Mind and Spirit – Page 43

Faith, folly, or hubris?

Published May 5, 2016 2:23 am by Claire

I’ve mentioned The Wandering Monk. He’s a handyman recently in our area who came well recommended and is living up to his reputation. He’s more skilled, conscientious, and reliable than Handyman Mike and charges substantially less. He makes difficult things simple and is pleasant to have around. Quite full of himself at times. But a really decent 39-year-old guy with a lot of experience behind him.

I plan no big house projects this year, but I’ve been bringing the Monk in on a number of small ones — partly because I can afford him, but partly (alas) because he is a wanderer and it’s been clear to me from the beginning that he’s likely to wander out of the area just as suddenly and capriciously as he wandered in. I want to get as much from his talents as I can before he drifts away.

He’s very religious and talks a lot about God. But being Catholic, and being kind of a happy wanderer, his approach is very different than some I’ve run into (who all too often figuratively slam me against the wall and threaten me with “Jesus or else” — and seem to enjoy the prospect of “or else” far more than a decent person should). I enjoy talking with him. Mostly.

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Tuesday links

Published May 3, 2016 12:26 pm by Claire

Pretty amazing way for a 16-year-old to live. (H/T JB) OTOH, some people may just have too much time on their hands. And hatchets and beer in them. (H/T ML) Speaking of too much time and hands … did you know there’s a (not joking) world of rock-paper-scissors competition? (Tip o’ hat to jed) Looking for some good hard science fiction? (H/T MJR) Get businesses freaked out enough about “discriminating against the disabled” and they’ll fall for anything. 12 lessons to learn and hang onto forever. (Especially for business, but plenty have applications in the rest of the world, too.)…

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Between rage, ridicule, and resignation

Published April 29, 2016 1:48 am by Claire

This Looney Toon of a presidential election takes me back, gods forbid, to elections past.

It takes me to Nixon-Humphrey, the previous absolute-worst political pairing in my lifetime. Before that, I was political, but only because my mom was political and I took after her. All Democrats were good, all Republicans were Eeeeevil, and John Kennedy was the best Democrat of all because he was handsome and a Democrat and he came to our town campaigning and I almost got to touch him. Life was simple.

I was still too young to v*te when the major parties threw up Nixon and Humphrey. But it was the first time I knew something was rotten on both sides. And Mom’s adoration for the tubby hack from Minnesota merely made me wonder what she’d been smoking (or rather, not smoking, since the smoking people of 1968 were as horrified by Hubie the Mediocre as they were by Milhaus the Whining Retread).

I think I may have even declared my intention to leave the country — years ahead of Alec Baldwin and his ilk, but just as insincerely. The fact that I was too young to get a passport excuses me, right? And shortly after that, there were Libertarians and retreaters (the name back then for prepper-survivalists) and cool non-political newsletters from the heady combo of Rothbard and Hess, and many other things besides politics-as-usual to put hopes in.

But this utterly hope-less election of 2016 — with its likely pairing of two megalomaniacs who use government for incessant personal gain and whose “principles” are light enough to blow wherever the next breeze takes them — also takes me back to the one-and-only national election where I felt an actual stirring of hope.

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Catching up in the big world and my small one

Published April 26, 2016 1:46 am by Claire

Still sick. More than two weeks now. Whatever you do, don’t catch this thing. It may also be that springtime is complicating matters. I don’t usually get hay fever, but Old Blue looks like Old Green every morning thanks to its daily dusting of yellow pollen, and I’m wondering whether things that normally wouldn’t bother me are affecting me now because my respiratory system is already sensitized by the virus. Whatever this is, please don’t catch it. —– I finally found a dose of OTC meds that knocks the symptoms down maybe 50% while only reducing me to stupid and…

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The new Mental Militia

Published April 22, 2016 11:41 am by Claire

Old friend Elias Alias has been busy redoing The Mental Militia site from top to bottom. This weekend might be a good time to check it out. Some elements remain familiar: there are the forums, of course. Other familiar features are gradually being updated. There’s a membership program. A new logo that emphasizes the “mental” in Mental Militia. Some good links, including onsite links to Allied Camps. Some history of TMM. And the thing I think Elias would most like you to know about (and contribute to): a a new movie he’s hoping to complete with a little help from…

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A finity of full moons

Published April 17, 2016 10:38 am by Claire

When I think of death, I think of full moons. Full moons are a mundane experience, but seeing a fat red moon rising over the hills is as close to true magic as ordinary life comes. A few years ago, it occurred to me that each number of full moons alloted to a person is finite. An obvious observation, I know. But still one of those things that hits you hard at the moment you observe it. If life goes along in it’s merry way, I may have 200, even 300, full moons left. That sounds like a lot of…

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Weekend links and news of the weird

Published April 2, 2016 12:17 pm by Claire

Sorrys in advance for being unable to remember now where I got some of these links. I’ve been saving them up for a while. So thanks to The Usual Suspects. 🙂 Wanna set up a pot business? Become a nun. Chase Bank holds funds and reports customer to the feds for paying his dog walker. Joel got to this one first, but it’s too pure-and-simply wonderful not to re-blog: the mystery of the squatter in the woods who came and left with no trace. Ghostery to the max! But this … once again takes “small-space living” to crazy extremes. Only…

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Friday Freedom Question: Why is it always about fighting?

Published April 1, 2016 3:45 am by Claire

I’ve had a lot of time to think this week and one question runs through my mind: Why is freedom so closely and (for many) irretrievably associated with fighting? Sure, we do periodically have to defend freedom against tyrants. And defend it more frequently against incremental encroachments and (if I may coin a term) the political encockroaches who so encroach. But given that the main thing we do with freedom is enjoy it, given that it is, in most of our lives, as lovely and easy a thing as pure air, why the sticky association with strife, battle, bloodshed, anguish,…

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A moment out of time

Published March 24, 2016 1:38 pm by Claire

I haven’t written much about being ‘Netless (one month, five days, and seven hours as I write this, but who’s counting?) because after the first few days of adjustment, it hasn’t had that much impact.

Sometimes it’s devilishly inconvenient. When I desperately — I assure you, desperately — needed to know all the Hogwarts house colors, heads, and ghosts, I had to wait all the way until the next morning to look them up, oh alas alack.

Other than that and slower correspondence, the impact has been small and mostly positive.

My favorite thing about this ‘Netless interval is having a “moment out of time” several mornings a week.

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A Day Out of Time

Published March 21, 2016 6:01 pm by Claire

This weekend I read Oliver Sacks’ tiny mini-tome, Gratitude. I really mean tiny. It’s a book you can finish in half an hour. It consists of four short essays, all written in the two years before his death. All four reflect on aging and dying as Sacks went from a robust 79-year-old who swam a mile a day to an invalid dying of liver cancer. He really says nothing new or profound. For that matter he doesn’t say much overtly about gratitude. The attraction is, of course, that Oliver Sacks is saying the rather familiar things about death. He lived…

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Category: Mind and Spirit