First Thoughts

… we started looking at new cars yesterday… will probably head in the direction of a Honda HR-V… slightly larger and more SUV like than the Fit… we will probably lease since we have to move quickly and can’t get our ideal car, a hybrid… HR-V hybrids will become available in a year or two, so by the end of the lease we may be able to get an HR-V hybrid… also, one would hope that the worldwide chip shortage will be over and new cars more readily available…

… dropped off K and B’s photograph and had a chat yesterday… good to see them… we have to get together with them after we return from BI… we owe lots of friends dinner or some kind of entertainment…

… continuing my streak of less than optimal fortune, both my bank cards were compromised yesterday… had to get new cards… need to think carefully about how i use them and where i allow them to be stored… seems rather unlikely that both of them, one relatively new and not used that much, should be compromised simultaneously… i worry i have been hacked somewhere…

… sorted out H’s Apple Watch issue yesterday… she is good to go…

… today… family meeting, photowalk, farmer’s market, vacuum, unpack suitcase, text M…

… need to eat a bit healthier today… no pizza, turkey and cheese rolls… need vegetables!…

… HCR meter solomn… about 911 on the 20th anniversary of the attack… the danger the Republican Party poses to democracy…

First Thoughts

… going home day… resuming something like a normal life day… M all on their own day… that is where we are… i feel confident that M will be ok…

… it is amazing how much less tension there is in the air without D in the picture… a kind of black hole increasing in intensity the older they got… it is a little sad that there are no recent good memories…

… Joe Biden upping the anti on COVID vaccinations… mandating them wherever the government touches… OSHA with companies of 100 or more… Head Start programs receiving government funding… all federal employees… all contractors doing business with the government… fines doubled for airline passengers refusing to mask… there was one on the way down…

… slept poorly… the red wine?… didn’t drink anymore last night than the night before… white wine the night before… i don’t think i got more than three or four hours sleep… last contact with my favorite barista at Kunjani… an unusually pleasant and smiley young woman… more willing to have eye contact… more willing to engage… if i were living here we would get to be on a first name basis and i would have warm feelings towards her and fantasies about her… so it goes…

… if all goes smoothly i will be home by 6 tonight… i will sleep in my own bed… i will hug and kiss H and the dogs… the weather should be ok…

… the increased number of cameras and clothing items i am going back with barely fit into my bag…

… HCR meter pointing up… the COVID vaccine mandates, the Justice Department suing Texas over its draconian new law… the actions taken by the Biden administration more popular than not…

Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective, David G. Lanoue

… Chapter 2, Anthropomorphism or Realism?…

… the difference between Basho and Issa…

cawing in the tree

are you a widow, crow?

Milky Way above¹

… one of Basho’s most famous crow haikus:

on a bare branch

sits a crow…

autumn evening²

… in the first, poet and crow participate in the universe together and share existential possibilities and kinship… in the second, the poet channels his own loneliness and late stage of life through the crow… for Issa, animals are fellow travelers… for Basho, animals are symbolic of the human condition… of his condition…

… overall, this book has confirmed my sense that Issa is a “down to earth” poet… he keeps his poems grounded through anthropomorphism and a willingness to depict life in it’s every day sense…

… Issa observing the universal condition… every creature must “work” to survivie… food and shelter must be obtained and maintained… children must be conceived and fed and supported… life, for most creatures is work… we are blessed when we are one with the work that sustains our lives…

First Thoughts

… HCR meter neutral, a discussion of Republican bad behavior over the past 50 years which, one gets the impressions, there has not been much to match on the Democratici side… it seems clear that Republicans view themselves as being involved in a existential situation and are pulling out all the stops to stay in power… and have always done so, except when they were on the side of right and multiculturalism and the Democrats were the racists and purveyors of white supremacy… back in the Civil War era…

… H reports that L has become fed up with M and P and is washing their hands of the care of M and P and plans to rent a house during the wedding of their daughter… i am wondering if H is going to have to jump into the breach to take care of M and P… H is resisting that but i wonder if family loyalty and nursing instincts will kick in… at any rate, one hopes that M and L will come to appreciate H’s generosity of spirit and calmness in the face of difficult situations… i feel for them all… family turmoil not fun…

… this is my last full day in Florida and i am increasingly confident that M will be ok on their own… not that there won’t be sadnesses here and there… not that they won’t have moments of profound aloneness…

… i don’t think M has ever been alone in their life, jumping straight from childhood home to marriage…

