“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”

“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”

by Sanjiv Chopra, M.D.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

- Mary Oliver

“The quiet, plain-spoken poet Mary Oliver died on January 17, 2019. An outpouring of emotion and tributes spanned the globe. She was both mourned and wildly revered by those for whom her words were a totem. With stark simplicity, she offered us both spiritual guidance and common sense, all of which was garnered from lessons she learned while simply meandering in the woods.

Mary Oliver’s gift was her ability to marvel at the world with an unsentimental acceptance that it (and we) are temporary. She looked clear-eyed and with unflinching certainty at the impermanence of our existence. In it she found not despair but rather joy. She chose to live in the moment and to be dazzled by it.

Mary Oliver’s roots were thoroughly midwestern. She hailed from Maple Heights, Ohio, a leafy suburb of Cleveland. From all accounts, hers was a difficult childhood. She wrote in “Blue Pastures” (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award): “Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them.”

This darkness of her youth led her to escape into nature and into books. Words and woods offered her solace. She fiercely embraced them, noting that “the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst stung heart.”

We know, and she acknowledged, that overcoming adversity isn’t easy: “There are stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet.” But she persisted. She said she read, “the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,” and that nature offered her “an antidote to confusion.”

She advised, “you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” And in saving her life, she rekindled so many of ours, using words that were deceptively simple but that had the power to shine a bright light into the dark crevices of our pain and misfortune and to set us free from the past. She gave us clear instructions for living a life:

“Pay attention. 


Be astonished. 


Tell about it.”

And for her- and for so many of us who have long sat at the knee of her prose – it worked. Mary Oliver wrote, “Having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. And can do what I want to with it. Live it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.” And when she died, she gave it back.

Mary Oliver’s religion was simple. It could best be described as “gratitude.” And so, as she departed this world leaving for us so many gifts, we offer this prayer for her – thank you. To honor her, we share here one of Mary Oliver’s most powerful poems, one that offers sage advice about accepting imperfection.”

“The Ponds”

“Every year


the lilies


are so perfect


I can hardly believe

their lapped light 

crowding
the black


mid-summer ponds.


Nobody could count all of them -

the muskrats swimming


among the pads and the grasses


can reach out


their muscular arms and touch

only so many, 

they are that 
rife and wild.


But what in this world 
is perfect?

I bend closer and see


how this one is clearly lopsided -


and that one wears an orange blight -


and this one is a glossy cheek 

half nibbled away -


and that one is a slumped purse


full of its own
 unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life


is to be willing


to be dazzled - 


to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even


to float a little


above this difficult world.


I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire 

of a great mystery.


I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -

that the light is everything - 

that it is more than the sum 


of each flawed blossom rising and fading. 

And I do.”

-  Mary Oliver

- https://www.psychologytoday.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character 

and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

by Maria Popova

“In 1957, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) became the second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him for work that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (It was with this earnestness that, days after receiving the coveted accolade, he sent his childhood teacher a beautiful letter of gratitude.)

More than half a century later, his lucid and luminous insight renders Camus a timeless seer of truth, one who ennobles and enlarges the human spirit in the very act of seeing it – the kind of attentiveness that calls to mind his compatriot Simone Weil, whom he admired more than he did any other thinker and who memorably asserted that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Nowhere does Camus’s generous attention to the human spirit emanate more brilliantly than in a 1940 essay titled “The Almond Trees” (after the arboreal species that blooms in winter), found in his “Lyrical and Critical Essays” (public library) – the superb volume that gave us Camus on happiness, despair, and how to amplify our love of life. Penned at the peak of WWII, to the shrill crescendo of humanity’s collective cry for justice and mercy, Camus’s clarion call for reawakening our noblest nature reverberates with newfound poignancy today, amid our present age of shootings and senseless violence.

At only twenty-seven, Camus writes: “We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

In a sentiment evocative of the 1919 manifesto “Declaration of the Independence of the Mind” - which was signed by such luminaries as Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, Stefan Zweig, and Hermann Hesse – Camus argues that this “kick” is to be delivered by the deliberate cultivation of the mind’s highest virtues: “If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it.

But where are the conquering virtues of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit. For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,” classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of the wise. More than ever, these virtues are necessary today, and each of us can choose the one that suits him best. Before the vastness of the undertaking, let no one forget strength of character. I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political platforms, complete with frowns and threatening gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in from the sea. Such is the strength of character that in the winter of the world will prepare the fruit.

