Coldly Logical

The last post was a bit too coldly logical. To restate, my point was that people shouldn't get caught up in self-righteous histrionics, given the totality of humanity's current relationship with animals.

I had been following PETA on both Facebook and Twitter. PETA actually advocated hanging Walter Palmer. That's so over the top, I don't really know what to say. Later Ingrid Newkirk tried to walk it back. Maybe they can develop better sense and more compassion in the future, but they do not seem to have it right now. 

Tonight I'll say a prayer for Walter Palmer. I've got my hands full as it is, but I can spare a prayer for someone who's being subjected to mob hysteria. 

Cecil the Lion

I believe, with regard to the dentist and the lion:

Humaneness and kind treatment of animals arise in part from our recognition of their capacity to suffer and their capacity of conscious awareness--in other words, their human-like qualities. Killing and eating a person is more morally blameworthy than merely* killing a person, therefore, where survival does not require it, killing and eating an animal is more morally blameworthy than just killing it. 

Imagine millions of people were being killed and eaten for food in Country A. Imagine that millions of people were being killed and eaten for food in Country B. Now imagine that a man travels from Country A to Country B and murders a famous actor to acquire a trophy. Imagine further that after doing so, the populations of Country A and Country B, the overwhelming majority of whom participate in the holocaust-food genocide just described, were in an uproar over the "egregious nature of the murder" and wanted to destroy the man's business in retribution. 

That would be utterly irrational, wouldn't it?

Less self-righteousness, please. 

*The word merely is inserted as an argument building block to distinguish two levels of bad, not to diminish the wrongness of murder. 

Good vs. Evil

1. Where there are no inflexible principles, people treat one another badly because there's nothing to stop them (e.g., slavery).

2. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another better because they are held to standards (e.g., laws disallowing inhumane treatment of others).

2. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another badly, because of the inflexible principles (e.g., the European Wars of Religion).

3. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another badly, because the invention of good is impliedly the invention of evil. 

The moral balance sheet of monotheistic-dualistic religions is impossible to tally. 

If cosmic good and cosmic evil were real, multiple perspectives would not exist with regard to the moral dimension of events in human history, just as there are no ordinary, valid differences of perspective on physical laws, such as gravity. But perspective does exist: The same events can be regarded by different parties as immensely good, immensely bad, neither good nor bad, on a continuum between good and bad, and so forth. 

Instead of cosmic good and evil, the universe has aspects, features, qualities: Anger, Kindness, Desk, Cat, Star, Boredom, etc. This is borne out by everyday experience and science (unless you subscribe to the untalked about implicit assumption of many popular science writers that a composite thing has less metaphysical realness than its constituent elements). 

The Gods We Worship

People worship War, Conflict, Death, Misunderstanding, Passion, Demagoguery.

People don't like Concordia, Minerva, Mens, Pax.

We have no adults, neither left nor right.

Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

I went to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. It was very different than a mountain hike. There aren't a lot of trails. As a wildlife refuge, it's nature oriented, not people oriented. The longest trail is only 1.6 miles, which I walked, out and back. There are several wildlife observation areas with wooden blinds, which are nice. The observation areas are in some of the swampiest areas of the refuge. At midday, these places were quite striking--the atmosphere, the heat, the water plants, and the bullfrog sounds. The foliage along the trail was about chest high, and the trail itself was mostly no wider than a deer track. 

Milkweed was in bloom, as well as a kind of spotted lily, and a third kind of flower that I didn't know the name of. There were also enormous cattails. I heard a cardinal. 

Hay

My father had baled up all the hay in the main field, so today was the day we set to take it in. My father is not getting any younger, and he can't really carry a bale of hay. So I piled them into the pickup truck. Then we would drive to the barn. Then I would unload and stack them. After we finished this morning, my father baled up the hay in the side fields. Altogether it was 149 bales. I think my arms are going to fall off. I also fell down getting off the truck and kind of sprained my wrist. Haha..

There was a dead catbird by the back door. I took its body up to the top of the field and laid it down in the bushes at the edge of the woods. I picked three asters and laid them by its body. I said a little prayer. Sweet little catbird. 

