Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Many Happy Returns

Back from Louisiana, a wedding, new family, and all the rest. I thought lengthily on further writing during the trip back, which hasn't happened in some time. Perhaps writing will be a more regular fixture because of a new computer with which to use. That is news: This is the first (of many) updates coming from my new computer. It is a System76 Pangolin laptop that runs on Ubuntu. Except for the troubles formatting my iPod to it and the difficulties with the home network (which is a pretty regular affair), I am happy with it. Currently, though, I am still test-driving it for its functionality.

Potential, possibilities and concerns for the new computer: getting all the software to work properly on it; exploring the products of open-source software programmers; learning about the community of supporters and explorers of the open-source software movement; being able to write more frequently and in more places than before; and so on. Obviously, the excitement outweighs the problems. I have already made a call to customer support for help with the wireless at home, and it likely has nothing to do with the computer, which is a relief and frustration simultaneously. I have had fun making up the map of my computer; that is, finding the places I go to and explore as well as learning about the places that provide open music and other media. This latter aspect is part of a leisurely project from the winter. With the help of friends, I was able to find many great sources for music under Creative Commons licensing and in the public domain. Here are some, but not all: www.Daytrotter.com, www.elbo.ws, http://music.minneapolisfuckingrocks.com, and www.hypem.com. If someone expresses interest, I also was led to sources of blues, jazz, hindi, and other music resources.

In other news, Nebraska weather is currently beautiful. I am happy to be outside in a tolerable clime. I want to bike and write and work and walk and laugh and converse. I am jumpy, despite mild hunger, because of all that is feeling jubilant. Last night I reminisced about India and Buddhism with a new friend, Miss Adrienne, which was good to do because I too easily forget the wonder it gave to me.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Jane Addams, Industrialization, and the Corporation

Reading from Jane Addams's Centennial Reader, I am struck with the harsh, lived experiences of those who did and those who are undergoing the social realities of industrialization. Addams writes and worked for a better world in the face of a despicable one, endlessly seeking that which was almost incomprehensible: A time and place where workers were allowed rights to life for themselves and their families, liberty of thought and speech, and the possibility of creative action. She joined and galvanized those who struggled in the face wealthy, politically minded, and socially connected industrialists and businesses. A mass of seemingly powerless, undereducated, displaced, and disparate peoples thrown together against the few empowered, networked, and highly educated entrepeneurs; simply put, such were unbeatable odds. All the same, through cooperation and determination, through the unification of cultural, religious, and ethnic conflicts, things change in dramatic and encouraging ways. Successes like a forty hour work week, child labor laws, safety codes, and--eventually--minimum wage are just some of the pleasures we now expect from any simple, straightforward economic system.

Those many, many peoples undergoing industrialization now, in its various difficult and uncertain manifestations, certainly have an even greater task. Though we have profound model individuals and policies that support workers' rights, the sides are even more extreme. Corporations are an entirely different beast from their forebears, the industrial business. Corporations can transcend boundaries and distance themselves from the locations of conflict, construct and reconstruct the means of production with the ebb and flow of social and economic tides, and have gained the support of pseudo-regulatory institutions like the WTO and IMF to back them up. National economic policies readily come to favor the goods of transboundary corporate imports because corporations so easily gain the ear--and the dollar--of nation-state and regional politicians.

I would like to hold that even if these odds had been so stacked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then the cosmopolitans of the urban slums, the national and ethnic hodgepodge of the factory floors, and the earnest determination of figures like Jane Addams would still have overcome the empowered industrial elites. All the same, I am greatly concerned that without a strengthened collective consciousness concerning the needs, labors, and conditions that industrialization has and continues to enforce on workers, then things won't change for the well-being of people. I cannot end on a sour note; rather, I end acknowledging the immensity of the task at hand. What is needed is the creation, nurturance, and excitement concerning that sort of cooperation and mindset. I wish for more of what was: determined individuals, cosmopolitan conversations, enlightened self-interest, community bonding, resource efficiency through sharing; I want to see guest rooms with strangers or acquaintances in need, extra seats at the table filled with those who cannot buy or grow all their food this week, the excitement of children growing food in community gardens, the ingenuity of people encouraged to be creative in their collectivity...

