Resolution

My resolution for 2011 is to wear my wrist watch all day. I can then know Time immediately, even if only a whim. I've been doing this all morning and I kind of like it already. If it works out well the rest of the day, then I'm going to make it my New Year resolution for tomorrow.

I bought a book of poems yesterday that should arrive next week in the mail. The title of the book drew me in, "Still Life" by Alexander Long. Still life happens to be something I have given a lot of thought to in the past. Anyway, one teaser line for you

"If only childhood would tell the wind where to go,

If only it had a home."

Father Christmas

Don is really a man for all seasons, but Christmas happens to be the last time I saw him. Eighty-Eight years old, he held the Christmas gathering at his house this year, as most years before. Some of his daughters (4) call him Gramps. Baffling reality. This year they got him a big screen TV for Christmas. While younger family members are attempting to set the set up and surprise him, a snag develops in the connection. Turns out, when he returns, the solution isn't a surprise for him. "Digital to digital" he explains. Pretty clear thinking here, problem solved. Later, in the shank of the evening, he needs to snag a two year old that believes derailing a bathroom door might be in order. "I can't let him do that", he explains to me, "I have to put it back on the rail". So practical too. Moving on to the kitchen, his conversation turns to the need for recycling. This greatest generation, World War II vet, hasn't grown more conservative with age as Freud would have predicted, but younger as years pass. I'm proud to know him!

Zen Wood

I watched a Sixty Minutes segment on the monks of Mount Athos and it was fascinating!

They are Greek Orthodox not Zen, but the video slammed my brain back into place.

"Chop wood-carry water", bolt out of it--

Don't let this cold snap keep you in the cabin with a fever!

Not a jet plane

It's getting colder, I've burned the wood, I'm leaving town.

Benton Harbor

This city is going through urban renewal. Two high profile projects, a golf course and art center are already completed. A large percentage of the population fall below the poverty line so these two new projects will be of little use to them. Instead, they are being offered a free ten week course, "Bridges Out of Poverty." This class is designed to prepare residents culturally to join the middle class. "Moving out of culture of poverty requires more than an increase in financial means...and accepting achievement as the driving force in one's life," the course description read. "It will require one to learn and use middle-class language and behaviors." I have always suspected that education is a cultural success route, but this smacks of something entirely different. Is the key to renewal to mimic the middle class?

Seasons

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
-William Blake

Reverb

William T. was apt to say, in his later years, when asked if he needed anything, " Just a few kind words, honey". Since he was a man of few words, his meaning had an ending that echoed then on after.

Vote of Confidence

The post office has some good things going for it and one of them is economy of measure. Last week, I used the UPS system to deliver one little envelope, as time was a factor. Formerly, I worked for UPS and one thing I know about them is that nobody leaves until the work is done, so things arrive on time. My response at the price, "Son of a Buck!". Almost $15 to mail one tiny package (4 cds). Choo Wow! It did arrive on time, UPS called, they hauled, so I got what I paid for on time.

Today, I mailed 3 similar packages at the post office for a total of $5. It's Christmas time, but I don't care when they arrive. People need presents after Christmas too. The price was my present to myself.

"Only a Thing"

Joe was a great teacher and sometimes his students would come up to see him at the canoe livery even after they had graduated. One such time, Joe and I, along with two of them, went out in search of a lost canoe. Lost was a relative term in the business. Sooner or later it would be "discovered", but the search also functioned as a mechanism for "Plausible Deniability" and "Purpose" in one brush stroke. Handy tool on many occasions.

On this particular search, both of the students responded like a Greek chorus with one refrain, no matter what the question happened to be, "It's only a thing!" Sometimes, from my vantage point, questions and discussions can be like quadratic equations. It takes some time to figure them out, but by the end of that fun day, I realized one answer to cosmic inquiries is truly, "It's only a thing!"

All of this brings us to another thing. Procrastination has its own downside in spite of the fun that it generates. Many times before we can get one thing done, we have to get another thing out of the way, and still the thing at hand has to be done before we can move on to the next thing.

Pass 'er Buy

For over twenty years, I have passed this house about once a week with the thought that I really want to live here. Once, it was for sale, but I didn't have the money to buy it. This is the mystery. Often it appears to be empty, but not for sale, which baffles me. Now it appears vacant again, but just out there by itself, patiently waiting for the next recycle.

Going Postal

The post office announced that it will soon run out of money. One cost cutting measure announced is shutting down half of of the distribution sites and laying off 100,000 employees. As a consequence of these moves, first class mail would then be slower. I like first class mail as it is now and thought of some other ways to save money. Americans in general are impatient, and it might be time to slow some things down. Why do we need Saturday mail? Anybody with a job should be able to make a living working five days a week anyway. First class mail is a bargain so good that it can subsidize junk mail. Why not have junk mail pay its own way? Perhaps a positive spin off of this movement would then be a cleaner environment, more trees, and less junk mail to boot!

Not Saturday

Freezing rain kept this boy home. When the gray dawn finally hit the tree line, confirming my suspicion that moving about would be a mistake, I reserved the greater option, and stayed inside for the day.