Post - Educationalism

::blows away the dust:: Well, somehow we're right back to Summer again.   The last nine months have been something special.  It's hard to believe that in that time I've been fortunate enough to snowshoe frozen lakes, dive the depths of Whiskey Town, scale the heights of Shasta, and otherwise hike much of the Northern hinterlands.   I'm in the middle of a dead zone as far as formal education goes.  I'm still another year out before I can start much of the course work I had planned (I realized much of it has ridiculous work experience requirements).  But, this has been a blessing.  I was able to take some time off in January and completed the Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course--a necessary certification brought on by a close call at Mt. Lassen with a flipped car and several injured people.   So Summer is starting again, and though I'm sure I'll find myself in some exciting positions, I really am looking forward to those relaxing days where the o...

Funny how after all these years out of formal schooling, it still feels like something is ending come September.  Too many good memories to account for them here. And so starts another 'semester' of hard-nosed, book grinding, tea-sipping, stress-jogging efficacy. CLU Designation - Your days are numbered Algebra I/II - Re-mastery in the making Masters - Closer to reality Book - The note taking begins That should get me to Thanksgiving. 

[Dedicated to Mom: You know I'm just kidding...] It was an early summer, Sunday morning.  The kind where the flies don't seem such a nuisance with pancakes on the griddle, a pot of syrup bubbling on the stove with berries of red and blue and a healthy dose of butter mixed in for good measure.  Sun pours through kitchen windows, and kids run about, fighting and hollering until plates are set and food is ready.  Silver dollars never had such power but in pancake form. Fast forward 20 years It's that same type of early summer, Sunday morning.  But now the griddle is idle and looks a forgotten shrine (though still more sacred than traditional ones), and the only remnants of a shared meal drips off of the counter onto tile floor as the cat laps up spilled milk.  The kids are still fighting and it seems that the currencies have changed: "Mom, I can't believe we're taking Conan.  I mean, we're hiking up a mountain, he'll just complaint he whole time ...

And the start of many goals: #1: Hike all 150 miles of the Lassen National Park trails (and log all the geocaches!) #2: Finish CLU certification (even if it means bringing textbooks hiking) #3: Perfect baking skills #4: Be the board

Subtitle: Why I Love My Family "Honey, what's that?" "I think it's a mouse." "No Mom, it looks like a mole." "Come on, have neither of you ever seen a gopher?" "Oh, yeah, I see it now.  Definitely a gopher." Dad bends down and pets the cat on the head, and tells him that the gopher-mole-mouse corpse dangling by a canine is a very good thing, and that he's a very special cat.   The cat, known here simply as Tetos--as Mr. Tetos to his peers, I'm sure--had just interrupted the communal, after-dinner clean-up by lolloping in with the half-dead gophermole only to ensure it's entire death by flinging it into the air, across kitchen floor sending it smack into oak-stained cabinets, shaking the Tupperware inside.  I have to admit I did feel something when the cat waltzed in there with that fear-ridden-faced mouser, bopping him around like the toys other members of the family spoiled him with as a kitten (I...

Good books stay with us like good friends pages like voices, so oft repeated phrases stories like memories and lovers noted and not yet come words that speak as only  between us and bent spine in moments reflected upon the history of a body a life whose story would go untold save for dogeared edges and errant marks that blot facade and good face betrays more than just prose that voice, a living novel reveals to us more as we go persists in hidden corners of mind and troubled mouth couches and coffee tables dusty shelves and old bus stops as eddies in a stream or deep undertow at sea rescues us from broken, shallow homes buried deep within a tale weaves and cuts into our passions, into stories we thought our own

My contribution to the annual, office newsletter, cross-posted from my financial/work interpretation-of-the-world blog : Ordinary Lang uage Finance . Even in America, the land of the second chance, and of transcendentalist redeemers, the paradox inevitably arises: you cannot change the world (for example, a state of marriage [or conversely: an economy]) until the people in it change, and the people cannot change until the world changes. - Stanley Cavell I hadn't seen this passage since the middle-years of college (if you remember those days too, it was a different time back then--long before I personally came to an inkling's understanding of the power of tragedy, and the subsequent flow of change). During those shattering years, I questioned the purpose of many practices and sites of genius. I wondered why so many studied the tragic Greek plays, the tragic writings of Kafka, or the tragic films; I wondered why people didn't focus solely on the works of those who burned br...

