Micro Posts
2024-11-04
# Just some obvious examples and points of likely failure as citizens that actually take democracy as a responsibility rather than as an afterthought. A brief survey:
- When was the last city council meeting you attended?
- When was the last county commission meeting you attended?
- When was the last school board meeting you attended?
- Have you ever served on a local advisory board or a non-profit board?
- How often do you volunteer in your community?
# There's a lot of anxiety and panic leading up to the election. Whatever happens, I hope it is understood that this election is just the most obvious, open fissure of very deep systemic problems and increasing pressure building up. We keep failing to learn the lesson that as citizens we have a full-time responsibility to be active participants in and watchdogs of "our" government. We abandoned our responsibilities long ago.
# Spending this rainy morning watching The Cure. Their YouTube channel is a treasure of interviews, old videos and concerts. I'm on my second watch of their three hour long live stream from a couple days ago. What a show.
2024-11-03
# Out on a walk in the woods today I discovered a small patch of pawpaws on the trail and it occurred to me that now might be the best time to find them because their very large oblong leaves are currently pale yellow and stand out as most of the trees have already lost all of their leaves. I think there is a longer post to write exploring the different ways to learn to read nature. Trees, stars, birds, lichen all have their own language, their own patterns.
2024-10-30
# I was sitting on my porch cracking walnuts and noticed a nasty smell. I couldn't see any smoke. Turns out the less-than-one year old battery recycling facility 3 miles south of me was on fire. I moved inside immediately but I'm guessing my 15 minutes of breathing in those particulates was a couple years worth of average exposure. Yay?
2024-10-27
# Joe Biden has apologized to the indigenous people 'for what happened during the "Indian Boarding School era".
Now let's apologize and reckon with the rest. America has turned away from its foundational truth: It is a country built on white supremacy which is, even now, based in genocide, land theft, slavery and violence. In the years since its founding we've repeatedly and arrogantly pretended to be the champions of freedom and democracy.
The truth is we have become a violent empire with a thin veneer of democracy. The core is white supremacy, systemic violence and capitalism.
2024-10-25
# I'm happy to have been included in Manuel Moreale's ongoing People and Blogs series. You can read the interview here. There are 60 other interviews in his ongoing series. There are lots of interesting folks out there publishing blogs.
2024-10-22
# Watching season 2 of Pachinko and it's excellent. Also, I cannot resist watching the opening credits for this show. The smiles, the dancing, it's delightful.
2024-10-17
# Today's afternoon food experiments. Dinner was my usual sweet rice which is simple, just a bit of sugar, cinnamon, salt and soy milk. I'm out of soy milk so I subbed in peanut butter and also added 1/4 cup of canned pumpkin pie mix. Oh my that was good! Then some hot chocolate and because I'm out of soy I subbed in peanut butter again. Might sound odd but I just blend up a bit of water and peanut butter to make a frothy, nutty milk that works great for hot chocolate.
# Morning breakfast that was so good it deserves a mention: Baked pumpkin oatmeal with walnuts. And coffee of course.
2024-10-13
# Morning coffee and oatmeal while listening to Tech Won't Save Us podcast. An excellent podcast and this particular episode is especially worth a listen. They just dig right in. Accessible but really dense in history, the facts and narrative of the current moment. No doubt I'll give it a second listen.
2024-10-08
# I've made a good bit of progress the past couple weeks getting my Images page setup. It's far from complete but I've got a good start. Each image linked to the matching blog post.
# Sitting on the porch listening to a flock of birds in a nearby tree. I've not identified them visually but Merlin suggests Common Grackel or European Starling. They're having quite the conversation and it is somehow very soothing.
# Should we act? The latest reporting from the Guardian suggesting that "humanity’s future is in balance".
Look. There will be no averting profound human suffering. Let's have some fucking straight talk. We have waited too long. Should we act? YES. But look around you. Look at yourself. What are you willing to give? If you're a typical middle class American the answer thus far is not a fucking thing. The middle class of the US is a significant driving force behind the climate emergency. And from my observation these folks could not care less than they do...
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2024-09-28 Want to help?
2024-09-25 Repairing rather than returning
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2024-09-14 20 years later
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2024-09-07 That time I resurfaced a gravel road by hand
2024-09-05 On doing things the "hard" way
2024-09-03 On canceling my Apple Music subscription
2024-09-03 Begin Again
2024-08-25 We belong to our ecosystem
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2024-08-24 Iced sumac tea
2024-08-24 A new process for exploring blogs
2024-08-23 Cardinal Flowers
2024-08-21 Pawpaw Harvest
2024-08-20 Will Biden supporters ever acknowledge his role in genocide?
2024-08-20 Morning porch time
2024-08-19 I have a large forehead.
2024-08-17 Saturday critter time
2024-08-15 A view of the countryside from my morning ride.
2024-08-14 Adding dark mode to my sites
2024-08-11 Free time blog exploration
2024-08-11 The challenge of the mundane
2024-08-08 Lucky observation of a pair of Yellow-billed Cuckoos
2024-08-02 A quiet morning bike ride
2024-07-31 Individual action adds up to collective action
2024-07-25 A foggy morning sunrise
2024-07-09 Apple's marketing of the iPad as a general computing device
2024-07-02 Organizing and active citizenship
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Featured Posts
2024-10-28 Rocking the boat
2024-09-29 Weaving the web but more like frogs visiting in a pond
2024-09-18 Thoughts on single proprietor blog services and what if...
2024-09-12 Using the right tool for the job: Website coding, site management and blog posting from the iPad
2024-07-02 Organizing and active citizenship
2024-03-29 US History: We need to acknowledge the violence of white settler colonialism and slavery
2023-11-24 America as a failed democracy
2023-11-22 The precipice of authoritarianism: How and why did the US get to this?
2023-11-18 The soothing balm of minimalism
2023-11-07 Building on-the-ground community democracy
2023-11-07 This is our genocide too
2022-12-30 192 Square feet: Part 3
2016-08-04 192 Square feet: Part 2
2016-07-21 192 Square feet: Part 1