Christopher Williams Edited from the PC interactive computer game that unfortunately does not run on modern machines by Tivola. Kenneth Branagh as the narrator, and Owen Evans as the Little Prince. Text is from the translation by Richard Howard. Music by French electronic composer Olivier Pryszlak. Gozoya Media Production 2000

Ned Henry January 6, 2021 · (nedhenry.medium.com)

This is that little one room shack with a dirt floor and a fire pit in the middle where I stayed in the Oaxaca mountains for a week by myself looking for the Yaqui Way of Knowledge as described by Carlos Castaneda using psilocybin mushrooms and trying to “get” the teachings of Don Juan. I was going through some pics and found it. This was one of times in my life where I felt utter sadness, loneliness and abandonment. I ordered the flannel sheets but they won’t get here until Jan 19. Bummer as we used to say. I am up late again. And my feet are cold again. But I am more relaxed after holding the buddha for a while.PranaIn Hindu philosophy including yoga, Indian medicine and Indian martial arts, prana (, prāṇa; the Sanskrit word for…en.wikipedia.org

So I want to say something. What I am doing here is mostly working out my past. My future is in God’s hands or whatever your concept of God. I’m learning what mine is. The present is sacred. I am protective of the present. There are things happening in the present that I am not going to share. They are intimate and they are personal. Now I also know that all of this is timeless so past, future and present are one. I know this path I am on has a hard edge. But I also know there are a couple of you who ARE on this path with me. And as I’ve said before, it’s OK whether you are or not. Or whether you decide to take a break or not. This is all timeless. This is life happening and that’s all it is. People ask me what I need and I am going to try to tell you. I need your love. Not in words and texts necessarily. I am screening calls and if I don’t answer it’s just because I am busy with my own stuff. But you can send your love with your mind. I will get it. I am getting love from many people right now and I know it because I can feel it. You don’t have to pick up your phone to tell me. Use your mind instead. And while you are at it, send some love to the guy in the car next to you, the baby in the grocery store with her mother or the homeless guy you just walked past or anybody and everybody you encounter. Because it’s all the same. So let me feel your love by your loving first yourself and then your world. This is what I am trying to do in the present. I’ll keep working on my past in this blog. It is a great tool for that. But just know that is what I am doing here. The work is bigger than the blog. You can do the work if you want. This crisis has finally made me wake up and realize it’s time to get on the ball and do my work. So I may or may not come back today. I will post something every day even if it’s just one word just to stay in touch. I am going to try to read a short book I had trouble getting through called The Path is the Goal. I’ve always used books mostly as reference tools. But I want to try to get into this one a little deeper. I am going translate My Feet are Cold. And I am going to try to get some sleep. It’s 5:58 AM on 1/6 and I have not really slept since chemo on 12/29. And I did not sleep again tonight. I’m fine. I’m doing great. I feel energy but I really need to make myself rest today. So use your mind to send love out. That’s what I need.

Here is today’s Lesson 6 from the Course in Miracles. “ I am upset because I see something that is not there.”

A-dios.

Ned Henry January 5, 2021 · (nedhenry.medium.com)

Middle of the night. Nausea kicked in for really the first time. My feet are cold and I can’t warm them up. Socks, more blankets. Nothing works. Tossing and turning. Working to just Let it Be. Let myself have this experience but it is uncomfortable. Stomach churning, feet freezing. I’m tired but can’t nod off. Took Ambien and Benadryl hours ago. Still no sleeep. I am so tired. I haven’t been able to just crash for 12 hours since chemo. It’s a couple of hours here and there a night. And I just want to crash and rest. Stomach too upset. Can’t take more drugs just have to live through this — just be with this. I’m gonna go put a symphony on in the living room and let myself just lie on the massage table and rub my belly. Breathe with me.

That was lovely. I feel a little better. I just laid on my back with my feet up on one of those big exercise balls. Threw a blanket over me and just breathed in The Messiah ( the whole thing). Stomach still churning when I got up. Turned the heat up feet not as cold but the air is dry. I’m gonna go back to bed and see if I can nod off. Don’t have to be at the hospital til 1 PM for a Spine MRI. I’ll be back sometime.

