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Love the Solsbury Hill
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Was telling someone earlier today that we'll look back on this week in a couple years and laugh. Not sure if it'll be due to that STILL being the TN record, or because we're rolling along with hundreds of members and just trying to keep up ... but either way, it's going to look funny in retrospect.
Cheers back, and thanks for jumping in. -
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That could be awkward.
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About Me
- About Om
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- Little hair, lotsa love
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- Virginia
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Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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Dear Humans of 3020 AD,
With science and medicine accelerating at a dizzying rate even today, it is not inconceivable that death is as archaic a notion to you in your time as ritual human sacrifice is to us in ours.
Part of me certainly hopes so ... a sentiment made all the more keen this week as I grieve the sudden loss of a friend l have known and loved for thirty years.
When a loved one dies today, particularly if young or in unexpected fashion, it shakes our foundations. Cool logic, mature perspective and intellectual understanding of death as the natural process we know it to be—the yin to life's yang—is shattered, exposed, undone. For a time all is upside down, the fabric of our lives torn apart ... and what we see peering back through the hole unnerves us as nothing else can.
Strangely, part of me also hopes you have not conquered death, at least not completely. Because for all the grief, as we slowly emerge from its immediacy...
With science and medicine accelerating at a dizzying rate even today, it is not inconceivable that death is as archaic a notion to you in your time as ritual human sacrifice is to us in ours.
Part of me certainly hopes so ... a sentiment made all the more keen this week as I grieve the sudden loss of a friend l have known and loved for thirty years.
When a loved one dies today, particularly if young or in unexpected fashion, it shakes our foundations. Cool logic, mature perspective and intellectual understanding of death as the natural process we know it to be—the yin to life's yang—is shattered, exposed, undone. For a time all is upside down, the fabric of our lives torn apart ... and what we see peering back through the hole unnerves us as nothing else can.
Strangely, part of me also hopes you have not conquered death, at least not completely. Because for all the grief, as we slowly emerge from its immediacy...
Posted in Uncategorized
Dear Humans of 3020 AD,
In your time, do innocent bystanders still fear displacement, injury and worse in the crossfire created by others?
I sit safe, warm, well-fed and sheltered in one part of our world, while in another, fellow human beings with no more an active hand in the geopolitical forces surrounding them than I have in mine are endangered, grief-stricken, exposed.
This euphemistically-called "hot spot"--a place called Gaza in a small nation called Israel--is just one of several remaining in the world today. Your history will record the religious, political and cultural roots of the conflict in the part of the world...
In your time, do innocent bystanders still fear displacement, injury and worse in the crossfire created by others?
Quote:
| "You don't know anymore; you don't know who is alive, you feel you are in a trap, you don't know who is a target," said my friend and neighbor in Gaza City, journalist Taghreed El-Khodary. The fear resonated in her voice while she was on the phone to Al-Jazeera. Taghreed lives on a street near my parents. |
This euphemistically-called "hot spot"--a place called Gaza in a small nation called Israel--is just one of several remaining in the world today. Your history will record the religious, political and cultural roots of the conflict in the part of the world...
Posted in Uncategorized
Dear Humans of 3020 AD,
I wonder how a story like this might read in your time.
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I wonder how a story like this might read in your time.
Quote:
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The boy, whose ordeal mirrors that of the character Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book, was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight wild cats. Doctors believe the animals snuggled up with him during freezing nights which would otherwise have killed him. The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by the animals while they licked him, it has been claimed. Policewoman Alicia Lorena Lindgvist discovered the child by a canal in the Christ King district of the city. She said: "I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that's where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty. "When I |
Posted in Uncategorized
After several months of trying to figure out what this blog would be “about,” I think I’ve finally stumbled on an answer.
All my life, I’ve wondered what my counterparts a hundred, a thousand, five thousand years ago, did, felt and thought in their daily lives.
Our libraries are full of history books that tell us what happened in their times.
We have writings from a handful of learned individuals—the precious few who could, had the time and occasion to write—telling us of the events of their day … as often as not, one suspects, as much with the intent to influence their times than objectively record them for posterity.
