Hello, world! Have you ever wondered how your corner of the world is impacted by your voice, your unique contribution, and your way with words? This is my corner of the world, as nerdy or dorky as that might sound. But this is my voice, my newspaper page, and my current events to record what is going on in society and our culture. It’s important to keep a snapshot or a portrait of the current times. So here we go! Welcome, take a seat, and get cozy. But not too comfortable, as we’ll be talking about lots of different ideas. That might take you out of your so called comfort zone.

Pourquoi ce texte existe : Son nom circule encore dans les ateliers, dans les conversations des sculpteurs anciens et dans les anecdotes des familles du village. On connaît ses silhouettes sculptées, vendues pendant des décennies, mais on connaît très peu l’homme lui-même. Ce texte vise à rassembler ce que la mémoire locale a conservé de Servul Dumas, à éclairer la figure réelle qui se cache derrière un symbole de la sculpture québécoise, et à donner un visage humain à celui qui est devenu une icône populaire.

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Un homme réel, au début du XXᵉ siècle

Dans les premières décennies du XXᵉ siècle, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli n’était qu’un petit village côtier, rythmé par le travail du bois, la charpenterie, la mer et les saisons. C’est là que vivait un homme nommé Servul Dumas — parfois appelé Servule selon les anciens — dont la présence discrète a marqué durablement la mémoire du village.

Ancien charpentier, il possédait les mains et l’endurance de ceux qui travaillent le bois. Mais sa vie prit un tournant difficile : solitude, pauvreté, déclin silencieux. Les raisons se sont perdues. Il ne reste que l’image d’un homme qui, après avoir eu sa place dans le village, s’en est progressivement éloigné.

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La vie en marge

On disait qu’il habitait une petite cabane, bâtie sans prétention, un abri plus qu’une maison. Sa barbe longue, son manteau usé et sa démarche lente le rendaient immédiatement reconnaissable.

Les enfants du village le regardaient avec un mélange de crainte, de compassion et de fascination : il ne demandait rien, parlait peu, marchait doucement, les mains dans les poches comme pour se protéger du froid et du monde. On ne savait pas s’il cherchait l’aumône ou simplement une forme de présence parmi les autres.

Ce n’était pas un personnage inventé : c’était un homme, avec son histoire difficile, visible par tous.

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De l’homme à la sculpture : la naissance d’un symbole

C’est dans ce contexte que les sculpteurs du village — dont plusieurs membres de la famille Bourgault — commencèrent à le représenter. Dans un milieu où l’on sculptait les figures marquantes du quotidien (marins, travailleurs, paysans, vieillards), le Servule devint un sujet naturel.

Sa silhouette se prêtait à la sculpture :

• tête légèrement basse
• épaules affaissées
• manteau trop grand
• barbe longue
• mains dans les poches
• démarche lente
• expression perdue quelque part entre fatigue et résignation

Les premiers Servules sculptés étaient proche du réel. Puis, avec les années, la figure se stylisa : plus voûtée, plus simple, plus symbolique.

Cette transformation n’était pas un manque de respect. C’était une manière de donner forme à une réalité humaine que les artisans connaissaient intimement : la pauvreté silencieuse, l’humilité, l’effacement.

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Un personnage surreprésenté : entre tradition et lassitude

Au fil du temps, le Servule devint l’un des sujets les plus reproduits du village. On le sculptait parce que :

• les touristes le reconnaissaient,
• les marchands le demandaient,
• le modèle était simple et vendable,
• la figure avait quelque chose d’universel.

Cette abondance eut un effet paradoxal : elle finit par banaliser un sujet qui, à l’origine, portait une charge humaine et sociale forte.

Certains sculpteurs dirent même que “le Servule a tué la sculpture”, non pas en lui-même, mais par l’excès de répétition, par la perte progressive de sens.

Ce n’était pas la faute de l’homme réel. C’était la conséquence d’un motif devenu trop facile.

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Aujourd’hui, presque personne ne peut décrire Servul Dumas autrement que par les sculptures qu’il a inspirées. Son image de bois a survécu, mais son existence réelle, elle, a glissé vers l’ombre.

C’est précisément pour cela que ce texte existe : pour rappeler qu’avant d’être un modèle folklorique, Servul Dumas était un être humain, un homme du village, dont la vie modeste a laissé une empreinte inattendue sur la sculpture québécoise.

