Supporting effective & meaningful personal growth through spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical balance.
It's just us (wild) folks.
America's dog; the coyote!
(Let's stop killing them!)
These are such good quotes that I just keep them
here to remind me of some wisdoms I may forget day-to-day. So, I may
add to them now and then but in the main, just leave them to keep my
brain happy. c
"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." William James
"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have."
Garrison Keillor
"I was determined to spend my life seeking Truth while being spared the company of those who claimed to have found it." (attributed to) John Henry Faulk
'I don't know, I just work here."
Joseph, Beautiful Painted Arrow, Real (in response to any spiritual inquiry)
"I am a member of 'The Church of There's-Something-Going-on-Here!'" coyote
He was constantly narrating his own actions in a writerly way, in his head. "I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued." George Orwell
(Me, Garrison Keillor & George, and probably a million
other
writers on the planet. "Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." William James
"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have."
Garrison Keillor
"I was determined to spend my life seeking Truth while being spared the company of those who claimed to have found it." (attributed to) John Henry Faulk
'I don't know, I just work here."
Joseph, Beautiful Painted Arrow, Real (in response to any spiritual inquiry)
"I am a member of 'The Church of There's-Something-Going-on-Here!'" coyote
He was constantly narrating his own actions in a writerly way, in his head. "I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued." George Orwell
And finally this one:
A nation of sheep will beget
a
government of wolves. Ed Murrow
Black lives matter
&
Let's take our country back in 2020 and make it BETTER!
July
28th, Men's Circle, 6 PM
August
11th, Men's Circle, 6 PM
25th Men's Circle, 6 PM
"We're Managing Wildlife"
the Trappers say;
We say:
Ban Trapping,
And "Manage" Trappers!
• • •
Help us support these activist organizations:
The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
www.nmwild.org
...and ProjectCoyote
www.projectcoyote.org
Notes
(From Coyote)
Doubts (Revised)
Fair Reflections
There Are Such Things
About Kurt
Shopping (Revised)
LBJ's Journey, and our own.
The Paradox of Sentimentality
The Evolution and Dissoluttion of the BMS Colorado Fairs
Fed up with Football (Revised)
A Note and a Rant
Note from Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)
We Are Still Young....and Foolish
Where Have You Been All My Life? (Revised)
Considering Beginnings
A Hobby
Return with me
I Usually Avoid
Just Say No!
What's in a Name?
Men's Page
MMen's Health, Mine anyway!
(Up-dated, June 16th.)
Once again.
You Americans and your Guns!
Background Checks, the Political Manipulations
Fall Out
Books
Reading a classic!
(and re-reading everything else.)
The best political historian I know is Doris Kearnes Goodwin and her 2018 book, "Leadership in Turbulent Times" scores high as one of her best. I hope Joe Biden has read it! If not I hope someone gets him a copy.
For a "fun" and informative read, try "Archaeological Oddities" by Ken Feder. This one explores the many archaeological sites in the U.S. that have been claimed to be everything they are not....as in "....clear evidence of much earlier habitation then Columbus..." "....evidence of alien visitors".....noted "spiritual portals", etc., etc. Feder is a funny and expert skeptic and his investigations will clear up all those TV show claims of "Who created these STRANGE sites?" (You know how those go, complete with dramatic music...). I think you will enjoy his debunking style.
When I heard the Terry Gross interview with the authors of “A Very Stable Genius” (Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig) months ago (Fresh Air, NPR) I could hardly wait to get the book. It took weeks of waiting to get through the line of readers who were ahead of me but it finally showed up at the “Hold” shelf this week….and it took me about two hours to return it, a 60 mile round trip, not just a turn around in the library itself.
Why?
By the time I was into the first 30 or so pages I was already angry and leafing through the rest of the book, checking chapter heads and picking out paragraphs here and there, didn’t serve to calm me down a bit. Anyone who checks out a reliable news source (N.Y. Times, NPR, BBC, CNN, etc., etc.) knows damned well just how insane, there’s no other word for it this current occupant of the White House has, and is, showing himself to be.
Add to that the in-your-face cowardness, greed, and corruption evidenced by his Congressional supporters, ALL Republicans, “all” except Mitt Romney that is, have proven themselves to be and this book spells out the depths to which our government has sunk, dragged down by this, and Hillary was absolutely accurate to call them this, this collection of “deplorables” (I’d not be so kind and call them “despicables”) and it’s enough to create a churning rage in the heart of any American who has cared about what we have been at least TRYING to become since our founding.
The “good part”? The stirring of the “pot” that this outrage has produced has brought ALL the scum to the surface not only in government of course, but throughout our society. And as NEVER before things ARE changing.
(Note: one of the most regressive states, Mississippi, is redesigning its state flag to remove the Confederate symbol in it.
Note: A black poet has written an article published in the N.Y. Times (June 26th) and in it she says, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?” By Caroline Randall Williams
Note: Princeton is removing the name of one of our most well known presidents from one of it’s most famous “schools”, the Woodrow Wilson School of Economics is no more. Wilson was a well-known racist who removed many black civil servants from their positions in D.C. when he came into office. He also supported the KKK.
