Ummagumma

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he does not become a monster.  And if you gaze too long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” - Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future   Over the past few months, I've watched a YouTube history channel about the fall of the great empires and civilizations.  Assyrian.  Egyptian.  Byzantine.  Indus.  Mayan.  All sorts of civilizations and empires have come and gone.  In watching these documentaries, I was more interested in what brought each new one about, how did each of these vast collection of societies emerge as a new power?  Ultimately, each one fell and it sometime seemed to me they fell for similar reasons. Also over that same period of time, I watched a couple of Jordan Peterson videos that left me enraged at him without initially understanding why.  I respect the man immensely.  I even agree with most of what he is saying.  ...

For a nice change of pace I’ve turned to some different reading subjects lately.  One of them was revisiting Henry David Thoreau , as I often do in the winter months.  This time I did not read Walden or “ Civil Disobedience ” or any of his other famous writings.  Instead, I enjoyed a few of his essays. Thoreau’s writing style really captures the wonder and majesty of nature.  He finds the extraordinary in ordinary things like snow, leaves, fields, creeks and woodland animals.  I read him and instantly connect with my own experience of being in my woods or hiking and camping elsewhere throughout the years of my life.  I wrote about reading him back in February 2009 .  Typically, I read a few pages of him during the cold season.  It seems fitting to me.  Don’t ask me why.   The oldest parts of my library are mostly paperbacks from my high school and college days.  My copy of The Portable Thoreau dates from 1977.  The pag...

There are few things in life I hold more dear than maintaining a sense of place.  That is one reason Jennifer and I chose back in 1993 to build our home on what was once part of a large farm in my family.  I had played in the nearby fields and forests as a kid and I felt completely at peace with the view from our front porch, which (at that time) remained unchanged since I was a child. Now things are a bit different.  Old houses and barns have long sense been bulldozed.  New homes and barns are in their place, along with nearby suburbs with hundreds of houses. But, suburbia's massive sprawl has never reached the several hundred acres around our property.  So, comparatively speaking, the land and its surroundings has not significantly changed.   My woods have matured, my fields have been somewhat transformed by Jennifer's gardens and our tree plantings. Many pine and oak trees have volunteered and grown naturally through what was once a mulched open gard...

My 1991 Subaru Loyale. This was the first new car I ever purchased. It has an old-fashioned family stationwagon design. I bought my Subaru Loyale in 1991. That makes it an antique this year. I have a little over 177,000 miles on that car. Not that many miles really for a car I’ve owned for 20 years. It was originally Jennifer’s primary car in the early 90’s until we bought the Lumina we still own in 1995. Then it became a hand-me-down / camping vacation mobile. The Subaru has been an outstanding car. It still gets 33 MPH on the highway and about 29 around town. I usually can drive around for two weeks on one tank of gas. It handles great and has a very smooth ride. It rattles a lot and is a noisy car but, hey, it’s an antique. My Subaru leaks a little oil and has a small brake fluid leak no one can seem to locate. I add about a half quart of oil to it every two months and some small amount of brake fluid in that time as well. The radio hasn’t worked in it for years. I drive silent whe...

Last weekend, as we experienced one of the hottest Memorial Day holidays in recent memory, I found a little time to read a fascinating issue of The Economist that featured a cover story entitled “ Welcome to the Anthropocene .” It was the first time I have encountered this term though it has apparently been batted around within the scientific community ( particularly in geology ) since 2000. In brief, a growing body of scientists both within geology and in other disciplines are coming to the conclusion that we are no longer living in the Holocene geologic period. Instead, we have entered a new period with amazing swiftness where human beings are no longer the passive victims and observers of environmental processes. Due primarily to our active participation in the carbon-cycle and the nitrogen-cycle , humanity now shapes the workings of vast ecological systems. The Gaia Principle is now married to (or perhaps in contention with) the human footprint upon the earthly engine of cr...

Since sundown January 1 it has been below freezing here for all but a few hours. The last two mornings it has been 14 degrees. Our heat pump is giving us the finger, running nonstop. But, this weekend has been bright and sunny and mid-afternoon today it got up to 34 degrees. The wind was forceful yesterday but the sun felt warm enough. I spent awhile this afternoon outside with the dogs in the sun and a constant, slow freezing breeze. The dusting of snow we got Thursday night is still everywhere the sun doesn’t shine. When I was a kid growing up here we had cold spells that would last a week or two. So, this reminds me of the way winter used to be, cold, in the shadow of pines waving in the dry arctic breeze. Most of the stock ponds have frozen over. On cloudy days you can walk on the sheet of ice, but when the sun is out it melts the surface into slush. Tree dormancy is something of importance that most people never consider. I was told by the County Extension Agent several years ago...