… the other day M was speculating about how things might have been different had their childhood home situation not been difficult… would they have spent some time by themselves?… might they have gone to college? might they have become more independent?… would they have married D at all?… would R, J and i be here at all?… in that thought is the hint that the price for security has been high… further supported by the “free at last thought” the other day…

… yesterday a story about D’s intense jealousy preventing M and D from spending time with a couple M was close friends with… all because the spouse had a habit of touching, both men and women, on the arm when talking to them… a warm, friendly gesture which D refused to see as anything but hitting on M, even when they were the receiver of the touch gestures… they believed it was misdirection aimed at concealing lust for M…

… sadly, jealousy has kept M from lots of interactions with people she knew and cared about, including me, as i believe that jealousy was at the base of D’s anger towards me for the past 35 or 40 years… it’s not surprising that M has part of them saying “free at last”, and somewhat ironic that they are channeling Martin Luther King Jr. in doing so…

First Thoughts

… HCR meter positive… about the radicalization of the Republican party and the possibility that the radical gamble may not be paying off… we’ll see… would love if it were true…

… more and more i am looking forward to returning home… in the past month and a half, H and i have spent less than 24 hours in each other’s presence… it’s wearing thin… i miss the dogs and the cat too… i miss my home life…

… M continues to look ok to me… they are sad, for sure, a little uncertain about being on their own… but my assessment is that they will be ok… we should all be attentive after i leave and it will be good to come back for Christmas…

… i went to check out the Red Roof Inn we would probably stay in when we come down… it was nice as RR Inns go… a big one with three buildings arranged around a courtyard with, i think, a pool… it is within walking distance of Tin City, a fun tourist trap with shops and restaurants installed in old tin commercial fishing buildings… one of my rituals when visiting M and D was to have dinner in Tin City at least once… i liked the honky tonk nature of it and the generally ordinary people that went there…

… M keeps trying to have political conversations with me… it makes me uncomfortable… at least they don’t get angry with opposing views… they were questioning me about voter ID laws in ways i didn’t have a good immediate answer for… i just sent them an article on the subject that seemed reasonably balanced and described the issues involved… we’ll see what they think…

… the world is different without D around… much less tension in the air, which we all felt because of their tendency towards irrational anger explosions… M feeling guilty because the thought “free at last” was passing through their mind… i told them that feelings are feelings, they are neither right or wrong… what one does with and about feelings is the pivotal question… that is where right and wrong start to enter into things…

… M is propelling me back onto FB… they want a way to keep up with what is going on in my life… i hesitate to give them access to this blog because even though i am very circumspect about identity, feelings that may be distressing to them do get expressed in a public venue… this might be a signal that i shouldn’t post them, but the venue is not public in the sense that FB is and i resent not being able to express myself more publicly about what’s going on in my life…

First Thoughts

… beginning to look forward to getting home… miss H and the dogs… getting a little bored… M seems as though they will go on… a little sad… a little lacking in motivation… but otherwise ok… doing some future planning…

… HCR meter neutral to pointing downwards… about the voting rights landscape… about whether the multicultural majority will control the next many decades, or the mostly white minority will… the filibuster stands in the way of the former and so far, Dems have been unwilling to change it…

… have started reading a book on Issa haikus dealing with animals… i thought, when i bought it, that it was focused on animal symbology, and it does get into that, but the main focus is demonstrating Issa’s attitude towards animals, which was more or less a Buddhist attitude, and making an argument that he believed in the fair treatment of animals as that might be meant in our time, not his… i don’t know that i see the purpose of making such a case in a scholarly treatment of the poet… Buddhist belief systems generally treat all life forms as fellow travelers in the universe… as part of the web of life… i suppose i prefer the web of life view in general, even as i consider machine intelligence, and what might be evolving in the entire life/consciousness/thought system… having just finished George Dyson’s Analogia, which makes the case that machines and the coding that runs them will, have(?), reached the point of self determination and self reproduction, but not without needing us as a sublayer of their existence… this is perhaps the more benign way it could go, if indeed it is going that way… human beings not at the top of the intelligence chain, but necessary to it and therefore guaranteed a place in it going forward… i need to pick up Ken Wilbur’s book and read it again… i think it dovetails with the Dyson ideas… one question remains, however… this whole human machine thing maintains the possibility of self annihilation… how will this machine/human complex avoid destroying itself?… is violence an unavoidable part of all cultural thought systems?…

