>Over the Thanksgiving holiday we were in Portland and went the the Zoo Lights which is, of course, as the zoo.
This video was captured with a Flip HD camera and edited in Windows Movie Maker.
Author: Tucker
>the footprint we work
>
Several years ago I read a great little book on personal finance called Your Money or Your Life. In that book I was captivated by the idea that money represents one’s “life energy.” The idea is that much of the time we work for counterproductive reasons – we falsely trade our life energy for something that feels like life but is something much less. By working more (giving up more and more of our life energy) we end up wasting more trying to maintenance our busy lives. We eat more fast food, pay for dry cleaners, pay for child care, lack time to cut out coupons or shop frugally, drive more rather than bike or take public transportation, and generally have less time for our families. Our modern lives are increasingly lives of diminishing returns.
Recently I came across a somewhat related quote in Bill McKibben’s book Deep Economy. It is as follows:
The more hours you work, the bigger your ecological footprint too. That’s because you’re spending more money and spending it carelessly: with no time to go to the farmers’ market, let alone to cook what you buy there, you drive through the drive-through instead. The numbers are substantial: an American working twenty to forty hours a week requires about twenty-three acres of the earth to support him; someone working more than forty hours requires nearly twenty-eight acres.(1)
I have not been someone to get on the environmentalist bandwagon as much as I probably should, though I have been at the fringes for years. However, if what McKibben says is true I feel I have to take note. If my goal is to love my neighbor as myself then I need to ask how requiring my person acreage, as it were, to be more than the American average, or even more than the global average, is helping me to love my neighbor. One of the great ironies is that the U.S., a country that has claimed Christian roots, praises itself for being such a great help and example to the world while it far outstrips the world in consumption of just about everything. In other words, we puff ourselves with pride for how much we love our neighbors yet we live as though what belongs to others is more rightfully ours. That’s not the way I want to live.
1. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, pp. 114-115.
>Messiah (Christmas Portions)
>A poem for the season and other great things:
>a day of celebration
>Today is a day of celebration for me and my little family. I celebrate my beautiful wife’s LIFE. On this day one year ago she was struck by an SUV while walking on the sidewalk near our home. I wrote about it then. From that moment on our lives (and especially her’s) have not been the same. Weeks in the hospital, then hospital bed at home, then months of physical therapy, continuing pains, and all the rest of life (wife, mother, homeschool teacher, and pregnant again) have been her existence. For the rest of our lives November 17th will continue to bring back the memories of near tragedy and great pain. But this day is also a day of great thanks. I am so thankful that Maricel is still with us and thriving. I am so blessed to have her as my wife, and our daughters are so blessed to have her as their mother. That she is with us, that our family is whole and growing, makes this season that much more joyful.
Waiting for Monet
Monet painted many lilies,
vibrant under a summer light
more so than even life,
but life in winter
with its bare trees in the park
and its buried bulbs
has another vibrance
that Monet also knew I’m sure.
Think of the beauty of a starry night
above the high desert where
city lights are forgotten;
those lights speckling the darkness
are really just stars in an
immenseness so much more
than all the stars put together,
and yet we fall down before
all that beauty
like toppling statuaries.
But we have not really acquiesced,
like when we drove out before dawn
through thick stubble of sheared hay
under and moonless sky as we opened
stretched barbed wire gates and
following barely visible tracks
toward the canal
then checked our pockets for cartridges
and our packs for lunches.
We beheld the sky
once blanketed with stars
lit up with pale blue and the
dotted lines of high flying geese.
We waited motionless
for the low flying ducks.
We hid like children
playing adults playing soldiers
fighting the force of nature.
There was really no acquiescence
except the fading stars before
the sun, then the sun,
then the stunning beauty
of the fragile beasts
dead in our hands, gutted,
and their dead eyes still staring,
perhaps pleading,
as though God’s eyes might
be looking for an answer
to a question He will ask
at an undisclosed time.
And the line is drawn
to the killing of all things
and the spilling of blood
overspilling the altars.
From tabernacles everywhere,
those sacred places we call home
and elsewhere,
the ground cries out
like it did to heaven when
Cain shrugged and really
did not think it such
a big deal,
though he must have thought
it would be nice for lambs
and lions to get along at least.
But today soldiers walk the streets
where they say the garden
must have been,
and where the angel with
the flaming sword left
his post eventually of boredom.
Other angels came later
carrying messages. They always
seem to start with “Be not afraid”
but I think they were joking,
a little fun you know,
because angels do not normally
get out much I would think.
I also think Monet saw the stars,
and the dead eyes questioning,
and the horrors of war.
Yet I doubt he saw an angel
whether with message
or with sword.
But he did paint water lilies
as though he was teaching God
something about His creation
something that God already knew
but was waiting
for Monet.
>26 individuals simultaneously lose
>On some show called Your Next Move, Gary Kasparov played chess against 26 individuals simultaneously. Here are some highlights, with Nigel Short narrating:
Watching others play chess is not always the the most exciting thing to do. It’s better to play. But it is fascinating to see someone so capably play 26 simultaneous games, and then win them all. Of course one could say that is expected from Kasparov. The goal, as one of his opponents, is to hold out as long as possible and then recognize when it is time to concede defeat.
>Alberto Salazar, 1981 NYC Marathon
>Once, in the early ’80s (probably around the time of the ’81 NYC marathon) when working out at my highschool track after school (I competed in shotput/hammer/javelin/discus for the team) Salazar came by to do some laps. We watched him run faster than anyone on our team could possible run lap after lap. After about 25 laps he left. We thought it was cool. Needless to say he was one of the greats.
>Some Vincent for Halloween
>
>Happy All Saints Eve
>
Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832 by Daniel Maclise.
>The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)
>
pilgrimakimbo 