What I want to see is the breakdown of barriers in the construction of new identities, the identities involved in thinking, working, and living together. We easily identify the dissolution of groups, individuals, social structures, et cetera; but this affords the potential for new hybridities and reconstructions, the growth of what we never knew we could have beforehand. I look forward to our responses to the tribulations present and ahead, I am anxious for them all the more.

...

I finished White Noise by Don DeLillo. It was fantastic and I could not have expected much different of a conclusion. I worry somewhat about its validity, but its sense of humor gives me more hope all the same.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Disclosure Concerning the Charbonneau Woods

I have completed a story of which I am moderately proud. Though it may sound strange, it is fantastic horror in the style of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. His work takes place predominantly in New England whereas mine draws on some of the natural eeriness of Louisiana. If anyone is interested in reading it, let me know. It has undergone mild revision, but further work would benefit greatly from the input of others.

In a matter of hours my brother will be wed. I look forward to it and the many blessings they will receive. May each be fortified by the strength of the other.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Light Green Reading

This is lengthy but important. I have not yet finished reading it.

My mother and I arrived safely, if someone de-energized, in Lafayette for my brother's wedding(s). Tomorrow is the ceremony as performed by their friend the yoga instructor, the Catholic ceremony commences Saturday. Presently, I am writing a story inspired by the trees and heritage of Louisiana.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Researches

Tomorrow (or in a matter of hours) I will be leaving with my mother for Louisiana for my brother's wedding. I will be acting as best man and plan on bringing the best man mug I purchased in the fall. I look forward to family, reading, food, and a little bit of familial (or soon to be familial) mayhem. Reading will involve research, but I also plan on finishing White Noise, which I set down for a spell and haven't yet made the time to finish it. The time with my mother--following an absurd week of busy-ness on both of our parts--will be much treasured, particularly in retrospect if I land a baking position upon my return.

My researches will include or have already included:
Dorothy Day's Meditations,
A Centennial Reader: Jane Addams,
Socrates in Love by Christopher Phillips (who shares my initials and last name),
A collection of essays entitled Embodied Care,
as well as a collection of writings by Dorothy Day.

Phillips's work has led me into some more classical sources, which is very exciting because initial searching for material was not all that fruitful. Now, I feel like I am stepping out into my query: Can the notion of xenia be a useful baseline for transcultural ethical dialogue? This is intended not to be an ethics paper per se, but an argument for the validity and importance of cross-cultural ethical conversations.

And briefly, for the sake of a personal log, over Friday and Saturday I worked eighteen hours at Ivanna Cone and nearly wore myself to bits. It was pretty fantastic all the same, even getting pretty well drenched on Saturday night when the sky decided to open up on me. When I made a mental motion to be present, I could not help but laugh at the sensation of overeager joy the Midwest climate seemed to express. During my four hour reprieve on Saturday, I ran into Miss Ashley Wick and Mr Charlie Scherer (whose name I have likely mispelled) at Bread & Cup, which was wondrous. It is good to feel the tingling of old roots. Afterward, I ran into a Miss Adrienne, who came in with a friend to Ivanna Cone on Friday. Without much of any introduction or pause, we found ourselves in the midst of conversation; in which we bounced from idealism/realism in the humanities and social sciences, personal plans and service projects, traditional and personal recipes and foodways, politics and crticism thereof, and our experiences with religion. I could not have asked for a better interlocutor before returning to the final four hours of ice cream scooping, which was all the more enjoyable following the exercise and relaxation of these encounters, new and old.

