of waterproof duffle bags from Mies for the top of the car… this should be enough capacity to get us to Florida and back with dogs and crates in the car…

… i miss some of the features of Feedly, one of them being the ability to set up boards around topic interest… but then i realize i can do that by clipping to Evernote and poof… desire met… i have been using Evernote practically from the day it arrived on the app scene… nothing has come close to replacing it… it’s had its ups and downs… but it has been reliable and the ability to have a clip shortcut on the browser tool bar is everything…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… DW says not to worry what people will think about his journal writing, time will eradicate what it needs to and embrace the rest… he thinks people will blush reading the journal, not in 200 years time, maybe a little in 100 years time… well, it is not quite 80 years time that i am reading it… no blushing here… i suppose he might have been referring to some of his remarks about people he met… he sometimes wasn’t kind… people who knew the people might blush…

… DW is more and more often sick… all of this flows from the accident he had when 20… i wonder what got so messed up the it should become a slow but steady decline until he dies in his early 30’s… what the cosmos serves up to people… it’s a crap shoot really… by any measure, the cosmic forces that be have smiled on me… i wish i felt better about it all… i still want to find that fundamental truth that makes it all ok…

Life, A User’s Manual, Georges Perec

… a very curious book describing in minute detail characters that the world might generally pass by, but who are exceptional and deeply contoured in their own obscure ways… it reminds me of the realm of true outsider artists, not the posers, but the people who make art just to make… that there might be a market for their creations in the art world is not of consequence to them… they just make… this seems a great deal like the characters in Perec’s novel… they come and go… they contribute what they contribute which is ignored by most of the world…

… in this passage Perec anticipates the ability to tag items digitally, which came with the age of personal computing:

What he would have liked would be to link each label to the next, but each time in respect of something else: for example, they could have some detail in common, a mountain, or volcano, an illuminated bay, some particular flower, the same red and gold edging, the beaming face of a groom, or the same dimensions, or the same typeface or similar slogans (“Pearl oof the Ocean”, “Diamond of the Coast”), or a relationship based not on similarity but on opposition or a fragile, almost arbitrary association: a minute village bay an Italian lake followed by the skyscrapers of Manhattan, skiers followed by swimmers, fireworks by candlelit dinner, railway by aeroplane, baccarat table by chemin de fer, etc. It’s not just hard, Winckler added, above all it’s useless: if you leave the labels unsorted and take two at random, you can be sure they’ll have at least three things in common.¹

… and here i consider the extensive tagging system that i am developing for my journal…

Pictures from 12.01.2021

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

… i read two articles this AM on this case before the Supreme Court:

• https://reason.com/volokh/2021/12/01/rehnquist-roberts-and-roe/… an unimpassioned article that makes the legal case that the constitution is essentially mum on the right to abortion…
• https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/12/supreme-court-abortion-dobbs-conservative-justices-doom/… an impassioned outcry against what is assumed will be the outcome… effective dismantling of Roe v. Wade…

… there will be many more articles written on the subject in the next few days… then we wait for three months to find out how much the court will unwind Roe v. Wade…

… having fathered a child that my then wife and i decided to abort due to the horrid state of our relationship, i can tell you that the emotional issues run deep and there is trauma no matter what you do… a pro life friend once said to me that they were pretty sure abortion was violence… so is carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term… it’s violence of a different sort… a civil society will have many options for dealing with the situation… i am pretty sure one of them should be abortion…

First Thoughts

231.2

…HCR meter, depressing… the white patriarchy is winning… what can we do about it?… voting rights legislation would help… abortion rights legislation would help… none of that seems set to happen…

… i keep thinking about M… i keep thinking that they generally only watch Fox news and that because of that they have a very narrow view of the situation… they are only being told bits and pieces of the story with an overall picture painted that just isn’t what anyone would call truth… to some degree all news outlets offer up partial truths… they may be very factual in the stories they write, but story selection is another matter… there is no way to have an intelligent conversation with anyone about social and political issues if both parties aren’t taking in multiple sources of information… and who has time?… i barely have time and i have no job in the traditional sense… i will, rather than having political conversations, challenge M to get their information more broadly… then maybe we can have a conversation…

