Category Archives: impediments

Restitutions and Return Visits

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, collaborating, Community, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Inner Struggles, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 6, 2022- I was quite gratified this morning, to be given a complementary breakfast, in view of the two such meals which I had to speak out in order to receive, after paying in advance. Good will means a lot at the Legion, so when the servers mess up, the host steps up. After I was finished eating, one of our regular table mates who usually helps serve the other diners had just been given his own breakfast. So, I took a turn at service for a bit-and saw where some of the confusion may have arisen over the past few weeks. There is a tendency to write first names and family initials. There are four “Garys”, myself included and two of us have the last initial “B”. There are six “Steves”, five “Bobs” and three “Terris”. I called out the people’s names and got it done. The problem, thus, seems to be shy servers.

After my weekly Zoom devotional, the day looked open-ended, and the Agua Fria River was calling, so I made a return hike along the Badger Springs Trail, this time focusing on the section that passes by two frames of petroglyphs. The glyphs are visible to the naked eye, but don’t photograph well in a casual manner. Could it be that the spirits are protecting them from casual photographers? We’ll have to see, on future visits.

The river itself is not so coy. It does seem to be down a bit, but since it is largely dependent on snow melt, the level may yet rise, over the next month or so.

Agua Fria River, at Badger Springs
Agua Fria River, at Badger Springs

Return visits to local natural scenes are increasingly important, if for no other reason than rootedness. They also figure in acts of completion. A few days ago, I finished hiking the Lime Kiln Trail, which runs between Cottonwood and Sedona. The final segment is but 1 1/2 miles, from one segment of the Red Rock State Park access road, over Scheuerman (SHOY-er man) Mountain Ridge, across a forested valley and on to the entrance to the state park. It was a fitting end to a segmented hike that had been in abeyance for over a year.

Beginning of Scheuerman Ridge segment, Lime Kiln Trail
Junction with Scheuerman Mountain Trail
View towards Cathedral Rock, from Scheuerman Ridge

So the cementing of returns dovetails with the strengthening that comes from new discoveries.

Finally, because we need it in the face of both real and imagined tyranny: A return to the most stirring song from Les Miserables (2012). Let us neither be deluded or complacent, in the weeks, months and possibly years ahead. Every nation, every people, deserve to be free of rule from without.

A Tale from 2007

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 5, 2022- It has now been eleven years, since Penny winged her flight to be with our Lord. As her passage took place on a Saturday, this day was especially poignant. Having been in Phoenix, and the cemetery, on Thursday took some of the edge off of this day’s ambiance. I also followed my Saturday morning routine, and having a Baha’i Zoom devotional, that was itself based in Phoenix, as part of that routine was also a plus.

Ten of our twenty-nine years together were spent in Phoenix. Although the community is large and the people are quite busy with their daily lives, Penny made a positive impression on a lot of people. Her joie de vivre was irrepressible, almost to the end. She did not use her disability as an excuse to refrain from living her faith. Fifteen years ago, in the midst of her decline in mobility, and just after she had to be wheelchair bound, we were invited to attend a prayer meeting that was on the second floor of an apartment complex, and there was no elevator.

She asked me to help her to the stairs, and proceeded to carefully climb the stairs, on her hands and knees, reversing the process by coming down each step on her buttocks when the meeting was over. I brought the empty wheelchair up and down, standing behind, then in front of her, as was prudent. The device was her chair while we were in the apartment.

There went a genuine hero.

Sweet

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 2, 2022- A state legislator, censured for advocating executions of her political opponents, on a public gallows, fired back at those who voted for censure-saying they were picking on a “sweet grandma”.

To be sure, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, even for those who say people of different ethnicities have horns and a tail, or words to that effect. Yet, there are laws that forbid making specific threats against the safety and well-being of other human beings-or hurting most animals, for that matter.

I am sure the legislator is sweet to her grandchildren, if not her children. Loving people who are one’s bloodline is well nigh universal, save for those who are deranged. That tells me the woman has some semblance of heart. Her comments, at a recent gathering of white supremacists, tell me that she has spent precious little time listening to those who offer views different from her own. They also give readers and listeners who disagree with those comments a sense that she herself may be a bit unhinged.