So now I am off. I may update from afar, but if not, this is brief adieu until (possibly) next week.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

A Small Indulgence

I just got back from seeing Drag Me To Hell and it was fantastic. The occasionally over the top music was satisfying, the plot was straightforward horror, casting was pretty spot on (though acting was not always top notch, but with B style, it doesn't really matter), and the self-aware gross out/hilarious moments left my face skewed between disgust and giddy laughter. It even has a scene with an anvil. Who puts in a scene with an anvil? Sam Raimi does! And it is excellent. That guy loves the icky undead old women shtick.

In other news, David and Kate showed up on their cross-country move for the afternoon. As was to be expected, their company was splendid. Also, now I miss Brazil and everyone who experienced it with me.

Alas...

And finally, I have started researching my paper on xenia. It is absolutely happening and will involve some interesting further research. Hopefully I can dig into some more classical sources and may contact some professors back at Gustavus. I am excited.

More on scones

The scones turned out great. Kalisa added green onions, orange zest, and fresh basil. They were aggressively flavored, all of the ingredients competing for attention. I added a pinch of salt to the ingredients.

This morning I made berry scones for my mom (I made mixes in jars yesterday and today, so it is quite easy). The dough was chilly and easy to handle, but the water in the berries--they were frozen--flattened the scones and fouled up the texture a little. They also took longer to bake despite my mom's pretty excellent oven.

David, a co-traveler I know from my semester in Brazil, and his partner Kate are driving through the afternoon and I am overjoyed. Showing off the cool spots in Lincoln is satisfying, in part because I feel that it can so easily defy one's assumptions about the town and the people who live here. Upending assumptions may become a regular pastime.

I have much in the way of Jane Addams and Dorothy Day, as well as a little on classical material to read for my paper on hospitality and guest-host responsibilities. The project is tentatively based on the notion that we are perpetually guests in the worlds of others and if we recognize the ties that that creates, we have some basic ground on which to build ethical discourse. As a result, we would also be hosts to one another, which then supports some basic moral conclusions, but not necessarily prescriptively. I have a good deal of reading to do though.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Reflections of Reality, and Scones

Augmented reality is a term denoting the way technology can provide more or different data to your senses (dominated by sight, of course) than just walking around provides. In Fast Company, Kit Eaton writes about Layar, which uses smartphone gadgets to identify your location and give you more information. Depending on who licenses Layar in the country (it was developed in and the video shows Amsterdam), you can find various information such as housing prices, ATMs, bars and clubs, your way home, etc. All in all, this sounds pretty cool.

As information becomes increasingly available and immediate, some warning bells to start ringing. We like to think that more information leads to better decisions, better decisions are part of better (more informed, better skills, etc.) behavior; but it is not as simple as that, because if I can just follow a GoogleMap on my phone to get to my friends' homes or even to my home, will navigating city streets go the way of recalling telephone numbers?

In a video game, one often uses a "heads-up display" or HUD to figure out one's location or activate items in the game world. In many ways one must do this because, most of the time, video game environments are pretty homogeneous whereas our real life experience is extraordinarily heterogeneous. Downtown Lincoln or South Street or the academic ghetto outside of Wesleyan all look and feel different than my neighborhood of South Lincoln. If I woke up confused and disoriented in St. Peter, Minnesota, I would very quickly know where I was and that I was not in Lincoln or St. Paul; Belem, Brazil or Durham, North Carolina (Places I have lived and worked, by the way). The sights and smells and noises of each place provide a great deal of information by which I can orient myself and understand something about what is going on.

These cues would not provide the market value of a flat in London or the nearest ATM in downtown Minneapolis, but that is what locals, friends, and one's own memory are for. I do happily concede that looking for a place to stay for the night or live would be made easier if a star-rating, price, and perhaps directions were posted on the corner, and Layar does provide something like that. Most of the time, though, I get enough going on around me to capture my attention. We already walk around with headphones in a little too often for my taste, I would hate to see everyone wandering around looking "through" their little phone screens in order to "see" the world. As a culture (I am uncertain if I mean American or High Tech or industrialized here), we tend to take a good thing and overindulge, to make abundant the blessings best left discrete. The notion of more readily available information is exciting and has potential, but in a world of such experiential diversity, it feels--for the most part--unneeded.