Oh my daily lesson should be posted. Its’ not up yet. Lesson 5 in Course in Miracles. I’ll catch it when it come in. G’night.

It’s around 8 AM and I never did really get back to sleep. My feet are still cold. Stomach not as bad. The anti nausea meds must have kicked in. I had stopped taking them since I didn’t think I needed them anymore. So I just got up and getting my day going. When I first got up though I thought of something I have never tried. I’ve heard about them — just never had any. Flannel Sheets. I think I am going to go to Amazon today and see if I can find some good flannel sheets. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that that would help my cold feet (and so my body’s ability to fall asleep) immensely.

The lesson is here – 6 minutes long – Gonna go get coffee and listen to it. Course in Miracles Lesson 5 — I am Never Upset for the Reason I Think.

Playing Chopin. I remembered something else about Aubrey. I uded to take Qi Gong classes with her. Only time I ever treid that. Was never that good. I’ve always needed lots of “body” work. I’m gonna go see what exercises an old man like me can still do. I used to take lots of yoga classes from different folks all my life until me knees got bad. Deborah was my yoga teacher here in Decatur. I have not been in touch with her in years. I’m sure she doesn’t know I have cancer.

You know all this reminiscing is really about letting myself appreciate my life. I tend to think too much about the things I didn’t get to do or the people I didn’t get to hang out with more. And this is my own damn fault, I tend to let people go and move on. I don’t put the effort in to maintaining close friendships. I have taken them for granted in my entire life. And when I move on, I just let them go. I don’t do Christmas cards. I haven’t wrtten a proper letter in I don’t know how long. In some ways that’s what I want this to be. My acknowledgment of the amazing and generous friends I have had over my life. To remember them, appreciate them, value them. I did not do enough of just that most of the time. I also realize that I have been so lucky in my life that so many interesting and caring and loving people have shown up along the way. I push folks away with my behavior and new ones always seem to come in and fill the gaps. I look back now and want to reach out. Not necessarily to burden someone with my sorry story about cancer but just to let them know that I really did love them, I really did care. I just didn’t know how to express that at that time. And so I want to do that now without intruding. As I write this blog, I am learning just how much this means to me. We’ve talked about me processing my cancer and really processing my life but this morning I realize that I am also appreciating all the people in my life. I’ve been given so much by so many and I haven’t really given that much back yet. I don’t feel guilty about that but I do feel like I want to do better with the time I have left.