… i resent all this crap going on at this time in my life… but who gets to choose the crap that may or may not be going on during their lifetimes… what i am tasked with coping with pales in comparison to what many around the globe cope with…

… oral arguments on a case that challenges Roe v. Wade were heard by the Supreme Court yesterday… it seems likely that the law in question will be allowed to stand and that the standard for when the right to an abortion kicks in will become “undue burden” as opposed to setting the age of viability as the current court decisions in place do… so, undue burden will become that point at which a majority of women will recognize they are pregnant and are able to abort should they choose… in the case before the court, this rolls fetal age back to fifteen weeks, a little over three months… this is the point by which most women in the state of (Mississippi?, Missouri?) obtain an abortion… honestly, if this is the compromise we reach and even this Supreme Court upholds the right to an abortion, then i think we are as well off on the issue as we will be under the current juridical situation…

… it is still possible that Roe v. Wade will be completely undone, but it doesn’t sound like it to me… and then a string of cases from states across the country will refine the new conditions and the law will be settled at this level…

I have recently joined Literal and am finding my way around. I am @mbkriegh if there are any fellow users here. Will connect with anyone who wishes to.

Also, I was trying to log on with my desktop web browser which was refusing to accept my credentials. Anyone know what that might be about?

Photography - A Feminist History, Emma Lewis

Photograph by Priya Kambli

When Emma Lewis first discovered the work of artist and activist Joan E Biren (known as JEB) in 2016, she describes it as a “lightbulb moment.” Biren – who began documenting the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the 1970s, and used her camera as a revolutionary tool to advance social justice for lesbians – was well known in the States. So why had Lewis, a curator at Tate Modern, never heard of her?¹

… part of an ongoing effort in the art and museum world to give greater recognition to women in the arts… in this case, photography… read this article in AnOther Magazine about it… because of my oft stated interest in women in photography, i have purchased the Kindle version of the book… my library of unread books grows… how does one set aside enough time for all the books one wants to read?…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… DW has been asked to write an article supporting nudity at boarding schools as a means of reducing sexual interaction… he believes it will have the reverse effect…

… he writes frequently about passing through army camps no longer in use… military ghost towns left from the Second World War…

… DW frequently has fans write him and even show up to visit… i have rarely reached out to anyone i appreciated the work of… once or twice to photographers… i am not very interested in celebrity if it isn’t my own and i have no celebrity myself to speak of…

… i have reached page 300, seventy to go… it’s been a long read, sometimes boring, often enough interesting to keep me going…

First Thoughts

… i have switched back to Firefox as browser after discovering that Safari didn’t play nice with many websites… a shame… both on the Safari and websites ends… at any rate, i will now have to update passwords in the Firefox environment as i was switching over to keychain… sigh… it is so hard to maintain a unified browsing and password environment…

… HCR meter about the booming economy (inflation not withstanding) and the January 6 commission… also about the news failing to celebrate the economy… two different spins on the future of inflation… HCR maintains that Jerome Powell told congress inflation would abate as supply chain issues got worked out… the news indicated that testimony was given to congress saying the opposite… i don’t remember if it was Powell or another economic official… the January 6 news is that there is evidence of 45 communicating with the “command center” at the Willard Hotel and January 5… and finally, news that Mark Meadows is starting to cooperate… will anything in the way of accountability ever come of it?…

… not feeling great this AM… sleep a little fitful… i am not rested…

… first day of December… i bought H a Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas Advent Calendar… she was pleased… now to work on everyone else’s gifts… i have ideas, just have to execute…

… did a course on optimizing SEO on Square Space websites… we have done probably 70% of what can be done… for some of what remains to be done, it isn’t clear that we should do it… in any case, with a little further tweaking i will be able to tell J that we are fully optimized…