We have had a long, hard road together, vis-à-vis race relations, especially between Blacks and Whites, but also between Whites and First Nations people as well as between First Nations people and Blacks. Much of the discord involves failure to listen, to observe, to accept others for who they are. It’s true that there are people in each group who have taken advantage of their own, and who have ingratiated themselves with the dominant group. It is also true that there are people within the dominant group who have suffered at the hands of “their own kind”. This, however, does not take away from the aggregate of the dominant group, in a good many countries, having the responsibility for erecting a system that perpetuates their dominance, at the expense of those outside their circle.

Real sweetness does not hate.

Lions, Tigers, Bears-and Zebras

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 1, 2022- I woke this morning, after some vivid dreams, in a sort of mental fog. I managed to get the rent paid, then went and sat in one of my safe havens, and wrote at length in the 2022 journal. Things were better afterward, so a synopsis about March came into my awareness.

March appears to have come in like a lion-in Australia. A wide swath of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria is under water. On the opposite side of the country, Western Australia is parched. Here in North America, the month has started off in benign fashion, after a tempestuous February.

This one, born in a Year of the Tiger, will view a “Birth Chart” in a few days. It will likely answer some questions I still have about the circumstances of my birth and how they have affected my life since then. Part of me has been bold and another part, furtive. Both are traits of a tiger in the wild. That aspect lends credence to the East Asian zodiac.

The Russian Bear has stalled. Mother Russia seems to have had less say about where her cubs have been sent, and why. The wayward Lone Male has sent them on a mission, known only to him-with only snippets divulged to a select few. While he stays in his cave, the cubs cast about for food-and fuel.

I see and hear a lot of zebras these days. People talking out of both sides of their mouths are more common than they’ve been in a long time. Skittish, prancing about haphazardly, wanting to be everything and nothing, simultaneously, they alternate between snorting half-truths and noises of obeisance to the Lone Male and braying that they only want to see justice done. They readily point to the other animals, in the corral, and claim that those are the real beasts who need to be brought to heel.

March will bring out a lot of truth and will bring a few down. We may or may not be seeing the onset of another worldwide conflagration. We may or may not be seeing the long-overdue implosion of the real “empire of lies”. We will definitely continue to see the true faces of heroism and love of humanity.

In the late winter of the Russian soldier, his humanity buried by the artillery of his wayward master; in the long nightmare of the Ukrainian mother, her dreams for her children drowned out by the pummeling of all around her; in the long and frightful night before the eerie dawn-listen to the hopeful voice of Mat Shaw:

Hypocrisy? or Just Being Inconsistent?

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Posted by on in collaborating, impediments, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 28, 2022- The just-concluded Conservative Political Action Conference featured several speakers with a similar message: The Far Left is a dictatorial entity. Many on the Left, citing the fear that so many of their opposite numbers seem to have of former President Trump, claim that the Right is the autocratic force.

Both are correct, insofar as each side practices intolerance and outright anathema towards those with whom they disagree. The calls for the imprisonment of people who express an opposing point of view have increased dramatically, since 2016, and all the more since the onset of the COVID pandemic. I have heard calls for the executions of various figures on the Left, and there are the rabbit-hole dwellers who say that this has already happened! Conversely, there are thousands of comments on posts, each day, wondering when the participants in all aspects of the January 6th events will be punished.

So, we have each group calling out the other for hypocrisy. I have a slightly different take on the matter. For decades, society has subconsciously pushed the idea that the way to get out of a bind is to distract, to engage in false equivalency, to muddy the waters. People my age have made a fine art out of looking under rocks to find fault with those whom they themselves wrong-as if the actual victims brought it on themselves. Those in subsequent generations have astutely taken note.

Since the last Perfect Being ascended in 1892, and the last Perfect Exemplar, in 1921, it stands to reason that anyone can be taken to task, for one thing or another. I have experienced plenty of table turning, over the years, and probably have done the same to others, at one time or another. Yet, I think there is a subtle difference between hypocrisy and inconsistency of conduct. A true hypocrite builds a brand, career or reputation around consistently throwing stones at others, while knowingly doing the exact same thing to which (s)he objects in others. Occasional inconsistency, or even past behaviours which one has overcome, do not constitute hypocrisy, IF one owns the faux pas and is actively making amends.

We are all works in progress.

What She Knew

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Posted by on in collaborating, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 26, 2022- The forthright man told of his reaction when one of his children broke the news of gender reassignment. He also had the courage to walk alongside that child and grew in his understanding of what was behind the process. When that child’s life ended, father and child parted as friends. Most importantly, the adult child was friend to self.