So I went back to Santa Cruz for the Fall quarter in 1979 after my time in Alaska. I finally realized the for professional (money making)reasons, I better finish that last quarter of college and get the BA. So I had to take 4 classes and I had to figure out a major. I had taken all the “requirements.” I just kinds took classes in stuff I was interested in. UCSC has these small liberal arts colleges inside a bigger university. It was modeled on the Oxford idea that you could get the advantages of a small college AND a big university at the same place. Not sure the idealism of that really translated to the reality, but I went to the college that “specialized” in liberal arts. There were only 4 colleges then. Cowell (mine), Stevenson (Social Sciences), Crown (Natural Sciences) and Merril. I just tried to google their core course and it came up “Reading ourselves, Reading Our world.” I don’t remember what their specialty is but each college had a required core course and Cowell’s was Western Civ at that time. A 2 year course that was REQUIRED and was taght by an eccentric professor from England Jasper Rose. The fine art calsses were taught by Mary Holmes A reall nice and smart old lady. So I went along for years and years just getting requirements done — you know Oceanography and Marine Biology for the science requirement. Social sciences and Liberal arts weren’t a problem. I knew I was screwed up so I took lots of psychology — abnormal psychology and I took lots of liberal arts — shakespeare, whatever interested me and my interests were pretty broad so when the class schedule came out I picked my 3 courses to take that quarter. Took Latin as my language since I had already had 4 years of it in high school so all I needed was to take one quarter of college Latin and I had my language requirement done. I started high school in the seminary. In those days the Catholics wanted to get them young and get them on the path toward priesthood before they could really figure out the whole sex thing. Well we had a bishop as a pastor and well he was willing to pay my freight to go to the seminary (I was an altar boy and all that) and hell as I look back, this was really a strategy to get out of the house at age 14. And do it legitimately with the support of my parents. So I went to this boarding high school seminary in the Valley called Queen of Angels. I’m sure it is long gone. It was at one of the California Missions — San Fernando as I recall. I could go home on weekends if I wanted but they let me stay if I wanted. I did both. Sometimes I stay on the weekends and play pool for 2 days. No sports teams there — all intramurals. So I got no coaching or anything like that. That hurt me when I tried to make sports teams at the Jesuit high school where I finished the last 2 years. I couldn’t make any of the teams because I hadn’t come up in their freshman and JV sports programs. So things were geting a little weird. Guys jacking off in dorm room at night, I was starting to feel really uncomfortable around some of the guys. And I started smoking and well I think I had a bad attitude and after sophmore year they kicked me out. well what they do is they “ask you to leave” because they think you don’t have a vocation. So I left and moved back home. There were some 13 people living in that house then at 857 S. Bronson Ave, LA, CA 90005. Jack hadn’t been born yet and yes it was CROWDED. But I had started with church Latin so I just kept it up and Latin became my language when I went to Loyola High School on Venice Blvd. Now I was smart enough and we were poor enough that I qualified for a California State scholarship at whatever college I wanted to go to. I was natually accepted at Loyola U (now Loyola Marymount) and Santa Clara — both Jesuit schools. And I applied for UC. You picked the campus you wanted to go to and ranked them. I had read about Santa Cruz and My dad had taken me on a trip to Northern California to look at Santa Cruz and Santa Clara. He wanted me to go to the Catholic college. More expensive by alot but the scholarship covered that and books so it didn’t matter. In those days people were turning down Stanford to go to a place like UCSC to participate in this “experiment” they were trying out. You know the no grades, no test lots of writing thing. (The whole house of cards sort of fell apart when folks realized they couldn’t get into grad school without a GPA). So UCSC was not and IS not a very prestigious university. I never even applied to a place like Stanford or USC. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to stay in LA and didn’t care if I went to an elite school. Needed to get away from the family. So I chose Santa Cruz and well just skated through for 4 years and it became crunch time and I was really getting pressured to figure out a major. I had also fallen in with some of the local Santa Cruz kids and spent more time hanging out with them than students. Guys from like Soquel High school. They knew how to party and I was living off campus and real life was more interesting to me that college life. Reagan was governor and he used that “Shining City on a Hill” line alot. Well that was UCSC. The campus was on a hill looking out over the ocean. It was like above the rest of the world. The local guys called it the Shitty on a Hill. But they accepted me in their crowd and they were probably my closest friends in college. Not at all intellectual — these were mechanics and tradesman. And we did drugs and went camping at big Sur alot and just enjoyed lving life. Needless to say I was NOT a good student. So I left college one quarter short of graduating and I did not have a major. Decided to go traveling but I had no money. Slight problem. But, I could go to Mexico. didn’t cost much, was close, and well after reading Carlos Casteneda books,Carlos CastanedaCarlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998) was an American author. Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan…en.wikipedia.org

I wanted to go find Magic mushrooms in Mexico, learn Spanish and well travel. I did 7 months all over Mexico and Guatemala on $1,000.

Slept on hammocks on beaches, Ate in the markets, would run into other hippies along the way, hang out. I was trying to be a vegetarian then and when I got Oaxaca I found some buddies from Santa Cruz — you know the local guys — in the zocalo. Didn’t even know they were there. They were making hash to sell back in California. They looked at me and I was emaciated. One of the guys claimed he was DB Cooper — the first highjacker. Who knows? I don’t. But they took me in their rented house and fed me steak and eggs for a week and my vegetarian career was done for. But I felt better. It’s hard to maintain a good vegetarian diet in the best of places. On the road in Mexico with no money was not the ideal place to try to do that. It was just beans and rice and tortillas that I was living on. Well I found mushrooms and lots of pot along the way. Was with a girlfriend from France for the first half of the trip but sent her packing back to France when we got to Mexico City on the flip of a coin. I think I talked about that already. And kept going South on my own for the rest of the trip. The best mushrooms were in a place in the Oaxaca mountains called San Jose Pacifico.

