Testing!

Testing text color. Should be readable white on black, not unreadable grey on black!

Okay. Now I just have to figure out how to correct previous blog post!

Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Me

For a somewhat obtuse (but guessable) reason, my morning mind today conjured up and latched onto this phrase: the summer of our discontent. It seemed suspiciously unoriginal, so I googled it. Voila! Riches previously unknown spilled out and a small mining project began. 

Better educated persons can plumb this mine, but even scratching its glistening surface has happily preoccupied me for awhile, sort of like a really creative three minute commercial. (Sometimes commercials offer needed relief from the intense dark drama of everyday life, no?)

The Winter of Our Discontent. Contemporary Philosophical Discontent. Discontent, Isolation and Hiding Places. Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Me.

Hmmmmm. So my afternoon mind has plenty to busy itself with, even if a cavernous quasi-eremitical existence appears ludicrous to strangers.

“The evil usurper who reveals his inner thoughts in ‘Richard III’  uses ‘our’ to denote his status as king. Steinbeck’s characters are contemporary Americans, and their thoughts—like ours—are much more about ‘me’ than ‘we.’

The ourof Richard’s discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes is isolated, the political and psychological paranoia of a one-man murder ring. In The Winter of Our Discontent, the attitude of discontent is philosophical—an existential anxiety embodied in the protagonist, his spouse, his best friend, his would-be mistress, and in the personal life of the author as well. Discontent in the play Steinbeck quotes for a reason is individual. In The Winter of Our Discontentit is dramatized as  a condition of existence for everyone involved—including us.”  

( cf: The Philosophy of Our Discontent

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 BY JAMES CI// About James Ci

James Ci is a visual artist living in North Carolina. He received his BFA degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.)

A Time of Innocence

A young surfer was caught in a riptide and disappeared a few days before Easter. As fog rolled in at Poplar Beach, search and rescue efforts failed. Friends and family kept vigil on the beach for days, and mourned. Today, he may have been found. Or maybe it is someone else? RIP young man from Hayward.

https://twitter.com/SMCSheriff/status/1122601601565380609

We sort of know that our days are somehow numbered. But how, exactly?

No one really knows, not even those good with numbers can figure out how to count the time to the inscrutable end of a human life. That calculation has always been impossible.

Which reminds me of a question that recently came to me. How does a child develop a sense of time?  I imagine there are many good studies about this, so I must do some searching. Right now my questions are rather specific, and prompted by observing little kids in first and third grades. The ones I know are just learning how to tell time. As yet, they do not care much about that. Except in a very utilitarian way, eg to know when their after school tutored reading session will end. And once it is ended, they simply pick up and go on to the next thing. Not even a slightly ceremonial or reluctant or gleeful goodbye! Why is that? When does that change?

At what point does the question change from “Are we there yet?” to something else?

Parents and teachers and child psychologists probably know the answer.  For me, this innocence about time is still a mystery. And so is the beautiful time of innocence I witnessed this morning in the children making their First Communion at my local parish. I hoped they would remember this day far into their futures, as I have.

But my questions remain about time and when, or how, or what happens to develop a sense of future time.  The tabula rasa changes, and that seems like a mysterious process to me.

Innocence of time within a time of innocence. Is it possible to lose neither? Or maybe we can only hope to recapture both if we wipe the slate clean of each piece of evil.

Hallelujah Update

Holy Week Update 04/20/19

Barr’s DOJ even made the link for the Mueller Report obscure and hard to find! (As Seth Meyers pointed out!!!!) 

I looked and looked last night and today on DOJ website and did not find the link, but finally I got the actual DOJ link via replay of Seth Meyers show from other day on my dvr! Go figure! I had also found a printable pdf link from a cbs news link. But for whatever reason, I could not crack the New York Times online version (to get to the original document) which was not in a PDF format for printing the document. So it is, or has been, a saga for me just to be able to print the darn thing! So now I just have to order more ink for my printer and get a new supply of printer paper! (It probably would be cheaper to buy it from Amazon since printer ink ain’t cheap!) However, I think I might use the backside of my already printed New York Times pages because they are just not in the right format! Oh, and it does not escape me that all this time I could have been reading the thing! But I have been listening to some excellent analysis on MSNBC and PBS, so it is probably good that I was wrapped up in the problems of printing for otherwise Mueller’s Report would have been MORE of a distraction this holy week!

Speaking of holy week, all of the cleaning and filing and shredding and laundry that I was going to do this week did not happen! However, this afternoon I intend to tackle some of it because I am almost out of printer ink! 

I do not yet have any plans for travel or for Easter, but I am counting on all the angels and saints, but especially counting on the Lord, in his passion, death and resurrection, to help me reach our ultimate goal via these smaller daily ones (through which I plod)! I feel really blessed in this winter of lies and rampant corruption when I can keep my eyes on the prize, as they say. And to critics who think I am obsessed, I still declare that is not a fair or true claim. Let me explain:

Faith and hope and love do provide a moral compass, especially when tested. And the testing does shine a light on the diabolical nature of evil: chaos, mendacity, greed, cruelty, rage, cowardice, darkness, strife, narcissism, retaliation, demagoguery, despotism. Sadly, unapologetically, and with some theological basis, I do find that Donald J Trump is an apt and public incarnation of diabolical evil, but there are many evils in today’s world: wars in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine; the refugee crisis throughout the world; failed governments; despotic leaders; famine, fires, floods, climate change denial; human trafficking and sexual predators; unjust imprisonment, killing or disappearance of journalists; economic injustices; voter suppression; racism; bigotry; capital punishment; gun violence; endless detention of asylum seeking immigrants; caging babies and children; etcetera.

Solutions? Obviously there are many solutions (preaching to the choir!), but they definitely include: Prayer. Action. Resistance. Voting.  Supporting congressional oversight, the Rule of Law, US Constitution, UN, NATO, RAICES, ACLU, responsible journalism, a living wage, affordable healthcare, quality affordable education, freedom of religion; etcetera.

It looks like there is plenty of work ahead for good people willing to do something.

Happy Pasch! Happy Spring!

Hallelujah

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