Another slow day to get moving. Seriously, this cramping my arms needs to be over and done.
I went to work on my email. As of 5:43 pm, it is still not done.
Rent paid and bank account drained.
Checked on my pay, and it was not showing up. After I paid rent, I called KH. He did not get the revised "Road Tripping." I do not know why he did not call me and tell me this when I made reference to it in the email. He got to hear me bitch about electronic depositing of pay.
W thinks I should seek reinstatement. I do not see the sense of it, but I did not want to blow her off. She talked about my self-esteem. She is the second person to talk about my self-esteem. Paul S said the blog entries made my life sound grim. The PO seems to think there is something wrong with me not wanting to move; as if it may be my mental health is suffering.
So, dear reader, if you do exist, and you do read this, let me ask: do I sound despondent in what I write here?
And also let me ask: do I sound like my self-esteem is impaired?
I put out more job applications. The current job is not going to do it for an income.I have an interview Monday, but it is an open call for interviews.
T2 sent me an email. She has been depressed and back to work. Her dogs died.
CC has not called today.
I talked to the attorney about Dad's trust. Things are progressing.
For dinner, I had spaghetti. I finally perfected the method!
Here is one of those things that Muncie does that I do not see elsewhere: Madjax Offers Unique Spring Workshops for All Ages,
Building on the success of their summer and fall programs, Educators in Residence will return with spring programming for older students and families:
- Lights, Music, Plants … Action! with Jenifer Pierce of Northside Middle School will teach students to experiment with plant growing conditions including soil, music, lights, and water.
- Design & Print Your Own Stickers with Meghan Anacker of Alexandria Community Schools will instruct students in the basics of using the Canva design platform, then creating and printing their own personalized stickers.
- Pet Productions with James Lodl of Delaware Community Schools will teach students to use digital fabrication tools in the Madjax Design Lab to create personalized pet accessories.
“Our spring programs are an accessible, low-cost way for families and adults to be curious and explore different ways of making,” said Kyra Zylstra, Initiatives Director. “We’re especially proud of the connections our Makers foster with the community while hosting these events, and we invite you to experience the fun of making for yourself at Madjax.”
I knew some guys who spent time in the DC jail. Like every big city jail, it was a mess. HuffPost has this headline today: House Republicans Launch Investigation Into DC Jail's Treatment Of Capitol Riot Defendants. I wonder if the House will give any attention to the Blacks residing in the DC jail.
I really, really, really hate the abomination called daylight savings time. This winter seems to have been troublesome for me because of daylight savings time. NPR gives advice for how to survive: These 6 tips can help you skip the daylight saving time hangover. Best solution: get rid of it.
The Brisbane Times sent out its book review newsletter. I read the interview with American writer, Paul Auster, America built by ‘religious fanatics who promoted armed struggle’: Paul Auster:
Bloodbath Nation contains no such ambiguity. The long-form essay sets out to answer a direct question: why is the US the most violent country in the Western world? “This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a writer,” Auster admits.
The essay contains a number of shocking statistics. There are 393 million guns owned by Americans. More than 100 Americans are killed by bullets every day. Americans are also 25 times more likely to be shot than individuals residing in other wealthy, developed nations. Each year, approximately 40,000 Americans are killed by gunshot wounds.
“Fear coupled with violence, with bullets as the weapon of first resort, is a combination that runs through every chapter of [American] history,” Auster explains. That bloody history began in the early 1600s, when America was still a sparsely populated collection of white settlements, scattered among 13 distant outposts of the British Empire.
“American society was built by religious fanatics who promoted armed struggle, conflict, war, violence, annihilation, and what we today would call genocide,” says Auster. He notes how the Declaration of Independence that the Continental Congress approved on July 4, 1776, announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. The second paragraph states that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Namely: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I have not been following the book selling lists in this country, so I do not know how well this book has gone over here. It is making a splash overseas. And I like Auster's idea of what needs to be done for our country:
Auster believes peace will not come to the US unless an honest conversation is had about the country’s violent and racist past. Right now, that doesn’t seem very likely though. “America has entered a new, previously unimagined territory, and [nobody] has the slightest clue about what will happen next,” he says.
From The Baffler I found Drinking from the Original Fountain: Bringing The Illiad into Arabic , and, I who have no time for curiosity and yet think I should not cut off that same curiosity, gave it a quick read. Fun, if you like to read the history behind a work, to see more than what we are told to see.
The more I read ancient or modern verse, the more my appreciation for The Iliad grew, because while it is the oldest in age, it is the most modern in splendor, the most elegant in narrative, the greatest in clarity, the widest in scope, and the most eloquent in all aspects. The elite poets wove their verse after its manner and didn’t come close to its stature. They drew water from its sea, and their own seas grew full, but they never exhausted their source.
So I said to myself: our Arabic language deserves a version of this rare gem. Indeed, our language is more deserving of it than those of the various urban societies that have acquired it; for there is nothing in the poetry of the Europeans or in European languages which offers it the means to flourish in as beautiful a dress as that which our language is equipped to provide; for Greek poetry is in a language close to the natural constitution of the world (fītra), much like our own language. And the subject of The Iliad is an inquiry into the Jahiliya of a people much like our own Jahiliya. The verse of our ancestral poets, in its wisdom and poetic description, is more in accord with that of The Iliad than the verse of any other poetic tradition. And so my spirit called upon me to bring the poem into Arabic, though I knew the gravity of the task, the difficulty of the path, and the length of the hardship. I said: that pleasure shall take up my free time, for if God revealed and clarified the purpose, I would ease the text’s reception for readers. If not, I would exercise my spirit, the poem being excellent for that purpose. I was determined, upon composing its first verse, to not abandon it until I should arrive at its end.