There is much more. It’s going on now all over our country and I believe that THIS TIME, real change IS taking place, not fast enough, not big enough YET, but it’s happening…..and it has never happened this way before. This is more than token “integration” this is societal change…..in WHITE PEOPLE! And now what must happen is a change in our federal government. The “deplorable” must be removed from wherever they are hiding, whether the halls of Congress or the statehouse in Michigan or the police force in Minneapolis…..no matter which rock they have scuttled under, they must be exposed and removed…..and of course, the chief of the vermin has to be gotten out……fast!
So, I couldn’t read the book, that’s the short of it. I already know this insult in the White House is literally crazy. But that’s too nice a word. A “crazy” person might be treatable, might have some redeemable qualities that a therapist (for example) can encourage….in other words, any of us might be able to relate to a crazy person and want to help them with their illness. Not with the one in the White House.
If you need to read the book to try to find some bit of relatable humanity in the man, perhaps it’s worth your time and effort. I confess I have neither. I just want him gone so that we can begin to patch, rebuild….try to bring back to life, the soul of the dream this country was founded upon.
Yes, I know the structure has been rotting for some time, that’s obvious, and also “obvious” is the fact that this insult to humanity has roots that go deep and has been growing for some time over our long history…..and I also know, believe at least, that now we can pull all of this up by those roots and begin to grow something good.
For this, at least, we can be thankful; that this abomination has exposed those American roots, just as the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed those roots there in the 1930s.
We’ve got a long slog in front of us to clean up all the lies. It will take a generation or perhaps more, but we have a start now. Marches are fine, protests are needed, but at last we need more, and it SEEMS to be happening. Again, too slow, maybe not deep enough….but it, seems to me, that tectonic plates are shifting and we can no longer try, nor should we try, to stop this shaking of our foundations so that we can next build something that is worthwhile for EVERYONE, so that our national “motto” of Out of many, ONE! can really mean something.
OK, I know this is a “rant”, needs editing for content, length, grammar, et. al. and yes, I’ll probably cool down after a spell and take this all down to a simmer, but here it is and I’m leaving it as is……I’m angry, and we should all be. (Those DESPICABLES in Congress aren’t and that should be enough to set us all off. They ARE supposed to be working for us after all.)
They did nothing about guns after all the kids were murdered, nothing about policing now that we see how racist some of our police departments have operated, nothing about throwing this insult out of the White House. It’s up to us, up to that WE THE PEOPLE part……you and me.
Before our library reopened I had run out of interesting books, not that our bookshelves aren’t weighted down with them, and for some reason I found myself thinking about “Around the World in 80 Days”, I have no idea why….remember that one? In the movie David Niven was the lead and it seems in my memory to have been a fun movie……but it wasn’t available on Netflix or Amazon so I checked out the library for the book and ordered a copy.
Last week I got it,….it was a well used paper back and I plunged right in. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read Jules Verne, I’m sure I must have but that would have been back in high school. And who remembers that?
Perhaps I only saw the movie. ….but now I’ve discovered the book, and what a book! I journeyed though it in about three days and found it to be marvelous!
To begin with it’s a great story and incredibly well done. What Verne did with it was amazing especially for its time…well, for THIS time too. Verne was a perfectionist when it came to setting up his settings, unlike H. G. Wells who delved into science fiction and didn’t bother with basing anything on fact, Verne built on fact by choice. In “….80 days” his calculations about setting up the route were based on real verifiable evidence that such an undertaking could be accomplished.
For every country traveled through by his characters Verne writes about the native trees, plants, people, customs, food…..he takes the reader there…and of course it’s all based on research and factual discovery. Imagine how this was experienced by readers when it was first published in 1872.
You will be amazed by this piece. The movie, and the 1937 radio re-creation by Orson Wells*, didn’t come close to replicating its magic!
*Which was broadcast one week before his infamous “War of the Worlds” caused a national upheaval.
NOTE: I just finished Matthew Goodman's "Eighty Days" which is the ACTUAL undertaking of the journey that Verne fictionalized about. It took place in 1889-1890 and featured two New York reporters, Nellie Bly vs Elizabeth Bisland racing each other for rival news sources (The New York World vs Cosmopolitan) and going in opposite directions. What a movie this woud have made! Nellie Bly (not her real name but a name that would live far beyond her life span) was an amazing woman. I won't go into the details except to say that her story is well worth the time you'll spend in reading about it.
You’ve heard of a “slow news day”. Usually a Sunday is automatically labeled with this one. And the slowest news “week” is considered to be the one between Christmas and New Years.
So it was with some dismay that this was the very time that fate decided that this combo would be a perfect challenge for Gene Weingarten to make the subject of his book “One Day”….and it was “fate” and not some gauntlet flung down by a colleague that caused December 28th to be the subject matter for the book.