Analogia, George Dyson 02

… at last, we get to an idea of intelligent and evolving machines…

Erewhon contained three central massages: machine intelligence will supervene upon human intelligence as surely as our own intelligence supervened upon that of our individual cells; self reproduction is inevitable once evolution takes hold among machines; and there is no future in trying to turn back the clock.¹

… and, quoting Canon Thomas Butler…

Our plan is to turn man’s besotted enthusiasm to our own advantage, to make him develop us to the utmost, and find himself enslaved unawares²

… and…

Butler concluded that it was impossible to draw a precise distinction between living and nonliving things, or to give a precise definition of life that would not, sooner or later, include machines. “Then only thing of which I am sure,” he argued in 1880, “is that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into them.”³

… and this…

Automata, advertising, and natural selection are an explosive mix. Google’s introduction of AdWords, nonetizing not just language, already coded, but also meaning, not fully coded yet, was the equivalent of Lee de Forest’s introducing the control grid into Fleming’s vacuum tube. Internet advertising drives a global high-gain amplifier connecting the reward sought by computers (more machine cycles and instructions) to the reward sought by humans (more of the stimulation now returned with every click). We set loose an evolutionary system that rewards machines that learn to control both how we feel and what we think⁴

First Thoughts

… nine hours of sleep last night… remarkable… must have been tired… or sleeping in a comfortable bed as opposed to the couch makes a difference… or both…

… J & R returned to Seattle yesterday… J had a hard time with delayed flights, etc… don’t know about R… they haven’t communicated… it’s just M and me now…

… my foot is feeling better… H thinks it’s planter fasciitis… some of the symptoms match up… some don’t… we’ll see…

… no HCR meter this AM… she took the night off…

Analogia, George Dyson

… i must confess to a good deal of confusion on what this book is about… i am well over halfway into the book and it has, so far, not much to do with the subject suggested by the subtitle… “The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control”… there have been a few hints of the development of digital technology, but otherwise the book has been a recounting of history and individuals, sometimes with connection to the advancement of digital technology, sometimes not, oft times only peripheral connection… i assume this will make sense at some point, but it doesn’t just yet…

… i keep reading and reading and reading, expecting that any moment the main point of the book as rendered in the subtitle will make its way to the fore front… it just doesn’t… it’s all anecdotes and quasi related history… very little about digital information processing technology… perhaps making a point about how one can live with and on the land without all that technology… it’s enjoyable reading, but a little baffling… is the author putting us through a set of analog experiences before unleashing the digital overtaking of those experiences???… hard to know… hard to see what the endgame will be…

First Thoughts

… R and J go back to the West Coast… just M and me for the next week… then, M will be on her own… that will be a difficult place for her i am guessing…

… went to the beach to have dinner… watched the sunset…

… weighed in, 227.0 lbs… good news… was a little worried that i have gained in the past week…

… the HCR meter pointing decidedly down… a discussion of the Texas fetal heartbeat abortion law… a discussion about how similar laws could undermine civil rights… the whole situation awful…

… J up… i thought i heard M too…

First Thoughts

… more drinking last night… not as bad as the other night…

… a dream about LS last night… a dream about toying with the idea of an affair with them… we both wanted it… i was resisting it because i was married… i was resisting it because i knew it would get complicated…

… having some political conversations with M… at least they don’t get really angry… they are firmly in the Fox silo though… i suppose i look like i am firmly in the MSNBC silo to them… important to work with facts… M is possibly fungible on their conservativism… R and J stayed largely out of it…

… hauled most of D’s stuff to Goodwill… some more today…

… R is not sure he wants the Rolex watch either…

… we uncovered another camera… a pretty fancy for its time Minolta… google searches determine that none of the equipment is particularly valuable presently and that the lenses are outperformed by today’s lenses though current lenses are not built as well… just finished reading a review that claims the Maxxum is one of the best film cameras ever made… that is not necessarily concurred with by other reviewers… of the cameras i have inherited, the two film cameras are most interesting and perhaps i will find some film and use them to whatever effect they are capable of…

… i am sitting here feeling very warm…

… HCR meeter slightly downward to slightly upward… a discussion of the history of anti-abortion politics that began when Nixon wanted the Catholic vote which normally went Democratic… abortion was made an issue to divide that constituency and win elections… she points out that the country is fairly unified on the issue and wants Roe V. Wade to stand… that it is a minority driving it as a wedge issue that wins elections… she suggests that there will be considerable blowback around the Texan anti-abortion legislation passed yesterday… let’s hope so… i, for one, will abandon any ideas i had about traveling to Texas until they undo the legislation insanity they have recently embarked on…