Dans un monde où l’on se souvient surtout des héros, des artisans ou des figures religieuses, il est important de reconnaître la dignité silencieuse de ceux qui ont marqué l’histoire sans jamais l’écrire eux-mêmes.

Servul Dumas n’a pas sculpté de chefs-d’œuvre. Il n’a pas fondé d’école. Il n’a pas laissé de discours.

Mais son passage dans le village a touché les sculpteurs, au point que son visage et sa posture existent encore aujourd’hui, dans les ateliers, les vitrines, les souvenirs et les mains des artisans.

C’est peut-être là, finalement, la trace la plus humaine qu’un homme puisse laisser.

Sir Jack Raphael

She awakes to a new reality

#nsfw #glass

Reluctantly, Meredith gets up from her chair. Her eyes are still glued to the screen, but she has just enough willpower to move away. She is filthy. The room is a mess; there are stains on the floor from her juices. She’s dehydrated. Her hair is a mess. She’s not okay.

She decides to take a shower. She’s too hungry and ravaged to take a bath, but the thought of staying in her own bodily filth any longer is a non-starter. Her pussy is throbbing. She’s still leaking arousal down her legs. She tells herself she’ll just have to get used to it. She asked for this, after all. Meredith is struggling to normalize her new reality.

As she showers, the realization hits her that what she did was real. It’s permanent. It’s everything she wanted. But now, with some sliver of clarity returning, she questions why her sexual impulses overrode common sense. She doesn’t know what she made a pact with. Yet now she has an uncontrollable urge to masturbate that feels more primal than any other need. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Black goddesses commanding her to give in to pleasure. The intrusive thoughts are a permanent drone in her mind.

Masturbate. Feed the addiction. You need to watch more porn.

Those thoughts feel like hers and like they’re coming from somewhere else at the same time. Her soul drank from their world. They heard her. Ancient spirits older than time granted her deepest desires. And now she has willingly given everything to remain in a constant state of arousal for Black women. That blinding, sudden orgasm was the sign that this was more than permanent. This was something deeper.

Meredith, now clean but still exhausted and ravaged, makes her way downstairs to the kitchen. She doesn’t even bother with clothes. She just needs to exist for porn. She needs to exist for the Black goddesses on her screen. She needs to keep her vessel healthy for worship. None of that requires clothing.

Meredith stumbles down the stairs and into the kitchen for a small meal and a large glass of water. A whisper in her mind says, “Go out and see your goddesses.”

That thought is not her own. It came from somewhere else, and it is a command. She instinctively knows there will be consequences if she doesn’t obey. She decides to drive to the Black side of town to observe her goddesses in their natural habitat.

Meredith reluctantly dresses in her full Karen costume: crisp white blouse, neutral pencil skirt, pearls, soft pink lipstick, low nude heels that click like a metronome counting down to her ruin. She would rather be nude in their presence—kneeling, mouth open and useless. But some last shard of social programming keeps the fabric in place. Her hands shake so badly the pearl buttons feel like pebbles. The fire between her legs is no longer a want; it’s a brand—searing, constant, wet. She knows her panties are soaked. There isn’t much she can do about it. Her legs shake as another hands-free orgasm quivers through her groin and up her spine.

She reminds herself she asked for this. They granted her wish. “This is normal,” she lies. “I’m normal.” She wills herself to make it true. She says it again, with conviction.

Because it is normal. This is what she wanted. This is her dream come true. It’s safe. It’s healthy. Being so horny she can’t think straight is normal. Hands-free orgasms from just thinking about Black women are normal.

She tucks her porn tablet into her tote. It’s her mobile shrine. Insurance. Salvation. A portable altar.

Her legs tremble and her pussy throbs with each step. With measured practice and control, she makes it to her SUV in a haze of extreme arousal. The tablet auto-connects. Thick ebony moans flood the cabin before the garage door even finishes rising—wet slaps, low feminine laughter, a man growling “take that shit” in a voice that makes Meredith’s clit jerk like it’s on a leash. She leaves it playing. This is normal. This is just background noise, like birdsong. Porn is normal music.

