I got a cheery Independence Day hello from Gabi Klaf. Never mind that Gabi, Kobi, and the kids are Israelis; never mind that they’re currently in Cambodia. They’re celebrating an all-American Fourth of July for fabulous reasons. You remember the Klafs. Last we heard from them, in October, the adventurous family was in Panama. Or was it Columbia? Ecuador? Hard to keep track. They’ve been in five or six places since then, spending a long time in each one and immersing themselves deeply in every experience. Since this is a week for celebrating lots of forms of freedom, for celebrating…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
Happy Independence Day, one and all. Yeah, I know. “Independent of what?” you might ask. King George was a pussycat compared with today’s rulers. But we can still celebrate the ideal if not a national reality. And for sure, for always, we can celebrate our own inner independence. —– This is going to be short. I have just one thing to say. And while I’d like to put it in rhyme and make it an anthem, time and lack of talent demand prose: Don’t fall with the empire. People tell us that declaring (or going off and living) individual freedom…
After John Roberts’ Obamanable decision on Obamacare, Joel guessed that I would be holed up somewhere, fondling serious weaponry. Not unless you consider a hammer to be weaponry. I’ve spent the days since my last blog banging on the back of the house. Not in destruct-o-mode. But putting up trim and cedar singles. I love cedar shingles. Not only are they the most beautiful of all house sidings. But they smell sublime. And shingling is something I can do entirely by my lonesome. Great sense of personal power in that. So I’ve had three days of pure satisfaction broken by…
Show this to the innocents in your circle the next time one of them says if you obey the law you have nothing to fear. Whole family loses everything and goes to jail for … failure to speak Spanish when the feds use a Spanish speaker to frame them. Should we ban the word “trillion”? Naw. Good think piece, though. “Pry the Big Gulp from My Cold, Dead Fingers.” (H/T MJR) Sheldon Richman gives another good whack to David Brooks. “Why My Child Will Be Your Child’s Boss.” (Hint: because my child isn’t being turned into a risk-averse ninny.) (Tip…
Earlier this month, the Tubz were rattling over David Brooks’ plea for us all to know our places and respect our betters. And I was surely glad to see Radley Balko give Brooks and his Olde Establishment snobbery a good fisking. But me, I laughed. Brooks’ demand for obedience to Authoritah (any old Authoritah) was so pathetic, so obviously a dying cry from the Ancien Regime, that it delighted me. Yay! We’re out of control! Hooray! We point and snicker at the undersized dangly bits and bloated bellies of our naked emperors! That’s just how things ought to be. Today…
The simple fact is, I’m very, very grateful. Last night I was talking with somebody who has a lot of the same problems in his life that I do. They grind him down and I think he’s becoming (or more likely long ago became) very bitter. I was bitter when I was young. I’d be lying if I said things don’t get me down, even now. I’ve bled all over these blog pages often enough that you surely know I get depressed, frustrated, head-banging, angry, sad, and all the other dreary etceteras of life. More than once — heck, more…
Here’s some wintry summertime cheer for ya. Those of “a certain age” could never have imagined something like this in Moscow of all places.
Proof positive. The Canadian government is as filled with paranoid weirdos as the U.S. fedgov. (H/T MJR.) Is it a good sign that even the mainstream media is starting to notice the DEA’s war on pain patients and their doctors? Speaking of the war on freedom, here’s your question of the day. Eric Holder: Liar, incompetent or both? If you liked J.D. Tuccille’s book, High Desert Barbecue, you might want to give it a v*te. How will the world end? You get to help decide. Not exactly new, but a healthy reminder: Humans may not be the only animals with…
No, I’m not talking about the target of the neocons’ latest interventionist fantasy. I’m talking about the St. Paul Moment. The Great Aha! Turning points and watershed occurrences in our lives. For the last three days the Damascus phrase has been banging around inside my head, telling me there’s a blog entry or article to be written. But whatever’s doing the banging hasn’t been kind enough to tell me exactly what brilliant point I’m supposed to make. Sigh. So I find myself once again scribbling something that might turn out embarrassingly idiotic, but really having no choice in the matter.…
I was eight or nine. I was bored. With nothing of my own to read, I tried a book from the grown-ups’ shelves for the first time. My parents weren’t readers. They had just two shelves of hardbound books, which, lacking pictures, had never interested me. That day I found a lone paperback. Although it, too, had no illustrations, its cover was bright and strange enough to attract me. I had never heard of Arthur C. Clarke. I had no concept of science fiction. I didn’t know there were such things as grownup stories about spaceships or time travel. How…