Shame Shame Shame

 Again, I was knocked by my back. I think the problem comes from throwing out the trash and a complete lack of willpower on my end. I got home around 12:30. An hour later I was asleep and that lasted until around 6 pm. Shameful.

 

Not writing done, but I did get the email cleared out a bit. Some interesting bits follow.

Another rejection for "Problem Solving":

Thank you for sending us your work. We appreciated the chance to read it. Unfortunately, we could not find a place for it in our upcoming issues.

We wish you the best of luck in finding a home for your work.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Southern Humanities Review

Good history lesson in Jonathan V. Last's ‘America First’ Is a Lie (The Bulwark). Very good one, actually, since it seems Americans do not know their own history. That it also coincides with my views is not a mark against it! Everything Trump wants to get rid of - the UN, WHO, WTO, NATO - has served to protect us. The business of America is business, said Calvin Coolidge, and letting Putin or China get control of the G7, G20, and the WTO is not good for American business. So long as we have the money, so long as the dollar is what the world runs on, we have security. Trump keeps talking about our having an ocean between us and Europe was an out of date concept by 1917, dead by 1941, and fossilized with the first ICBM. Give the rest of the world a reason to dump the dollar for buying oil, and we are on the road to irrelevance.
 

Oligarchs like monopoly; they control us that way; they keep making pikes of money. I did not expect to see my thesis make concrete in Donald Trump Is Going to Ruin Legal Marijuana (The New Republic), but here it is:

Trump’s actual choice is simple: He will either embrace loose regulation that favors large, corporate producers or he will completely abandon federal legalization and shift back to the socially conservative policies at the heart of Project 2025. The X factor here is likely Elon Musk.

Musk has seized unprecedented authority since election night, and would certainly have Trump’s ear on an issue like marijuana legalization. Musk—reportedly a raging kethead and regular psychedelic user who tries his absolute hardest to “win the internet” every day, sometimes by attempted weed-related humor—has expressed support for legalization in the past, infamously smoking (but not inhaling) on The Joe Rogan Show in 2018. Musk unfortunately speaks to the young, low-propensity manosphere electorate to which Donald Trump has grown to endear himself, and the president has realized that. One can imagine that the Silicon Valley alum currently destroying the federal government would jump at the opportunity to fully corporatize the weed industry under the guise of legalization.

This would look like an even worse version of the current landscape: Large, well-endowed “multistate operators,” or MSOs—vertically integrated corporate weed companies—sweep in and dominate the market. They buy out and kill smaller competition, create the illusion of choice for consumers, and focus only on creating the most potent weed, and as much of it as possible, which is not in the best interest of consumers. Most importantly, a lack of federal involvement in marijuana legalization would make it even more difficult than it presently is to ensure that marijuana products are adequately tested and regulated to the same standards that any other product is.

Now, far from that subject to religion, Aristotle Papanikolaou's Fasting: What’s the Point?

If the answer to “Why fast?” is a set of rules that Christians must follow to earn their way to heaven, then fasting is nonsensical because it treats our relationship with God like a contract: if I do X, Y, and Z, then I have fulfilled the terms of the agreement and have earned my way to heaven; if not, then I go to hell. God does not want a transactional relationship; we cannot treat God like a checklist. Heaven is not a place; it is God’s very life. It is communion with God.

The French philosopher Simone Weil once said that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Fasting is about attention. It helps us fight against forgetfulness and endless distractions. It keeps God in our awareness, which gives our relationship with God a chance to grow and deepen. It’s about remembering all that God has done for us in Christ, which is why, in the Orthodox tradition, fasting correlates with celebrating essential moments in Christ’s life (Lent, Christmas, Wednesday/Friday, etc.). In remembering all Christ has done for us, we remind ourselves that what’s possible is a relationship of love with a God who never stops loving us and simply wants us to figure out a way to love God back.

One thing is sure: love cannot grow or deepen when we forget the Other, when we are not paying attention.

I am trying hard with Lent to stay on the fast. Work gives me a free meal and I do eat meat there. It feels less ostentatious to just go with the flow. However, even then I have in mind what is the season and what is its purpose. Mindfulness is something I learned from Orthodox Christian writers while I was in prison, long before I heard about it in my group therapy sessions. I guess that is why I listen, thinking, yes, I have heard that from before; it is good advice, over a millennia old in the Orthodox Church. Used to be, I was in such a hurry, so bloody impatient to get where I thought I was meant to go, then ever so ready to just get out of this life, that I was not mindful, instrumental is closer to my thinking in those days. I think and feel better about myself and existence now.

I am listening to more Joe Cocker than I have listened to in 30 years. She was Linda's favorite, and one of TJ's. Maybe there is, finally, scar tissue with those two.

 

I am not interested in the State of the Union; only in what I am not accomplishing right now. There will be enough time tomorrow to read what stupidity happened in Washington tonight.

sch