And the task of adapting, of translating, has its own wonders:
I had with me some of what I had brought into Arabic of the first and second nashīds, so I went back to scrutinize this bit and to compare it with the original. I found inconsistencies which obliged me to correct and revise. I did not refrain from changing a verse or two, and many times I recomposed some small sections in their entirety, but I did not have to do this kind of restructuring in the rest of the nashids, unless it was to replace a phrase or hemistich with another or to change the rhyme to another one, just like everyone who composes verse. Besides that, I devoted myself to understanding the verse as best as I could before writing it down.
I grew up in a city where the UAW union halls were landmarks, so I could not help myself notice United Auto Workers on Brink of Unprecedented Leadership Upset. One odd thing about Muncie is that for all their GM factories, I have never known where were their UAW union halls.
“A Fain victory is the difference between solidarity unionism — rank-and-file unionism — and the company unionism that we’ve been experiencing in the UAW for several decades now,” Scott Houldieson, a leader of Unite All Workers for Democracy, told The Intercept. “Look no further than the last set of negotiations when GM workers were on strike. There was a complete information blackout. The workers on the picket line knew what they wanted out of the contract: no more tiers, no more pensions bleeding dry, and bringing back cost-of-living adjustments. There was none of that messaging coming out of negotiations from past leadership.”
For the first time, members of the UAW voted directly to select their president through a one-member, one-vote system. The switch away from the delegate system followed federal oversight to keep an eye on the scandal-plagued union and momentum from rank-and-file members seeking to democratize the electoral process. In light of the auto union’s failure to clean shop, an independent monitor was appointed by a federal judge to ensure election integrity.
Ah, how the mighty have fallen, to be under federal supervision, as if the UAW was the Teamsters. What would Walter Reuther think?
Interesting Literature published 10 of the Best Poems about Knowledge and Wisdom, and I actually read 2 of them. Maybe if I had studied them, I would be wiser. From the same source came The Best Poems about Tolerance and Acceptance.
Cutleaf 3.05 is out. I mean to read its fiction selection, The House Always Wins by Susan Streeter. I like its opening paragraph:
As she pulls up to the house for the first time, Tess spots the white goat. It stands in the fenced-in side yard, chewing on tufts of weeds and watching as she steps out of the car. Grinding its mouth in a circular motion, the goat quickly loses interest in her. She debates whether to pet it, but veers toward the house.
Long River Review published 3 Fantasy Quotes That Will Make You Think, and I really the Emily St. Mandel quote.
Balance that Mandel quote against The Virtual Condition by Alexa Hazel published by The Point:
In his recent book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, philosopher David Chalmers argues for the relevance of the simulation hypothesis. The best of simulation technology is advancing quickly. It’s more difficult than ever to distinguish the virtual from the ordinary. Chalmers estimates that we’ll be able to engineer indistinguishable virtual realities within a century, which makes it more plausible that we already have. We may already be simulated, sim-living, say, in one of the many simulations that Elon Musk is running to counterfactually model his rise as sim-god. The fact that a metaverse is being built seems to suggest that we’re already in one. How would we know? If simulators are more likely to simulate people who think about simulations, then an interest in Reality+ may be a sim sign. If things seem absurd or inexplicable with some regularity, and if no one else seems to notice or pay it much mind, this may be a sim sign.
“Virtual reality is genuine reality,” says Reality+. The virtual worlds we create are just as real as our world, which, for all we know, may be a virtual world. It’s not only the case that VR is real reality, according to Chalmers. It’s also the case that our lives in VR worlds can be in principle just as good, if not better, than our lives in ordinary reality.
Pitchfork picked Prince's best album of the Nineties, The Gold Experience. I was not listening back then, so I need to check it out.
I cannot explain reading The eagle, the eaglet and the two grenadiers, other than the merest curiosity at the title, but I did learn Rostand wrote another play beside Cyrano.
I emailed the Po my pay stub and work schedule. One thing accomplished. No money for laundry, so I am doing it by hand. Also, I forgot to call Social Security.
Now I need to fill out blog posts.
6:51 pm.
From The Millions: Back to Plimoth Plantation:
Casey Figueroa, who worked at the museum as an interpreter for years before leaving in 2015, was quoted by NPR as saying, “There’s this unwillingness to acknowledge that times have changed. The Native side of the Plymouth story has so much more to offer in terms of the issues we’re facing today, from immigration to racism and climate change, but they went backwards instead. They totally blew it.” It’s a truly logical take. While, in the current state of the museum, I wholeheartedly support the boycott announced last July, and wish I’d known about it before I visited myself, I also think we all have a lot to lose if the site continues to replicate the injustices of the period it captures.
I have been much of our lack of Native Americans in Indiana, but I think that we lack a Plimoth Plantation is not a bad thing.
“Colonel Tom” is rejected, again:
Thank you for offering your creative work for consideration to Fiction. On behalf of Ignatian's editorial team, we regret to inform you that we do not have a place for your submission, "Colonel Tom" at this time.
Please do not feel discouraged by this, or by any momentary setback. Thank you again for letting us see your work, and for your interest in our magazine.
Best wishes,Ignatian staff
I knocked off a few more posts and survived a crash.
A friend asked how it was I joined the Orthodox Church, and I mentioned the Desert Fathers. She wanted to know more, so I did some looking and found some items online and free:
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