She drives to the park on the edge of the Black side of town—still manicured enough for her gleaming white SUV to blend, diverse enough that the air itself feels darker, warmer, alive with them. The arousal curse hums under her skin like a second heartbeat.

She hears another command: “Find them. See them. WORSHIP.”

That is no longer a whisper. That is the Goddess commanding her. She is no longer in control of her fate. She must obey.

She parks and takes a deep breath. Her throbbing arousal climbs to new heights in anticipation. With trembling hands, she puts in her premium earbuds. She’s never been on this side of town before. She never had a good reason—until now.

Most people probably think she’s just getting fresh air. In reality she’s here to feast on the sight and secretly worship Black women as she discovers them.

It feels wrong, but her pussy and the echoes of the Goddess tell her this is right. What they tell her is truth and gospel now.

Meredith sets her phone to a private porn loop: softcore sliding into hardcore, a thick sister riding reverse cowgirl, sweat rolling down the valley of her wide back, ass rippling with every bounce. The audio drips straight into Meredith’s skull. She steps onto the path and the world tilts.

It doesn’t take long before she sees her first Black goddess. A beautiful, fit woman in her early thirties is stretching by a cedar bench—cocoa skin gleaming, coral sports bra and black leggings vacuum-sealed to her body. One leg propped high, she bends forward; the fabric stretches translucent across the fat lips of her pussy, cameltoe deep and shameless. Meredith tries her best not to stare blatantly. She’s grateful she wore shades.

As she keeps walking, thighs already trembling, she spots another goddess in the distance. The waistband of her jeans rides low enough to reveal the soft roll of her belly and the dimpled top of her ass, faint stretch marks catching the sun like silver lightning. Meredith’s mouth floods with saliva. Her own cunt answers with a hard pulse—hot slick blooming against the gusset of her control-top hose. Her panties are instantly soaked, nothing more than a wet, intrusive clump of fabric now.

Ten yards ahead: two more goddesses on the grass doing yoga. It feels orchestrated. One is upside-down in downward dog—caramel skin, purple mat, gray shorts riding so high the bottom half of her ass is out, heavy cheeks parted just enough to show the shadowed crease between. The other kneels beside her, adjusting her hips with easy ownership, long box braids swinging, gold beads flashing. Their low, private laughter punches Meredith right in the clit.

“Obey us and you will get your reward,” the voices promise. She moans under her breath, knowing this level of arousal is becoming all-consuming.

She can smell their woman-scent on the breeze as she passes—floral undertones, perfume, something unique and intoxicating, nothing like Meredith’s bland designer notes she’s used to. The scent crawls up her nose and pools low in her belly like molten sugar. She feels her wetness starting to leak down her legs.

She tries to breathe. She can’t.

Then the final, most perfect goddess sends her over the edge.

Late twenties, leaning back against a weathered picnic table, one foot propped on the bench, phone glowing. She’s poured into a deep golden short-sleeve wide-leg jumpsuit—thin jersey fabric painted on. It clings to every roll and curve: heavy breasts straining the V-neck, dark areolas ghosting through when she breathes, thick nipples printing proud. The torso snaps tight around her soft belly before flaring into flowing legs that still outline the thunder of her thighs and the impossible shelf of her ass. One sleeve has slipped off her brown-sugar shoulder, baring the top swell of her breast; a black lace bra strap barely holding everything together. The crotch rides high and merciless, plush pussy lips pillowing out on either side.

The Golden Goddess throws her head back and laughs—rich, throat exposed, gold bamboo earrings swinging, box braids with blond tips spilling like night and honey. She is Joy, upgraded. Meredith’s clit takes violent notice.

Uncontrolled arousal starts spawning hallucinations and phantom sensations. She tastes copper. Vision tunnels to that laughing throat, that spilled breast, that obscene golden wedge she wants to drown in.

Her knees buckle. A helpless whimper escapes—too loud. The Golden Goddess glances over, then returns to her phone, unbothered.

The curse roars: WORSHIP. NOW.

Juices slide hot down the inside of her thigh, trapped by the hose, soaking the skirt lining. Her clit is so swollen it aches against the seam of her panties; every heartbeat is agony and need. The earbuds slip; wet porn moans spill into open air for half a second before she claws them back in.