When I was a child, I was far from athletic and presented a gentle disposition. That didn’t set all that well with some of the other boys in the neighbourhood, or with those in my paternal grandmother’s neighbourhood, when we visited over there, every other Sunday. In retrospect, the bullying wasn’t all that bad and I was rarely attacked physically. One thing I always knew, though, was that I was solely interested in girls, and never felt the secret urge to BE one.

Not everyone is clear, as to their gender, as their childhood and adolescence progress. The reasons for this range widely-possibly the effects of additives in foods, possibly chemical imbalances, possibly lack of either same sex or opposite sex role model. The causes are all speculative, but the result, for those who choose gender reassignment, is a physically and emotionally excruciating process-lasting several years and possibly the rest of the person’s life.

I have friends who are transgender. It is because of them that I have made my own transition, from glib detractor of those who chose gender reassignment to one who sees the background of the process more clearly. The person who makes such an irreversible choice does not lose humanity nor becomes less worthy of the love of friends and family. The person grows in need to be enveloped in love, much as does a woman who undergoes an abortion or someone who is suffering an addiction. No one has the right to discount another person’s pain.

The young adult mentioned above died while asleep, and was thankfully in a supportive living space. Suffering appeared to have come to an end. What she knew about herself was confirmed-and accepted by those around her, at long last.

I will forever be glad to be male and cisgender; (he/him). I extend the peace of identity to everyone.

The Winter General

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Posted by on in collaborating, distraction issues, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

February 25, 2022- The message on my computer was unequivocal: “The Russians are in Ukraine to cleanse the area of human trafficking groups and other unsavory entities.” Others have told me that the Far Right’s new “White Knight” is merely seeking to de-Nazify eastern Europe”. These are certainly interesting, unique perspectives on the current situation in that long-suffering region. They have yet to convince me, however, that Ukraine is unique, as a center of human trafficking, or that Russia is squeaky clean in that regard.

There is a widespread attitude, across eastern and central Europe-and in many other parts of the world, that life is cheap, that women and girls are “useful commodities” and that masculinity is affirmed when females are “kept in their place”. Besides that, I know of no country on Earth that is free of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation. Assuredly, our own country has its challenges in that area.

Any time a human being becomes messianic, regardless of the issue at hand, demons appear in his/her mind. For those on the Far Right, anything progressive or to do with the Democratic Party in this country, or Social Liberals elsewhere, is to be rooted out and extinguished-because of reports that so-and-so committed incest or that that certain people in that category are engaged in Satanic rituals. Those on the Far Left do much the same, in disparaging their opposite numbers.

The president of Russia has targeted some questionable entities, in his war of conquest-but they are red herrings, diversions. His true aim seems, to these eyes, to be a wall-building exercise- whose long-term aim is to “restore the greatness of Mother Russia”, by taking one country at a time, as Alexander of Macedon, Chingiz Khan, Napoleon and Hitler did before him. HIS messianic fervour is astonishing in its breadth, but underwhelming in its depth. Those placing their hopes for moral cleansing, in the hands of that particular Winter General, are bound to be disappointed.

Time of Han’ba

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Posted by on in collaborating, Historical, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 24, 2022- Once upon a time, in an Austrian town, a little boy was regularly terrorized by his father. The boy wanted his father to respect him, so he internalized his father’s brutish manners and refused to cry after his beatings. When his father died, the boy was 13 and assumed the title Haus Herr. He would beat his younger sister, in the way his father had beaten him.

The boy grew into manhood, served in his country’s army and resented any weakness he encountered in society, including that of government officials. He tried to overthrow that government, was arrested, tried and imprisoned. Once he was released, he joined with like-minded authoritarians, succeeded in overthrowing the government and led his country into oblivion. The world remembers him as Adolf Hitler, the original Fuehrer.

Many, since, have followed in Hitler’s footsteps. Some have had abysmal childhoods, even if they enjoyed material comfort-as Hitler himself did. Others lived meager, miserable lives in childhood, but were spoiled by their parents, to the best of the parents’ ability.

One of the latter is Vladimir Putin, who grew up in a tenement in what is now St. Petersburg, facing off against rats, who taught him the meaning of fighting when cornered. He also faced off against human bullies, and became a judo master, in response. Becoming self-reliant, and having been pampered with expensive gifts on occasion, in a nutshell made Putin value machismo and greed.

