Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
The escaped slaves of the early Americas (“Maroons” or cimarrons) and their struggle to live free at all cost. Sometimes, according to this piece, their determination to live without masters led to alliances with pirates. I can’t say how gloriously accurate this book excerpt is, but it’s a good read on a subject that deserves more attention. The book itself is a new history of the Jamestown colony, published a few days ago. But this excerpt is more about the slaves and pirates of the Caribbean in the days of Spanish conquest and early English adventurism.
Furrydoc and I had lunch together yesterday. We talked politics as we so often do. And we found ourselves in the same state — a not-so-unusual state, these days. We wished news would simply go away. We’re both taking steps to avoid it. The world seems to have gone completely mad. Hate pretends to represent love. Rage replaces thought. Ignorance supplants knowledge. Yet try though we might, both of us find ourselves steeped in the noise of news as if we breathe it in with the very air. Then she told me she talked to her clinic staff about some…
The murdering barbarian struck literally in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and at the synagogue where writer Weiss became a bat mitzvah. Every Jewish community in America will now have to make sensible decisions about how to ensure that they are not the next victims of someone like Mr. Bowers. But those hard choices should not make us forget the core values that make communities like Squirrel Hill what they are: welcoming, big-hearted and profoundly decent. One of the gifts of the Jewish experience in America is that because we have been so welcomed and so safe here, these values have been…
I had two blogs I wanted to post today, but it’s been zip and zoom and zap since early morning. Commitments, appointments, distractions, demands. Then every time I think I have a moment to sit down, something interrupts. Now I’ve got half an hour before an appointment. Let’s see if I can sneak some links into that time, and come back later (cross fingers) for post two. Jeffrey A. Tucker on the epic battle to control our thoughts. Naturally, the CIA has an official Chief of Disguise. A former holder of that office made a short video about her craft.…
Yesterday was the best of this extraordinary October. Temps in the low 70s, no wind, sunshine. It was also, I knew, the last of the great days, which made it very poignant as well as making me want to stay outside — a choice of which Ava heartily approved. We managed by running errands, taking extra walks, and then (because of construction traffic) a long detour into the country. —– This particular detour is a pretty as anything we’ve got around here. It runs along river and wetland, through tiny pocket neighborhoods, and past farms. Friendly and bucolic. It also…