It was New Year’s Day in 2013 when Weingarten and friend Tom Shroder sat in a restaurant in D.C. and by using 12 slips of paper to chose a month, with 31 slips to chose a day and with 21 slips to chose a year between 1969 and 1989 (“ We wanted a date far enough in the past to feel like history and have a future to explore, but not so far back that living witnesses would be hard to find.”)
The day turned out to be December 28th, 1986 and that day, one considered to be one of those “slow news” days in the middle of a “slow news week” turned up stories that ranged from one beginning at 12:01 AM in Charlottesville, Virginia all the way to the ending at 11:55 PM in Oakland, California. Tragic ones, happy ones and all of those in-between tales that make up every single day in lives everywhere, from a crooked cop to the Rolling Stones, fascinating stories you will want to read…and best of all, each has a follow-up so no story ends with what happened that day. (Over 500 interviews contributed to the narrative.)
Weingarten has done a masterful job (with a lot of (acknowledged) help. This is a winner!
Yes, sometimes I read about two books a week (cause I'm sort of burned out on writing right now and I like to read at least one good one a week) and I just finished a REALLY "good one"!
This time I picked up two winners, the "Eighty Days" noted above and the one I just finished and really didn't think would be worth my time (boy was I wrong) "The Last Time Around Cape Horn" by William F. Stark. The subtitle is, "The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir".
I'm not much on seafaring stories (I once got seasick on a very short jaunt off Santa Monica to whale watch, so not a fan of shipping out) but this one is marvelous! I finished it in two days because I was caught up in the drama and the education I got about big sailing ships from reading Stark's clear style and story-telling skill.
Don't miss out on a fantastic read. This is not a "novel", this is the real thing!
I read a lot of history and biography and one of the best is a combination of the two by Joseph J. Ellis, “The Quartet, Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789”. The main actors are Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, and John Jay…..and if you’d like to know how we got here from 1776 you don’t want to pass this one up.
It’s too bad Justice Scalia didn’t have this one to read in his lifetime, it might have made a difference in his “originalist” philosophy when it came to viewing both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (there are many who should read it now, including the 2nd Amendment boosters who James Madison, who wrote that one, would beg to differ with over the definitions of its wording.)
There’s no way to boil down all that this book covers but the main theme is that without these four principles (and their supporting cast) we would have wound up as a collection of fiefdoms instead of a United States. It took a lot of work to get us from one to the other and the story is still a work in process.
One quote won’t sum it up but I think this one is worth reflecting upon; “Jefferson spoke for all the most prominent members of the revolutionary generation in urging posterity not to regard their political prescriptions as sacred script. It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of ‘original intent.’ To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, they did not want to be embalmed.” Ellis
To what extent did James Comey cost Hillary the 2016 election? His book; “Higher Loyalty, Truth, Lies, and Leadership” doesn’t address that question. What it DOES talk about is why he chose to re-open the Clinton email investigation just days before the election. That’s just one issue. Most of the book is about how the FBI must stay separate from policy and politics, how that was respected by Bush and Obama and how the current resident of the White House (he whose name shall not be spoken) tried, and continues to try to sabotage that necessity, and if that doesn't work, to destroy public confidence in the agency.
I finished this book in two days, it’s not one you can put down, well written, well argued and insightful it will also confirm what you, and we, have thought about both Bush and Obama and the abomination. (Yes, it IS just as you thought and we’ve all had good reason to think so.)
Worth your time.
I wish I had read this book before Christmas; I might have been better disposed to deal with the “crowd”. My introverted self went into some sort of existential panic about having to socialize. But, Christmas came and went, and so did the ‘crowd” and I was gifted with this little book, Mr. Dickens and His Carol. I had finished all the books I’d selected to read during the holidays and was left with this one so I thought I’d give it a go. I was struck immediately that the author had so beautifully captured the times, the mid 1800s, by the language usage common in England. I mean, that had to take an enormous amount of research. That part alone was amazing. And then there was the story. This is a novel by the way, loosly based on Dicken's life.
The story arc was wonderfully done, and the whole book written with such heart, that when I was three quarters of the way through and had paused for a time Elizabeth asked me how I liked the book and I said, “I can’t answer right now, I’m too emotional.”
Yes, that good.
I wrote to the author, Samantha Silva and told her that her writing ranked with that of Urrea and Doig. She responded with thanks and it turned out that these were some of her favorites too and in fact she had experienced a workshop with Urrea some time ago.
The short of it, this fictional take on Dickens is a bit of a masterpiece. I think you will like it just as I did.
It’s a good thing I didn’t get hold of Roger Welsch’s book “The Reluctant Pilgrim, A skeptic’s journey into Native Mysteries” before writing my own, ("Becoming Coyote, A Journey of Enlightenment…Mostly".) because I would have been accused of plagiarism (by me at least).
Chapter after chapter in Roger’s book parallel my own, not word for word, but at least concept by concept. I DID borrow, actually quote, one of Roger’s ideas. It came as a result of a phone call to him which might have taken place right about the time he was writing “Reluctant…” about 2014 or so. In that call, a rare one since Roger is phone-call adverse, he told me his granddaughter had commented to him that she thought he was a “…..member of the church of ‘There’s Something-going-on-here.’” (How did I get his number? Obviously the result of “Something-going-on-here!”)