I guy I knew in Santa Cruz who had given me my first Mantra told me about it. I got there and well rented — really got had — a small isolated hut in the woods and valleys there. I think it was just an abandoned one room shack. Bought a bunch of mushrooms and went out there to live by myself for a week and eat mushrooms. The only people I saw were shepherd girls who herded their flock of sheep through a couple of times. They snickered at the stupid Gringo haging out there all by himself with the long hair and dirty clothes

with patches all over my jeans.Here’s what I kinda looked like in those days. This was taken in the dorms at UCSC with a local guy named Jack Crick who straddled that line between the local kids and the tourist intellectual invaders from places like LA. Hanging out with couple of guys like Jack was how I got accepted by the locals — even though I met all the criteria to be an outcast from that crowd. Jack became a postman and did it for his whole career and ended up with a USPS pension and did alot of walking his entire life delivering mail in Santa Cruz.

So I’m in the woods in San Jose Pacifico alone and lonely. Caroline was gone now for a couple of weeks and I missed herPsilocybinPsilocybin ( sy-lə-SY-bin ) is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of…en.wikipedia.org

And doing psilocybin mushrooms and getting really really sad. I finally pulled myself together went down to the beach at Puerto Escondido met some hippies and life got less complicated. Moved on eventually — went to all the Mayans ruins, Spent a month in Tulum living on a beach where I rented a place to hang a hammock. Tulum is the only place I have ever been to where both the Sun and the Moon rose out of the ocean. The ruins there were small but really interesting. This was 1973 so it wasn’t touristy at all. I remember when we went past Cancun, it wasn’t even there yet. It was just an abandoned empty beach. So I wanted to keep going and go on to Guatemala but there a a problem. Belize. Look at a map if you want. In Tulum I was close to Guatemala but I had to go through Belize to get there and at that time Belize was sort of well dangerous and not very friendly to hippie types. So I doubled back to Palenque (great ruins there) and went through San Crisobal de las Casas into Guatemala. San Crisobal was a mountain town with a cultural mix of Catholic and (not Mayan — that was more in The Yucattan)Indian culture. Their own language — like in Guatemala. Lots of folks did not speak Spanish. The spoke an Indian dialect. And of course I was speaking Spanish full time by now. Caroline had helped me learn it and with the Latin background it was pretty easy to pick up. Went though Guatemala and made all the way up Tikal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikal

Read about it. Its’ a very interesting place and HUGE. Spent a week there in the jungle. We would walk around and the monkeys would throw sticks at us from the trees above us and then we would climb up to the tp of one of the Mayan temples and look down and those same trees looked like little bushes. We sit on top all day and smoke weed. Psychedelics and weed were my drugs of choice back then. I hated speed and reds (downers) and anything that didn’t wake you up. Some of those local Santa Cruz kids were experimenting with Heroin. I never wanted to get anywhere near that shit. And I never did.

So I got the end of this trip and I was fried. Decided to hightail it back to the US and jammed as fast as I could by bus. I was a mess. Here I am at 857 wearing a guatemala shirt when I got back to LA.

Look at the tension in my shoulders. I was wound up TIGHT as a DRUM. I was lost. I was in total and complete culture shock shut down despair mode. I did not know what the hell I was going to do. I had no job no skills no nothing and I was totally lost. Just home because my folks ALWAYS would take us in, but I didn’t have a clue and my dad didn’t know what to do with me. We had a rose garden in the backyard and I’ll talk about that later but here’s a glimpse of it and in retrospect, a glimpse at the hope for my future. After this I went to that dental student at USC and started a long hard road back to life again.