George Dyson, Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control

… i am one and a half chapters into the book… i am learning about the first modern Russians to cross the Bearing Straits and explore the Pacific Northwest of the Americas… i am learning about the European settler overrun of the West and the Native American population that had called it home for thousands of years… i am learning about very early communication technology that permitted the coordination of troops across large stretches of land…

… really interesting how much of a lesson in the history of suppression of Native American populations the book is… other than the opportunity it afforded to develop the precursor digital transmission technology, there seems little reason for the inclusion of so much historical detail… i wonder if i will learn the reason later on… and then this:

We have to regard the Universe,” he concluded, “not as a collection of Things or Events existing apart from any awareness of them by observers, but as manifested Thoughts in a Universal Mind¹

… which dovetails nicely into panpsychism though with leanings towards a Christian sprituality…

… reading about Marconi, Fleming and the development of transatlantic signaling and the vacuum tube…

… and now the development of theoretical physics, nuclear energy, and the atom bomb…

First Thoughts

… in bed at 9:30, up at 4:30, about 7 hours… not bad, woke up once…

… yesterday we bagged up all D’s clothing and sorted through their things… each of us taking what fit, what we wanted, which in my case is not much as little fit and D’s tastes were more conservative than mine… R got sad and had to go off by themselves for a while… i found it more interesting than sad… D had a lot of clothes… two big closets… and everything was new or showed negligible amounts of wear… i wear things pretty much till they wear out… i have two or three pairs of pants, maybe four… D had at least 20 pairs of jeans, two or three times that amount of shirts, a number of belts equal to the number of jeans… some jeans had their particular belts installed in the loops, ready to be put on… today we haul it all off to Good Will…

… lots of texting with H… big rains in Beacon… the remnants of Ida passing through… H has been experiencing many frustrations since i left and said they are depressed… they are depressed a lot lately it seems to me… i hope it lifts…

… HCR meter pointing hard down… about laws being signed into existence in Texas that will likely make it impossible for women to get an abortion and will set up “vigilante” citizens as the enforcers… what could go wrong with that?… another law legalizes concealed carry of weapons without a permit… another law limits voting rights and permits partisan patrolling of voting stations where voters can now be intimidated by gun toting zealots… what could go wrong with that?… even worse, the Supreme court has refused to knock down these strategies… has refused to even hear arguments on them… has refused even to issue justice opinions on them… they are largely being carried out on the “shadow” docket… so now we have another thing the Biden/Harris administration must deal with in the next year and two months… we are a country in decline, and radical conservatives are a circling band of hyenas… i am thinking i will boycot Texas unless sanity gets restored there…

Photographer: Kate Sweeny

Kate Sweeny

… nice photographs of young women, clothed and unclothed… an example of nude photography with women behind and in front of the camera… the artist tells us that the photographs are not about the objectification of women, but rather, about the celebration of women’s bodies as an art form in and of themselves and as natural presences in the world… which i believe… the photographs are, however, easy to view in a sexualized and objectified way, especially when they deploy tropes like wet fabric on the body as in the above image… i think we suffer from a lot of confusion about sex and sexuality, particularly in American Society, because there is a strong tendency to repress sexuality, and because the Patriarchy is so alive and well, it makes any young woman an object of sexual desire and any photograph of said young woman sexualized, when patriarchal eyes that are looking… i don’t see this as a reason not to make and display them… i do see a need to be honest about the variety of ways in which content can be perceived…

Photographer: Grade Solomon, BOOOOOOOM Mag

Grade Solomon

… the above photograph blew me away with it subtlety and clarity… it’s also a photo i could easily have taken…

… exceptionally well made photographs and an artist statement that is to the point and accurately reflects what i encounter in the work… no small feat…

** Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex**

… a book about the politics of sex?… from a philosopher no less… sounds interesting… might want to get…

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

… the title of Halsey’s new album… what an interesting dynamic in that statement… i have been known to say i don’t want power… i would perhaps amend that statement to: i don’t want power, but i want to be powerful… that is, i want to be a powerful presence because of the wisdom with which i move through the world, not because i can make the world conform to the way i want to move… now, the idea that it is love or power… hmmm…

Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Matter, Part I, The Logical Analysis of Physics, Chapter II, Pre Relativity Physics