"Tell me this: can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?" It's rare that I'm compelled to physically expound upon a high-fantasy novel. Sure, I can talk up the George RR Martin books until the sun grows cold, but then they're not exactly high fantasy, nor does the thousands of pages lend itself to a haphazard reflection. That said, it's few novels (short ones, even fewer) that will, and can, openly discuss the inherent paradox of magic in a coming of age story (Harry Potter has his own difficulties, though not on quite this scale); but, Lev Grossman's The Magicians does, and it does it well. The opening quote speaks to this paradox inherent to magic and "growing up". Professor Fogg, philosopher, magician, professor and dean speaks to a group of his Magic University graduates: "Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic...It doesn't really make sense. It's a little too perfect...If there's...

I must confess: the importance of health reform just got real. For some time now (since August of 2007) I've lived under the good graces of group health insurance. And not just any group health. We're talking: awesome group health (as in, cheap, sub-$300 deductible, $2,000 out-of-pocket, 80/20 co-pay insurance, huge networks, nearly all practices/procedures are covered, etc.). The corporate overlords informed us last week that the above mentioned health insurance is being dropped, with no replacement plan. They managed to work out a deal with the insurance overlords to allow us to keep the insurance in place until March of 2010 (they were actually considering just dropping it, immediately, as in: "sorry you no longer have health insurance, effective today; you should probably go get health insurance"). After reviewing with another health agent today about what choices we have available to us, as a small business, and to me as an individual--I AM COMPLETELY AND UTTE...

Some might say that takes the magic out of love, to know that you are  loved. But what's still a surprise is how much you love her. I loved her to abstraction, to destitution. I blew my fortune on engagements; now only my love sustains me. Love for a woman who doesn't exist. That's my sad story. ...... I thought I was passed it You don't get passed it.  It just--becomes a part of who you are. [ seriously, how is it that this  is the kind of work that is cancelled?]  

Scene: Castle walks back into his apartment, and finds his mom on the couch who is admiring a dried rose.   .... Mom: And I'm scared.  What if it doesn't work out?  What if it does? Castle: That's the cost of living. Mom: I just don't want to ruin this (this, referring to her nostalgic feelings, and to the dried rose she's holding) *Castle takes the rose from her and puts its on the table* Castle: This (referring to the rose) is dead.  You are not.  Time to start making some new memories. ... I always knew he wasn't a one trick, sci-fi pony. 

What if philosophy is not , as many have supposed, a search for truth, but the avoiding of the void (or avoiding [a] depression), the continual flight from skepticism, the acknowledgment that we are--by our very human nature--isolated: strangers to ourselves, others and the world all at once? It took me forever to come to this understanding... ... (and I mean "this" as in, this one, one of many others. Just as in Super Mario Brothers, there is no singular world, there are many worlds--all of which our hero finds himself almost totally isolated from other, humanly contact; he/we have no knowledge of his past or present; with only the drive to avoid the voids and find Princess--who must constantly be re-found, an important note--we proceed through many worlds and many trials, tragedies, and doubts (the wrong castle, again?), and come to many different understandings by dedication, skill, and a bit of luck. ::blows whistle::).

I've been out of college for 936 days now. As a self-purported blog about "life after the academy," you'd think I'd have started keeping track of this a lot sooner. I guess I finally found some semblance of balance somewhere between work-or-die mode, and work-or-bad-things-will-happen mode. As I sit here in my best attempt at recreating one of the Hargrove, music library cubicles, with books ranging from political theory to finance to philosophy to wizards scattered across the desk, it's hard to imagine that it has been so long (some things never change, thankfully). It feels a bit silly to track this, but I do it if for no other reason than to remember the general sense of abundance of being that we all (if I may speak for the others) felt while negotiating the very depths of our existence (and more usually the streets of Berkeley at two in the morning), and perhaps, just perhaps, I do it so that I can begin to nurture that gratitude once more outside of th...