Chopin mix ended and I put Dave Alvin on. Once it hits on a tune I especially like, I’ll post it. The best drug I ever did was mescaline.MescalineMescaline ( 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted…en.wikipedia.org

Just wanted to mention that this is a drug I woulkd take today if I could ever find it and know that it was pure and safe. I wouldn’t touch acid anymore or anything else. Acid was kind of harsh. Mescaline was sooo mellow. All those locals from Santa Cruz and I went to Big Sur one summer week to a place in Big Sur called Pine Valley. We went in the back end through Carmel Valley (where Joan Baez lives). There were about 2 dozen of us. We camped and hung out hiked and swam and lived life for that wondeful week in nature. Nature is THE very best place to do psychedelics. Well one guy had a baggie of this pink powder. It was synthetic mescaline and it was incredible. We’d dip our fingers in the bag and suck the magic powder off them and wait. As it wore off, we’d come back for more. It was like to a week long trip in the woods so peaceful and calm. So secure. I’d love to have that one more time nut at least I can appreciate it now by rembering how I felt then. But in the end, drugs didn’t really do it for me. There in LA when I was such a mess, I knew I HAD to stop using them or I would die. I was also a smoker this whole time. I didn’t give that up until I was maybe 35 years old. It’s almost 11 now and I have to grab a shower and get to the hospital. I’ll polish this later and find something new to tell you about.

Let find a couple of Dave Alvin tunes for you.

Here’s a really old one. Been to Andersonville in South Georgia. A dreary hopeless place for Union prisoners. There’s a museum there. Google it.

Again My brother Jack turned me on to him. He’s from LA of all places. Jack and I saw him at Eddie’s Attic once. Eddie’s Attic is a really small venue, a club really in Decatur. Also saw Dave Alvin at The Earl with Allen. That’s a bigger venue in Atlanta. I think Allen isn’t quite sure to make of this. I’m not hearing from like I was since I started. It might be too much for him. He’ll come around. I know he loves me. He is a good guitarist. I’ll tell you a funny story about he started playing sometime. Gotta run and get my shit together. Enjoy yourself.

You tube just bounced to a HOT TUNA concert. It’s 2 hours and 45 minutes long. I gotta hear this. Hot Tuna is Jorma and Jack Cassidy from the Aiplane. I used to play a little bit of one of Jorma’s songs on guitar. One of the very few I could pick. Simple picking pattern. He is a great guitar player. I’ll post it and listen to it when I get back.

Continue reading My Cancer Journey 1/5/21 →

Toni Davey29.1K subscribersSUBSCRIBEFrom their 1966 debut album Freak Out!. Frank Zappa wrote the song in 1965 at 1819 Bellevue Avenue, the Echo Park, Los Angeles residence of a methamphetamine chemist referred to by Zappa as “Wild Bill the Mannequin-F@%#ker” after watching news coverage of the Watts Riots. Originally dubbed “The Watts Riot Song,” its primary lyrical themes are racial violence, social injustice, and sensationalist journalism. The musical style—featuring multiple guitar tracks and a harmonica—much more closely resembles electric blues than mainstream rock and roll

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Song

Trouble Every Day

Artist

The Mothers Of Invention

Writers

Frank Zappa

Licensed to YouTube by

UMG (on behalf of Frank Zappa Catalog); Kobalt Music Publishing, LatinAutor, LatinAutorPerf, Sony ATV Publishing, AMRA, and 8 Music Rights Societies

Well I’m about to get UPSET
From watchin’ my TV
Been checkin’ out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean they say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friends
Is anybody’s guessSo I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every dayWednesday I watched the riot…
I seen the cops out on the street
Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff
And chokin’ in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin’ ’round
Seen the smoke & fire
And the market burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burnAnd I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every dayWell you can cool it,
You can heat it…
‘Cause, baby, I don’t need it…
Take your TV tube and eat it
‘N all that phony stuff on sports
‘N all THOSE unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head began to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
The newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they’ll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They’ll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin’ hard and doin’ swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can’t be beatAnd if another woman driver
Gets machine-gunned from her seat
They’ll send some joker with a brownie
And you’ll see it all completeSo I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every dayHey you know something people
I’m not black
But there’s a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I’m not whiteWell, I seen the fires burnin’
And the local people turnin’
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob just turn and bite ’em
And they say it served ’em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it’s the same across the nation
Black & white discrimination
They’re yellin’ “You can’t understand me!”
And all the other crap they hand me
In the papers and TV
‘N all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don’t appeal to him
(No matter if it’s black or white)
Because he’s out for blood tonight
You know we gotta sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many left
To see it really end
‘Cause the fire in the street
Ain’t like the fire in my heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don’t you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain’t no great society
As it applies to you and me
Our country isn’t free
And the law refuses to see
If all that you can ever be
Is just a lousy janitor
Unless your uncle owns a store
You know that five in every four
WON’T amount TO nothin’ more
THAN watch the rats go across the floor
And make up songs about being poor
Blow you harmonica son!

