Snow

09 Saturday Dec 2017

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There’s no Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. It’s just been snowing in Richmond since mid-afternoon. It rarely snows this early in the season. I imagine the local TV guys are going nuts. The local snow coverage makes the JFK assassination story look like a supermarket opening,

But it is beautiful. I am watching the Virtual Railcam LLC webcam view of Ashland near Richmond. It is a picture book small town longitudinally bisected by double railroad tracks. We all agree Ashland is a nice place. And it looks great in the snow at Christmas with the Christmas lights and all.

I haven’t been away today. I fixed tonight’s chicken vegetable soup out of what was on hand. And the cornbread too.

I might start to worry if it doesn’t let up by tomorrow afternoon. But the value of snow around here is the opportunity to sit back and reflect. It is at most a three or four day inconvenience.  Here in Richmond, the go-to snow removal guy is called Mr Sun.

23:36. EST. 7. XII. 2017

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, Exercise/ Fitness

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Here I am at the end of a day. After a five day respite, I went swimming again. I had no idea how much I missed it. I put on six pounds in six days. Don’t ask how. But the appetite  seems to ramp up when I am idle. Today I swam 2500 meters. During the swimming respite, I had 2 leaf raking sessions in those 5 days.  My  back was in agony for about twenty four hours post raking session. Aleve© helped some. Still I thought I had screwed up my back in another place different from the fusion site of two years ago.

Live and learn. Work out at least five days a week. I re-learned that old rule.

I went to the Vigil Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It was a very reverent Mass in English. Father Tony M is a good priest.  I think he loves his vocation. I told him about my elder son’s autism. He seemed genuinely touched that I shared this news with him.

Now I am sitting recollecting my day, waiting for the chick movie on Lifetime Channel to end.  All in all, not a bad day.

Twice Blessed

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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I have known for the longest time that my younger adopted son, now 29, has Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition on the Autism Spectrum. Today I was talking with my elder son, age 41, from an earlier marriage. He said, “Did you know I was autistic?” 

No. 

It has taken about 6 hours to wrap my head around this. But that diagnosis explains so much of his behavior. He is a high-functioning autistic, who has hidden much of his condition. Basically I am relieved, more than anything else. 

And OK.

Brush With Greatness

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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My friend John on his previously mentioned cycling excursion took photos of the house where Mother Maybelle Carter and her family lived while she performed in Richmond on The Old Dominion Barn Dance on WRNL-AM 910. This was 70 years ago.

I did not know this. Maybelle Carter was the mother of June Carter Cash

“Shazzam”

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Futurism, Smartphones, Uncategorized

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I got a text from a long time friend just as I was sitting down to the huevos rancheros I ordered for brunch at my friendly neighborhood trendy restaurant.

He was on a weekend bicycling excursion to where we call The Center Of The Universe, Ashland,Virginia. Virtual Railcam LLC has a camera placed there, so that trainspotters like me can watch rail traffic at home. (Amtrak’s Northbound Silver Star #92 just passed by.)

He texted to let me know he just bought a cookie and would be riding by the webcam. I have known John since sixth grade. We were roommates our First Year at the University of Virginia. We live in the same town and communicate almost daily.  Fifty-plus year continuing friendships are remarkable these days, but  I could not have imagined receiving a text from him, then seeing him wave at me in a live image on a tiny handheld computer fifty four years ago.

Breath-taking. 

The larger point I want to make is that assumptions we have about progress are being outpaced by that actual progress itself. We still cling to Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ideas about the world and exercise little scepticism about them. Malthusian ideas about population growth and food supply were advanced before mechanization, plant genetics, and animal breeding revolutionized agricultural productivity. Think about that.

Do we face a technological utopia or dis-topia? I don’t know. But our visions of the future say more about us today than they do about what tomorrow has in store.

Why Am I Awake?

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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Most of you know I go to Nocturnal Eucharistic Adoration on First Fridays. (It’s a Catholic tradition). I choose my Holy Hour between 4 and 5 AM. That means I’m groggy and half-awake for most of  Saturday morning. All in all, it’s not a bad feeling, compelled, to just sit, watch the world, and be with my thoughts.  The contemplation of Holy Hour transfers from Our Lord to the world at large.

I could think about my frustrations, how I’m not getting what I want, such as sex, time with my adult children, and why the Culture isn’t acting the Way I Want It To Act.

Big Parenthetical Aside Coming

(Ironic, isn’t it, that no matter what our values and opinions are, we think our set of values and opinions are the only ones that bring true happiness to people. That assumes that happiness is our primary purpose in life. I will leave that question of what our purpose is open for now)

Rather than dwell on frustration, appreciation is far more worthy pursuit. Friendship. Beauty. Love. For example, a friend brought her dog to AA yesterday. Seeing that dog made me happy. I totally get how therapy dogs can be beneficial.

I just read where two of my blogosphere friends met for the first time. I’m glad, and I wish I could have been there too.

Tidying Up. 

25 Saturday Nov 2017

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I don’t know why I fight doing housework. I rather enjoy it once I get in the swing. I spent about 90 minutes tidying up the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. The downstairs smells nice, lavender, lemon verbena fragrances. 

I am actually tired now. A nap is forthcoming. 

More later, maybe.

Happy Resentmentholding Day.

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, food, Sobriety

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  • The Aztecs had a rite of human sacrifice wherein a priest would excise the heart of a female victim from her body with an obsidian dagger and offer that still beating heart to the Aztec deity. We should not be astonished at the miraculous conversion to Catholic Christianity of the indigenous persons of Mexico in a little over a decade after the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  If some anticlerical secularists in our culture are to be believed, we should be resentful that the indigenous religion was abandoned. Those nostalgic for the old religion are obviously in no danger of having their own hearts ripped out.
  • So we have another Thanksgiving and America has an opportunity to express gratitude. How can one even begin to express gratitude in our Culture of Entitlement? Gratitude makes us uncomfortable. We do not ever want to be uncomfortable!!!! Never. Ever. 
  • Are you grateful for the modicum of comfort you enjoy? Why be grateful for something you are entitled to? If we remember the Pilgrims and others who celebrated Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago, we can always dredge up every wrong committed by European immigrants subsequently from 1620 who treated others shamefully and shabbily, wrongly. That will stifle, even smother, this humbling spirit of gratitude. My experience among my fellow  recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in my circle of friends is that gratitude has to be instilled among us.  We feel entitled to feel good.  We drunks and druggies act on our sense of entitlement by using.
  • The Culture of Entitlement and Resentment is fueled by the fires of Envy.  One is entitled to a free college education, free healthcare, safe neighborhoods, clean air, clean water, and somebody else, not you, has to pay for it. Those who have more than you obviously stole it, in one way or another.
  • If you don’t have all that you desire, the proper attitude is covetousness directed at those who have more, not gratitude for what you do have.
  • It’s a prescription for discontent.  So the logical break from a day of Thanksgiving is to rush out and jump back on the acquisition merry-go-round. That these are purchases intended as gifts is merely a different salve for our egos, proving to ourselves that not only are we savvy consumers, but think of others, almost as much as we think about ourselves, but not quite.
  • Gratitude. Get some.