… i am feeling up to the challenge… we will see how it goes…

• starting with some words on Newtonian physics, because, modern day physics amends rather than replaces Newtonian physics…¹
• Russel says of the world described by Newton in Principia: nature is convenient for the mathematician²… not so for modern physics…
• Newtonian physics describes a world situated in absolute space and absolute time, posits that particles are eternal and reduces the interaction of particles to force, mass and acceleration…
• there are epistemological questions that haunt Newtonian physics which are less problematic for relativity, though not entirely unproblematic… ³
• epistemological: relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion: what epistemological foundation is there for such an artificial discrimination?
• absolute space, absolute time, is the most significant epistemic question… it would subsequently be proved that these are not necessary…
• reasons for rejecting absolute space and time:
  • everything we observe concerns only the relative position position of bodies and events… Russell believes this argument has no force… he argues there is no logical reason that we can’t infer things to exist that are not directly evident… he further argues that the science of physics collapses if we are not able to infer…
  • points and instants are not a required hypothesis and Occam’s razor requires we dispense with them (Russell believes this argument is false as far as Newtonian mechanics is concerned, but not for Relativity)

First Thoughts

… 24 hours without having to run the AC, OMG, feels so good…

… HCR Meter pointing downward… about the need for voting rights legislation… about the need to overcome resistance to eliminating the filibuster… about the idea(fact) that there will almost certainly be a radically conservative president in 2024 if it is not… i find it hard to believe that Democrats will allow themselves to be forever out of power, or that the consequences are really that dire… but here we are… at present they are poised to fritter away an opportunity to keep the U.S. for the people…

… day two since dad passing… feeling OK… looking forward to seeing Mom, brother and sister on Monday… not looking forward to traveling… not looking forward to being in Florida where the virus is raging…

… H comes home today… we will have about 20 hours together before i have to climb on a plane and fly to Florida… be gone for almost 2 weeks… return on the 10th… a week later we get to go to Block Island, enjoy my niece’s wedding celebration and then relax and reflect on the challenging couple of months we have had…

Bruce Haley, Home Fires. Vol.I: The Past

… reviewed by Jonathan Blaustein… based on the review, i would buy the book if i had much disposable cash… it’s about ecological disaster… maybe i need something more uplifting…

Basho and His Interpreters, Selected Hokku with Commentary, Makoto Ueda

… a book i ordered a couple of weeks ago… i have decided to set The Analysis of Matter aside given that i will be traveling and won’t be able to concentrate as effectively as i would otherwise… i will read this book instead as i think it will be more digestible in short spurts… also, the spiritual dimensions of haiku may be helpful at this moment…

… the haiku as a stand alone poetic form grew out of renga, a form of linked verse composed by a group of poets gathered… the guest of honor initiates the sequence and each poet takes a turn composing subsequent phrases in the sequence… renga have been known to get as long as ten thousand verses but more usually were one hundred or less…

… i find myself a bit tired for concentration even on haiku…

First Thoughts

… in bed at 9:30, up at 3:00 AM… at least i slept through…

… the day after dad’s passing… the melancholy is subsiding… lots of thoughts about seeing Mom and my brother and sister… wondering if the expected improvement in family dynamics will materialize… worried about my sister annoying me, which she has the capacity to do… i will find out come Monday…

… Fiona being very fussy about her food… only way to get her to eat much is to sprinkle it with freeze dried organ dust… she seems not to like the kibble and it hasn’t helped much to home make wet food… she might need more exercise to pique her appetite…

… the heat has finally broken… i may actually get the stairs in place if not completely finished…

… a major hurricane heading straight for Louisiana… will hit tomorrow the x year anniversary of Katrina…

… HCR meter mixed… about the contest of individualism and collectivism in the U.S… not at all clear which will come out on top…

… a day or two ago, i read an interesting article on slime mold… i appear not to have published it… now i have… the idea that the view of races as being inferior/superior is a social construct and that it has been constructed in service of white supremacy… the idea that humanity sits on top of an intelligence pyramid has also been constructed in service of white supremacy… it makes sense to me…

Various Articles

… i read a bit of the news, since i haven’t been watching any… mostly about Afghanistan, a fiasco that couldn’t be avoided, a fiasco that could have been handled better…

… onto a really interesting article about slime mold in which i encounter this paragraph:

