Category: Status

Lincoln Memorial and Mall Barriers

Lily was cracking everyone up with her “device” and saying “CHEESE!” to fellow tourists (and ducks in the Reflecting Pool)

We made it to the Lincoln Memorial as well as the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials last night for our first evening here in the D.C. area.

I was particularly struck by the number of barriers and fencing that has been “deployed” all over the National Mall (I’m guessing in preparation for the “parade” on June 14). I’m sad that even getting a glimpse of our White House is buried behind rows of police and security lines like something out of a dystopian future-movie (compared to just a decade ago).

We’re heading off to the Smithsonian Museums and then the Capitol this morning. I’m hoping that I the barriers we’ve erected don’t just strike me as something that we should strive to have no need for in our Nation’s capitol in the very near future, but something we resolve to do in our collective consciousness.

The more I read Plotinus as a 46-year-old PhD student, the more I want to focus on Plotinus and spiritual ecology (and meld in some Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edith Stein).

Got to see the Pine Warbler that’s been hanging out around our home this morning. It’s currently my favorite bird (and the Pine Grosbeak on the cover of my current Field Notes notebook is a close representation). I’m an old man 👴.

 

Ark Moments

The Beatles arrived in NYC for the first time 61 years ago. I’ve been a big fan since I was a young person in rural South Carolina, intent on making my southern accent disappear by listening to too much of their music (along with David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Tom Petty’s Florida / California twang). I miss that accent now and wonder what I would sound like had I not tried to match McCartney’s pitch or Lennon’s subtle phrases all those hours in my bedroom with a ceiling that I painted black (thanks to the Stones).

It’s also the re-release of Wilco’s album a ghost is born. I was 25 (almost 26) when the album was released in 2004. The songs sound much different now than they did in my hazy memories of 25. Now, as the dad of five young people and after a 20 or so year stint in the classroom as a Middle and High School Teacher scattered with some adjunct university teaching, there’s an earnestness of trying to preserve something that comes through. Tweedy called the album an “ark” (in the Noah or Utnapishtim or Atrahasis sense) of such as he was in a bad spot at the time and thought it might be his goodbye. He wanted to preserve some of his better parts for his children. There are panthers, hummingbirds, a muzzle of bees, spiders, a fly (and he re-explores Noah’s ark in his future as well),

I didn’t pick up on that as a 25 or 26 year old. I get it now as a 46 year old.

I like to stand outside with a black walnut tree on the property we share and reflect on things after getting the little ones off to school. I’m thinking of ark moments this morning and wondering what the black walnut will take with it after our human family here has moved along down the paths of life and death. I wonder why or when it had a few of its limbs chopped off to afford a powerline that runs adjacent to our property. I wonder if any other children have ever climbed the walnut or hung a tire swing on its limbs before. I wonder what it thought of Helene or if it even did.

All of these ark moments that we hold dear ebb and flow with time and yet we say that our souls remain.

Or as Tweedy sang, “theologians, they don’t know nothing about my soul…”

Take Care of Your Tiny Notebooks

I like to think every time I open up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations that I’m peering into something I shouldn’t be privy to… as I would always tell my students, he didn’t write those words for me, but only for himself. Yet, here we are. 

I gave away little composition notebooks to my students that we called “Tiny Notebooks.” I’d like to think some of them still are tempted to use them!

Take Care of Your Little Notebook | Charles Simic | The New York Review of Books:

I very much hope these notebooks I see in stationery stores, card shops, and bookstores are serving similar purposes. Just think, if you preserve them, your grandchildren will be able to read your jewels of wisdom fifty years from now, which may prove exceedingly difficult, should you decide to confine them solely to a smart phone you purchased yesterday.