...

Almost unrelatedly, check out Worio and its FAQ. It is a new search engine that could threaten Google's dominance by incorporating a memory factor. Worio effectively cross-references old searches with your present query in order to find things that might interest you. Google does many things well, but Worio may be doing something excitingly different.

...

Later today, I am making scones with my friend Kalisa. Here is a recipe:

Buttermilk Scones

1 3/4 c white flour
1/2 c oats, preferably thick
2 or 4 tablespoons of sugar, for savory or sweet varieties
4 teaspoons baking powder

Blend dry ingredients and any mix-ins. For sweet scones, I've used dried cranberries or frozen blueberries. I haven't yet made them with savory ingredients, so I may have an update later.

4 tablespoons (half a stick) of butter, salted

Cut in butter and mix with your fingers. You are supposed to get a little messy. Mix until the pieces of butter are smaller than peas.

1 cup buttermilk, less is better than too much in this case

Add and mix gradually. When the buttermilk is incorporated, dump out onto wax paper or aluminum foil in order to get all the dry ingredients mixed in. Do not overmix scones! Overmixing makes them too tough. Mix as little as necessary.

You can shape the dough into a circle and flip onto a greased cookie sheet or stone. Bake at 400 F for at least 10 minutes. This has been a wet recipe so in my sad little oven at school, it would take nearer to 20 minutes to bake through.

Scones are their very best the day of their making, so share and eat!

Monday, June 15, 2009

A Peculiar Love

Surprisingly for a Nebraska summer, it has been raining regularly, almost daily. As a result, mushrooms have popped up all over the place. I adore mushrooms, though I cannot exactly say why. The best I can do, is explain a little bit about mushrooms.

When you see mushrooms in the same region that are similar looking, these mushrooms are quite probably part of the same creature, not independent organisms like plants are. That is because fungi grow very differently from plants. When a spore lands in a viable substrate (soil, a dead log, or a foot saturated in a trench, depending on the fungus), the spore begins to grow and digest the nutrients in the substrate through the formation of microhyphae, or tiny root-like structures. These grow and grow, digesting what they can in order to grow further. Under certain conditions, like highly saturated soil, fruiting bodies sprout from the soil and burst into the air above.

Originally, fungi were classified by the four types of fruiting bodies (cap, club, cup, and puffball, I think), but this does not actually reflect the evolutionary relationships between specific species. All the same, it is important to note these morphological differences, which are the basic qualities used by mushroom hunters and other fungophiles. Each of these structures emerges--for most fungi species--under the aforementioned optimum conditions on one species' own, or when the hyphae of two different individual fungus species mix and sexually reproduce. Picking or kicking (which I don't suggest) a mushroom disperses these spores in search of further candidate substrates.

Now, a few characteristics of fungi. First of all, they consume nutrients from the soil like simple animals, not at all like plants. They are actually quite good at this, developing unique chemicals in order to break up lignin, for example, which is the stuff that makes wood so resilient. (Termites have a bacterium or suite of bacteria in their guts which helps them do the same.) Lignin is more or less a network of simple sugars, chaotically bound together and tough to break up. Fungi figured out how to take them apart and so have access to great reservoirs of nutrients in decomposing plant matter that would otherwise build up and be locked away from the biosphere for thousands or millions of years. (Prairie soils, I might add, are composed of a rich humus layer of undecayed or slowly decaying plant matter--in part because of climatological dryness--that takes hundreds of years to build up.) Another characteristic is that the are subtly immense. The largest organism in the world is likely a fungus in the American northwest, which consumes fallen trees in a national park. They can also by very small, lacing the leaves of tropical plants, for example. The great breadth is difficult to articulate factually because most of the fungi we study are problem species, which eat up crops or plant stores.