Elsewhere in the volume, Camus writes: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Each time our world cycles through a winter of the human spirit, Camus remains an abiding hearth of the invisible summer within us, his work a perennial invitation to reinhabit our deepest decency and live up to our most ennobled nature.

Complement this particular excerpt from the thoroughly elevating “Lyrical and Critical Essays” with Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit and Susan Sontag on how to be a moral human being, then revisit Camus on happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons and our search for meaning.“

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"The Bamboozle"

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

- Carl Sagan

“Fear Is A Viral Monster”

“Fear Is A Viral Monster”

by Donald Boudreaux

“Reading the late Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, “Factfulness”, during the summer of 2020 creates a sensation of surrealness that would have been absent had I read this volume in 2018 or 2019. On nearly every page of “Factfulness” Rosling busts the popular myth that we denizens of modernity face imminent calamities that will destroy us and the earth. Widespread fears – such as of overpopulation, of terrorism, and of the rich getting richer while the poor stagnate – are methodically revealed to be either completely unjustified or exorbitantly exaggerated.

But today, in the midst of the ongoing lockdowns and with no end in sight to the hysteria over COVID, I’ve lost all of the natural optimism that has long resided within me and that would have otherwise been fortified by Rosling’s splendid work.

Sledgehammered: The image that keeps coming into my head is of a sledgehammer. With brute force, a blunt and heavy instrument was swung down on society by the state. Sledgehammers crush. They demolish. That’s their only function. They do not build. And for as long as the dreadful weight of this particular sledgehammer – the massive mallet that is the COVID-19 lockdown – continues to press down on the rubble that it caused, there is very little opportunity for the human creativity and work effort unleashed by markets to bring about the kind of improvements that Rosling documents.

Will humanity recover? Will we – when the sledgehammer is lifted – rise, dust ourselves off, and climb back on to the happy track that we were on before March 2020? Of course it’s possible. But there’s now a novel reality that makes a renewed continuation of pre-COVID progress much less likely: the sledgehammer itself.

When this sledgehammer is lifted off of us, it won’t be lifted for long. We now know that this awful hammer is there, looming overhead. We have good reason to worry that government officials are likely to smash it down upon us when another communicable pathogen emerges and makes news – as such a pathogen inevitably will, for viral pathogens have been part of human existence from the start. How will entrepreneurship and investment be changed by this ever-present threat of a smashing sledgehammer? The creation, funding, and operation of venues in which individuals come into close physical contact with each other – either for recreation or for work – will surely be much less attractive.

More generally, the newly demonstrated willingness of state officials to destroy, with just a few executive diktats, hundreds of billions of dollars of capital value cannot but push some entrepreneurs and investors into inactivity. Why build, or build grandly, when some pompous governor or mayor – someone whose only ‘skill’ and most intense itch is to exercise power over fellow human beings – can, with a mere signature, smash down a sledgehammer and turn to mush the fruits of years of hard work and sacrifice?

And how will those in power – and those who seek power – be affected by the display by so many people of a sheepish willingness to be ordered by the state into house arrest? Did prime ministers, governors, and mayors know in mid-March just how easy it would be for them to herd millions of the rest of us away from the activities that we human beings have for generations enjoyed? Were these officials aware of their power to convince so many people under their command that each individual poses a poisonous threat to every other individual?

To prosper, we human beings must cooperate in production – Adam Smith called it the division of labor – and trade extensively. Most of these activities require face-to-face contact among individuals who see each other as partners in cooperation and exchange rather than as threatening carriers of death. And to enjoy what we produce also requires face-to-face contact, for we are a social species.

In possession of dictatorial power unknown just a few months ago, government officials – a group undeserving of much trust even in the best of times – will not shy away from wielding their newly discovered powers. The results will be ugly.

Attentive to Fear: Ironically, in his upbeat book Hans Rosling himself unintentionally offers justification for my pessimism. He does so in a chapter titled “The Fear Instinct.” Here’s a key passage: “When we are afraid, we do not see clearly… Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear. This undeniable reality means that a people in fear are a people who are unlikely to assess with much rationality the pros and cons of government policies. And the greater the fear, the less able people are to detect and resist government overreach.

