Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Tides are turning...

For the first time in years I sat up and watched live coverage of election returns last night. It was encouraging to see sense, optimism, and practicality weigh in with most of the elections around the country. Locally, some things I voted for won, and a couple--school board positions--didn't quite make the numbers they needed. But households making over $300,000/year will be contributing to continuing the free healthy school lunches program. Our current school board has been led by a... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, November 3, 2025

Someone Else Will Do It!

Thinking about how other countries are solving social and environmental problems while the US, mentally and emotionally stuck in the rules and judgments and condemnations, the philosophical traps of centuries past, spends time arguing about who deserves or doesn't and who is worthy or not. Self-interests top the list of considerations of deciding when and who and where a solution might be implemented disturbing no one's comfort or convenience who matters. "Not in my backyard, and not out of my... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, November 1, 2025

Darkness...

I wrote this one in another season as autumn gave way to winter... In The Dark In the dark I think of you sometimes and remember laughter that delighted you though not enough it seems. I no longer seek to laugh or feel; or share; nor trust the promises I wanted once, embraced but finally found in my arms nothing. A time there was when hope of love of welcome of desire still glowed within me banked, and waiting for a breath, and it was yours that set the embers flickering and flaring finally into... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, October 26, 2025

Seeing what's useful about the current chaos

The past decade has turned the ugly underbelly of the US up to the light. While it festers and stinks, we suffer from it, but it's the opening, the opportunity to clean it up: to own responsibility for past sins of ignorance, apathy, and acquiescence, and to make sure that what has been broken for so long is finally faced and fixed. I suggest that we begin with questioning the values inherited from colonial ancestors: The Western European Paradigm has overlaid the world as if it is the only... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Words, words, words...!

I saw a bit over in Facebook about how the Junior Oxford Dictionary has discarded many words once common: "For almost 20 years, editors of the Junior Oxford Dictionary have gradually removed from the book many words used to describe things found in nature (e.g., acorn, bluebell, ivy, fern, moss, blackberry, dandelion, lark, raven, heron, starling, hazel, heather, goldfinch, grey seal, otter and kingfisher) on the grounds that they are not of use to modern children." Vocabulary is lost when... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

The Seasons

My just-turned-six grandperson was asked if she knows the seasons. Of course she does! Summer, Winter, Halloween, and Easter! Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Rally!

On Wednesday Oct 8 the local school district teachers held a one-day strike. Their demands are for smaller class sizes and better support for teachers and students, and of course, better pay. Behind it all is the battle between the school board and the schools. Currently the Board is composed of political and religious zealots who have the goal of shifting all curriculum towards their agendas. Their strategy included doing away with a contract with the teachers that has been in place 56 years... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, September 29, 2025

Northern Lights

A friend of mine who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba was treated to Northern Lights on his way to work this morning and it cut through the low spirits of living in a world in crisis. Facebook notoriously uses its peculiar algorithms to feed what it thinks people want to look at. I have the impression that many who look there to 'keep up' with goings-on get a skewed vision towards their own hopes and fears. I think we also tend to do this to ourselves. While many seem only to see the gathering gloom,... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

The coming American Resolution

What we are living now, what we are seeing is the ugly underbelly that has always been part of the American Empire. Now it is fully exposed, now it cannot be denied or ignored; our next choice is whether to fight for the better and best of America, or let the ugly win. If that happens, that's the whole story told, the karma, the consequences of letting all the underlying sewage fester until it exploded and covered the landscape. But if we don't swallow it and die of it, then we have the best... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, September 4, 2025

What's taking so long...?

This current misadministration must be undone through American values & standards--for instance: *The Rule of Law,* countering the corrupting of the judicial process; active legal resistance to every violation of law by the thugs currently claiming power. *The Vote:* maintaining election integrity to express the actual will of the People through true representation. *The Constitution* understood, defended and protected as required by the oaths of every single member of the government.... Sign in to see full entry.

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