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It is in the details, the minutiae, that we discover and begin to understand another's life. So much meaning in such tiny things.  Purse dust, I call it.

And the first time I understood it was a day when I was full of resentment, frustration, anger, and grief.  An ordinary day, really, for so many. The day of moving a grandmother, an aunt, a dad, out of their home and into a safe place. A retirement place. A place that may or may not actually become a home, again, for them. A day of sadness, driven by hope. Pin pricks of hope that there might be new connections, less worry, less responsibility, more life. [read more]

The daily mull generally deals in questions which do not have final, simple, definitive answers.

This time is almost an exception.

Some time ago, I posted a little essay on Grabel's Law (you can find it here) :

Two is not equal to three, even for very large values of two.

The law, as most of you who find your way to this post will already know, is fairly famous on the internet and even on T-shirts and mugs.

At the time I wrote about it, I had no idea who Grabel was, or what the law's origin was, and I could find no evidence of either.

The post got a lot of attention, and a lot of comments, including one from a student who claimed to have heard his professor (Arvand Grabel at Northeastern University) actually state the "law" in class: [read more]

My adult son recently gifted me with a pocket knife.

I hadn't carried one since I was a boy, and it took me back to my first knife, and the very first thing I learned to carve: a simple whistle.

You start with a small branch, cut off a section, notch it, slide off part of the bark, carve out a hollow and a flat spot for your breath to go through, replace the bark, and if all goes well it makes a very pleasing sound.

Of course, you have to know what you are doing, and you have to actually do it.

That's the difference between a whistle and a piece of a branch.

But if you expend the effort, and do it right, you have something more valuable than a piece of branch.

I was thinking about this the other day when a friend suggested that we ought to return to the gold standard. [read more]

No Digging for Worms         

Earthworms have their own business, and it is holy.
They are lacing through debris, making it clean.
If you see them when you are turning the earth to plant a bulb
or root out a weed, let them return to their dark home.

They bristle their way through their loamy world
 with tiny hairs all along their body, bringing air to the soil.

The mystery of their own breathing is in the slime that coats them. 

In the night, above the ground, under the moon, or under the stars, or under a thick blanket of cloud,

they find a mate.  Each worm is male and female, complete unto itself. But still they need a mate.

Regeneration is their holy business.  Turning and turning, they revive what has decayed, what is dead to us.  [read more]

Bits of holiday paper and glitter linger long after the holidays have packed themselves up (oh if only they really did that) and put themselves away in tidy boxes, hidden out of sight until we go looking for them again at the end of this new year.  The ornaments that we hung on trees, by chimneys, or around windows have left an imprint, even though they are not actually there.  That imprint is, of course, on our mind’s eye – that eye that sees so much more.  The mind’s eye still can see the wrapped packages, the fresh green tree, the tables set for guests, the lighted deer on the lawn nodding over that big weed that grew up suddenly, untouched by the greedy lawn mower.  The glow from the Hanukah candles still shimmers on the dining room wall, the vision -- the flavors -- of the Kwanzaa feast linger.
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The headaches began when the dreams began. 

In the dreams, people would talk without pauses or inflection.  Sentences had no beginning, no end.  There were no commas, semi-colons, or colons.  No dashes – no question marks – no periods.  There were also no compound words – no “can’ts”, no “wont’s”, no possessives.

It made the dialogue sound like that of political pundits.  It was delivered rapidly, with urgency.  Almost with a despair that all the words would not come out fast enough, that the ideas needed to be emptied from the mind and poured out quickly or they would sour and turn on the speaker. [read more]

Figuring out how life works is hard.  It takes most of us all of our lives to make sense of it.  But there are some who are luckier than others.  There are some who are fortunate to start with a foundation of enough love, enough trust, enough of the basics that make life comfortable.  And that makes all the difference.

This foundation "layer" starts with parents who see children as people, right from the beginning--people with their own needs, their own desires, their own ways of being.  Parents who get that, give their children most of what they need to build good lives, right there, in the earliest years of their lives.   [read more]

Connections.     

I have been thinking lately about how we make them, how we lose them, and what they mean to us.  Do we intentionally stop trying to make them -- or do they just wither away without much intentionality at all?  What did they mean to us when we had them?  How were they crafted, forged, proved, tested, and trusted?  And how do we do that today?

My mother used to talk to her mother every day on the telephone.  When we had a party line, she had to wait until it was free before she could make a call.  If she had been nosey, she could listen quite easily to the conversation that was going on while she was waiting, but I know she did not do that.  Her life was complicated enough. [read more]

Workmanship refers to the quality of the work of an artisan or craftsman.  WIKIPEDIA     [read more]

'What lies beneath may be more treacherous than the surface chooses to disclose...'

from student notes, archaeological dig, California coastline circa 1921. 

Cliff's list of requirements to earn a scholarship was succinct, and somewhat surprising.  High school gpa of only 3.5, an essay not longer than three pages, and a statement to substantiate financial need.

"One scholarship will go to each of the Colleges: Fine Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and Mathematics," Cliff announced.

Hah.  Good luck getting anyone to agree on who would get the one scholarship in social sciences.  The two sides of the room were already glaring at one another.  Good thing the decisions this first year were made only by Warren and Cliff. [read more]

'Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.'

Mary W. Shelley, English Novelist (1797-1851)

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Why do we look back?  Why do we sort photos, read old correspondence, look at artifacts and articles that speak only to the past? 

I recently spent a week going through photos that came to me from my dad.  They started before the 1900's (yes, they did) and continued until about 1945.  In his later years, he was in the process of reviewing them and making some kind of declaration of who was who, and where they were, and when.

  Albert, circa 1927

He died in 2009, only a few days before his 91st birthday. Right until his very last breath, he could recount who was who, what was what, where they were, and when.  He wasn't so good at what was going on.  That's not strictly fair, he tried to make sense of it.  He did his best to explain, extrapolate, and justify. [read more]

“Did you know you’ve got ants all over your kitchen?” Char was back, and had seated herself gingerly on the edge of the bathroom counter. “Do you have any bug spray?”

“Under the sink.”  Good, maybe she’d leave Kate alone if she could go kill something.

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Father's Day is coming up.  Sunday, in fact.  Well, it always is on Sunday. 

Maybe that's why I'm thinking about my dad, and his dad, and all dads.  I don't know if I would choose Sunday for Fathers' Day, if it were up to me. 

Sunday was the day in my family where dad had little or no say about what was going on.  Sunday was a day of rituals, and most of them revolved around the mothers in the family.  Church, mainly something women were interested/compelled/obligated to attend -- but not really for spiritual reasons, because of community.  And that's fine -- and then there was Sunday dinner.  [read more]