Hiatus Ended

Moving is a pain in the tookus.

This is known as conventional wisdom. When I posted Hiatus Claimed, I revealed that Ellie and I had been busy house-hunting, had bought a townhouse and would be busy with moving. Not admitted, but also on my mind, were the activities associated with settling in once moved, then preparing our original place for sale, listing it and selling it. My blog partner said he optimizes his life-style to minimize moving pain and moving still costs him a couple of months. "Moving is a pain in the tookus" dominated my consciousness as I decided on and declared my hiatus.

I am happy to report not only that we are moved and settled, but that it went far smoother than we could have dreamed. In addition, our original house is also sold, to people we both knew previously and with whom we have become better friends during the process.

I continue to desire to write and to tell stories; I have missed writing and posting to this blog; I hope you have missed reading my posts. The good news is that all moving, preparing, and selling has generated much story material, much of which I will weave into stories in the coming weeks. Please plan to read these stories, beginning next week with the intial phase of our journey. 

If you would like to comment but don't care to use the comment field, send an email to  wrjsojourner@gmail.com.

Hiatus Claimed

"Want to see it?"

I was speaking to a friend of mine about the current POTUS and the apparent inability to speak civilly to those who disagree with us politically. We seem intent on winning rather than finding truth.

"Character matters," she said simply; "Character matters."

I started a blog post on this topic when life happened.

Ellie and I had loosely been talking about moving to a townhouse; we don't enjoy yard work like we did, Ellie's arthritis is an obstacle to yard work even if she still enjoyed it, and the steep steps in our house, even to get in from the outside, are an issue.  We had decided on a realtor to both help us look for a townhouse and to sell our house. She was the woman who managed the sale of the property Ellie was the executor of three years ago. Though we had decided to wait until after Ellie's surgery ( early January ), Ellie had recently contacted her, just to stay in touch and let her know our real estate adventures would, in the "near future," be warming up.

"I have a town home right now that seems to meet your requirements. Want to see it?"

We made an offer on the place, which was not accepted, which broke our hearts ... and this experience both began our house hunting activity
in-earnest and super-charged it.

For no particularly good reason, I have been lackadaisical about posting for a while, and house-hunting has introduced more activities that have further pushed me from posting. All of this introduces the formal hiatus I am announcing. You see, we found another wonderful townhouse...and bought it!

This is very exciting, and driven in large measure by finding a place with most living space on one level. Ellie will no longer face fourteen steep steps just to end her day in the evening, or to begin her day in the morning. But it also means Ellie and I have four or so weeks to gather the thirty-six years worth of stuff we've acquired while in this house, evaluate it and implement the evaluation decision. All the while not renigging on other commitments, such as parish volunteer jobs, tutoring second grade math, helping Ellie get ready for her hip replacement surgery, prior social commitments with friends and the like.

S0 ... rather than feeling badly about not posting ( I will continue to so
feel ) I am explicitly saying I will not post again until 2019, hopefully January. There is nothing to be gained by pretending life is normal and posting as part of it will resume before that. Please keep us in your prayers ... for the sale of our house, our move, and Ellie's surgery.

If you would like to comment but don't care to use the comment field, send an email to  wrjsojourner@gmail.com.

Spanish is Easy...ier #4

When I was 13 I got my first pair of glasses.  My mother told me to pick out the pair I wanted, so I wisely picked the biggest pair, the one that covered the most of my peripheral vision. Suddenly walls had textures, and the trees became 3 dimensional.  It changed the world.  Then the other kids saw them, and laughed at how ridiculous they looked.  So I promptly took them off, and never wore them again.  My mother told me that I was the one who had picked them out, and she could not afford to purchase another pair so soon.  My vision journey would not continue until I became an adult.

I was reminded of this the other day when I overheard someone making a comment on the price of an item at Walmart... in Spanish.  I hear people speak Spanish several times a week.  It's something in the background, like the texture on the walls.  It's there, but not for me... until now.  The experience was not exactly the same, mind you.  Glasses correct my vision immediately to better than 20/20, while it took me 100 hours of study to piece together one comment in Spanish.  But it was the first glimpse into a world I have never experienced before.  It was a glorious taste of things to come.

When I first started studying I began with a multi prong approach.  I stand by that, but I realize now that order does matter.  I'm beginning to understand that learning a language is so confusing because it is like a pile of puzzle pieces turned upside down.  It just means nothing.  But if you could turn those puzzle pieces over, they would start to mean something.  "This pile is part of a boat", and "this pile is part of the sky"; for example.  Your not done, but you have begun.  Knowing what the words mean is like flipping those puzzle pieces over.  You still have a puzzle, but it's a puzzle you can understand.

To maximize my effort, I now believe step 1 should be memorizing the most commonly used words in Spanish.  I have changed my approach to prioritize Anki.  It is easy, low stress, and can be picked up whenever I have a moment.  And it is the most useful thing I could be doing now.

Getting my Act in Order

I remember when I was young someone told me that the angles have infinite willpower.  That if you look at the stories from the bible, they seem to do everything deliberately.  They may decide to do what they are told, and they may decide not to, but it is always a choice.  It is never out of weakness.  As a lazy man, it really made me think.

I did give up eating animals.  It wasn't even hard.  My diet is healthier for it.  I would say I eat a healthy diet... and then I eat a ton of sugar.  The next step is to give up sugar, and I am making progress.  I'm doing really good, actually.  Normally I eat a dessert everyday; sometimes two.  I have only eaten dessert two of the last seven days, and one of those was a special occasion.  I really do see myself giving up dessert except for special occasions; maybe once a month.

I'm also committing to cooking more in the new home, and my plan is to cook more vegan food.  I'm not committing to become vegan.  That's not just a will power thing.  Eating food, and the eating experience, does bring me happiness.  That might be giving too much up.  But I think cooking more often, and making more of that cooking vegan, are reasonable goals.