When Roger related that to me I immediately recognized that that was exactly the “church” I belonged to and that the idea of Something-going-on summed up my thinking as well. I’ve used it ever since. (Thanks Roger!)
I’ve tried to contact Roger, even re-opened my Facebook account temporarily only to get in touch with him (I don’t “do” social media) but to no avail…so I’ve let go of the idea.
“Reluctant” is a good one and if you are seeking any kind of spiritual path, this is the read for you….ESPECIALLY if you’re a skeptic.
(and re-reading everything else.)
The best political historian I know is Doris Kearnes Goodwin and her 2018 book, "Leadership in Turbulent Times" scores high as one of her best. I hope Joe Biden has read it! If not I hope someone gets him a copy.
For a "fun" and informative read, try "Archaeological Oddities" by Ken Feder. This one explores the many archaeological sites in the U.S. that have been claimed to be everything they are not....as in "....clear evidence of much earlier habitation then Columbus..." "....evidence of alien visitors".....noted "spiritual portals", etc., etc. Feder is a funny and expert skeptic and his investigations will clear up all those TV show claims of "Who created these STRANGE sites?" (You know how those go, complete with dramatic music...). I think you will enjoy his debunking style.
When I heard the Terry Gross interview with the authors of “A Very Stable Genius” (Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig) months ago (Fresh Air, NPR) I could hardly wait to get the book. It took weeks of waiting to get through the line of readers who were ahead of me but it finally showed up at the “Hold” shelf this week….and it took me about two hours to return it, a 60 mile round trip, not just a turn around in the library itself.
Why?
By the time I was into the first 30 or so pages I was already angry and leafing through the rest of the book, checking chapter heads and picking out paragraphs here and there, didn’t serve to calm me down a bit. Anyone who checks out a reliable news source (N.Y. Times, NPR, BBC, CNN, etc., etc.) knows damned well just how insane, there’s no other word for it this current occupant of the White House has, and is, showing himself to be.
Add to that the in-your-face cowardness, greed, and corruption evidenced by his Congressional supporters, ALL Republicans, “all” except Mitt Romney that is, have proven themselves to be and this book spells out the depths to which our government has sunk, dragged down by this, and Hillary was absolutely accurate to call them this, this collection of “deplorables” (I’d not be so kind and call them “despicables”) and it’s enough to create a churning rage in the heart of any American who has cared about what we have been at least TRYING to become since our founding.
The “good part”? The stirring of the “pot” that this outrage has produced has brought ALL the scum to the surface not only in government of course, but throughout our society. And as NEVER before things ARE changing.
(Note: one of the most regressive states, Mississippi, is redesigning its state flag to remove the Confederate symbol in it.
Note: A black poet has written an article published in the N.Y. Times (June 26th) and in it she says, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?” By Caroline Randall Williams
Note: Princeton is removing the name of one of our most well known presidents from one of it’s most famous “schools”, the Woodrow Wilson School of Economics is no more. Wilson was a well-known racist who removed many black civil servants from their positions in D.C. when he came into office. He also supported the KKK.
There is much more. It’s going on now all over our country and I believe that THIS TIME, real change IS taking place, not fast enough, not big enough YET, but it’s happening…..and it has never happened this way before. This is more than token “integration” this is societal change…..in WHITE PEOPLE! And now what must happen is a change in our federal government. The “deplorable” must be removed from wherever they are hiding, whether the halls of Congress or the statehouse in Michigan or the police force in Minneapolis…..no matter which rock they have scuttled under, they must be exposed and removed…..and of course, the chief of the vermin has to be gotten out……fast!
So, I couldn’t read the book, that’s the short of it. I already know this insult in the White House is literally crazy. But that’s too nice a word. A “crazy” person might be treatable, might have some redeemable qualities that a therapist (for example) can encourage….in other words, any of us might be able to relate to a crazy person and want to help them with their illness. Not with the one in the White House.
If you need to read the book to try to find some bit of relatable humanity in the man, perhaps it’s worth your time and effort. I confess I have neither. I just want him gone so that we can begin to patch, rebuild….try to bring back to life, the soul of the dream this country was founded upon.
Yes, I know the structure has been rotting for some time, that’s obvious, and also “obvious” is the fact that this insult to humanity has roots that go deep and has been growing for some time over our long history…..and I also know, believe at least, that now we can pull all of this up by those roots and begin to grow something good.
For this, at least, we can be thankful; that this abomination has exposed those American roots, just as the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed those roots there in the 1930s.
We’ve got a long slog in front of us to clean up all the lies. It will take a generation or perhaps more, but we have a start now. Marches are fine, protests are needed, but at last we need more, and it SEEMS to be happening. Again, too slow, maybe not deep enough….but it, seems to me, that tectonic plates are shifting and we can no longer try, nor should we try, to stop this shaking of our foundations so that we can next build something that is worthwhile for EVERYONE, so that our national “motto” of Out of many, ONE! can really mean something.