Finally, fungi are colorful in more ways than are at first obvious. The average button mushroom is pretty pale and unassuming, but do not be deceived. Many fruiting bodies are fantastically colorful, but nearly all fungi are chemically ingenious. As a result, you have the development of powerful neurotoxins which can result in hallucinations during a trip. Other possibilities can paralyze you, even kill a trekker with the possibility of later digestion. This sort of idea is emphasized in a rather crazy episode of The X-Files, which includes an orange ooze bleeding Skinner. Terence McKenna has gone to great lengths to explore this range of hue that are not at first obvious. He has theorized, at least at one time, that natural psychedelics are the result of co-evolutionary forces that ultimately assist humans in understanding the timelessness of the universe. McKenna is a good read, full of rich optimism about the potential boundlessness of perception despite our conditioned intellectual limitations.

When I see a mushroom or some cousin of it, I see one appendage of a great, secretive creature, which grows mindlessly but purposefully. The hyphae network are in search of food and biochemical romance, but only tiny soil organisms ever exactly witness. Afterward, though, we can see the result of such marriage--or perhaps a fantastic instance of masturbatory excess--and some folks even engage in further experience with its unique chemical alchemies. Fungi do things that other organisms can rarely do if they can be done at all. Such ingenuity has made them a spark for human intellectual exploration, political intrigue, and cultural creativity. All the while, they evade our everyday notions of animal, vegetable, or mineral. Not only do they mostly stay out of sight, revealing from time to time their traces like fairy circles, but they require a deeper intellectualization and familiarization that is alien to what we often find. They have spurred particular social customs like using net bags for morrel hunting or psychedelic tripping. Too easily, I would say, do we forget these rich, archaic, and creative critters.

Friday, June 12, 2009

A Brief Memorium

Today would have been Anne Frank's 80th birthday. Particularly with the violence that took place at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., I feel like this ought to be noted. For other reasons, such notation is important. In passing, I regard Anne Frank's diary and its functioning as a historical record flippantly; but whenever her writing is shared, such as when my class returning from India visited her family's home or the excerpts from the Reading Project broadcast over Democracy Now!, I am forced to stop and pay heed, to listen and to feel the weight of such wisdom and profundity borne by such a young woman.

I listened to Democracy Now! while rearranging and cleaning my room. I have been sleeping in, today until ten o'clock, which frustrates me. Part of the reason for sleeping in is that I do not usually see the sky when I wake in my bed at home. This, I have changed. Changing the delegation of space in a room is difficult, frustrating, and inconclusive. I do not know how I will feel tomorrow morning, after a night of work at Ivanna Cone and the (likely) bike ride home; nor do I know how I will stir on Sunday when my mother runs around preparing herself for Mass; nor any further day ahead and how it will change because of my number vantage. How will I dream differently? How will I sleep differently? How will I wake differently?

In a leisurely pause while reading White Noise, I picked up some Lovecraft and have been wandering through the Dreamworld in search of the alien city of Kadath with Randolph Carter. I bring this up because the style so well encapsulates the sojourn of an epic poem and the flow of a dream. We discover frightening things, wander in suspenseful landscapes, and converse with foreign peoples in our travels with Randolph Carter, but very little is given any formal difference in the writing. When I wake and recall my dreams, what stands out are neither particular instances of dialogue nor the most stupendous episodes, but the overall sensation of the dream; what follows is the recovery of the dream from the sensation like a shallow, archaeological dig.

In conversing at great length with Miss Kalisa Schweitzer yesterday, it became all the more apparent that stimulation, sensation, experience are very rarely all that illuminating on what lays underneath. What these actualities reflect on is the sort of dreamlike divinity that yields the sort of things we sense and recall. Anne Frank, likely without much insight into it, was able to articulate the personable reality underneath experiences so simply, so subtly, that I am frequently forced to stop and express silent gratitude at the clear seeing she details. Anne Frank articulates are shared, political, and spiritual cohabitation with brief phrases and enlightened loveliness. It reveals, I suppose, the necessary hybridity foisted on her by being a child and an adult, a victim and a survivor, a hopeful romantic humanist in the midst of desparation and suffering. She was neither innocent nor world-weary; rather, she was somewhere and someone that she both had to be and could not have become. For that, I am thankful in the face of the reasons for such personality and conditions.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Record and Recipe

On the menu for today is a simple oat wheat bread, the dough of which is rising on this beautiful early summer day.

