And so begins our effort to eliminate plastic from our lives. We’ll start with the weekly throw away stuff from the supermarket.

The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually gets recycled. In the United States, the rate is now 5 percent. Most used plastic is landfilled, incinerated, or winds up drifting around the environment.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/05/plastics-recycling-failure-microplastics-pollution-study/

Peonies in our garden… @circustiger

Pink peony.

Deep pink peony.

Spent peony blooms.

Medium pink peonies.

Light pink peony with yellow center.

Classic French omelette with chives and tarragon, homemade sourdough bread with cream cheese, chive blossoms sprinkled on top.

Tarragon and chives fresh from our garden for our eggs this AM.

Tarragon and chive blossoms on a cutting board with knife.

From this morning’s walk… flowers are from our front garden…

Pink peony flower closeup.

Purple globe alliums.

Overflowing trash can on the day after Memorial Day.

Wadded white paper towel on concrete sidewalk.

Butter Head Salad Company window graphic.

Closeup of tree bark with early morning light and staple.

Reading: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici 📚

We can see, in other words, that the human body and not the steam engine, was the first machine developed by capitalism.

Reading: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici 📚

The course of scientific rationalization was intimately connected to the attempt by the state to impose its control over an unwilling workforce.

Very excited… have confirmed that hashtags placed in notes in Kindle import to Obsidian smoothly… a game changer for organizing highlighted material when imported!

Some pics from yesterday…

Landscape with boat, dock and shack.

Shadow selfie with bridge railing on water below.

Pink beach rose. They come in white too.

The National Hotel on Block Island from the beach below.

Fish The World trailer parked on street.

From this morning’s walk…

Landscape with rubber dingy in foreground and Narragansett Hotel in the background.

Small boat tied up to a dock and reflected in the calm water.

Landscape of docks and boats.

Boat reflected in the water.

Yacht reflected in the water.

When a Single Person Controlled the Copyright on All Music (Even Blank Music Paper)

But the saddest conclusion I draw from all this is that musicians themselves can be just as oppressive as governments or bureaucracies if you give them too much power. Of course, there’s little risk of that happening in our current musical culture.

From today’s walk…

Landscape with houses and cellphone tower in background, no parking sign in foreground.

Looking down the curved end of a galvanized metal traffic guard rail at the support post and the stream being guarded.

Landscape with utility poles and power company buildings.

Early morning sunlight on three tree trunks.

Landscape with water and boats in the foreground.

Reading: The Matter with Things by 📚

… ‘the layman’s grounds for accepting the models propounded by the scientist are often no different from the young African villager’s ground for accepting the models propounded by one of his elders.’

From the past couple of days…

Beach rose bush, pink flowers.

Stain on concrete sidewalk that looks like a walking 🚶🏻‍♀️ person.

The National Hotel building on Block Island, in the early morning sun.

White bearded Iris.

Brain coral in a shop window.

Residential buildings in the early morning sun.

From this morning’s walk…

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.

Stone in sand with wave erosion around it.

Rock in the sand with water erosion around it.

Boulder sticking out of bluff with rock placed on top.

Beach reeds with shrubs mixed in.

From yesterday, a picture of the pack…

Picture of a woman with two dogs. A PBGV and a GBGV. Standing on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

More recently, though, I have lost my enthusiasm for human space exploration, largely because I cannot figure out where there is for flesh and blood to go. There is no destination reachable within a current human life span that is hospitable, as far as I know.

What Intelligent Life is Made Of, Part 2 Essays On Attention Paid

From today’s walk…

Old gas station building with potted plants and deck type furniture.

4 small holes in a square pattern in a circular patch of rust in a manhole cover.

Mopeds and signage for businesses at Payne’s Dock including The Cracked Mug, source of my morning coffee.

View of New Harbor past Payne’s Dock building on right. Day is sunny and calm.

Concrete patch in shape of abstracted human.

Reading: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici 📚

The stakes on which witches and other practitioners of magic died, and the chambers in which their tortures were executed, were a laboratory in which social discipline was sedimented, and much knowledge about the body gained. Here those irrationalities were eliminated that stood in the way of the transformation of the individual and social body into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms.

Reading: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici 📚

What died was the concept of the body as receptacle of magical powers that had prevailed in the medieval world. In reality, it was destroyed. For in the background of the new philosophy we find a vast initiative by the state, whereby what the philosophers classified as “irrational” was branded as crime.

@manton, Really like the redesign of the M.b app!

Some Block Island homes…

2 story beach home on Block Island.

One story beach home on Block Island.

Two story beach home on Block Island.

Three story beach mansion on Block Island.

Two story beach mansion on Block Island.

Apparently we’ve been to the brink and beyond before and it was the Democrats who took us there….

On October 22, 1985, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III told congressional leaders that if Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling by the end of the month, the Reagan administration would pay the nation’s bills by taking back Treasury securities in which Social Security had invested.

Robert Reich

Scenes from this morning’s walk…

Gravel road curving left to right and disappearing behind shrubs in a foggy landscape.

Floating platform in a pond with shrubs in the foreground and fog shrouded landscape in the background.

Horses standing in the middle distance of a field fading into the fog.

House on a rise in the landscape. Landscape beyond the house obscured by fog.

Driveway and house partially obscured by trees.

Ada Limon, Dead Stars … a really lovely poem!

We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?