OK, I know this is a “rant”, needs editing for content, length, grammar, et. al. and yes, I’ll probably cool down after a spell and take this all down to a simmer, but here it is and I’m leaving it as is……I’m angry, and we should all be. (Those DESPICABLES in Congress aren’t and that should be enough to set us all off. They ARE supposed to be working for us after all.)
They did nothing about guns after all the kids were murdered, nothing about policing now that we see how racist some of our police departments have operated, nothing about throwing this insult out of the White House. It’s up to us, up to that WE THE PEOPLE part……you and me.
Before our library reopened I had run out of interesting books, not that our bookshelves aren’t weighted down with them, and for some reason I found myself thinking about “Around the World in 80 Days”, I have no idea why….remember that one? In the movie David Niven was the lead and it seems in my memory to have been a fun movie……but it wasn’t available on Netflix or Amazon so I checked out the library for the book and ordered a copy.
Last week I got it,….it was a well used paper back and I plunged right in. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read Jules Verne, I’m sure I must have but that would have been back in high school. And who remembers that?
Perhaps I only saw the movie. ….but now I’ve discovered the book, and what a book! I journeyed though it in about three days and found it to be marvelous!
To begin with it’s a great story and incredibly well done. What Verne did with it was amazing especially for its time…well, for THIS time too. Verne was a perfectionist when it came to setting up his settings, unlike H. G. Wells who delved into science fiction and didn’t bother with basing anything on fact, Verne built on fact by choice. In “….80 days” his calculations about setting up the route were based on real verifiable evidence that such an undertaking could be accomplished.
For every country traveled through by his characters Verne writes about the native trees, plants, people, customs, food…..he takes the reader there…and of course it’s all based on research and factual discovery. Imagine how this was experienced by readers when it was first published in 1872.
You will be amazed by this piece. The movie, and the 1937 radio re-creation by Orson Wells*, didn’t come close to replicating its magic!
*Which was broadcast one week before his infamous “War of the Worlds” caused a national upheaval.
NOTE: I just finished Matthew Goodman's "Eighty Days" which is the ACTUAL undertaking of the journey that Verne fictionalized about. It took place in 1889-1890 and featured two New York reporters, Nellie Bly vs Elizabeth Bisland racing each other for rival news sources (The New York World vs Cosmopolitan) and going in opposite directions. What a movie this woud have made! Nellie Bly (not her real name but a name that would live far beyond her life span) was an amazing woman. I won't go into the details except to say that her story is well worth the time you'll spend in reading about it.
You’ve heard of a “slow news day”. Usually a Sunday is automatically labeled with this one. And the slowest news “week” is considered to be the one between Christmas and New Years.
So it was with some dismay that this was the very time that fate decided that this combo would be a perfect challenge for Gene Weingarten to make the subject of his book “One Day”….and it was “fate” and not some gauntlet flung down by a colleague that caused December 28th to be the subject matter for the book.
It was New Year’s Day in 2013 when Weingarten and friend Tom Shroder sat in a restaurant in D.C. and by using 12 slips of paper to chose a month, with 31 slips to chose a day and with 21 slips to chose a year between 1969 and 1989 (“ We wanted a date far enough in the past to feel like history and have a future to explore, but not so far back that living witnesses would be hard to find.”)
The day turned out to be December 28th, 1986 and that day, one considered to be one of those “slow news” days in the middle of a “slow news week” turned up stories that ranged from one beginning at 12:01 AM in Charlottesville, Virginia all the way to the ending at 11:55 PM in Oakland, California. Tragic ones, happy ones and all of those in-between tales that make up every single day in lives everywhere, from a crooked cop to the Rolling Stones, fascinating stories you will want to read…and best of all, each has a follow-up so no story ends with what happened that day. (Over 500 interviews contributed to the narrative.)
Weingarten has done a masterful job (with a lot of (acknowledged) help. This is a winner!
Yes, sometimes I read about two books a week (cause I'm sort of burned out on writing right now and I like to read at least one good one a week) and I just finished a REALLY "good one"!
This time I picked up two winners, the "Eighty Days" noted above and the one I just finished and really didn't think would be worth my time (boy was I wrong) "The Last Time Around Cape Horn" by William F. Stark. The subtitle is, "The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir".
I'm not much on seafaring stories (I once got seasick on a very short jaunt off Santa Monica to whale watch, so not a fan of shipping out) but this one is marvelous! I finished it in two days because I was caught up in the drama and the education I got about big sailing ships from reading Stark's clear style and story-telling skill.
Don't miss out on a fantastic read. This is not a "novel", this is the real thing!
I read a lot of history and biography and one of the best is a combination of the two by Joseph J. Ellis, “The Quartet, Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789”. The main actors are Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, and John Jay…..and if you’d like to know how we got here from 1776 you don’t want to pass this one up.