Who is so naïve as to deny that this reality gives to government officials strong incentives to stir up fear? People who seek positions of political power generally are people who, by this very seeking, reveal that they are especially keen on exercising power over fellow human beings. And so if more power for the state grows out of more fear in the people, state officials have every incentive to exaggerate real dangers and to concoct fake ones. The result is a vicious cycle. The possession of power includes a disproportionately great ability to stir up fear, and stirred-up fear creates more power.”

Further, Rosling’s insights about the media imply that they contribute to this vicious cycle. Here again is Rosling: “We have a shield, or attention filter, between the world and our brain. This attention filter protects us against the noise of the world: without it, we would constantly be bombarded with so much information we would be overloaded and paralyzed. Most information doesn’t get through, but the holes [in our attention filter] do allow through information that appeals to our dramatic instincts. So we end up paying attention to information that fits our dramatic instincts, and ignoring information that does not.

The media can’t waste time on stories that won’t pass our attention filters. Here are a couple of headlines that won’t get past a newspaper editor, because they are unlikely to get past our own filters: “MALARIA CONTINUES TO GRADUALLY DECLINE.” “METEOROLOGISTS CORRECTLY PREDICTED YESTERDAY THAT THERE WOULD BE MILD WEATHER IN LONDON TODAY.” Here are some topics that easily get through our filters: earthquakes, war, refugees, disease, fire, floods, shark attacks, terror attacks. The unusual events are more newsworthy than everyday ones.”

An invisible virus is the perfect troublemaker to portray as an existential monster. Like an evil spirit, it can live, usually silently, within the breast of each of us. And so if a large enough number of us can be convinced that an unseen, vile monster lurks in everyone else, the resulting widespread fear empowers government officials to do what government officials do best – and what they’ve done so horribly over the past seven months: destroy.”

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/19/20"

  

SEP 19, 2020 12:05 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 30,485,500 
people, according to official counts, including 6,747,516 Americans.

      SEP 19, 2020 12:05 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

◆

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

SEP 19, 2020 11:35 AM: "US COVID-19 Outbreak Accelerates With 50k Jump In Cases As France Sees Sudden Jump In Deaths: Live Updates"

 ◆

Updated 9/19/20, 4:22AM ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Musical Interlude: Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues" (Make Me Wanna Holler)

Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues" (Make Me Wanna Holler)

“Middle Class Eaten Alive; Pension Time Bomb; 401K Robbed; System Collapse; Medical Debt Crisis”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Middle Class Eaten Alive; Pension Time Bomb;

 401K Robbed; System Collapse; Medical Debt Crisis”

"Election Wildcards"

"Election Wildcards"

By Jim Rickards

"We need to be on guard against one or more surprises that can come without warning. I call these the “wildcards” in the election season. It’s hard to know which one might emerge, but it’s not hard to forecast that at least one of them will. Investors should prepare accordingly. Here they are:

The Replacement of Joe Biden: The first wildcard is the potential that Joe Biden will be removed from the ticket soon and replaced by a more acceptable candidate, possibly New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Biden is suffering acute cognitive decline. Whether this is dementia, early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease or the result of Biden’s two aneurysm-related neurosurgeries in the 1970s is hard to say without direct medical examination. Still, the cognitive impairment is obvious based on Biden’s vacant stare, confused demeanor and his inability to form sentences, complete thoughts or stay on topic.

The Biden campaign strategy so far has been to keep Biden under wraps and stuck in his basement. He does not do press conferences and his few interviews involve soft-ball questions and pre-scripted answers. Policies aside, the thought of Biden having to react in the midst of a crisis or a war will embolden America’s enemies and should chill Americans to the bone.

The crunch will come on September 29. That’s the date of the first presidential debate. Trump is an underrated debater with more command of the facts than critics give him credit for. He did well against Clinton in 2016 and will do the same if he faces Biden.

The real problem is not whether Biden can win a debate; it’s whether he can stand on the stage and speak and act coherently. Even with rehearsal and medication, this will prove exceedingly difficult. The Democrats’ options are to replace Biden before the debate (which can be done at the DNC level without new primaries or a new convention), cancel the debates or go ahead and hope for the best.

The candidate replacement option doesn’t just solve the debate problem, it also gives the Democrats a better chance of a win in November. Canceling the debates (no doubt by playing the COVID-card) is a solution but it carries its own costs and highlights the problem (cognitive decline) it was meant to solve. Letting Biden go onstage live with Trump may be the riskiest choice of all.