I do think a maid will help with that.  Not that she will be doing the cooking, although that is a possibility.  I have a friend who had a maid for a few months, and she learned a lot about cleaning.  I think I'll learn a lot too, and be motivated to accomplish something myself.

Movin' Right Along

"I haven't moved in a year and a half."  That was my witty come back to a friend's crazy accusation that I seem to move quite a bit.  Okay, maybe I do move more than most.  I don't have the numbers, but I suspect my average stay at a given residence is about 3 years.  The fact that I would have to guess is probably a sign as well.

When my roommate and I moved into the place we're at now, we decided to spend a little more on a place with lots of amenities.  These are amenities that we never use.  We weren't inclined to use them as much as we thought; that's true.  It's also true that this place was sold right after we moved in, and went downhill rapidly after that.  So these amenities became less appealing.  We also found out pretty early on that the utilities, and associated fees, were higher than we expected.

So, we're moving, and I'm excited for a number of reasons.

1. I will be saving $150 to $200 a month.  Part of this is fewer amenities, but also rent prices have gone down in my area.

2. We have decided to spend some of that saved money on a cleaner.  So many people have said, "you're that lazy..."  If their homes were perfectly clean, then they'd have a point.  They way I see it, I'm paying for cleanliness, and they choose not to.

3. I'm even closer to work.  I'm literally down the street.  It will be maybe a 10 minute walk.

4. I'm getting a new bed.  I've had a queen for I think 17 years.  What I really want is a loft bed.  It's going to come with more space.  But also, I think it will be easier to control the climate and lighting in the enclosed area.  Plus there has been some advancement in mattress technology in the last 17 years.

5. It's time for a new office chair as well.

6. Finally, there are a few changes I have been reluctant to make to a place I'm renting, but I'm just going to go for it.  Changes like hanging hand sanitize and paper towel dispensers.  I might even spend a little on sound absorbing panels.

Necessary Lies

Months ago I listened to a podcast where the topic discussed was, "Necessary Lies of Civilization."  The idea is that we collectively and subconsciously agree that society is better off if we tell ourselves, and each other, that certain things are true, when they are not.  We lie to ourselves.  Lies like, "Crime never pays."  Lies like, "Hard work pays off."  It can, and often does, but there are certainly people who work harder than I who are worse off; and many better off who work less hard.  Hard work is one factor; one resource.  But what kind of message is that?  Since then I've kept my eyes open for these lies as one more veil to lift to see the world as it really is.  That led me down a really unexpected path.

Start with all American adults who are of sound mind who have formed an opinion about when a person becomes a person.  I'm ignoring everyone who has not formed an opinion.  I'm ignoring everyone who is repeating what their religion tells them.  Look at everyone who has used logic to determine when they believe a person becomes a person.  It seems to me something like 99% would agree that a person become a person at birth.  Does this make sense?

It never has to me.  Imagine explaining to a robot that this adult human is a person, and that adult pig is not.  You could easily point to a superior intelligence, abstract thinking, an appreciation of art...  This would not be a hard task.  But that robot would immediately use your criteria to determine a new born baby is not a person.  So you'd add, "And everyone who can be expected to develop these traits."  Great, but now the robot would tell you that any unborn human is a person.

What I'm getting at is, how does anyone use logic to determine that a person become a person at birth?  And it finally hit me, they don't.

There is a huge cost to placing that point of demarcation at any point after birth.  There is a huge cost to saying, "these humans are people, but these humans are not people."  I think every atrocity in human history has started with that idea.  And there is a huge cost to putting that point before birth.  Pregnancy has huge costs.  Financial, of course, but the cost of time, and effort; the effects on a person's body and life.

So the majority of people tell that lie, but it is a lie.  If a new born baby is a person, then he or she was a person ten minutes earlier.  And if its not its not.  And I get it.  We tell ourselves each life is priceless, but that's just one more lie.  We all decide how much we are willing to give up for our safety, the safety of the people we love, and the safety of people we will never meet.  This isn't a call for action, if anything it's a call for transparency.

Influencing Politics

With apologies to Benjamin ...

It's the rules …

In a prior blog post, I shared what was to be a letter to the editor but what turned into a commentary … too long ( too wordy, would you believe? ) for a simple letter to the editor. My paper failed to publish it.

Perhaps I don't blame them. But I'm not giving up. I have trimmed the nearly 450 word article to a mere fraction of that. It's below; I believe it's still hard-hitting.

It's the rules, buddy, As the economy has been a major factor in many nation-wide elections, so too should the rules of the United States House of Representatives be this year. For it is those Rules, and some practices that have evolved due to them, that have precluded even consideration of common sense bi-partisan legislation. Legislation doing what is supported by an overwhelming majority of voters and which would pass easily in both houses. Think Health Care; DACA; Immigration; Roads and Bridges The Problem Solvers' Caucus, consisting of forty-some Republicans and Democrats, with the Support of No Labels (nolabels.org), a bipartisan citizens group, proposes a series of specific changes to the House Rules that would break these barriers to consideration of bipartisan legislation. New rules could be implemented in the next Congress, as the incoming Class chooses its Rules in January. The old rules are usually rubber-stamped and the Caucus aims to change that. Communicate with your favorite candidate for a Congressional seat, or a member of her or his Staff; talk about the proposal to change some of the House Rules. GOOD: Ask for support. BETTER: ask for a pledge of support. BEST: communicate that your vote hinges on such support. With enough citizens leaning on elected officials this way, change can happen. It's the rules, buddy,

 
What do you think?

If you would like to comment but don't care to use the comment field, send an email to  wrjsojourner@gmail.com.