Monday, May 8, 2023
In bed at 9:30, awake unable to sleep after 2:45 till 3:30(?), up at 6:40. 47℉, fog/haze since before we went to bed, high of 51℉, rain expected in a few minutes, wind ENE at 8 mph, 3 to 14 mph today, gusts up to 23 mph. Almost an inch of rain expected today. Sun rose at 5:35, sunset at 8:01, 14+24.
LTMW as I open the venetian blins I see a magnificent male Rose-Breasted Grosbeak on my sunflower seed feeder, two male goldfinches, one female. 'O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” he chortled in his joy. ' Later, 3 white-crowned sparrows pecking away furiously at the abundance of seeds on the ground beneath the feeders. Still later, wild turkeys in the front yard and under the feeders.
The House of Peace was the site of one of my dreams last night and of my thoughts while unable to sleep in the middle of the night. Pleasant dream of returning and visiting. I'm urprised that Linda Barnes has not returned my call. I had thoughts of the legal clinic and its usefulness in steering visitors to other resources, Julie Darnieder, the fact that the clinic has been operational for more than 20 years now at HOP, and before that at St. Francis of Assisi while I was a member of the Parish Council. . Father Paul Koenig was not pleased with me when I made the HOP available to the clinic. Also had thoughts of Brother/Father Bob, Father Niles Kaufmann.
H. L. Mencken on the Church: "Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings." 'nuf said.
America/Dystopia. WaPo: "The mass killing Saturday at an outlet mall in the Dallas suburb of Allen, Tex., that left at least eight dead was the second-deadliest in the United States in 2023 — a year on pace to set a modern record. So far this year, the country has recorded 22 mass killings — all involving guns — that collectively have resulted in at least 115 deaths, according to a database maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. This is more than double the number of mass killings recorded by this point last year, which was eight. In all of 2022, there were a total of 36 mass killings by gunfire in the United States, which resulted in at least 186 deaths, according to the database. This was the highest number recorded since 2006, when data on such incidents started being tracked."
Why Do I Journal? I wonder about this. (1) The answer that most frequently comes to mind is the one Flannery O'Connor gave in a 1948 letter to one of her literary agent: "I don’t have my novel outlined and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again." Thoughts are ephemeral; writing concretizses them. I've long remembered the law student who said to me "I understand such and such a doctrine or theory, I just can't put it into words." I told him that if he can't put it into words, he doesn't understand it and much of what we think we know, we can't put into words. It's only in attempting to write what we know that we understand just how hard it can be to be sure of our thoughts, our supposed knowledge. Sometimes our thoughts are really muddled, or even contradictory. (2) On the other hand, writing our thoughts give us a clearer picture of our biases, our values, our fears. and our enmities. When one write every day over a protracted period of time, the writing inevitably will reflect what the writer considers inportant in life, what merits attention and the energy it takes to write something about it, what worries him/her, who and what persistently vexes him/her, etc. (3) Recently I have been wondering whether I write simply to try to check on my ability to write anything at all worthwhile or coherent, to get a sense of how much cognitive decline I am experiencing in my 80s, to have some guage of memory loss, executive function loss, and - shudder- dementia. (4) Perhaps, though, the real reason is fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, fighters fight and writers write. Some people are driven to put their thoughts down on paper (or in a digital file). How else do we explain the comments section following some news stories where we find literally thousands of people responding to the subject matter of the story. The writers can't expect that anyone will be reading their comments, but they are driven to write them anyway. I don't expect that anyone other then me will read the words I am typing at this very moment so why write them at all? Fish gotta swim, . . .
Cauliflower Carrot Bacon Soup. I made a big pot of it this afternoon and had a bowl for lunch. Tasty. Also did a load of laundry and a load in the dishwasher. Active morning.
Geri, the friend indeed. She spent much of the day helphing her buddy Cheri move stuff from their temporary house into their new house, which is now completed.
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