There are no good solutions to having a mentally impaired candidate. In a normal election against a conventional Republican incumbent, Biden wouldn’t stand a chance. Of course, Trump’s not a conventional Republican incumbent, so a Biden vote is really an anti-Trump vote. Any of the above choices set the race up for an unexpected shock, especially since Biden’s condition has been largely covered-up by a compliant media. You should brace for a shock on this front in the coming weeks.

Mail-in Ballots: Another shock-in-the-making is election day chaos resulting from the surge in mail-in ballots. These are not traditional absentee ballots that have long been used and have proved useful. This involves tens of millions of mail-in ballots intended to replace polling places and voting booths.

We can leave aside the issue of fraud in mail-in ballots (that’s a big issue but will likely not arise on election day itself; it can take weeks or months to identify and investigate such cases). The immediate problem is counting the ballots. Many mail-in ballots arrive at the last minute or even after election day. There will be issues concerning postmarks, matching signatures, timely delivery and the sheer time it takes to open the mail and visually inspect each ballot.

This mail-in ballot chaos won’t matter in states such as California or New York where Trump has almost no chance to win. The mail-in ballots will affect the final vote count, but they won’t affect the election winner because those states are solidly in the Biden column. But, it could be crucial in swing states such as Michigan where Trump won in 2016 by 10,700 votes, and where millions of mail-in ballots are expected to be cast. What this means is that the election will not be decided on election day; it may take days or weeks to count the ballots and announce the winner in key states that will determine the electoral outcome.

Both sides are gearing up for this. The Trump and Biden campaigns have hired over 600 lawyers each to fan out across fifty states on election day demanding court orders on extended voting hours, impoundment of mail-in ballots and mandatory injunctions against certifying results. Neither side will concede the election until these legal contests are resolved. A similar stalemate ensued in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. But, that was confined to a few counties in a single state, Florida. This stalemate will involve perhaps seven to ten states, all crucial to the outcome.

Two-time presidential loser Hillary Clinton added fuel to this fire by telling Showtime: “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out.” This reveals the Democrats are already preparing for election day chaos. The recent hoax about supposed efforts by the U.S. Postal Service to remove mailboxes to frustrate mail-in ballots is laying the predicate for election day charges of malfeasance. The reality is that mailboxes are routinely relocated for normal logistical reasons and the vast majority of mailbox relocations were done during the Obama administration.

The Chaos After Election Day Is Coming: Is there anything on the horizon worse than chaos on election day? Yes. It’s the prospect of chaos on the day after. The one certain forecast is that the next two months will be a wild ride.

The Black Lives Matter and Antifa factions are preparing for a possible Trump victory. For them, it will be a vindication of their view that American democracy is inherently flawed, and the only solution is to destroy the system and start over. The destruction will begin within 24 hours of a Trump victory in cities all over America. The riots and looting in Portland, Seattle, New York, Chicago and other major cities are just a warm-up for what will happen in the aftermath of a Trump victory.

The bottom line is that the next 70 days will be among the most volatile in U.S. political history. An uncertain election outcome with extreme differences between the candidates would be enough to cause great volatility. When one factors in a possible candidate switch, Biden’s cognitive decline, a delayed result due to mail-in ballots, refusal to concede the outcome, coast-to-coast election litigation and widespread riots, we are facing a minefield of hidden dangers and catastrophic outcomes."

- dailyreckoning.com.

○

Related:

"The True Election Day Nightmare Scenario"

"Retail Apocalypse Getting Worse: 60 Percent Of Closed Stores Will Never Reopen Again"

 

"Retail Apocalypse Getting Worse: 

60 Percent Of Closed Stores Will Never Reopen Again"

by Epic Economist

"Today, we are going to present to you the new unfoldings of the retail apocalypse, with several businesses struggling to stay afloat during this ground-breaking economic meltdown. The retail apocalypse has spread out so fast that the traditional Black Friday and Holiday shopping are now jeopardized. Hundreds of thousands of retail store closures are happening around the country, and more than half of them won't ever resume their activities. We are going to analyze a recent study that indicated that over 60 percent of the business closures that occurred so far turned out to be permanent, and all of these jobs were lost for good. If you have been keeping up with us, a while ago, we have reported how the generalized bankruptcy that is taking place all over the country will only add pressure to the giant debt bubble that America has created. Will that bubble burst by the end of the year? Let's examine together! Without further ado, let's jump into this video, and please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already.

