One of the greatest......................

 ...........days of the year:  National Bacon Day

Back...........................................

 ...................................to the basics.

Likely true...............................

 

Thanks to birds..........................

 

Birds are dinosaurs who shrugged off a couple apocalypses.
Some eat bone marrow.
Some drink nectar.
They outswim fish in the sea.
They smile politely at gravity's demands.
I am grateful when I see them.  I am grateful to feed them.
I am grateful to know them.

-Jarod K. Anderson, from Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

Opening paragraphs...........................

 The town on Gros Ventre was so far from anywhere that you had to take a bus to catch the bus.  At that time, remote locales like ours were served by a homegrown enterprise with more name than vehicles, the Rocky Mountain Stage Line and Postal Courier, in the form of a lengthened Chevrolet sedan that held ten passengers besides the driver and the mailbag, and when I nervously went to climb in for the first time ever, the Chevy bus was already loaded with a ladies' club heading home from an outing to Glacier National Park.  The only seat left was in the back next to the mailbag, sandwiched between it and a hefty gray-haired woman clutching her purse to herself as though stage robbers were still on the loose in the middle of the twentieth century.

-Ivan Doig, Last Bus to Wisdom

Gone but not forgotten..........................

...............................Tommy Smothers

 

loopy..............................

 A rut is not a sign that you've tanked.  A plateau is not a cue that you've peaked.  They're signals that it may be time to turn around and find a new route.  When you're stuck, it's usually because you're heading in the wrong direction, you're taking the wrong path, or you're running out of fuel.  Gaining momentum often involves backing up and navigating your way down a different road—even if it's not the one you initially intended to travel.  It might be unfamiliar, winding, and bumpy.  Progress rarely happens in a straight line; it typically unfolds in loops.

-Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

WTF...............................

 The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.

Stepping outside the intellectually serious circle of my teachers at Chicago into broader academic world, it struck me as an industry hostile to thinking.

Process becomes more important than product.

What the hell is going on?  Is this our society as a whole, buying more education only to scale new heights of stupidity?

Tocqueville foresaw a "soft despotism" in which Americans would increasingly seek their security in, and become dependent upon, the state.  His analysis must be extended to our time: the softly despotic tendencies of a nanny state are found in the large commercial enterprise as well, and indeed a case could be made that it is now outsized corporations, more than government, that exercise this particularly enervating form of authority in our lives, through work.

-some thoughts culled from Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft

One things us Ohioans do.............

 ..........pretty well is build, build, build.

In fact, blue states’ failure to allow development is a pervasive feature of their political cultures. Housing scarcity doesn’t just cause population loss — it’s also the primary cause of the wave of homelessness that has swamped California and New York. Progressives’ professed concern for the unhoused is entirely undone by their refusal to allow the creation of new homes near where they live. Nor is housing the only thing that blue states fail to build — anti-development politics is preventing blue states from adopting solar and wind, while red states power ahead. And red states’ willingness to build new factories means that progressive industrial policy is actually benefitting them more.

If blue states are going to thrive in the 21st century, they need to relearn how to build, build, build.

-Noah Smith, as excerpted from here

On having skin in the game................

 Back in the 1950s, when the focal practice of baking was displaced by the advent of cake mixes, Betty Crocker learned quickly that it was good business to make the mix not quite complete.  The baker felt better about her cake if she was required to add an egg to the mix.

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soul Craft

A good practice..................

 I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years. Two years later, we were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since refrained from all prediction.

-Wilber Wright, as quoted here

absurdity...............................

 Absurdity is good for comedy, but bad as a way of life.  It usually indicates that somewhere beneath the threshold of official notice fester contradictions that, if commonly admitted, would bring some kind of crisis.

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

Lifespan........................

 A firefly lives two months.
There are bristlecone pines standing today that have lived 5,000 years.

The vital dignity of each of these species is not measured in time.
Both are perfection.

Treat your time likewise.
Your moments deserve the same careful attention as your years.

-Jarod K. Anderson

Opening paragraphs.............

 It is sometimes said, either irritably or with a certain satisfaction, that philosophy makes no progress.  It is certainly true, and I think this is an abiding and not a regrettable characteristic of the discipline, that philosophy has in a sense to keep trying to return to the beginning: a thing which it is not at all easy to do.  There is a two-way movement in philosophy, a movement towards the building of elaborate theories, and a move back again towards the consideration of simple and obvious facts.

-Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good

A wild Christianity.....................

My Christian journey so far has taught me two cataphatic lessons: that God is an artist; and that he has a sense of humor. . . .

 Anthony Bloom once wrote that the Desert Fathers and their kind retreated in order to seek an “ardent and active solitude”: “These men leave everything because they have understood that in torment, disorder and purely earthly seeking they will not find the answer to the problems of their contemporaries . . . They have to find their souls again, and with their soul, the nation, the soul of their people, the soul of their contemporaries.” When the nation, the people, the culture needs to find its soul again—this is when we turn to the saints of the caves. This is when we call for their help, and their prayers. Assuming we can find them. . . .

The global Machine is teetering, even as it clamps down on its citizenry in an attempt to tamp down unrest and rein in its own wanton destruction of creation and culture. A way of seeing that sets itself against what C. S. Lewis happily characterized as the Tao—the way of great nature, willed by its creator—cannot last, however much it desperately tightens its grip. We are not gods, however much we have always wanted to be. . . .

In a time when the temptation is always toward culture war rather than inner war, I think we could learn something from our spiritual ancestors. What we might learn is not that the external battle is never necessary; sometimes it very much is. But a battle that is uninformed by inner transformation will soon eat itself, and those around it.

-Paul Kingsnorth, from here

An interesting way to look at books...........

................................ A wonderful book (even though you can probably skip the first 25% and the last 25%).

-Ben Carlson, as excerpted from a book report on his 2023 reading list

Easier too...................

 ................Persistent, gentle pressure almost always outperforms sudden, violent blows.

-Seth Godin

Hate it.............................

 ..................................when that happens.

A story of rebellion.................

 Here is how Paul describes himself: “I am an animist in an age of machines; a poet-of-sorts in a dictatorship of merchants; a believer in a culture of cynics. Either I’m mad, or the world is.” He continues: “My most strongly-held belief is this: that our modern crisis is not economic, political, scientific or technological, and that no ‘answers’ to it will be found in those spheres. I believe that we are living through a deep spiritual crisis; perhaps even a spiritual war. My interest these days is what this means.”

-Bari Weiss, from her intro to this Paul Kingsnorth essay

Patience Grasshopper...................

 The point is: It always takes longer than you want. So, one of the most important habits is the habit that makes all other habits possible: patience. It doesn’t matter if it’s writing a book, opening a small business, getting in shape, establishing a reading or meditation practice—it always takes longer than you expect. It takes longer than you’re willing to wait. In any case, it takes however long it takes. We want our progress now. We want our success now. We want our rewards now. But if you can practice delayed gratification, if you can understand that all good things take time, that it’s a process, you’re almost always going to be more successful.

-Ryan Holiday, from this blog post