culture

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance

by

Life is all it is – joyful, sad, comprehensive, confusing, peaceful, violent, and on and on and on…

Of course, regardless of what reality tries to tell one, it can only be what one – you, me, each unique individual making up the all of we – says it is.

And no matter how hard we/I try to understand it, to challenge it, to master it, chances are we/I never will; and chances are along the way we/I will alienate those who see reality 180 degrees differently than you/me.

So, understanding our understanding and execution of life will always be incomplete and often inaccurate, and way off kilter to many, accepting that some will love us for what we do and, sadly, some with hate us for the same, will hopefully make it all a bit less painful.

So, we might as smile the best we can and dance.

#embraceyourreality

Disenranted

by
pexels-photo-62376.jpeg

It used to be fun, and, quite frankly, quite therapeutic to release a rant or two around here back in the good ol’ days.

Any guesses to as when I’m referring to the “good ol’ days?”

Yeah… exactly.

BCET

Before the Catastrophic Era of Trump

But now, in these far less than good ol’ days…

One rants at one’s own risk.

Literally…

Read more

The Pandemic of/and Poverty

by

Americans felt the effects of this kind of spending* during the coronavirus pandemic, when the government extended unemployment benefits and sent close to $1 trillion in direct stimulus payments to about 85 percent of households. This temporary expansion of the social safety net caused poverty to drop to the lowest levels on record in the United States (underlining emphasis mine).

Extreme Poverty Has Been Sharply Cut. What Has Changed?, New York Times, December 2, 2021
Wikipedia

Now seems like a good time to deeply consider implementing a national universal basic income initiative, no?

If I were king** for a day of these less than United States, I would mandate UBI and the only requirements to receive it for those subjects of mine so impoverished would be for the entire household to receive regular health checkups and for all school-age children within the household to stay in school, similar to succeeding initiatives to end extreme poverty in other countries… such as Mexico as discussed in the referenced NYT article.

But what do I know, I’m just a caveman**…

*social initiatives to end extreme poverty, defined by the United Nations as a household having to survive on less than $1.90 a day

**non-gender specific

/////

PSA: I have a new newsletter initiative coming online soon. My old newsletter, Newsletter Love, one hosted through the clunky Mailchimp service which made it hard for me to get motivated to attend to it properly, is being superseded by a new newsletter hosted by SUBSTACK, a super smooth provider.

The newsletter is called HumanZen: one man’s attempt to discover the Zen of being human…

Each new edition will be delivered weekly on Sundays. All new subscribers will still receive a copy of my short story collection LEAVE: And Other Stories Short and Shorter.

To learn more about the newsletter and subscribe, venture forth to here.

Where do all the dreams go

by

In the 12-month period that ended in April, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The figure marks the first time the number of overdose deaths in the United States has exceeded 100,000 a year, more than the toll of car accidents and guns combined. Overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2015.

Overdose Deaths Reached Record High as the Pandemic Spread, New York Times, November 17, 2021

~~~~~

where do all the dreams go
when the hope for tomorrow
dies along the way

If You Believe It, You’ll See It

by

I really, really wish I could believe all the bizarre hocus pocus things like astrology and palm readings and other pseudo-sciencey, pseudo-religiousy things so I could lay all my blame for all the unpleasantries going on all over this pretty yet petulant planet of ours (those dang locusts in Africa are biblically unrelenting) on a misaligned moon or star…

That said, Claire Comstock-Gay of The Cut has an interesting take on the subject, whether you want to believe it or not.

“Astrology’s skeptics and detractors like to make a fuss about how foolish it is to imagine that, simply by looking to the stars, we can know what the future will bring. But to argue this is to completely misunderstand one of modern astrology’s central purposes — not to find our destinies, but to find our actually existing, living human selves.”

Who Cares If Astrology Isn’t ‘Real’?, Claire Comstock-Gay, The Cut, May 14, 2020

#alonetogetherwiththeskeptics