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 21 Feb 2007 @ 10:54
I do not want to be right in theory but in nature.
---Paul Cezanne
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
---John Burroughs
Year after year
the monkey's mask
reveals the monkey.
---Basho
I'll never grow to like the word "blog." At newciv.org, where perhaps blogging was invented, we've used the word "log" to describe the simple acts of composition that record the thoughts and events of our days. Blog is a heavy, slogging sort of word to me, and yields none of the poetic beauty I associate with the act of writing...especially on the Internet. I like the idea I'm keeping a log of my voyage. Even "diary," with its romantic, secretive connotations, is better than blog---a word that invites derision in its very pronunciation.
Be that as it may, I came to the computer this morning with the innocent intention to catch up on email. (Continued apologies to the legion out there to whom I owe messages and replies.) The very first note I read was from Tim Chavez in Columbus, who's a friend of Annie Warmke, proprietress of the innovative www.bluerockstation.com. I'm sure Tim and I are going to get to meet someday soon, but for now we're still encouraging each other's politics with messages now and then. This one, which he actually sent yesterday, sent me browsing all over the place for an hour...and maybe you'd like to share. Hopefully you already know all about this, but I'm just learning. More >
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 20 Feb 2007 @ 10:50
Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it means to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it still differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake.
---Erich Fromm
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
---George Washington Carver
In the midst of the plain
sings the skylark,
free of all things.
---Basho
Who could have guessed? There now exists a scholarly periodic journal entitled CyberPsychology & Behavior. Actually I'm relieved the psychologists are on this situation. I wouldn't be me if I hadn't run afoul already of various challenges social interaction on the Internet has created for the species.
Fortunately I have been spared the most extreme examples, such as leaving one's wife and children to marry a woman in a faroff land with whom one has carried on only in a chatroom. Or tracking down some guy on a message board who's flamed you once too often, going to his house, and punching him in the nose. Or finding a teenage lovely at MySpace and trying to arrange a chance to spy on her at the Mall. But I've been close enough to understand these strange behaviors.
But what is there to understand, and why do people react differently to Internet situations than ever they would face-to-face? Today an essay appears in The New York Times on the activity known as "flaming." One time I made a guy so mad at me at a group I was in (now merged with Yahoo) that he booted me out and, since he was an assistant webmaster or something of the thing, found other groups I was in, joined them and proceeded to terrorize me wherever I went. Here are some reasons they think we do stuff like that~~~ More >
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 5 Feb 2007 @ 05:10
The mind creates the chasm which only the heart can cross.
---Stephen Levine
It is our very search for perfection outside of ourselves that causes our suffering.
---The Buddha
A disciple lived for a time with Zen master Kassan. But feeling that the teachings did not suit him, the disciple decided to go on a pilgrimage. But everywhere he went, the disciple only heard praise for how Master Kassan was the best of teachers. Finally the disciple returned, and when he greeted his old master he said, "Why did you not reveal your profound understanding of the dharma?"
The Master smiled, and replied: "When you cooked rice, did I not light the fire? When you served food, did I not hold out my bowl? How have I failed you?"
At this the disciple was enlightened.
---Zen mondo
When someone creates a work of art that seemingly captures, describes, celebrates your life at the moment, you get spoiled. You think you must have a personal connection with this artist, that somehow you are universal and famous: an archetype, a microcosm, a herald. You develop expectations of the artist...and if the next piece doesn't continue the synchronicity, you're disappointed and maybe resentful. Perhaps you dismiss the artist as having dimmed and missed the boat. Washed up, a has-been.
Everyone knows, and especially today's teen-agers, this kind of thing used to happen a lot in the rock music of the 1970s. Few singer-songwriters did it to us more than Joni Mitchell...and few suffered our disdain for her later efforts more than she. Joni didn't seem to need our illusions and fantasies about her as much as other performers though. Probably when you grow up in Saskatchewan, you're accustomed to the richness of solitude...and there's always something else to do.