Butterflies

I came down a mountain once ending up in front of a dark tunnel going through a ridge, a tunnel with no sidewalk such that it would have been easy for a car to smear you against the tunnel wall; I wanted to walk through because the greenery in the bright sunlight on the far end looked alluring. A car came, and I tried to run back, but I had walked too far in, and there was no way I would make it out before the car overtook me. I prayed it wouldn't hit me, and a moment after I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by several white moths or butterflies fluttering all about me. I say moths because I think that's what they were, but they were not shabby in the way that word suggests. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Last month, getting onboard my connecting train through the narrow train door, I had been feeling kind of like my stress was too much. There were dozens of people on the platform getting on, too, and as many people already in their seats inside the railroad car. As I plopped down in my seat, with all those people in all that enclosed, air-conditioned space, a white moth flew over and fluttered around my seat, finally settling on the seatback in front of me. I think this is also a coincidence.

This week, also feeling stressed out, while walking through the middle of Penn Station, inside and underground, in the middle of New York City, a dark butterfly fluttered directly in front of me, inches from me. 

Today while driving home, a butterfly flew directly in front of the truck. 

If you look for signs, you will find what fits your preconceptions. Still, these felt otherworldly, in an indeterminate way. 

Getting Along

A day for harmony, cooperation, concord, and getting along.

Help up the person you were arguing with; dust him off; smile at one another.

May all our lives be blessed with concord.

Thematic Sound of North Jersey

I had intended my journal entry to be about my day, about how I caught the early early train instead of the early train, about how I worked as hard and as well as I could, about how I bought roses in the city for my mom and dad to present to them upon arriving home, etc. But I went for a walk after dinner, and going for a walk just has a way of making you think about different things.

In particular, it always has the effect of making you--or at least me--think about the passage of time. 

It's hard not to be haunted by the passage of time, to be bothered by that feeling of buying into the suffocating nowness of the current day, the current hour, the current minute, and all their attendant circumstances and situations, as if past times, past people, past situations, and past places never were, as if past times had no more substance than the evaporating dream of a momentary daytime doze. 

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If I could pick out a set of thematic sounds for formerly-rural-but-now-suburban north Jersey, this would be among those I would choose. (The link goes to a YouTube clip.) It might also be a thematic sound elsewhere. No matter. It can be the thematic sound of multiple places and times without any of them being diminished for lack of exclusivity. 

When the Woods Were My Home

I went to Jockey Hollow National Park to go for a long walk. I walked around the main loop. Perhaps it was about three and a half miles. The trees were mature, fat, and vertiginously tall. The forest had broad open areas that made it look inviting. There was an enormous tulip tree. I mean, enormous, both in girth and in height. The whole place, as elsewhere, is literally covered in raspberries.

For some reason--maybe it was the particular scent of New Jersey woods that stirred something from deep within--this walk brought back a lot of memories of my childhood. That era of circumscribed childhood life. The things I might have done were not available. I ended up spending a lot of time in the woods. Sometimes with my friend, sometimes with my cousin, and other times with my sister. We sat on logs and talked. We walked along old railroad beds. We hopped on stepping stones in streams. We always had sticks in hand as we went along. What comes somewhat strongly to mind as I remember this now is how we noticed differences in atmosphere and character between places in the forest, and--perhaps because that was our whole world--how big these differences seemed to us: the patch of tulip trees with its scattered light, that one place with the loose collection of birches where we carved our initials, the dark grove of evergreens inside the forest that we had always been hesitant to approach, till one day, when my father was working not far away, we came up to it, entered it, and felt ourselves to be brave. 

Those days, long ago, with the future open wide in front of us, when the woods were my second home. 

Concordia: Goddess of Harmony

July 22nd is the day devoted to Concordia, the goddess of harmony. That's next Wednesday. I haven't been feeling particularly harmonious lately, but no matter about myself. I must get some incense to offer that day. 

After doing some research, there is evidence that the Romans appealed to Concordia for marital harmony, for harmony within the military, for harmony in politics, and for wider social harmony. 

I think these different areas are extensively diverse enough that one can say--if one is going to determine the character of a deity from the reasons for which she was worshipped--with confidence that Concordia is simply concord, in general, not that she represents harmony only within very specific areas of life. 

But I definitely don't want to argue about it. 

Distracted

I feel a little distracted. I need to focus; stay on course.

It is really important not to react. Half the problems in the world are caused by reacting to misperceptions, misapprehensions, and the false urgency of strong emotions. 

May you and all the people in your world be blessed this Tuesday in mid-July, 2015. 