The aftermath of the health crisis is accelerating the deterioration of the economy at a pace never witnessed before in all American history, leaving deep economic scarring in several sectors, and every attempt to rescue it haven't come without major consequences. The downturn boosted by the outbreak has made the economy fall into a "liquidity trap," in which interest rates will potentially be maintained on the zero lower bound until 2023, that is to say, the monetary policy is likely to face further challenges on stimulating the real economy having to do much more than artificially inflating asset prices. 

While the federal government keeps pumping one fiscal injection after the other into the real economy, forging a volatile and artificial growth, the latest gap in fiscal support, 48 days now, has sent the economy into another meltdown, with retailers failing to manage their way through the crisis and online spending rates nearing zero. Comparing to the prominent reopening background of other countries, the US rates were, at the very least, disappointing. In the retail sector, the observed rise was merely 0.6%.

According to Bloomberg, apart from foodservice and drinking places (4,7%), all the remaining retail sectors either presented a derisory growth or dropped below zero. Electronics and appliance stores recorded an 0.8% upswing, same as health and personal care, while gasoline stations recorded the marginal rates of 0.4%. On the other hand, paradoxically, food and beverage stores had seen a decrease of -1.2% in their sales, sporting goods and book stores noted a -5.7% fall, and general merchandise stores -0.4%. Online shopping sales remained unchanged, meaning that they flatlined and their growth is now close to 0%.

Furthermore, the deep economic disruption goes beyond the deterioration in the labor market, with more and more businesses registering that they won't ever be able to open doors again. A recent report published by Yelp revealed that up until August 31st, over 150,000 businesses have closed on the platform, marking a 23% increase since mid-July. The report also pointed out an increase of almost 100,000 permanent business closures over the past six months, which indicates that 60% of closed businesses will never reopen again."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Musical Interlude: Trevor Jones, "Promentory"

Trevor Jones, "Promentory"

"A Look From The Heavens"

Vangelis, "Albedo 0.39"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. 

Click image for larger size.

Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”

“Into The Night”

by Chet Raymo

“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.

Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.

Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.

The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.

In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.

One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.

That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.

That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”

“Alone”

“Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home,

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone.

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong,

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use,

Their wives run round like banshees,

Their children sing the blues.

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone,

But nobody,

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I’ll tell you what I know…

Storm clouds are gathering,

The wind is gonna blow.

The race of man is suffering,

And I can hear the moan,

‘Cause nobody,

But nobody,

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody,

Can make it out here alone.”

- Maya Angelou

"Bringing A BazookaTo A Knife Fight"

"Bringing A BazookaTo A Knife Fight"

by Jim Kunstler

"You heard it here first: Joe Biden will call in “sick” to the presidential candidates’ debate on Tuesday, September 29, and within days the Democratic Party will be obliged to replace him. Enough said for now. Wait for it…

Onto the election issue du jour: putting out ideological fires set by political arsonists: namely, the “systemic racism” hustle cooked up by “progressive” anarcho-terrorists to provoke hatred and division in a nation sore beset by propaganda, psy-ops, and seditious subterfuge - not to mention Covid-19 and economic collapse, as if those were not enough. This week, President Trump released an executive order halting all federal agency in-service training programs purporting to address “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “unconscious bias,” and other hobgoblins of Wokesterism, a scam that has become a multimillion-dollar consulting racket funded by taxpayers.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo to executive branch agency heads directing them to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any “propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.” When the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attempted to defy the order and go forward with training to “examine the mechanisms of systemic racism, white supremacist ideology, and systems of structured inequality,” Mr. Vought had to remind the agency to cancel it. So it goes with “the Resistance.”

One consulting outfit, CAST (the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking) has received $16-million from the Department of Education. At its August 2020 conference, attendees (including DOE staff) were told the United States has a “racial contract” that “says it’s okay for white people to kill blacks with immunity [sic]” (Did they mean impunity?) They also advocated abolishing prisons. The DOE press secretary says it’s investigating.

God knows what kind of swamp creatures lie embedded in the lower mudbanks of that agency, but at the top, at least, the department is cleaning up its act. DOE Secretary Betsy DeVos took aggressive action days ago after Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber sent out an open letter to “the Princeton community” stating that “racism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton” and that “racist assumptions” are “embedded in structures of the University itself.”