She staggers off the path, heels skidding on gravel, one hand clamped between her legs in public, pressing hard against her screaming cunt because if she doesn’t she’ll collapse. Vision swimming, tears of pure overwhelmed lust, she aims for the little concrete restroom at the edge of the trees—filthy, half-broken, door hanging crooked.

She has to get inside. She has lost complete control of her body and her arousal. This is the only place she can hide. She knows what she has to do. The Black Goddess from the other world commands sacrifice through masturbation.

A warning: This article discusses serious mental and behavioral health issues in blunt terms.

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This year, around mid-September, my mental health sharply declined. Since mid-November, I’ve returned close to my usual baseline. This has given me some time to reflect on what happened and lessons learned.

During therapy, I realized that my eating disorder issues were fueled by a personality trait I used to get myself through really hard moments: extreme perseverance. I can do anything I want to do. Sometimes, this is good. More often than I realized, this is bad. Like when I starve myself for months on end. This realization dealt a huge blow to my confidence, because most my hope for improving my life came from knowing that I have a will of iron.

My internal dialogue got dark, fast. I spent hours every day thinking about hurting myself. The worst days had me spending upwards of 6 hours straight ruminating about suicide and self-harm. I’ve had depression for a long time, but never like that.

In retrospect, the interesting part is that I didn’t recognize how serious it was. I knew it wasn’t normal, and that I needed help. But I can see now what I couldn’t then: It was a volatile situation. My therapist and psych were justified in how alarmed they are, and while I was getting quite sick of people saying they’re worried about me, I now think I was toeing involuntary hospitalization levels of crisis.

So lesson one is that I need to rely on others more. Both so that my own will doesn’t drag me into the mud, but also because I can enter mental states that distort my judgement of reality. For my own safety and flourishing, I need a village.

There were two things that helped. The first is that I got a new prescription regimen that made a lot more sense. Less medications overall, and medications more tailored to my present problems. That seemed to make a big difference.

The second thing that helped was existentialist philosophy and learning the concepts of existential therapy. It gave me the conceptual framework and language to work with my experiences and emotions in an empowering way. And what I needed was empowerment, because I felt like I was left without any ability to make my life better in a reliable way. What existentialism gave me, in a nutshell, was affirmation that improving your life is damn hard and that, at the end of the day, you always have a choice you can make.

Lesson two: I sometimes need to stop pressing forward and branch out to find something that’ll work. This was a new kind of mental health crisis for me which needed a new means of dealing with it. My usual supports collapsed until I introduced new ones (conceptually, as well as materially: I entered an intensive outpatient program for depression that I’ll be wrapping up soon). I wanted to believe that I had everything figured out, and that produced hopelessness. So no more of that nonsense.

The third and final lesson I’ve drawn from this: I need to be ready for next time. Because there will be a next time. The question for me is if I’m going to be able to bounce back quickly, or if it’s going to be a nearly five-figure detour into debt like this one was. (Or both. Both is possible.) Being ready means having supports already in place and a habit of openness about my mental health with others, so that they can flag for me when I’m going to a bad place.

So that’s my project in the meantime. That, and paying off the debt. It’ll be a good reminder of what I need to work towards.

Balance and Bravery: The Mixed Constitution as a School for Civic Courage

By L. Moraitis

Political courage does not emerge spontaneously. It must be cultivated, demanded, and rewarded. The mixed constitution is not primarily a compromise between classes or interests; it is a school for civic bravery, designed to mold citizens capable of governing themselves. In an age where fear—fear of social reprisal, fear of political isolation, fear of institutional retaliation—shapes public discourse, recovering the link between constitutional balance and fearless deliberation is essential.

Classical theorists understood that tyranny begins not with the tyrant, but with the citizen who has learned to hold his tongue. A population that internalizes fear, that shies away from honest disagreement, becomes governable not through law but through silence. Aristotle observed that political courage is the foundation of every other virtue in a free society. Polybius admired Rome not only because its constitution balanced the powers of consul, senate, and people, but because this balance forced Romans to become outspoken and resistant to domination. Public life demanded the constant exercise of spirited speech.

Public, fearless deliberation is the virtue that gives voice to the mixed constitution’s structure. Without it, bicameralism becomes procedural theatre, checks and balances become paperwork, and public assemblies become performative rituals. Power concentrates in the hands of those willing to use fear as a tool, and the constitutional order hollows into façade.