But how can renewal come about?--the perennial question of reformers and revolutionaries, of anyone who wants to start over, who wants another chance. Even in America, the land of the second chance, and of transcendentalist redeemers, the paradox inevitably arises: you cannot change the world (for example, a state of marriage) until the people in it change, and the people cannot change until the world changes. Pursuits of Happiness, 257. The only way back is the way forward.

The tragic need not be associated with only a tragic vision ...much like doubt need not fall into skepticism. Resignation is the natural end of a tragic vision; however, this fate is a misunderstanding of tragedy itself. Our desire for an end, a passivity, a will-to-nothingness is the denial of tragic wisdom , a denial of the temporality of tragedy.

So I'm jumping on the old but newly-rediscovered bandwagon of the Fixed Schedule Work Ethic Now, I know what you're saying: Remember what happened last time? I promise I'm allotting a certain amount of time for shaving and general maintenance this go around. In fact, I'm even timing everything that I consciously act on so that I can track and modify my love(lack-there-of)/life(need-more-of)/work balance. 14 minutes and 38 seconds. I've always had a knack for writing at the speed of the incredibly slow. And so, Thanksgiving is almost here, and I really haven't spent nearly enough time considering what I'm grateful for (too much doing, and not enough reflecting). It's also that time of year where I'm grasping for that inspirational passage that will slowly overgrow the engine up-stairs and flow out of the fingertips effortlessly to finish off our annual newsletter. Last year's article was appropriate, but given where we were, and where we ar...

We speed up to forget, only to slow down and realize we are lost.

An inability to bear suffering is an inability to participate in a real human fellowship [a tenuous construct, at best; the myth of a fellowship is as fragile as a spider's web, we must be agile enough to build, and dance, and play upon a foundation of running water], that is, a fellowship aware of its limits, aware of all potential conflicts that it contains, and ready to set its limits to the test [tests will fail; we will break, mend, and modify these limits]... The more we are incapable of enduring our own suffering, the more easily we endure that of others [the cold hands, cold heart theory; If I can not admit my own suffering, how can I begin to comprehend yours?]. The harder it is for us to tolerate loneliness, the more of it we create. We flee from love, which is or can be a source of suffering, shackling ourselves in a forced cynicism towards the whole field of sexuality, and forced by fear to abandon those enrichments of life which in love are rarely achieved withou...

I felt this first moment deserved a bit of transcription: Here's the problem that I have throwing in my lot with Science.  Science doesn't advance the human condition in any moralistic way, and Jesus did.  My thesis is that if everyone followed the teachings of Jesus Christ we'd have peace on earth and we'd almost be an idyllic civilization.  Am I one-hundred percent sure that Jesus is God? No, but I choose to believe that because the man was so extraordinary in what he did in his 33 years...[it] still resonates to this day.  That, I think, is more powerful [ed note: of course it's more powerful! Reductionism and Simplicity almost always win out over the complex and the real--especially when presented to the masses] than your belief in, "someday we might figure it all out, but in the mean time we're not going to believe in any deity." Whoa...did you see what just happened? Somehow, we got from finding the truth(s) of the universe to advancing pe...

The trust which co-creates the movement of love is not constrained by calculation, demands, or obligations. In the reciprocity of love no one is obliged and no one has rights. Reciprocity is the gift of grace and grace cannot be either earned or demanded: one attains it freely and it is removed freely. In this quality, too, the bond of love transcends all practical communications; it transcends them because it is not a relationship between empirical persons but a meeting, in an effort of mutual exchange, of nonexchangeable and non-conditioned realities. I'm reading Leszek Kolakowski's The Presence of Myth . It's a discussion of the real place that mythologies and myth inhabit in the human culture (see the myth of Love, above). I'm looking for the chapter where he describes the solution to the problem of people getting lost in mythology and losing sight of reality. Yes, there's always an inter-connection (a mythical reality, theoretically), but the last few yea...