July 13, 2015

This is from the concluding page of The Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, by R.M. Ogilvie:

For over a thousand years, [Roman religion] satisfied the spiritual urges of a wide range of peoples, because it offered an intelligent and dignified interpretation of how the world functions ... True religion for them, as opposed to superstition, was to honour the gods fitly in accordance with custom ... It was a fine, yet tolerant religion whose adherents committed very few crimes in its name and who were healthily free of neuroses. 

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On Sunday, I saw what was most likely a mink(!) in the narrow valley below the mountain I like to hike on. It could very well have been a weasel, or something else. Even if it was, as someone who hardly ever sees interesting animals compared to other people (my sister and both of my parents have seen bears), I felt pretty lucky. 

In other news, the mountainside was covered with raspberries. I mean, covered. I had the urge to gorge myself, and I probably ate too much, but then I started to feel guilty. I am, after all, not the only living thing that might like to eat berries. So I thanked the mountain and stopped. 

I am about twenty pages or so short of being finished with Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. I recommend it to everyone. It's positively brilliant! The individual sections are good; the way he weaves them together to tell a holistic story is even better. Many smaller-scale ideological squabbles are put into the context of larger patterns of human development, from which remove the inadequacy of their explanatory power is readily visible. 

Time

Time is passing. It is already high summer. In the southern hemisphere, it is mid-winter. In less than six months, it will be 2016. 

2016 is only a few short years from 2020, which represents the completion of one fifth of the twenty-first century.

The things of our lives are forever receding into the past.

I hope this day finds you content and at peace.

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Today, while hiking in the forest, I saw ash, sycamore, beech, oak, maple, tulip, and hawthorn trees. One park has a magnificent oak; the other has a magnificent sycamore. 

I saw the tail of an eastern cottontail disappearing into the bushes above the hilltop meadow. The meadow itself is covered with black-eyed susans and queen anne's lace. There were also many mullein plants with yellow flowers on their upper cone as well as butterfly weed, or butterfly milkweed, and, true to its name, there were several butterflies on it. 

The raspberries were out. There was raspberry bush after raspberry bush along the trail, each loaded with ripe raspberries. Where were the people who used to eat them? The hiking trails must not be well used. I didn't even have to venture off the trail to get the ones farther back. There were more raspberries than I could eat hanging near the edge. I had been thinking this morning that I wasn't getting enough fruit. And then to stumble upon this natural cornucopia. How blessed and wealthy I was today. 

High temperature: 86

Low temperature: 56

High air pressure: 30.11

Low air pressure: 30.01

Solar wind speed: 593.4 km/sec.

Proton density: 2.1 protons per cubic centimeter.

It was definitely a high air pressure day. The sun was brilliant and the sky was a rich blue. 

July 10, 2015

I took these pictures where I went for a walk last Sunday. I think that's milkweed the butterfly is sitting on. There's also a bee there, working side-by-side with the butterfly.

High temperature: 83

Low temperature: 62

High barometric pressure: 30.01

Low barometric pressure: 29.80

Solar wind speed: 506.5 km/second

Proton density: 6.3 protons per cubic centimeter

I haven't been following the solar wind long enough to know much about it, but that's a lot higher than previous days this week!

I wonder what's going on. 

Good night, world. :)

July 9, 2015

High temperature: 82

Low temperature: 65

High barometric pressure: 30.02

Low barometric pressure: 29.86

Solar wind speed: 345.6 km/sec

Proton density: 2.3 per cubic centimeter

It is currently thundering, and the weather maps show a line of showers moving in from Pennsylvania. 

I was looking out the train window on the way home, and between two stations, I noticed many mullein plants. One was enormous, was growing out of a sharply sloping embankment, and so had a rather dramatic curve in its stalk. 

Also, this morning, on the way in, in the marshes between Newark and Secaucus, I saw one of the resident egrets in flight. It is able to tuck its long neck in such a way when flying that it appears to have a short neck. 

They say the spacecraft that was launched nine years ago is approaching Pluto and will arrive in four days. This is the first time a spacecraft has gone to Pluto. I wonder what interesting features it will find?

It is events like this that give me that feeling that I love--a sense of the human community, and a sense that together, we are all participating in a grand human adventure. 

July 8, 2015

I'm afraid I wasn't able to upload the images of the mullein plant that I took yesterday. I guess my phone service is bad. It just wouldn't go through. Today, after I got home, I walked down and looked at it. More yellow flowers have come out on the cone-like upper section. It's going to be pretty. :)

High temperature: 86 degrees.