It’s too bad Justice Scalia didn’t have this one to read in his lifetime, it might have made a difference in his “originalist” philosophy when it came to viewing both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (there are many who should read it now, including the 2nd Amendment boosters who James Madison, who wrote that one, would beg to differ with over the definitions of its wording.)
There’s no way to boil down all that this book covers but the main theme is that without these four principles (and their supporting cast) we would have wound up as a collection of fiefdoms instead of a United States. It took a lot of work to get us from one to the other and the story is still a work in process.
One quote won’t sum it up but I think this one is worth reflecting upon; “Jefferson spoke for all the most prominent members of the revolutionary generation in urging posterity not to regard their political prescriptions as sacred script. It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of ‘original intent.’ To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, they did not want to be embalmed.” Ellis
To what extent did James Comey cost Hillary the 2016 election? His book; “Higher Loyalty, Truth, Lies, and Leadership” doesn’t address that question. What it DOES talk about is why he chose to re-open the Clinton email investigation just days before the election. That’s just one issue. Most of the book is about how the FBI must stay separate from policy and politics, how that was respected by Bush and Obama and how the current resident of the White House (he whose name shall not be spoken) tried, and continues to try to sabotage that necessity, and if that doesn't work, to destroy public confidence in the agency.
I finished this book in two days, it’s not one you can put down, well written, well argued and insightful it will also confirm what you, and we, have thought about both Bush and Obama and the abomination. (Yes, it IS just as you thought and we’ve all had good reason to think so.)
Worth your time.
I wish I had read this book before Christmas; I might have been better disposed to deal with the “crowd”. My introverted self went into some sort of existential panic about having to socialize. But, Christmas came and went, and so did the ‘crowd” and I was gifted with this little book, Mr. Dickens and His Carol. I had finished all the books I’d selected to read during the holidays and was left with this one so I thought I’d give it a go. I was struck immediately that the author had so beautifully captured the times, the mid 1800s, by the language usage common in England. I mean, that had to take an enormous amount of research. That part alone was amazing. And then there was the story. This is a novel by the way, loosly based on Dicken's life.
The story arc was wonderfully done, and the whole book written with such heart, that when I was three quarters of the way through and had paused for a time Elizabeth asked me how I liked the book and I said, “I can’t answer right now, I’m too emotional.”
Yes, that good.
I wrote to the author, Samantha Silva and told her that her writing ranked with that of Urrea and Doig. She responded with thanks and it turned out that these were some of her favorites too and in fact she had experienced a workshop with Urrea some time ago.
The short of it, this fictional take on Dickens is a bit of a masterpiece. I think you will like it just as I did.
It’s a good thing I didn’t get hold of Roger Welsch’s book “The Reluctant Pilgrim, A skeptic’s journey into Native Mysteries” before writing my own, ("Becoming Coyote, A Journey of Enlightenment…Mostly".) because I would have been accused of plagiarism (by me at least).
Chapter after chapter in Roger’s book parallel my own, not word for word, but at least concept by concept. I DID borrow, actually quote, one of Roger’s ideas. It came as a result of a phone call to him which might have taken place right about the time he was writing “Reluctant…” about 2014 or so. In that call, a rare one since Roger is phone-call adverse, he told me his granddaughter had commented to him that she thought he was a “…..member of the church of ‘There’s Something-going-on-here.’” (How did I get his number? Obviously the result of “Something-going-on-here!”)
When Roger related that to me I immediately recognized that that was exactly the “church” I belonged to and that the idea of Something-going-on summed up my thinking as well. I’ve used it ever since. (Thanks Roger!)
I’ve tried to contact Roger, even re-opened my Facebook account temporarily only to get in touch with him (I don’t “do” social media) but to no avail…so I’ve let go of the idea.
“Reluctant” is a good one and if you are seeking any kind of spiritual path, this is the read for you….ESPECIALLY if you’re a skeptic.
Here's just a tiny example taken from "Mountain Time" (1999) His main character is meeting a woman at the airport. (Her name is "Mariah" by the way.) so he writes, "There. Announced by the hair." Now any other writer would have said something like, "Then he spotted her." or "He couldn't miss her red hair in the crowd." But not Doig. In just five words we can guess she's probably a red head with a massive amount of hair.
I no longer look back by counting years, it's now all about blocks of time we call "decades". So, decades ago I read Paul Horgan's "The Great River"(the Rio Grande) and decided, a few weeks ago, to pick it up again. It's a thick book, not just in the number of pages, but in information about, the Southwest, the America of the mid 1800's, the nature of Americans (whites) Mexicans, Indians, humans, what stagecoaches were made of, how battles began, the Mexican-American war, Santa Fe, D.C., Pancho Villa, James Polk, the nature of the cowboy and his relationship to his horse......too much to list, way too much. This is one incredible book. (won the Pulitzer) I can't recommend it highly enough. Should be required reading for anyone who cares about how we became the U.S.