… uploaded the Beached Stones series to my portfolio website… i submitted this series to Shots Magazine for their Earthly Delights call… i wonder how much of what gets published will be nudes, especially female nudes, thought the call for entries had a male nude… Earthly Delights references Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, a tryptic painted between 1510 and 1515… the tryptic is thought by some art historians to be a warning against lust, suggesting that hell awaits those who loose control of themselves… my submission references female genitalia with photographs of stones on the beach around which ocean waves have eroded the sand in suggestive ways, at least to my mind… so my entry is both a reference to lust and configured from earthly materials… it is perfect really, but i have been disappointed by the editors before…

Miscellaneous readings…

… this AM i have been reading about How Steve Bannon Has Exploited Google Ads to Monetize Extremism; Lauren Boebert Doubling Down on Her Anti-Muslim Bigotry; an anonymous republican standing up to Kevin McCarthy; British Prime Minister Boris Johnson supporting a bill requiring electric charging stations in all new and renovated buildings; the uselessness of travel bans; Predicting Justice Barrett’s First Question in Dobbs; Why the 14th Amendment Does Not Prohibit Abortion; Man Imprisoned for 16 Years for Raping Lovely Bones Author Is Exonerated; AG Meese: Failing to Overrule Roe and Casey “Would Threaten to Destroy the 40-Year Effort to Restrain the Court with the Founders’ Interpretive Principles”; Ancient Insurrections—and Ours…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… winding down to the end…

… DW had a fascination with old country churches and stopped to visit them whenever he encountered one… was this peculiar to him or was it a general past time of the English?…

… i learn of Frances Burney, another writer and journal keeper… her journals cover the years 1768-1840… i search to see if the journals and letters are still in print and they are… i put them on my wish list… it’s not clear i will get them as they pertain to a level of society in England and France that i am not convinced i want to know more about… there is so much to read that i have already purchased, downloaded, etc… still, if i want to continue to journey down the journal rabbit hole…

… DW’s journal entries get longer and more detailed, sometimes too long and too detailed… but then it’s his journal and he is not creating a piece for publication but to remember and possibly write a piece from the journal as he seems to have often done…

First Thoughts

Recently, Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega conducted an interview with Miles Taylor, the chief of staff to Trump’s Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen who published a New York Times op-ed in 2018 as “Anonymous" claiming that he was part of a resistance movement in the Trump White House. Taylor told DeVega that Republican congresspeople are worried they will be attacked if they cross Trump. “I’m talking about former Cabinet secretaries, sitting members of Congress and others who personally confessed to me, ‘I don’t think I can join you in rising up against this guy because I’ve got to worry about my family’s safety.’” Taylor said. “I didn’t anticipate how much I was going to hear that as a response. They would say to me, “Look, I’ve got kids and this is too crazy right now.”¹

… HCR meter turned decidedly downward… the only thing that matters right now is passing voting rights legislation which, as far as she and i can tell, is on the back burner… the day is rapidly approaching beyond which it will be too late… that the Democrats can’t get their shit together to do the one thing that will preserve democracy and make anything else they want to do possible is utterly tragic… Rome is burning and even they are fiddling…

… i keep thinking about M’s belief that the insurrection wasn’t an insurrection… it makes me so angry because i know how uninformed they are about what is going down in the country because i know they principally watch Fox news… i am in despair about it because i love them and because they are representative of the damage Fox news has done in this country…

… i also marvel at this country’s inability to hold anyone significant accountable for misdeeds… it is beyond comprehension that our system should be so weak as to be incapable in this regard… was it ever strong enough?… or did it depend on the good will of it’s citizens to keep the rails up… and now they are divided and unable to do so…

… signs of the growing threat of authoritarian/fascist rule… a patriotic and militaristic mural painted on the side of a county building to honor veterans on veterans day… this year’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony opened with the National Anthem and closed with God Bless America… neither of these things have happened before during the 15 years we have lived here… my perception is they are happening now because of the growing threat from the right…

… i really dislike starting the day with these thoughts and feelings churning around in my mind… i would prefer something more optimistic…

My Submission to Shots Magazine call for entry, theme: Earthly Delights

US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time

_ The organisation’s secretary general, Kevin Casas-Zamora, said: “The visible deterioration of democracy in the United States, as seen in the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation (in elections), and the runaway polarisation … is one of the most concerning developments.”¹

