Went for an early morning hike with the pack…

Woman and two dogs sitting on a boulder in a forest.

Boulder with lichen.

Closeup of boulder with lichen.

Primitive face in rock with moss.

Landscape of a forest.

Trail and stream in a forest.

From this morning’s walk…

Lines of lights extending from edges of frame converging at the upper left of center creating a tunnel effect.

Broken concrete slab and repair patch.

COB0047 metal identification plate on a metal utility pole.

Plastic pallet wrapping on concrete sidewalk.

Uranium glassware in an antique shop window lit with black lights.

Two equal length metal tubes on a wood slat bench.

Closeup of crown and brim of a straw hat.

We watched Red, White and Royal Blue last night. The movie is based on the Casey McQuestin novel of the same title. It’s a latterday fairytale with a plot only viable in fairytale land, but, it is amazingly frank about homoerotic male relationship and sex. Highly recommend.

From this morning’s walk…

Underside of red umbrella with streetlights shining through at top of frame revealing water droplets sitting on top.

Painting of woman in Colonial/Victorian dress. Oval frame and canvas. In an antique shop window.

Skirt and simple v-neck cotton blouse on a mannequin in a shop window. Sky and buildings overlay reflected by window.

Rapids in creek swollen by rain.

Water drops on blue car hood.

Sandbag laying on asphalt with concrete block in upper left corner of frame.

In the category of Wow! Just, Wow!

August 14, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-14-2023)

Today, U.S. District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found for the young Montana residents, agreeing that they have “experienced past and ongoing injuries resulting from the State’s failure to consider [greenhouse gas emissions] and climate change, including injuries to their physical and mental health, homes and property, recreational, spiritual, and aesthetic interests, tribal and cultural traditions, economic security, and happiness.”

Unfortunately, by being purely strategic in intent, the left hemisphere makes strategic mistakes, since it remains largely ignorant of the reality on which it relies. As a sophisticated computer would. And very soon, no doubt, will.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist

a.co/5s779jp

From this morning’s walk…

Early morning cloudy sky.

Plant and flower shop interior.

Lace wedding dresses in a bridal shop.

M&M candies and macaroni in glass storage jars in a shop window.

Unlit neon sign in Chinese restaurant.

FedEx and UPS drop boxes on sidewalk in front of construction site.

Creek rapids swollen and violent after recent rains.

Today I deleted all social media apps from my phone. I will use my browser to access the accounts once or twice a day. Any service that doesn’t have a web portal is toast.

Today I tried to sit down and plan the week with my various digital apps. I came to a standstill trying to make them do what I wanted. I was so frustrated! Then I opened my paper journal book and wrote out a list of things I thought needed doing. My frustration disappeared. The week got planned.

This seems important…

August 12, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson

In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the _Marion County Record_newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computers, cell phones, and other equipment. Joan Meyer was unable to eat or sleep after the raid; she collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.

I think of the conspiracy soaked far right… McGilchrist arguing society shows signs of schizophrenia… 📚📖

… the schizophrenic subject appears to occupy extremes simultaneously: both sceptical to the point of paralysis about matters that must be taken for granted if one is to function at all, and yet gullible enough to espouse enormously improbable belief systems that are clearly delusional.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/20ZzSLa

From yesterday and today… 📷

Wispy cloudscape in early morning sun.

Trees reflected on a steel surface with circular polish marks running from upper left corner down and across to the right.

Back of a mannequin in a shop window with elephant ear plant in front of it.

Circular shadow on brick wall in a shop.

Chain link fence with green metal strips woven in a cross hatch pattern through the chain link. Two new segments of concrete in a stretch of sidewalk below the fence. Asphalt street at bottom of picture.

Abstract of construction fence, metal sheet and concrete slab.

Plastic takeout cup and empty brandy bottle on stone ledge.

About Habit :: Essays On Attention Paid

… our lives play out through this dance of individual and together habits… we live and love, hate and grieve, in our beautiful lake of habitualness… itself a splash and rippling of a glassy sea of continuity that engulfs every possible dream of our being…

Productive day!… laundry is done, floors are vacuumed, front garden is weeded and mulched, weed whacking is done both front and back, chicken thighs are marinating… oh, and i made progress on weekly blog post and started writing Devon, one of the lesbian characters in my nascent novella…

How an Angry Woman In Baltimore Almost Killed the Jazz Age

Young women who dance to jazz, eventually move on to other pursuits—where “automobiles are used as ‘apartments on wheels’.” But that was hardly necessary, because the female jazz fan, “letting the desire of the moment sway her,” soon “takes a visit to a man’s apartment or hotel room.”

It turns out that the malfunction of the Ego string trimmer I returned last week was the universe telling me I’d rather have the Makita string trimmer I replaced it with. I like it better in every way.

From yesterday…

Plastic bag on concrete sidewalk in early morning sun. Complex shadow pattern cat by the bag. Bag being blown around.

Plastic bag on concrete sidewalk in early morning sun. Complex shadow pattern cat by the bag. Bag being blown around.

Plastic bag on concrete sidewalk in early morning sun. Complex shadow pattern cat by the bag. Bag being blown around.

Plastic bag on concrete sidewalk in early morning sun. Complex shadow pattern cat by the bag. Bag being blown around.

Plastic bag on concrete sidewalk in early morning sun. Complex shadow pattern cat by the bag. Bag being blown around.

About Habit :: Essays On Attention Paid

… in the past couple of years, there have been emergent family issues, my father’s death, your mother’s struggling heart, my mother’s move… in these times, one or both of us packs up the habits and carries them to the place of need…

My wife loves the label… she liked the wine too…

Apparently, with ChatGPT, they have succeeded in replicating the left hemisphere of the brain…

It is the left hemisphere, which does not understand narrative, not the right, that wholly makes up ‘stories’ to fit circumstances it does not understand. Michael Gazzaniga calls it the interpreter precisely because of this propensity confidently to make up something, plausible or not, to explain a set of circumstances it cannot account for.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/hm9ywoP

In Praise of the Dancing Body — RITONA // A Beautiful Resistance

In our time, models for the body are the computer and the genetic code, crafting a dematerialized, dis-aggregated body, imagined as a conglomerate of cells and genes each with her own program, indifferent to the rest and to the good of the body as a whole.

In Praise of the Dancing Body — RITONA // A Beautiful Resistance

Daily contact with nature was the source of a great amount of knowledge reflected in the food revolution that took place especially in the Americas prior to colonization or in the revolution in sailing techniques. We know now, for instance, that the Polynesian populations used to travel the high seas at night with only their body as their compass, as they could tell from the vibrations of the waves the different ways to direct their boats to the shore.

In Praise of the Dancing Body — RITONA // A Beautiful Resistance

Capitalism was born from the separation of people from the land and its first task was to make work independent of the seasons and to lengthen the workday beyond the limits of our endurance… we stress the economic aspect of this process, the economic dependence capitalism has created on monetary relations, and its role in the formation of a wage proletariat. What we have not always seen is what the separation from the land and nature has meant for our body…

In Praise of the Dancing Body — RITONA // A Beautiful Resistance

Capitalism was not the first system based on the exploitation of human labor. But more than any other system in history, it has tried to create an economic world where labor is the most essential principle of accumulation. As such it was the first to make the regimentation and mechanization of the body a key premise of the accumulation of wealth. Indeed, one of capitalism’s main social tasks from its beginning to the present has been the transformation of our energies and corporeal powers into labor-powers.

And, tomato and watermelon salad…