Path of the Puma. We live in Mountain Lion country here in north-central New Mexico. In the twenty-five years we’ve been here we’ve seen three, one big one and two smaller. We have been extraordinarily lucky. Some people, even those given to lots of hiking in the back country may never see one in their lifetime that’s why some call these elusive animals “ghost cats”. But they DO see us. If you are in mountain lion country you can bet you are being watched, not as prey, they much prefer deer, but certainly as presence.
Jim Williams book is a great read, all about the puma, panther, catamount, mountain lion in all its beauty and its importance to the survival of the entire Wild in both North and South America. This book is another worth-your-time read with very fine photography to boot. It follows the mountain lion’s range from Canada to Patagonia and tells the story well. Don’t pass it up.
“Everyone loved sunsets. The light lost its sanity as it fell over the hills and into the Pacific¬––––it went red and deeper red, orange, and even green. The skies seemed to melt, like lava eating black rock into great bite marks of burning. Sometimes all the town stopped and stared west.” (p-129 in “House of Broken Angels”) Who wouldn't love to have written that paragraph.....and that's just a tiny taste of the kind of writing Luis Alberto Urrea produces time after time in his masterful works of both fiction and non. Of those I've only read, Hummingbird's Daughter, Queen of America, & The Devil's Highway (couldn't finish that last one, too painful). Urrea is one of our great masters.
• • •
In the next paragraph he says, "Mariah, all footwork
and grin, cut a sharp angle through the concourse crowd." We already
know a lot about her just with that little description.
Doig. An amazing writer.
I first came upon him in "The Whistling Season" and then, "This House of Sky". I haven't read all of his stuff (his "Bartender's Tale" was just so/so) but these last two are certainly tops!
Frankly it's hard to enjoy another read after one of his. Have to take a bit of a breather so as not to be let down by what may be a "flat prose" writer.
Doig. An amazing writer.
I first came upon him in "The Whistling Season" and then, "This House of Sky". I haven't read all of his stuff (his "Bartender's Tale" was just so/so) but these last two are certainly tops!
Frankly it's hard to enjoy another read after one of his. Have to take a bit of a breather so as not to be let down by what may be a "flat prose" writer.
• • •
It's thick enough (400+ pages) to make a good door stop and has a very nice cover.....which, for some obscure reason, I can't get to load here....it beats any over-the-counter sleep aid and has no horrible side effects. (so far)
Anyway; it's $20, which will cover book, envelope, and postage. (No, not available in a "Kindle" edition or on Amazon, so rare to begin with....and I'll sign it too!)
•
• •
Winter
Desiree's book "Matchbook"
is detective-fiction.....not a genre
I usually read...BUT! this is one fine piece of reading and as one of
the comments on the back cover notes, "You will not be able to put it
down."...well, that's for sure. Don't pass this one up, my daughter has
written one FINE story.PS, She just finished a second, not a sequel, and it's every bit as good as Matchbook. She's on a roll. That book, When I Knew You, is now available too.
Movies (& TV)
• • •
"The Good Liar"
with Helen Mirren is really a top of the line piece of work......very
much like the 1987 "House of Games" Don't miss it. Might be on Netflix
DVD.
Streaming on Netflix; "The Politician". 2 seasons. Fine writing, fun, clever and some great songs. This is a good one!
"Dough" is about a Jewish baker and a Muslem boy who.....well, if I tell you the plot it will spoil it for your. It's a Netflix DVD and a fun trip.
Looking for a "classic"? Go for "Anatomy of a Murder" (Jimmy Stewart) (Score by Duke Ellington) Not only a well done snap shot of the 50's but a great courtroom drama on so many levels. (Netflix DVD)
Even if you read the book, Michele Obama's "Becoming", now a film about the tour the former First Lady took to promote it, is a wonderful viewing. On Netflix now! Don't miss it.
From Netflix (DVD) "Sully" starring Tom Hanks. This one is really well done in some unexpected ways by Eastwood. Even though you know the story and how it all turns out, you won't want to miss the experience of this movie.....and by the way, there is no avoiding the truth of this, Sully WAS the central "hero" of this event. Yes, many performed heroically to help save lives, but without his amazing skill and coolness under pressure, there would likely have been no one to save.
Streaming on Netflix; "The Politician". 2 seasons. Fine writing, fun, clever and some great songs. This is a good one!
"Dough" is about a Jewish baker and a Muslem boy who.....well, if I tell you the plot it will spoil it for your. It's a Netflix DVD and a fun trip.
Looking for a "classic"? Go for "Anatomy of a Murder" (Jimmy Stewart) (Score by Duke Ellington) Not only a well done snap shot of the 50's but a great courtroom drama on so many levels. (Netflix DVD)
Even if you read the book, Michele Obama's "Becoming", now a film about the tour the former First Lady took to promote it, is a wonderful viewing. On Netflix now! Don't miss it.
From Netflix (DVD) "Sully" starring Tom Hanks. This one is really well done in some unexpected ways by Eastwood. Even though you know the story and how it all turns out, you won't want to miss the experience of this movie.....and by the way, there is no avoiding the truth of this, Sully WAS the central "hero" of this event. Yes, many performed heroically to help save lives, but without his amazing skill and coolness under pressure, there would likely have been no one to save.