And we have wonderfully written historical novels that do their best to interpret history, place it in the hands of fictional characters and thus hope to give us a flavor of their day.
I don’t believe, however, I’ve ever had the opportunity to know, first-hand, the life and mind of, say, a farmer living...
All my life, I’ve wondered what my counterparts a hundred, a thousand, five thousand years ago, did, felt and thought in their daily lives.
Our libraries are full of history books that tell us what happened in their times.
We have writings from a handful of learned individuals—the precious few who could, had the time and occasion to write—telling us of the events of their day … as often as not, one suspects, as much with the intent to influence their times than objectively record them for posterity.
And we have wonderfully written historical novels that do their best to interpret history, place it in the hands of fictional characters and thus hope to give us a flavor of their day.
I don’t believe, however, I’ve ever had the opportunity to know, first-hand, the life and mind of, say, a farmer living...
Posted in Uncategorized
I write this in response to a spirited (and remarkably civil) discussion I was engaged in late one night on the proposition that organized religion’s primary function is teaching Right from Wrong.
And further, that it is the primary, and arguably single most indispensable, vehicle for that purpose known to the human race.
Felt compelled to try to memorialize some thoughts on the matter.
To me, the role of providing moral and behavioral guidance to each individual should properly--and pragmatically--fall upon parents. Parents, and the village in which each child is raised (no invoking Hillary, please--"village" is not a dirty word).
I's my hope that there were far more compelling reasons behind our species having created entire universal belief systems--complete with what they can expect to be their lot after death--than getting our youngsters to eat their vegetables and remembering that they probably shouldn’t blow up the neighbor's...
And further, that it is the primary, and arguably single most indispensable, vehicle for that purpose known to the human race.
Felt compelled to try to memorialize some thoughts on the matter.
To me, the role of providing moral and behavioral guidance to each individual should properly--and pragmatically--fall upon parents. Parents, and the village in which each child is raised (no invoking Hillary, please--"village" is not a dirty word).
I's my hope that there were far more compelling reasons behind our species having created entire universal belief systems--complete with what they can expect to be their lot after death--than getting our youngsters to eat their vegetables and remembering that they probably shouldn’t blow up the neighbor's...
Recent Comments
I never thanked you for this.
It almost seems wrong to drag all of this back up after the dust has (somewhat) settled, but I wanted you to know that I appreciated this - so did my sister. I think it even brought a tear to mom's eye (and you should know how difficult that is to pull off where he was concerned). I tried to comment a few times, but...it was just too difficult.
Thank you for your words here, and also in you other blog. I read them, many times, and filed them away so that I would always have them. This is a much better tribute to him, and it's fitting that it comes from someone who knew him better than almost anyone else. You made me see him through different eyes, ones that saw through to the good things...and you made me realize that, just maybe, some of the good things in myself just might have come from him...
So, thank you for writing this. I'm glad you were his friend through it all. With a life like the one he lived, a friend like you is beyond worth. I know that he would have never believed it, that you care as much as you do, but I know that he would have been sincerely humbled. And then he would have cursed you for humbling him.
Best wishes.
-D...
It almost seems wrong to drag all of this back up after the dust has (somewhat) settled, but I wanted you to know that I appreciated this - so did my sister. I think it even brought a tear to mom's eye (and you should know how difficult that is to pull off where he was concerned). I tried to comment a few times, but...it was just too difficult.
Thank you for your words here, and also in you other blog. I read them, many times, and filed them away so that I would always have them. This is a much better tribute to him, and it's fitting that it comes from someone who knew him better than almost anyone else. You made me see him through different eyes, ones that saw through to the good things...and you made me realize that, just maybe, some of the good things in myself just might have come from him...
So, thank you for writing this. I'm glad you were his friend through it all. With a life like the one he lived, a friend like you is beyond worth. I know that he would have never believed it, that you care as much as you do, but I know that he would have been sincerely humbled. And then he would have cursed you for humbling him.
Best wishes.
-D...
Posted 06-28-09 at 09:05 PM by DS