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Zappa Frank
Trouble Every Day lyrics © Munchkin Music Co

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

Thinking lately about what it means to have the right heart, which intimates the question of what it means to tend to one’s own heart rightly, I was reminded of a passage from what may be the loveliest, truest, most quietly transcendent thing ever written about the art of growing older: “The main thing is this,” Grace Paley wrote in 1989, “when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.”

I was reminded, too, of a kindred passage penned two years earlier by another titan of thought and feeling in language: Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931–August 5, 2019), writing in her 1987 masterpiece Beloved (public library) — the novel that soon made her the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize, which she received with a speech of staggering insight into the human heart.

Toni Morrison. Jacket photograph for her debut novel, 1970.

From within the story’s broader meditation on the deepest meaning of freedom and the body as the locus of liberation, Morrison unspools this splendid sentiment from the lips of her protagonist:

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.

A century after Walt Whitman declaimed in Leaves of Grass that “the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and includes and is the soul,” composing his reverent catalogue of body-parts — “head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears… mouth, tongue, lips, teeth… strong shoulders… bowels sweet and clean… brain in its folds inside the skull-frame… heart-valves…” — Morrison writes:

Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face… Love your mouth… This is flesh… Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms… Love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver — love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts… love your heart. For this is the prize.

The Human Heart. One of French artist Paul Sougy’s mid-century scientific diagrams of life. Available as a print.

Beloved remains the rare sort of masterpiece that gives the English language back to itself and your conscience back to itself. Complement this particular fragment with , then revisit Morrison on literature as rebellion and redemption, wisdom in the age of information, the artist’s task in trying times, and the little-known, lovely children’s book about kindness she wrote with her son.

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

In the 1850s, Emily Dickinson’s passionate first love shaped her uncommon body of work for a lifetime to come, shaped the spare and searing poems that would go on animating lives for generations to come.

In the 1950s, Rai Weiss fell in love with a pianist, fell in love with his lover’s passion for music, and went on to invent the colossal instrument that captured the sound of spacetime, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe and earning him the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 1957, after becoming the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Albert Camus hastened to send his childhood teacher a tender letter of gratitude for shaping the spirit and sensibility of the boy that made the man that made the work that won humanity’s highest accolade.

With uncommon insight into these joint fomentations of heart and mind, the great Spanish-American philosopher, poet, essayist, and novelist George Santayana (December 16, 1863–September 26, 1952) takes up the question of how our sensibilities are formed in a portion of Reason in Art — the fourth volume, nestled between Reason in Religion and Reason in Science, of his five-volume 1906 masterwork The Life of Reason; or, the Phases of Human Progress (public domain | public library).

George Santayana, 1880s

Considering the formative infrastructure of our frames of reference and our standards, our likes and dislikes, our aesthetic and moral judgments — that colossal compass of sensibility we call “taste,” by which we orient ourselves to the world, for we only ever orient by our yeas and nays — Santayana writes:

Taste is formed in those moments when aesthetic emotion is massive and distinct; preferences then grown conscious, judgments then put into words, will verbal reverberate through calmer hours; they will constitute prejudices, habits of apperception, secret standards for all other beauties. A period of life in which such intuitions have been frequent may amass tastes and ideals sufficient for the rest of our days. Youth in these matters governs maturity, and while men may develop their early impressions more systematically and find confirmations of them in various quarters, they will seldom look at the world afresh or use new categories in deciphering it. Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves. Never being so deeply stirred again, we remain persuaded that no objects save those we then discovered can have a true sublimity.