Click image for larger size.

Okay, it being the case that Princeton officially claims to be a “racist” institution, the DOE has opened an investigation into Title VI violations under US Civil Rights law so as to recover the $75-million in federal funding Princeton has received since Mr. Eisgruber became president of the institution in 2013. Seems fair, dontcha think? The DOE has required Princeton to produce electronic records of every conceivable type - memoranda, emails, calendars, text messages, telephone logs, you name it - in order to determine whether Princeton has made false representation of its compliance with civil rights law - that is, if it is actually racist as its leadership claims it to be.

Click image for larger size.

Princeton is given 21 “calendar days” (includes weekends) to comply. That ought to keep Mr. Eisgruber’s subalterns in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion quite busy in the weeks ahead, a monumental Chinese fire drill that can only end badly for the university. Either they have to come up with proof that Mr. Eisgruber’s asseverations are true - that Princeton is indeed, and has been for a long time, a racist school - or that Mr. Eisgruber and his administrative colleagues have constructed a false narrative to please and mollify the “social justice” mob among its own faculty and student body. In the first case, they are strictly evil; in the second, they are lying cowards. In either case, Mr. Eisgruber must resign, and several vice-presidents and deans along with him. Notify the Princeton board of trustees.

Next up: University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, whose graduate school of English Language Studies announced that it is “accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies” for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle. (See official U of Chicago announcement.) Hmmmm, no studies at all of literature written by white people allowed? Sounds a little discriminatory, possibly even racist! How much funding are they getting from the US DOE?"

- https://kunstler.com/

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The Daily "Near You?"

 Beaver Island, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: Albert Einstein, “The World As I See It"

“The World As I See It:

Albert Einstein’s Thoughts on the Meaning of Life”

by Paul Ratner

“Albert Einstein was one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers, influencing scientific thought immeasurably. He was also not shy about sharing his wisdom about other topics, writing essays, articles, letters, giving interviews and speeches. His opinions on social and intellectual issues that do not come from the world of physics give an insight into the spiritual and moral vision of the scientist, offering much to take to heart. 

The collection of essays and ideas “The World As I See It”* gathers Einstein’s thoughts from before 1935, when he was as the preface says “at the height of his scientific powers but not yet known as the sage of the atomic age”. 

In the book, Einstein comes back to the question of the purpose of life on several occasions. In one passage, he links it to a sense of religiosity. “What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it many any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life,” wrote Einstein.

Was Einstein himself religious? Raised by secular Jewish parents, he had complex and evolving spiritual thoughts. He generally seemed to be open to the possibility of the scientific impulse and religious thoughts coexisting. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” said Einstein in his 1954 essay on science and religion.

Some (including the scientist himself) have called Einstein’s spiritual views as pantheism, largely influenced by the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Pantheists see God as existing but abstract, equating all of reality with divinity. They also reject a specific personal God or a god that is somehow endowed with human attributes.

Himself a famous atheist, Richard Dawkins calls Einstein’s pantheism a “sexed-up atheism,” but other scholars point to the fact that Einstein did seem to believe in a supernatural intelligence that’s beyond the physical world. He referred to it in his writings as “a superior spirit,” “a superior mind” and a “spirit vastly superior to men”. Einstein was possibly a deist, although he was quite familiar with various religious teachings, including a strong knowledge of Jewish religious texts. 

In another passage from 1934, Einstein talks about the value of a human being, reflecting a Buddhist-like approach: “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

This theme of liberating the self is also echoed by Einstein later in life, in a 1950 letter to console a grieving father Robert S. Marcus: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

In case you are wondering whether Einstein saw value in material pursuits, here’s him talking about accumulating wealth in 1934, as part of the “The World As I See It”: “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?”

- http://bigthink.com/

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Freely download “The World As I See It”, by Albert Einstein, here:

- https://www.colonialtours.com/ebook/

"'Inflation' and America's Accelerating Class War"

"'Inflation' and America's Accelerating Class War"

by Charles Hugh Smith.

"I recently came across the idea that inflation is a two-factor optimization problem: inflation is necessary for the macro-economy (or so we're told) and so the trick for policy makers (and their statisticians who measure the economy) is to maximize inflation in the economy but only to the point that it doesn't snuff out businesses and starve workers to death. From this perspective, households have to grin and bear the negative consequences of inflation for the good of the whole economy.