… this article was noted by MSNBC last week… it made an impression on me, but truthfully, i already knew what it was telling us… we are backsliding and furthermore, i believe the next three years will decide whither democracy in the USA… there is far too little alarm about the slide and the tools for countering it seem to be lacking, or perhaps, the situation is at the precarious edge of the cliff with one having to be very careful of what levers they try to pull as the wrong move could plunge us over the edge…

… over the holiday weekend i had two brief but eye opening conversations, both with close family members…

… one believes that we will be able to resist the extremes of either end because we are, basically, a centrist country… they believe that the people in the middle, of which they are one, will save the day… i am not optimistic on that point… it might be true if the voting landscape were not in the process of being skewed to favor a radical minority on the right… voting rights legislation is required if there is to be hope of the middle being able to stave if off…

… another was anxious to defend the idea that the January 6th riot/insurrection was nothing more than an impassioned protest that was mostly peaceful… it was the first time i have experienced a close family member believing something that is utter nonsense…

… together they made me more alarmed than ever…

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

… i read the review in AnOther magazine which i have been avoiding for days, largely because it was primal me that was interested in looking at it and i was trying to resist primal me… it surprised (disappointed?) me that it was not about the porn industry and was instead about societal attitudes towards sex and woman and largely about the polarization we are experiencing around the globe… i now want to watch it though with subtitles and it’s subject matter it will be a more difficult sell to H… a link to the trailer…

First Thoughts

Weight: 231.8

… i will be writing my weight down daily to help me get it back under control…

… started the morning with a review of the first week of journal entries in 2021… i am hoping to review all 52 weeks during the month of December and identify themes that emerged over the year… my system of tagging and saved filters is proving enormously valuable in this effort… i am able to gather together the attention i have paid to people, books and topics by person, title and topic…

… yesterday’s FT with M and J was a little fraught… M and i got into it briefly over January 6, 2021… they have bought the idea that it was a legitimate protest… that infuriated me… i had hoped for better from them… J also got on my nerves a bit over website optimization issues… i need to do some further research into how Square Space handles search engine optimization before we talk more about that… they seem to think i have not done what could be done while i think we pretty much have…

… my weight situation, disappointing, but what should i have expected given two Thanksgiving dinners etc…

… it is already proving enormously satisfying to read through the past year’s journal entries… it is turning out to be time intensive because i am having to fill in keywords and set up filters for a plethora of people, readings and ideas… i don’t think i got super religious about this until about mid-year and i didn’t start gathering things together in saved filters until the end of the summer, beginning of the fall… if i can keep the pace and get it done for the year, i should have an impressive list of ideas, people and readings to share as a summary of my year…

Thanksgiving Part II

… we almost always go to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving so we like to make ourselves another one the weekend following so i can strut my cooking stuff and H can have leftover turkey sandwiches and soup…

The menu:

• roast turkey
• mashed potatoes with cardoon (the cardoon was my inspiration)
• celery root and rutabaga mash
• roasted Brussels sprouts
• cranberry, mushroom and lentil loaf

Buddhist Economics

… this is a profound essay that i come back to again and again… it makes so much sense… please excuse it’s antiquated approach to gender roles which are a product of the time in which it was written:

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.¹

… i think about the work i currently pursue, and i will call it work even though it doesn’t produce an income which it doesn’t need to do… i read, write and make pictures daily, and that is rewarding to me… i also enjoy setting it down and spending time with H and the dogs, cooking and sharing nice meals… i am in a perfect place with very good balance between work and leisure…

It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.²

… and this:

From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale.³

… are there exceptions?… aren’t there things better produced in large factories?… like smartphones, automobiles, computers, etc.?… don’t these things work better and interconnect better with a more unified system of production?… what we are left with then is a system where some (most?) things are produced and distributed locally and others are mass produced and distributed nationally and globally… factories will increasingly be automated, not requiring human labor… local production will be centered on handcrafting, on local labor…

… and this:

Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men.⁴