Art by Margaret C. Cook from a rare 1913 edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. (Available as a print)

In consonance with the trailblazing astronomer Maria Mitchell’s observation that “whatever our degree of friends may be, we come more under their influence than we are aware,” and with an eye to our criteria for beauty — which apply to beauty in the broad Robinson Jeffers sense of not only aesthetic beauty but intellectual and moral beauty — Santayana adds:

It may be some eloquent appreciations read in a book, or some preference expressed by a gifted friend, that may have revealed unsuspected beauties in art or nature; and then, since our own perception was vicarious and obviously inferior in volume to that which our mentor possessed, we shall take his judgments for our criterion, since they were the source and exemplar of all our own. Thus the volume and intensity of some appreciations, especially when nothing of the kind has preceded, makes them authoritative over our subsequent judgments. On those warm moments hang all our cold systematic opinions; and while the latter fill our days and shape our careers it is only the former that are crucial and alive.

More than a century later, The Life of Reason remains an intellectual lavishment. Complement this particular fragment with Joseph Brodsky on how to develop your taste in reading, W. I. B. Beveridge on the cultivation of scientific taste, and Wordsworth on the artist’s responsibility of elevating taste.

Capricorn New Moon

The Capricorn New Moon puts control and authority issues in the spotlight, indicating that we will undertake a new responsibility or have an opportunity to approach authority figures differently. The Moon’s close conjunction with Pluto adds an edginess and creates more loaded situations, such as a power struggle with another of equal stature. Pluto often brings envy into the picture, so that one person feels “less than” another — even if that’s not true in reality.

The illusion that somebody else is “better than” oneself is hinted at by the Moon’s sextile to Neptune, the planet associated with fantasy and deception. Before we build up another in our imagination, we should remind ourselves to keep a grip on solid ground!

Saturn, can be a help — and in a new way now that he has moved into Aquarius, alongside just and truthful Jupiter. When those planets changed signs in mid December, they heralded a fresh focus on equality and fairness, with a special embrace of humanitarian issues. Jupiter and Saturn now sextile Chiron in Aries, providing a new warmth. The Aquarian breeze sets the scene to demonstrate increased integrity in our choices and actions — an ongoing theme as we continue navigating social issues that can’t be ignored on the international stage. Whether observing strategies to help manage the challenges and aftermath of COVID–19, appreciating how to better embrace the differences that characterize each of us — or any other situation that affects global society and national equilibrium — there is work to be done to come to mutual understandings and thus find agreements that are effective for the collective.

Whilst we may have limited control over governmental directives, we can apply Saturn’s power to our personal realm. So many difficult conflicts break out when people feel pushed too far, are tired, overburdened, or asking too much of themselves. In each day, however, we can find a plateau of Saturnian sanity by giving ever-expansive Jupiter a nudge and saying “enough!” Though we may want to cram extra into our lives — always trying to do, be, and have more — we can also consider that it makes sense to work with a plan. What can we realistically fit into any particular timeframe (24 hours, a week, etc.)? Some satisfaction can be found by sticking to viable personal goals.

Saying “no” may be hard in any new moment! Indeed, Neptune sextile the Moon represents a plethora of appealing opportunities popping up, each one more glittering than the next. But, rather like a selection of fireworks, we don’t have to set them off all at once. We could keep something in reserve for another day, knowing that there will very likely be something just as wonderful ahead if it is desired enough.

Another expression of Neptunian opportunity is the chance to experience greater gentleness and compassion. Although this may sound like an almost saintly, charitable scenario, extending kindness has been shown to help us feel better within ourselves — as documented in Dr. David R. Hamilton’s book The Five Side Effects of Kindness (Hay House, 2017). Hamilton explains how the hormone oxytocin is released in our brain when we are kind — both to others and to ourselves — and how it can be positively contagious, as well. It seems it’s a win win situation for all — unless, of course, our kindness comes loaded with expectations, which might breed resentment if not met. Once again, Saturnian boundaries seem useful.

As Saturn, Jupiter, and Mercury in Aquarius square Mars, and Uranus in Taurus, the best set boundaries and plans may also get upturned at times — or challenged, at least. There is a line of astrological theory that says that oppositions represent challenges from the outside whilst squares refer to a more internal set of conflicting “sides.” (Whether or not that’s accurate, if you meet someone with any planets opposing a square in your own natal chart, you’ll likely feel it both ways!) We may need to be ready to handle the odd moment of conflict as we go, both internally and externally — and remember that a boundary is likely to be worth upholding if it really matters and doesn’t prove too costly.