Simple Oat Wheat (makes two medium or six small loaves)

2 c thick oats
2 c whole wheat flour
3 c white flour + 3/4 c for starter
1 tsp salt + a dash for starter
1/2 c brown sugar
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter
yeast (about 2 or 3 tsp)

I made the starter last night, mixing flour, salt and water until it is just past doughy, then added the yeast and mixed thoroughly. Sooner or later (probably next time I make potato bread or get rye flour) I am going to make a sourdough starter, but for now I have plenty of store yeast to use.

This morning, I blended the dry ingredients until evenly mixed, then softened (or melted) the butter and mixed in thoroughly with a spatula (though I prefer wooden spoons). After it was well-blended, I scraped out all of the starter and added enough warm water to make a wet but solid dough. (I tend to add water by eye and touch, but it was near 3 cups, which the oats and whole wheat flour will absorb during. Further, adding oats to anything seems to protect the bread from drying out.) With the dough incorporating all of the dry ingredients, I added a bit of extra water and covered before setting it outside.

After it has doubled in size, I will turn it out onto a floured counter and knead until smooth, then let rise again for about thirty minutes before shaping and baking on baking stones or cookie sheets. They ought to take about 20 to 30 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees, but I am getting used to an oven that actually maintains its temperature, unlike the one at school. I will likely slip in warm water and spray the boules (round, bowl shaped loaves) with water for a firmer crust.

...

Now, a bit for recording.

The last three weeks have been boggling. I have run loops and chutes and what feels like a marathon. Finishing up finals was the easy part, whereas finding the mental space and the actual time to host friends and family in the midst of adieux and cleaning and ceremony, as well as a little bit of pomp, drained me. We would never have been allowed the time to meaningfully depart everyone--faculty and student and staff alike--with the affection and respect we owe them and one another, but all the same, I worked hard to vanish. Perhaps it feels too readily like we are admitting amicable defeat; that our friendships and other bonds have found some sort of terminal punctuation. I cannot feel that way. That may mislead; rather, I refuse to acknowledge any real sort of terminacy in graduation and departure. What I have, or what I choose to perceive, is the necessity for reunion, for interconnectivity and that maddening gravitational pull we have on one another. What does it mean to hug professors and friends at a time of division? I feel it must mean some admission or affirmation that divisions are temporary, that it is in their nature to be bound between moments of unification.

So, we left. My mother, father, Lauren, and I journeyed south for the land of Lincoln, the Jeep overfilled with my belongings, leaving some with friends in the Cities for retrieval next month. If anything, that expedition feels closer than the time in between because of the time I have spent unpacking, sorting, repacking, arranging, and the like in the space that has again become my room. My mother later commented on the way Lauren and I chattered away about friends and episodes we had shared with them, the difficulties and madnesses we had experienced and surmounted, frequently loving them all the while; and then, after all our words were--for the moment, at least--spent, we settled in and found space to be silent, in unison, like saying the same word at once, only the word was our silence.

The days with Lauren were a blur of paperwork and phone calls, of trips for food and driving I was begrudged to since biking was not much of an option. It bled easily into our adventure to Ozark State Park via Kansas City, meeting up with our compatriots and soon to be camping buddies. We were all mad, all crazed with music and company and farewells that were too easily forgotten. The musical highlights came to include Langhorne Slim, The Black Crowes, STS9, G. Love and Special Sauce, Matisyahu, and someone less so, Shpongle, Moonalice, and Buckethead. What stands out most readily is our exploits in camp cooking, most obviously with our solar powered couscous with tomato and onion dinner on Friday. I frequently felt dislocated, out of my element, and inappropriately attuned; but dinner and some distance from the speakers made it all gel a little more serenely. Musically, it is hard to top the boundless energy and fluidity discovered in the performance of the Black Crowes, followed by the second performance of STS9 at which thousands of people leapt and shouted and grooved. Though we parted once from the land refered to as Mulberry Mountain, we parted from one another at the Greenhouse Grille in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Meals provide their own substance to times together, lending all the more to understanding our times of parting. I can say little more that would be sincere other than it would have been nigh impossible to one up our lunch, both food and company, there.