Low temperature: 66 degrees.

High barometric pressure: 29.97

Low barometric pressure: 29.91

Solar wind: 377.7 km/second.

Proton density: 5.1 protons per cubic centimeter.

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Prayer to our family's guardian spirits for our family and household and prayer to Pax for peace among people and among countries.

Good night, world. 

Hymn to Diana, by Catullus

A translation of Catullus's Hymn to Diana.

July 7, 2015

There's a mullein plant (link goes to Google image search results page) growing wild at the bottom of the hill, in the weed patch by the driveway. I took pictures of it today. I will upload them later. It has a long, tall stalk, with broad, flat leaves that curl down from gravity as they extend out; the upper portion of the stalk is crowned with a long cone from which yellow flowers grow. The internet says the mullein comprises several hundred species; it's a weed in some places; in others, a prized garden plant. It also had traditional medicinal uses in both Europe and Native America. Several sources say the Romans dipped it in suet or tallow and used it as a funeral torch. 

Ours has grown so tall so fast, it's hard not to connect to it some feeling of passion or boldness. But, a sort of daring, vulnerable, breaking-the-rules kind of boldness, because it could easily be felled by a blow from a garden tool, and it's growing in a place where the nearby humans prefer something a little more low key. My mom in fact has designs on cutting it down because it sticks out so much. My dad and I are rooting for its survival. I've offered to do my mom a favor in return for not cutting it down. Negotiations are ongoing. 

High temperature: 88 degrees.

Low temperature: 73 degrees.

High barometric pressure: 30.04

Low barometric pressure: 29.94

Solar wind: 413.2 km/sec. 

Density: 2 protons per cubic centimeter.

*Earth weather data is from njweather.org. Solar weather data is from spaceweather.com.

Birch Trees

To stand next to some birch trees
Leaning out from the edge of a grove
To look out in winter 'cross
Buff-colored straw, lingering snow

Or in summer with foxtail & milkweed
Dragonflies, cicadas, bees
Mutual sense of belonging
Summer haze, person, and tree.

Never need for argument
Whether in spirits or not you believe
A birch tree has something holy;
This, what all concede.

Hymn to Diana

Devotion to Diana is recorded in the New Testament, and even in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, her worship was not forgotten. 

A hymn to Diana, by Ben Jonson (1572-1637):

QUEEN and huntress, chaste and fair, 

Now the sun is laid to sleep, 

Seated in thy silver chair, 

State in wonted manner keep: 

Hesperus entreats thy light

Goddess excellently bright. 

Earth, let not thy envious shade 

Dare itself to interpose; 

Cynthia's shining orb was made 

Heaven to clear when day did close: 

Bless us then with wishèd sight, 

Goddess excellently bright. 

Lay thy bow of pearl apart, 

And thy crystal-shining quiver; 

Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever: 

Thou that mak'st a day of night— 

Goddess excellently bright.

Hesperus: the evening star; the planet Venus.
Cynthia: another name for Artemis or Diana.
Hart: archaic word for a male deer.

An amazing painting of blessed Diana from Deviantart.com.

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy birthday, America!

I attended the Fourth of July parade this morning, and the rain let up just long enough that no one got too wet. Later, it cleared off, then rained just a tiny bit again, then cleared off for good. 

We had hot dogs for dinner, along with potato salad, beans, and sauerkraut. We ate on the patio. I read the Declaration of Independence before we started eating. Well, before I started eating. :)

After dinner, I drove back to the town that had the parade in the morning to watch their fireworks display. I had had a conversation about Concordia with my mom before leaving. On the way, I made a wrong turn and ended up on "Concord Drive," which I took to be auspicious. :)

At the fireworks, there was a fee for nonresidents, so when I got to the entrance, I said, "I'm a nonresident," and the fireman manning the entrance said, "That's too bad." It was funny, and I played along.

Prayer for the safety and well-being of all. Good night! 

Blessed Artemis of the Ephesians

Someone posted a picture they had taken of this in a Facebook group--that's how I learned about it. It is utterly gorgeous. It's a temple to Diana in Italy. But it made me think of Acts 19:28 (hence the title of this post). To any American readers, happy Independence Day! 

Bedtime Prayer

Concordia, bring harmony into the lives of families, groups of people within nations, and between nations. Let no one feel alienated, estranged, or in conflict with another. Good night.