Fast forward to our present day. A series of perceived personal affronts has led the Russian autocrat to execute an invasion of Russia’s southwestern neighbour, Ukraine. Authoritarian personages, the world over, have congratulated him for his strength-even gaslighting the Jewish president of Ukraine as “a tyrant” and “a Nazi”. While there are people who believe in Nazi philosophy in a good many countries around the world-including Ukraine, Russia, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany itself, such fawning over the actions of the Russian government do little or nothing to extinguish the other dreadful philosophy. Indeed, the sycophants’ boast, that the Russian people themselves support their government’s actions, is belied by the massive demonstrations, both organized and spontaneous, around the Federation.

Han’ba is the Romanized form of the Ukrainian word for infamy. It is that sort of time in our lives.

Truth to Power

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Posted by on in collaborating, Education, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 23, 2022- A week after Ottawa, the world saw images of Climate Strikers blocking access airports in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. This time, the focus was on ending food waste, which the group sees as contributing to global warming.

It occurs to me that there is an increase in the number of people engaged in socially disruptive public demonstrations, in many more countries, over the past eleven years. This is, one way or another, a shot across the bow of any authoritarian government, or individual satrap. That is good news for authentically democratic regimes. A little constructive criticism never hurt anyone. It is actually very bad news for those who think demonstrations by conservatives are a stamp of approval for their more blinkered, retrograde policies. There will come a time, should a reactionary or revanchist government come to power in the U.S., that the authorities will step on the toes of the mobs who put them in the driver’s seat.

Then, the parting on the right will turn to parting on the left, again. This was true in France, circa 1795-7. It was true in Spain and Portugal, in the 1970s and was certainly the case in the unraveling Soviet bloc, from 1985-1993. It will be the case again, as hyperactive curbs on individual rights are always the result of a wall being raised between those in power and those on the street.

What is also happening is that the political center, often mischaracterized as “sheep” or “The Silent Majority”, is finding its voice. The recent recall of three socially hyperactive members of the San Francisco School Board was largely effected by those who were neither Right nor Left, but just fed up with some ill-conceived actions or announced plans, such as renaming schools presently bearing the names “Abraham Lincoln” or “Paul Revere”. There will continue to be increased scrutiny and activism, at all points on the spectrum.

I see it as a collision of mindsets: Those who think an elite can do the best job, on behalf of the people, and those who have confidence in the collective judgment of an informed electorate. Keep speaking truth to power. The elitists may actually learn something.

Swarming

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 21, 2022- The skeletal remains of Russian thistle, commonly called tumbleweed, were advancing across the road, north of Chino Valley, clogging the pavement, in one section, almost as if they had a consciousness of their own.

As I was on the “home stretch” of the drive back to Prescott, this afternoon, the keening wind that had been with me all along I-40, kicking up a few tumbleweeds here and there, was even more insistent in its transporting the thistle balls from west to east. I drove through the above-mentioned mass, which was fortunately only one layer thick and a few feet long, north to south.

It could easily have been worse, and as I type these words, in the comfort of Home Base, I think of those traveling the same roads, with much the same level of wind, in the darkness. There was also a huge dust storm along old Route 66, visible from the freeway. Wind can generate what feels like swarms of obstructive materials.

My thoughts are thus with those who are planning a coast-to-coast convoy of vehicles, headed from Los Angeles to Washington, and hoping to get the President’s attention, on the day of his State of The Union address. If they pull it off, how he handles the situation will be as vital to the short term future of this country as how he handles the reported impasse in eastern Europe. Nay, it will be more vital, in the immediate future. Swarms of protesters have created chaos in the recent past, going back to the “Occupy …” events of 2011, the social justice protests of 2017 and 2020, and most recently the Ottawa and border crossing blockades, which were largely funded by right-wing activists, while taking more than a few cues from the occupants of neighbourhoods in Portland and Seattle-and the Woodstock Festival of 1969.

There is a valid credo that says “We do not negotiate with terrorists”. Ordinary citizens, gathering to express opinions, however disruptive they may be to the short-term order, are not terrorists. Those engaged in mob violence are of a different class, though-i.e. the January 6th Capitol occupants (as opposed to those who heard Trump speak and then left). My only hope is that the group which makes it to Washington will choose the tack of peaceful protest. A swarm, especially if there is another forced entry into the Capitol, would turn the group into poster children for counterproductivity.

Let there be light.