This article is from the Mountain Astrologer, written by Diana Collis.

Michael Moore Video shot by Congressman Dan Kildee (D-Flint) and sent to Michael Moore as he and other members took cover in the House gallery. You can hear them tell each other to take off their identifying Congressional pins so the terrorists would not know who was a member of Congress. During a coup, they would be the first to be executed.

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

Sun January 10, 2021 (cnn.com)

(CNN)When President Donald Trump signed the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December, so began the 180-day countdown for US intelligence agencies to tell Congress what they know about UFOs.No, really.The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense have a little less than six months now to provide the congressional intelligence and armed services committees with an unclassified report about “unidentified aerial phenomena.”It’s a stipulation that was tucked into the “committee comment” section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which was contained in the massive spending bill.

Pentagon to launch task force to investigate UFO sightingsThat report must contain detailed analyses of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI, according to the Senate intelligence committee’s directive.It should also describe in detail “an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government” and designate an official responsible for that process.Finally, the report should identify any potential national security threats posed by UFOs and assess whether any of the nation’s adversaries could be behind such activity, the committee said.The submitted report should be unclassified, the committee said, though it can contain a classified annex.A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the news to the fact-checking website Snopes.

Congress has long been interested in UFOs

The Pentagon released three short videos in April of last year showing “unidentified aerial phenomena” — clips that the US Navy had previously confirmed were real.The videos, one from 2004 and the other two from 2015, show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.

Newly released incident reports detail US Navy’s ‘UFO’ encountersIt’s still unclear what the objects are, and there’s no consensus on their origin. Some believe they may be drones potentially operated by earthly adversaries seeking to gather intelligence, rather than the extraterrestrials we normally equate with UFOs.In August, the Pentagon announced that it was forming a task force to investigate.Members of Congress and Pentagon officials have long been concerned about the appearance of the unidentified aircraft that have flown over US military bases. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted last June to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide a public analysis of the encounters.But it’s not the first time the Pentagon has looked into aerial encounters with unknown objects. The Pentagon previously studied recordings of such incidents as part of a since-shuttered classified program launched at the behest of former Sen. Harry Reid.That program was launched in 2007 and ended in 2012, according to the Pentagon, because they assessed that there were higher priorities that needed funding.The former head of the program Luis Elizondo told CNN in 2017 that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.”

CNN’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

(Contributed by Sarah Flynn)

By Kate Abnett (reuters.com)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s top diplomat said on Sunday that last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol exposed the dangers of allowing the degradation of democratic values to go unchecked and disinformation to spread on social media.

“What we saw on Wednesday was only the climax of very worrying developments happening globally in recent years. It must be a wake-up call for all democracy advocates,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a blog post.

“Everybody needs to understand that if we accept setbacks after setbacks, even if they seem minor, democracy and its values and institutions can eventually and irreversibly perish,” said Borrell, who speaks on behalf of the 27 EU member states.

President Donald Trump is facing a renewed drive by Democrats to remove him from office after he incited supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, based on the unsubstantiated claim that he lost the Nov. 3 election due to widespread voter fraud.

The resulting assault by rioters left five people dead.

“In case anyone had any doubts, the events in Washington also show that disinformation constitutes a real threat for democracies,” Borrell said. “If some people believe that an election was fraudulent, because their leader has been once and again telling them, they will behave accordingly.”

Borrell called for better regulation on social networks, and said this could not be carried out by the companies themselves.

Twitter permanently cut off Trump’s personal account and access to his nearly 90 million followers late on Friday, citing the risk of further incitement of violence. Trump has repeatedly used Twitter and other platforms to claim the election result was fraudulent and to share other conspiracy theories.

The EU’s executive Commission last month proposed rules to clamp down on fake news on social media. These would force large online platforms to tackle illegal content and intentional manipulation of platforms to influence elections and public health, or face fines up to 6% of global turnover.

Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by John Chalmers and Raissa Kasolowsky