This narrative, so typical of economics, ignores the core reality of "inflation" in America: it's a battleground for the class war that's accelerating. Allow me to explain.

"Inflation" affects different classes very differently. I put "inflation" in italics because it's not one phenomenon, it's numerous phenomena crammed into one deceptively simple word. When "inflation" boosts the value of homes, stocks, bonds, diamonds, quatloos etc. to the moon, those who own these assets are cheering. When "inflation" reduces the purchasing power of wages, those whose only income is earned from their labor suffer a decline in their lifestyles as their wages buy fewer goods and services. They are suffering while the wealthy owners of soaring assets are cheering.

The Federal Reserve and federal authorities are not neutral observers in this war. The Fed only cares about two things: enriching the banking sector and further enriching the already-rich.

The banking sector makes money by lending newly created currency to borrowers. No borrowers or new loans--banks go broke. So the Fed must generate the right kind of "inflation": it must lower the cost of borrowing money (deflating the cost of borrowing) by reducing the rate of interest borrowers pay, and it must "inflate" the market value of the collateral banks and Wall Street need to support more debt: commercial buildings, homes, stocks, bonds, etc.

This "inflation" of asset valuations makes those who already own these assets richer, while impoverishing those who must buy them with wages that are losing purchasing power. The Fed doesn't care if small businesses go broke or households slide into poverty; the Fed's only concerns are maintaining "inflation" in asset valuations and "deflation" in the cost of borrowing, so that debt-serfs, zombie corporations, local and federal government - everyone - can borrow more money, further enriching banks and Wall Street.

This is the sole goal of the Fed. Everything else is distracting PR.

There are downsides to this, of course, but they fall on "the little people" so economists, the Fed and federal officials don't bother to even track the downsides. Thus we have the nonsensical games government statisticians play to keep official measurements of "inflation" low. This serves to obscure the reality that real-world "inflation" in the cost of education, childcare, health insurance, rent, and so on - all the big-ticket household costs - is soaring, stripping away the purchasing power of wages.

Here's an example of how wages and purchasing power can be understood. Back in the day, I could rent my own studio apartment for half a week's pay. I was young and not well-paid, but I could still rent a crummy apartment for half a week's pay: 2.5 day's wages. Try finding an apartment for half a week's pay in a major city. Young workers are paying two week's pay just to rent a room. This is a massive loss in the purchasing power of labor.

Meanwhile, those with the right kind of assets are experiencing fantasic increases in their unearned income. These increases in income (and wealth) far exceed the modest impacts of real-world inflation on these owners of the right kind of assets.

Let's start with the the wrong kind of asset: a savings account. Where savers earned 5.25% on their savings as a regulatory requirement in the 1960s, now they earn less than nothing: even the bogus "official inflation" is 2%, while savers get 0.1% or less on savings. So savers lose money every day.

Those who bought bonds and stocks and real estate - the right kind of assets - have scored enormous gains in wealth and income. There's just one little tiny problem with the right kind of assets: the vast majority are owned by the top 5% of households, with the top 1% owning 40% and the top 0.1% owning 20% - more than the bottom 80% own.

There aren't just wealth-income classes - those who own these assets and those who don't - there are demographic and age classes, too. Young wage earners are mostly priced out of buying these assets with wages, unless they borrow staggering sums of money and devote most of their income to servicing their debts (student loans, auto loans, mortgage, etc.).

Retirees have been forced into gambling their retirement funds in the Fed-rigged casinos, which just so happen to crash every decade or so, wiping out the naive punters who believed "the Fed has our backs."

"Inflation" isn't an abstract debate - it's class war. And it's not just between two classes, those who depend on wages/earned income and those reaping the trillions in unearned income and wealth; there are warring classes fractured by age, demographics, political loyalties and issues of who's hoarding what: every one of these fractured classes is competing for scarce resources, scarce income and scarce security.

Those who don't see the fragmentation, the scarcities and the battlelines being drawn will be surprised by the acceleration of the unraveling. As noted here previously, The banquet of consequences is being laid out, and there won't be much choice in the seating."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Our Task As Humans..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

- Albert Camus

"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"

"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"

By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "First, we check in on the economy… Here’s CNBC: 'Yelp on  Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll. As of Aug. 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July.

