Loosely Speaking

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

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Back Porch Adventures

Pixiecat has lately had a new entertainment, a mix of frustration and territorial challenge. In September, before all the leaves fell, I hung a bird-feeder over the porch. It hung from an iron hook, the same one the wisteria had claimed to climb above the railing. The weight of the loaded feeder tipped the whole thing over, and as a result there's seed all over the porch. Can you guess what is also now all over the porch several times a day? Mice. Mice cavorting and nibbling and stashing seeds... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Coincidence and Inspiration

A few days ago, I published this on Wordpress: Global Warming and Snowball Earth – LOOSELY SPEAKING… Yesterday, I discovered a new documentary, recently added to the Netflix lineup, called LIFE ON EARTH, and to my great amusement and gratification, it is a far more detailed survey of the origins and progressions of life on our planet, and it covers the same bits I mentioned in my own essay. It also has me nibbling around some thoughts for a more spiritual background for the Whole Thing. If that... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Binging Crime Shows

I finally got it, why I watch crime shows. People love stories, not just for amusement, but to show us the way through the dark forest, the way through the terrible haunted swamp, the way to deal with monsters. Crime shows are stories about how the monsters are caught and stopped, how the monsters are made to pay for their evil, how they finally lose in the end, every time, and the world is made safe again. A child's world is full of monsters: Some of them are real. If, in childhood, the... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, September 18, 2023

Suddenly, the bar at the top has changed... I'm not sure why, but I don't much like having to suddenly find my way around a new system. I suppose there is some benefit to someone in this change. Anyone else have any comments about it? Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, August 13, 2023

It's a mystery!

While I crochet, I generally binge-watch, often mystery series. Right now I'm going through the several seasons of VERA, set in Northumbria, England, in modern times. The title character, played by Brenda Blethyn, is likeable in her middle-aged curmudgeonly way. It's got me thinking about the shows I have enjoyed, some not so much, and wondering what might be your favorite detectives and detective series, and what particularly draws you to these. One thing I particularly like about the British... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Better than court: Mediation

Some years ago, Thomas Crum, an aikido expert, reframed the very idea of 'conflict' from a negative to a positive, pointing out the beauty inherent in the conflict of ocean and land, for instance, on a rugged, sea-battered coastline. His work suggests that acknowledgement of conflict is the key to resolving conflict: acknowledge it, accept its existence, work with the reality that is, rather than frantically trying to replace it, unconsidered, with what you want to be the reality. What you want... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, July 17, 2023

Socialism...

Democratic Socialism IS NOT the 'socialism' that gets the knee-jerk fear reaction from the ignorant. Democratic Socialism supports the people of a democracy. What they fear with better reason is Authoritarian Socialism. Anyone who is knowingly fighting against the kind of socialism we've had in the US for over a century is actually opposed to the well-being of Americans that might cost they themselves some privilege, power, comfort, and money. The word "Socialism" by itself isn't a useful term.... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, July 8, 2023

Change ain't easy...

It's culture shock, like indigenous people experienced with the arrival of Western colonizers: The discovery that the world is bigger and more complicated than we were raised to believe. Our society is riding the shock wave of discovering there are and have always been more than just two genders, that there always have been people 'on the spectrum,' that time and space are not as simple and straightforward as we thought before we had quantum physics to figure out. Some of us are better at... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, July 3, 2023

The importance of being educated

For a while I have wondered, how do we as parents and teachers teach insight? I've recently been thinking, a mind with nothing to think about atrophies. The world is a great multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, and without a wide array of its bits and pieces, it cannot ever be assembled in any meaningful way. This is why everyone, including children, need to gather as many puzzle pieces as we can: read as much, learn as much, get educated as widely as possible. We need as much diversity of... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, July 1, 2023

My Son on Being a Patriot

Charles Redding J u n e 3 0, 2 0 2 2 · Just a reminder, that fireworks are unnecessary, harmful in a variety of horrible ways, downright obnoxious, but most significantly a terrible way to show "patriotism" given the veteran I met a few 4ths ago. He was standing in a minefield in the middle of a 7-11 parking lot, and had been breaking car windows to steal a ride to get home to his family. He was flipping in and out between lucid awareness that he was having an episode, and being in a minefield... Sign in to see full entry.

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