Our viewing habit is simple and predictable; around 7 each evening one of us will say, “Want to watch something?” The response is usually “OK.” unless we’ve each found a good book.
We choose from three streaming sources, Netflix, Prime, & Acorn. (If you don’t know Acorn it’s a source for Brit, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, Scot, and Welsh movies. They range from very good, A Place to Call Home for example, to depressing, almost anything made in Scotland. That’s not because of the thematic material, usually a murder, it’s because the sky is always overcast.)
Of those three we most often tend to check Netflix. The most recent winner for us has been “Anne with an E”. This is based on the book “Anne of Green Gables”, a classic “children’s book” written in 1907. But the film version is anything but a children’s story. There are so many levels of story and character that it’s very difficult to, as I’ve alluded, know what to talk about, so I’m going short-hand here. One of the main themes for me is that this is a story about fathers…..men, and our difficulty with relating on a feeling level. But this is just one of many important themes developed in this story. Count among them, racism, sexism, girls developing onto young women, boys into young men, birth, death, betrayal, love, life on a farm and what that means when it comes to setting priorities in life….so much to talk about and no where near enough words to say it all.
Three seasons, wish there were four. Made in Canada, set on Prince Edward island (off the coast of Newfoundland) time, early 1900s.
You will not regret the time spent on this one. Our only regret is that 1. It ended. And 2. It will be really hard to find anything that will match the writing, the story telling and the acting in this one. We’ll probably watch it again.
"Hollywood" is a short series (6 episods as I recall) and really well done. It's a fantasy about the Hollywood of 1947-'48 and what things might have been like if-only. Fact is, that "if-only" sceanario could never have taken place back then, but it IS a fantasy.....and again, well done. Good binge watching.
"Troop Zero" might seem to be a kid movie but it's a great show for adults for sure. (And the "kid" actors are amazing. Adult roles are handeled by Viola Davis, Jim Gavagahn (CBS Sunday Morning commentator) and Allison Janney. It's a fine story, yes, been done before but so what? The "done before" comment is the basis for a few "Rotten Tomatoes" negative reviews.....and I say again, "So what?" What story hasn't been done before? and this one has been done really well Troop Zero. This is a good one to watch. (on Prime)
Two little known but good movies on Amazon; “Captain Jack” starring the late Bob Hoskins. It’s about a small ships’ captain deciding to put together a motely crew to sail from the north of England to the Artic to place a memorial for an overlooked 18th century sea captain on an island. Good cast, good story........and a fine job done by Al Pacino in “Danny Collins” as a tired rocker whose life takes a 180 when he discovers a letter written to him decades ago by John Lennon. This is one of Pacino’s best and is a heart-warmer.
"Sweet Land" was made in 2005 on a shoe string....and it is beautiful! It takes place in Minnesota in the early 1920's and it's the story of two people who don't know each other at all, he a Norwegian, she having just come from Germany. She speaks no English and no one, so soon after WW I, is "allowed" to speak German. Probably best to just "Google" it to get the plot, or better yet, just stream it on Netflix. It's really worth your time.
"Goodbye Christopher Robin" (Netflix DVD, don't know if you can stream this) is the true story of A.A. Milne's series of books, who he was, why he wrote them and their impact on the real "Christopher" his son Billy Moon. This is a beautiful, heartfelt story wonderfully done.
"The man who invented Christmas!" Yes, it's a story about Dickens, cleverly told by a cast of Brit. stars.....a really heart warming story about writing the book (A Christmas Carol of course.) Need your spirits lifted? This is the movie to see. (Netflix)
"Rumors of Angels" with Vanessa Redgrave. Heart felt and magical....likewise, "Collateral Beauty" with Will Smith and a fine cast. Both of these are about death of a loved one (a mother in the first, a child in the second) and both are very well done. (Netflix)
Yoshi 'n Doug
Mug shots.
(Bottom four not dead yet.) >
Kierkegaard came up with two concepts that are commonplace to us today: one is "subjectivity," the idea that we all perceive the world — and "truth" — differently; and the other is the "leap of faith," that faith is not possible without doubt. “One must doubt the existence of God to have faith in the existence of God. Belief without doubt is just credulity.”
| Dick Prosapio, MSW, aka Coyote; ceremonialist, psychotherapist (recovering), writer (Intuitive Tarot, Becoming Coyote) drummer, photographer, dancer, and leader of experiential workshops for 30+ years. Co founder of; The Foundation for Common Sense©. | Elizabeth Prosapio, BFA, RMT, aka Raven; leads WildWoman weekends, is co leader of The Long Dance and Shadow Dance, leader of Woman's Spirit Weekend, a (very) fine artist and massage therapist and co-wrote Intuitive Tarot with Dick. (US Games pub.) Elizabeth is available for "Soul Face" drawing (more info by contacting her) and is also the co founder of; The Foundation for Common Sense©. |
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