In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60 percent of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.'

Almost 100,000 businesses left behind. Like worn out auto parts… yesterday’s sitcoms… and day-old bread.

Full Picture: But that is just part of the picture. Politically, the conservatives – and the restraint they used to bring to public finances – are gone. Socially, the middle ground is disappearing; you’re either red or blue, with us or agin’ us. And economically, the whole kit and kaboodle is headed for an explosive crescendo.

Societies are always evolving… taking up new things… leaving old things behind. Some good. Some bad. A half century ago, they left behind the gold-backed dollar. At the time, to many people, including famed conservative economist Milton Friedman, it seemed like an improvement. Then, it became a hustle. Businesses, households, and the government realized that borrowing money was easier than earning (or taxing) it.

Big Leader: Now, the fake money system is a racket. Why bother to borrow when you can print? Our prediction for today: It won’t be too long before the U.S. dollar itself is left behind (although we’re not fool enough to say exactly when).

We saw yesterday how the Argentines are abandoning their pesos for U.S. dollars. In one day, the peso lost 15% of its value in black market trading. As the price of dollars (in pesos) rises, it becomes harder and harder for the Argentines to pay their hundreds of billions of dollar-based debts. They have to default.

President Juan Perón pioneered the program in 1946 – taking Benito Mussolini as his model. Big government. Big promises. Big spending. Big borrowing. Big printing. And a Big Leader. Perón’s big spending made such a mess of the Argentine economy that by 1955, he was chased from the country and his party was outlawed. Alas, he made a comeback in 1973… and died a year later. Argentina was finally rid of Perón. But it couldn’t shake off Peronism: anaesthetize the masses with giveaways… denounce political enemies as “traitors”… and stir up an “us against them” internal struggle, while presenting yourself as the only one who will maintain law and order.

Spending Spree: Of course, there’s a big difference between the U.S. and Argentina. America has a choice – in theory; Argentina doesn’t. The gauchos can’t print dollars. The U.S. can. This week, for example, the Federal Reserve said it would add nearly $1.5 trillion in new money every year until 2023. It took a hundred years, from 1913 to 2013, for the Fed to run up its first $3 trillion in holdings (a rough measure of the U.S. base money supply). Then, in just three months, from March through May of this year, it added another $3 trillion. And now, the Fed is promising nearly $5 trillion more!

This week, too, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said the White House was in favor of more printing-press money; he said he expected that Republicans and Democrats would soon go on a spending spree (aka another “stimulus” package) together. This will include another flight of “helicopter money” – $1,200 checks dropped promiscuously, which is the only way you can do that kind of thing.

Argentine Experience: Even the Argentines didn’t go this far. Sure, they made the same mistake – locking down the productive economy in order to protect the unproductive part (largely retired people). Then, they, too, tried to replace real output with their fake money – printing pesos and giving them to people who weren’t working. But at least they left the helicopters on the ground. Everyone here knows the government is broke. So, if money were dropped from helicopters, the locals would know exactly what to do with it. They’d head straight for their friendly black-market currency traders… and exchange it for real money – U.S. dollars.

Monetary Naifs: By comparison, Americans are monetary naifs. They have no history of defaults. And inflation – which rose to 13% 40 years ago – is a distant memory. The feds can hand out trillions; no one wonders where it comes from. And no one bothers to imagine that the well might go dry. Yet, no paper currency has ever survived a full credit cycle – from bottom to top… to bottom… and back to top again. The dollar is unlikely to be the first. And now, we begin the final scene in a well-rehearsed farce.

Real yields are at a cyclical low – just as they were when we were born. From there, they rose for the next 30 years… until 1980. Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker put the kibosh on that trend. Yields have been going down ever since – aided and abetted by the Fed. Now, it’s time for the…

Final Act: The lights dim… and the curtain rises on Act Four… in which the fatal flaws of our fake-dollar system take center stage… yields turn up… and the dollar approaches its denouement. So, grab a drink. Pull up a chair. Settle in and enjoy the show. The Fed prints. The government spends. And the people – the bit players in this spectacle – realize their dollars are becoming worthless. And then what? How does it turn out? What black market will develop? For what will Americans trade in their dollars? Where will their money be safe? Tune in next week for the exciting grand finale…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Musical Interlude: John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"