Ummagumma

Our rock terrace garden in early July. The second half of the year begins with cicadas coming to life throughout our woods. The nightly emergence often rises to a kind of rhythmic reverb. Chchch-chchch-chchch. During the heat of the day a few of them sound off lazily here and there. They are especially loud around sunset, when they resemble some sort of electronic screech that can be somewhat deafening.  Unlike previous months, July at Twin Oaks was hot and very dry. It rained just before July 4. For most of the month after that, every band of showers or pop-up thunderstorms produced rain all around us but none here. The heat cranked up into the mid-90’s, scorching grass and plants. The vegetation on the floor of the woods started to wither, as did most of our other plants. The first half of the month brought numerous blooms and blossoms that were fragrant and beautiful.  Most things withered later in the month. Thanks to some nightly watering, the rock terrace reaches

Proof of Purchase. We usually think of evolution as progressive.  Human beings today are superior to pre-humans a million years ago because we think deeper faster and make more clever use of our opposable thumbs.  We improve as a species through time.  That sounds comforting but, in fact, it is not true. We no longer breathe as well as we used to.  Our bodies evolved in “ dysevolution .”  Our body parts frequently ache and hurt.  We develop osteoporosis.  Our teeth come in crooked and our jaws are often misaligned.  In fact, for the past million years our nostrils have greatly contracted.  We now have sleep apnea, snoring, and all manner of throat inflammations.  Our ancestors may have lived shorter lives but they were healthier than we are in one basic respect.  They breathed better.  Today human beings have dysevolved into “the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.” That’s how James Nestor opens his 2020 book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art .  He then proceeds to tell

Jordan Peterson (left) and Sam Harris (right) with Douglas Murray as the moderator at the O2 arena in London in 2018. A couple of weeks ago, I canceled my Hulu subscription.  When the site asked me why as clicked through the process I checked the “not enough content” box, which is a general statement but the truth nevertheless.  Of course there is a ton of content on Hulu and I have watched countless hours of programming on that platform over the past few years.  But, in today’s pandemic crisis, I find it more difficult than ever to connect with any traditional TV programming. We have a family account on Netflix but I don’t watch that any more either.  I have tried repeatedly to get into something.  Typical futuristic shows like Dark and Altered Carbon that I have read so many good reviews of do not speak to me.  I just don’t care about any entertaining puzzle they strive to create.  I am living in a reality that is far more interesting than any fiction TV can come up with.

Latest graph of new COVID-19 cases per day in the US.  We have entered a new reality with the virus.  Just wait until schools reopen.  Dr. Fauci says we may be headed to 100,000.  Yesterday's 67,000+ cases is a new record.  Now Donald Trump wants to control the data we see.  The graphs in this post are from the excellent Johns Hopkins website . My recent blog post expressing concern for the sudden spike in the number of 30,000+ days has been blown away.  Yesterday over 67,000 Americans contracted COVID-19.  This is a record daily total that went under-reported partly because a surprising announcement by the Trump administration that future reporting would not be handled by the Center for Disease Control. According to a New York Times report , “The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hosp