Lauren and I made our way to Kansas City, wandering around the outer rings looking for cheap motels, finding most notably the terrifying 4 Acre Motel, which requires its own space for explanation. We made our way to the bus stop, and with the help of her mother (and the attempts of the diner employees near the stop) we stayed at a nearby hotel. Hot, luxurious showers later, we found our way to Grinder's for ridiculously hot food, before nestling in at ten, watching a little TrueBlood before falling asleep. With the morning, I was finally beginning to feel the release of tensions and concerns that had not precipitated away with all of the hullabaloo of the past days and weeks. We drank tea and coffee, before I traversed the highways out of Kansas City and back toward home, singing ever-so loudly most of the way.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

A Different Sort of Commencement

I begin with lyrics from Van Morrison, quoting the song "The Beauty of the Days Gone By:"

It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
The beauty of the days gone by

The music that we used to play
So lift your glass and raise it high
To the beauty of the days gone by
I'll sing it from the mountain top
Down to the valley down below
Because my cup doth overflow
With the beauty of the days gone by
...
Oh my memory it does not lie
Of the beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old

So much has occurred over the last days, weeks, months, years, that I am left flummoxed with how to respond. Many friends of mine are concerned about my absence, as I am for theirs, and so have settled, albeit somewhat dissatisfied, on creating a blog to share my baking, my thinking, my writing, and my passions.

I refer to Van Morrison's words because on my departure from Kansas City, depositing Miss Lauren Fulner at a diner across from her bus stop, Down the Road was the first album I chose and these words in particular seemed to capture my excitement and joy for what has come to pass. Can one be excited for the past? I do not rightly know. What I can say is that I am passionate to undertake what is to come with the bonds and insights that have led me here.

Shortly, I will describe some of my recent adventures at the Wakarusa music festival in Arkansas at Mulberry Mountain, but I wish to say something more reflective. I titled this journal "Philosophy that Bakes Bread," which comes from the phrase, "Philosophy bakes no bread." This statement has received a good deal of criticism and reflection, but I find it blatantly wrong; it is so profoundly wrong that I contradict it. I say this because my experience is such that philosophy bakes bread, and in fact baking bread philosophizes. Perhaps the last four years have been so saturated by philosphers of food (notably Drs Lisa Heldke and Deane Curtin) that I have joined--or presently attempt to join--their ranks, or it could be that my baking and my philosophizing cohere to the point of hybridity, of intersubjectivity. As my friends know and will remark on increasingly here, baking bread is a passionate, rooting, methodical, creative, historical, and meditative experience for me. Without baking, I lose ground and focus, frequently becoming despondent or distant or melancholy. With it, I am enthused with passion and insight, on ideas about virtue and Nature or the social psychology of my friends and family, or an abundance of worthy waypoints for contemplation. (Note: I use Nature capitalized to incorporate its wider and historical use in the works of many writers, such as Spinoza and also, perhaps oddly, Lovecraft.) I preface this journal with these statements as an explanation and an introduction, hoping that readers, commentators, and interlocutors may take note of strange articulations in this personal, lived reality for the power of such actions in my theorizing and action.

And for now, thank you for taking the time to read my words and encourage your comments. I have innumerable people with whom I wish to communicate regularly who are more distant than ever. I hope to post intending discussion rather than sermonization. So, if Mr Van Morrison provides some celebration of the past, I now call attention to the future, proposing a toast, taken from Mr Don DeLillo's novel, White Noise, "May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance action according to a plan."