People cruelly have responded to Ms. Mitchell's solitary ways by calling her "reclusive," which really isn't true at all. She always is creating and her art is for others, as well as an expression for herself. New music and paintings have been around if you cared to look for them. But suddenly now once again, Joni Mitchell seems to be everywhere. A big feature article in yesterday's New York Times, a gallery showing in LA last month, an award ceremony in Toronto last week (where the decorating photo of her was taken), choreographies for ballet companies, and a new album of songs in the wings. Alas, she still smokes. More >
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 4 Feb 2007 @ 06:50
An old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how to tell when night ended and the morning began, which is the time for certain holy prayers.
"Is it when you see an animal in the distance and know whether it's a sheep or a dog?"
"No," the rabbi answered.
"Is it when you can look at a tree and tell whether it's a fig tree or a pear tree?"
"No," the rabbi answered again.
After a few more tries, the pupils said, "Then tell us, what is it?"
"It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and know that they are your sister or brother. Until then, it is still night."
---Hasidic mondo
The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it---exactly and completely.
---Dainin Katagiri
I do not seek, I find.
---Pablo Picasso
The digital art print is Business and Pleasure by Dale Kennington.
What has happened to a civilization when the people decide government itself is an infringement upon their freedom? What is the basis of the belief that nobody can tell me what to do? Is it that rights are determined only by the might and mood of one's neighbor? How is it that a human can assert ownership of any space of ground on this earth? Is it a weapon and money to buy the very best that determines righteousness in this life?
What happens when a people are convinced government is the problem, an evil? We had a president in the United States not long ago who said so. We had a Speaker of one house of our Congress who said government workers were worthless, terrible people who should be sent away. How many feel all "bureaucrats" should be eliminated and taxes done away with? How well has this country done, within itself and in the world of nations, after eliminating the process of regulation?
Has total reliance upon the "free" marketplace been a triumph? Are we happier being consumers than citizens? Without regulation, who keeps track of outsourcing? Is it even necessary to do, since capitalism is the most perfect way for humans to organize themselves, realize their needs, and celebrate the competitive spirit of innovation?
Is it Super Bowl Sunday that has me wondering all these things? No, actually I wonder this stuff all the time. What has happened however is the introduction today of a new series on outsourcing by The New York Times. Say what you will about that newspaper, but when they send reporters to cover a process like this I declare they are doing us a great service. I don't know of the reporters who have signed off on this first story, except that Scott Shane is a writer in their Washington bureau and Ron Nixon is a projects editor at the business desk. The first article is 4 Internet pages long, and the link at the bottom is to the first page. For those without registration at The Times, here is a post of the whole thing~~~ More >
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 3 Feb 2007 @ 06:59
To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
---Henry David Thoreau
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore!
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
In prayer, come empty, do nothing.
---St. John of the Cross
Photo of Molly Ivins by Carolyn Mary Bauman/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT
The title grows in significance when we learn Molly gave it to her last column in The Texas Observer a week ago Friday. [link] She was writing about "the war" and it was a phrase she found herself using often these past several years, but with her death this week it rings like an epitaph. Of course I could never get "enough" of Molly, and like someone egging on a fighter I usually wanted even more. When Bush was running for president I wanted her to be harder on him, knowing all she did about him as an atrocious Texas governor (who touted educational programs he never funded and used the death sentence on prisoners whenever he could) and also as a fellow teenager in Houston. And now who can possibly take her place? When my wife gave me the news the other night, weeping I lamented, "With Ann Richards gone too, there are no more wild Texas women." I hope I'm terribly wrong about that.
The past few hours I've done the research of mourning by just beginning to ascend a mountain of anecdote and praise written for her by bloggers and fellow journalists. I haven't been able to compile a "best-of" collection for you, because there is just so much. I can tell you there is writing going on everywhere, and I don't remember an outpouring like this for anybody. Maybe I can list a few names and a few sites where I went, in case you want to celebrate her life too. More >
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This is my News Log, actually the second manifestation of jazzoLOG. I moved the first edition to another site, where those articles still are archived and available for continued comment if you wish. Please copy and paste to access~~~ http://web.archive.org/web/20060315012857/http://www.upsaid.com/jazzolog/ |
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I don't know about you, but sometimes I work a long time, cumulatively for hours, on comments I make on these News Logs. I plan to edit this Log regularly and delete things. Before I do that, I want to assure you, I shall notify each commentator of such an amendment so you may have time to copy anything you wish to save and paste somewhere else. Create your own News Log in your profile. |
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