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Showing posts from June, 2013

Washington DC: Criss-Crossing The National Mall

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The original Smithsonian Institution building known as "the Castle" as viewed from the National Mall. Note: This is the second of three planned posts on our recent vacation to Washington DC. We marked the east-west extremes of the National Mall in my last travelogue post. Between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial lies a magnificent public space roughly divided by the Washington Monument. (Actually the monument is about a half-mile closer to the memorial than to the Capitol.) Beyond the monument the Mall is dominated by the giant reflecting pool. Between the monument and the Capitol stands several major galleries and museums of the Smithsonian Institution. It was there that Jennifer and I spent much of our time on our recent venture to DC. The magnificent Interior of the National Gallery of Art Rotunda featuring a fountain adorned by the Roman god Mercury. Jennifer took these interior pics which I greatly reduced to appropriate blog size.     A hallwa

Washington DC: Memorial Trekking

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The Capitol building marks the east side of the National Mall.  American flags fly only when Congress is in session, a relic of pre-electronic times when they served as signals for members of Congress to assemble.   Note: This is the first part of a planned three-part travelogue on our recent vacation in Washington DC. Jennifer and I recently celebrated 25 years of wedded bliss in part with a trip to Washington, DC . Originally, we had planned to visit Chicago this summer but when our daughter won a major art contest we received free tickets to our nation’s capital. But the award conflicted with my daughter's summer schedule so her parents decided to use the tickets for their summer getaway. I am not sure my daughter could have handled the pace and intensity of our tourist onslaught on DC. In the course of four days Jennifer and I visited about 13 museums, a plethora of statues, monuments, and memorials, visited DC's Chinatown, and toured a fashionable area around a dis

23 Words

Long-time readers know I consider linguistics and grammar to be particularly insightful into the nature of human experience . The words we choose, the rules governing their meaning and structure in usage, are a prism directly into the heart of what I call Intersubjectivity . In and of itself, grammar does not lie, it does not mislead. It is intended for mutual understanding in society and in ritual. As such, it is among humanity's best efforts at existential clarity. Guy Deutscher writes: "The real effects of the mother tongue are rather habits that develop through the frequent use of certain ways of expression. The concepts we are trained to treat as distinct, the information that our mother tongue continuously forces us to specify, the details it requires us to be attentive to, and the repeated associations it imposes on us - all these habits of speech can create habits of mind that affect more than merely the knowledge of language itself." (page 234) Language bo

Flow: An Overview

Flow is another wood doodle that has had a fundamental impact on my life.  This psychic reality was discerned by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Cheek-sent-me-hy-ee) a famous Hungarian psychologist.  My word doodles on Karma , Being , and Lifeworld have been hybrid posts.  I have cherry-picked sometimes disassociated ideas to give my intimate perspective on these aspects of my spirituality. With Flow it is different.  I do not take this and disregard that.  I do not fuse otherwise unlinked ideas together.  With Dr. C's brilliant work I take it hook, line, and sinker ( watch his TED talk here ).  Flow is an insightful psychological discovery and I would not change a single sentence in the four books Dr. C has written so far regarding Flow.  Flow is as close to a perfect understanding of how to get the most out of existence as I have come across in my lifetime of philosophical and spiritual questing. Placed in terms of my spiritual path, Flow is a orchestrated mode of Lifew