John Lott gives that stats for what ought to be obvious: The U.S. does not have a murder problem. Certain counties have a murder problem. (And no doubt also certain neighborhoods within those counties, and certain individuals within those neighborhoods.) Ooh. That hurts: “I threw away $4.8 million in bitcoin. (H/T MtK) Fairly decent article about the knife-rights movement. Mixed blessing. Pitbull saved from death row is now a drug warrior. (Tip o’ hat to PT) Attempted murder survivor tells women to fight back via her Fight Like Girls program. Nobody can give a pat definition of happiness. At least…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
“Dark night of the soul” is too serious a term for this week’s mini-crisis. That’s an expression to reserve for the big bad moments (or years) in life. But this week fell at least into a momentary twilight of the creative soul. Then … light! —– Tuesday the Wandering Monk and I found all that awfulness as we began the Great House Foundation Project. Not unexpected. Dismal nevertheless. The Monk immediately began kludging together a plan for jacking up the house even with very little of the house left to jack. His plan was creative. And intelligent. And it removed…
In her books and classes on rediscovering creativity, Julia Cameron (of The Artists Way fame) asks students to envision their “inner censor.” Our inner censor is the nasty voice in our heads that tells us, “You’re no good,” “You might start that but you’ll never finish it,” “Everybody will laugh at you,” “You’re lazy,” “You should just stick to the way things are now,” “You don’t have any talent,” “You’ll embarrass yourself,” “You should give up now because you’re going to fail, anyway.” And on and on. Last week I started following another of Cameron’s 12-week programs, but without much…
I never could draw. I took illustration classes for a while. Long, long time ago. Among students who hoped to become professional illustrators and other students who had no hope, I was in between. Some things I could do well. I always had a decent sense of color and design. But drawing? Meh. I’d observe the elegance of line, the flair, the ease, the confidence and powers of observation of the best students in the class and want to curl up in a little ball. Oddly, there was one type of sketching at which I excelled. In figure drawing class,…