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The Courage to Jump

I took this photo of my son, 18 months old and poised to jump off the bench to the ground below.  The picture captured his fearless love of adventure so clearly.  At the age of two he climbed up to the top bunk and jumped off into a bin of stuffed animals below.  He is still adventurous but lately I’ve come to realize that he isn’t without fear or doubts.  In other words, he is a normal young man.  I’d been thinking about gender roles when I came across a recent article by Tim Winton discussing how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny. “I don’t have any grand theory about masculinity,” he wrote, “but I know a bit about boys.”

Continue reading “The Courage to Jump”

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Vernal Equinox 2018

It is the day of the spring Equinox, the light and the dark in precise balance, the light hours lengthening most rapidly now, the lightest half a year starting now. With all the human holydays coming on their own human planned schedules, the four “astronomical” special points have a solid and real basis, cosmic even, so to speak, for being celebrated. Call me a pagan if you like, but just remember that unrepentant pagans cannot hear you on days like this… so…
Behold the Equinox and Happy Spring Everyone….

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Will the Center hold? (shorter version)

The photo above is William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

“The Second Coming”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

the falcon cannot hear the falconer;

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

the best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity. Continue reading “Will the Center hold? (shorter version)”

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sounds easy doesn’t it

Here it is in text with the original link below…

“NYTimes FEB. 8, 2018
Everyone a Changemaker
David Brooks

Bill Drayton invented the term “social entrepreneur” and founded Ashoka, the organization that supports 3,500 of them in 93 countries. He’s a legend in the nonprofit world, so I went to him this week to see if he could offer some clarity and hope in discouraging times. He did not disappoint.

Drayton believes we’re in the middle of a necessary but painful historical transition. For millenniums most people’s lives had a certain pattern. You went to school to learn a trade or a skill — baking, farming or accounting. Then you could go into the work force and make a good living repeating the same skill over the course of your career.

But these days machines can do pretty much anything that’s repetitive. The new world requires a different sort of person. Drayton calls this new sort of person a changemaker. Continue reading “sounds easy doesn’t it”

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Continuing on Jodi’s Stereotypes

If the US is considered a melting pot, Hawaii has long been the tip of the spear in the fire. Unexpectedly had most of four days at a high-rise hotel in Honolulu to attend the commissioning of the brand new destroyer my granddaughter serves on. It was the second time in a few months that i had been to Honolulu since 1965, and it was still much like i had entered a time warp. Back when there had been no high-rises, in fact no highways, so i was a little wide eyed and gawking. Over the few days I spent a fair amount of time outside at a special hidden, smoking area and over time got to be nodding acquaintances with others that came periodically on whatever schedule their habit drove them. Most conversations were fairly surface level, but occasionally a few went deeper and one such was a recently retired very black, very squared away Army Master Sergeant, and the topic came around to the new administration in DC. As soon as the November results were in this fellow retired. After 26 years serving his country he had had enough. Continue reading “Continuing on Jodi’s Stereotypes”

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When Your Day Starts with a #$%*^$% Ballistic Missile Alert

I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to feel.

About an hour and a half ago, as I was making a pot of tea after doing the morning chores, my cell phone starting blaring the way it does when there is a civil defense message.  Usually these are flood warnings but it was a bright and sunny morning in the middle of a drought so I was a bit puzzled.

I picked up my phone and there was the message BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. TAKE IMMEDIATE SHELTER.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  Yeah. Nice. Fuck.  Continue reading “When Your Day Starts with a #$%*^$% Ballistic Missile Alert”

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Winter Solstice Celebrations

Change is neither inherently good nor bad; it simply is the way universe moves. While it’s true that good or bad are relative depending on our perspective, this year has been filled with changes that felt mostly bad.  And because of this I felt it appropriate as we come to the end of the year to celebrate the Winter Solstice as a symbol of transition in the hope that the New Year will bring positive changes.

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