Throughout their lives, myxomycetes only ever exist as a single cell, inside which the cytoplasm always flows—out to its extremities, back to the center. When it encounters something it likes, such as oatmeal, the cytoplasm pulsates more quickly. If it finds something it dislikes, like salt, quinine, bright light, cold, or caffeine, it pulsates more slowly and moves its cytoplasm away (though it can choose to overcome these preferences if it means survival). In one remarkable study published in Science, Japanese researchers created a model of the Tokyo metropolitan area using oat flakes to represent population centers, and found that Physarum polycephalum configured itself into a near replica of the famously intuitive Tokyo rail system. In another experiment, scientists blasted a specimen with cold air at regular intervals, and found that it learned to expect the blast, and would retract in anticipation. It can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake, and later, can recall the path it took to reach it. More remarkable still, a slime mold can grow indefinitely in its plasmodial stage. As long as it has an adequate food supply and is comfortable in its environment, it doesn’t age and it doesn’t die.¹

… and this…

Taxonomy has evolved in the centuries since Haeckel and Linnaeus, but much of their thinking still remains. Even if science no longer views humans as divided into different and unequal species, we continue to refer to “race” as if it were a natural, biological category rather than a social one created in service of white supremacy. The myth that humans are superior to all other species—that we are complex and intelligent in a way that matters, while the intelligence and complexity of other species does not—also exists in service to white supremacy, conferring on far too many people an imagined right of total dominion over one another and the natural world.²

First Thoughts

… i went to bed angry last night… as i noted the anger i was feeling it wasn’t clear to me what i was angry about… i told myself i was angry at H for not being able to get back immediately so i could get to Florida sooner… i told myself i was angry with my father for arranging the timing of his death to cause maximum havoc in my life… i told myself i was angry with my sister for her smug, best daughter ever was of handling the end of a life that i know caused her considerable pain… i told myself i was angry with the weather for being brutally hot at precisely the wrong moment to allow me to finish rebuilding the back stairs… i told myself that i was angry with my skin, that because i have to be so protective of it i have to wear long sleeved sun protective shirts, neck gators, a hat, to protect myself, which means the heat is even more brutal to me… i told myself that i was angry with my left foot because it chose this moment to develop significant pain which limited my limited ability to get anything done… i am angry that i have to fly down to Florida rather than drive as i had planned… in the end, nothing is anybody’s fault, it’s just me being irritated that i have little control over the flow of events which seemed presently configured to thwart me at every turn…

… news yesterday that hospice nursing felt Dad had at best two days… he will almost certainly pass before i get there and may have been passed for a day or two before i can get there… as i have written before, i have no burning desire to be there… the man didn’t like me and the feeling was mutual… i am, if anything, looking forward to family gatherings without his angry presence… to a family that can relax a little because it doesn’t have to fear angry outbursts, walk on eggshells around him all the time… i am looking forward to being free of that…

… the HCR meter down pointing significantly today… Afghan terror attack killing U.S. military and civilians… conservatives behaving shamelessly… COVID ripping through Florida where i have to fly in a few days… i had planned to avoid people on my trip to Florida… i have been forced into a situation where i can’t… another thing to be angry about… if you step back and take in the big picture, it looks a lot like the failure of a state…

First Thoughts

… news that dad has taken a turn for the worse… it sounds like he won’t last through the weekend… H has arranged herself to get back on Sunday… not sure what my plans are other than as already established… i have no great need to be there when he passes… my sister is there now, so mom has somebody to be with her through it… it’s possible i will fly down, but only if there is some kind of service or memorial happening that requires my presence earlier than already planned… i believe my sister said he is to be cremated… if that is the case, there won’t be any urgency to whatever services may be planned… so mostly i am on track to arrive Monday, September 6…

… i am a little melancholy… i am pretty sure it’s not because i will miss my father… i don’t think i will… melancholy attends what comes to an end for a variety of reasons… all endings are deaths of a kind, so there is a general melancholy attached to that… deaths in particular carry the melancholy of knowing one day it will be you… probably there is melancholy in the feeling that i had a biological father who couldn’t find his way to anything but anger towards me, so for the last two to three decades, i didn’t really have a father…

… i look forward to time with my mother and, hopefully, a few occasions where we all gather as a family without his complicating and generally negative presence… he has been a kind of Death Star as far as i am concerned…

… the HCR meter today points slightly positive… news that congressional inquiry into the final months of 45’s administration is casting a broad net… news that the evacuation from Afghanistan continues with tens of thousands of evacuees flown out every day… news that the situation is deteriorating, turmoil ahead… news that the Harlem Hell Fighters from WW I have finally been awarded congressional medals of honor for their courageous fighting during the war…