To prevent this decay, the mixed constitution trains citizens in three forms of bravery:

Bravery of Accountability — the willingness to challenge elites and demand justification.

Bravery of Self-Restraint — the courage to accept limits on one’s own factional ambitions.

Bravery of Exposure — the willingness to speak in public, risking criticism, ridicule, and correction.

These forms of bravery transform deliberation from mere talk into civic service. They allow public argument to serve as a nonviolent arena of contest, replacing force with reason, violence with speech, domination with persuasion. The mixed constitution’s genius lies in converting conflict from a threat into a resource.

In this light, the modern retreat from public discourse—toward anonymity, secrecy, or self-censorship—is not a cultural preference but a constitutional crisis. A republic that cannot deliberate cannot balance power; a republic that cannot balance power cannot remain free. Only by reviving a culture of fearless public argument can the mixed constitution reclaim its purpose: to preserve liberty by cultivating citizens who are strong enough to practice it.

Some spaces can never be filled, only felt.

We will stand on the beach, at the crest of a dune at sunset, your hair whipping in the wind, brushing my cheek the way it did when you leaned close to speak.

I'll recall how it used to tickle me, but in time I came to love it's gentle caress. Its softness.

Gulls will cry somewhere far off, reedy grass will bend and sway, but all I will feel is your hand slipping into mine— that familiar fit, warm and certain.

My voice, weak with long years will whisper out: “It has been my great honor to love you. To keep you safe. You taught me how devotion feels when it settles into the body— how loyalty can draw up courage.”

And you will laugh, shoulder nudging mine, eyes bright with that mischief I never learned to resist. “What? I can’t hear you over the wind and the gulls.” You'll say it with that eager lilt I loved so much. It will make me smile and gather you against my chest, your temple resting in the hollow beneath my collarbone, your breath warming my skin.

The sand will lift and sting, tiny grains kissing my ankles, and with that touch— that small reminder of the world still moving without you— I will finally understand you have been gone for some time.

But even as sadness rises like the tide around my feet, the memory of your weight against my ribs, your fingers laced with mine, your laughter caught in my throat— all of it will remain.

And the honor of loving you will feel as intimate, as astonishing, as real as it does today.

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Manteca, California. A chance to try what I was filing in my head under real Americana. Marching bands, fields of 12-foot corn, homemade sloppy joe. That week, people cared I was English.

Braving the optional lane system of the regional highways, we took a trip to San José’s Winchester Mystery House™. Expectations were low. Sounded a bit Scooby Doo.

The house — a mansion, really — was built by Sarah Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester, treasurer of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company who died of TB aged 43. (Him, not the TB). Sarah built the mansion with her inheritance.

As buildings go, it’s fucking weird. It’s ugly, for starters, to European eyes. America and Britain are two nations divided by Queen Anne architecture. Exhibit A: Winslow Hall (Buckinghamshire, England, lovely). Exhibit B: Carson Mansion (Old Town Eureka, USA, hideous). Clearly we’ve stumbled into a major Transatlantic taxonomical anomaly.

More significantly, it makes no sense. None. Winding stairways meet ceiling. Huge cupboard doors open up to walls. Upstairs doors lead to sheer drops. There are internal windows, nonsense circuitous layouts, and my favourite: a north-facing stained glass window.

The explanation peddled through the tour headsets was that Sarah Winchester designed the house to the exacting specification of her dead husband, as relayed by her spirit medium.

Winchester Mystery House’s oddities were designed to confuse the vengeful spirits that met their demise at the noisy end of a Winchester rifle.

Sarah’s private rooms — the only nice bit of the house — are surrounded by a labyrinthine buffer so the ghosts couldn’t find her.

Judging by the guestbook, visitors hoover up the stuff. And fair enough.

Expect jump scares. Peer into a nook and it’s very possible you’ll come face to face with someone peering into it from the other side of a wall.

Wandering around an old house which is a physical embodiment of fear is creepy.

Still, I wonder if she really believed those things. For all its oddness, there is some novel design going on. There are shallow stair cases that fill whole rooms, doubling and tripling back on themselves, built for the ailing Winchester.

There are conservatories with grilled floor tiles, with drainage underneath. Watering the plants? Go nuts.

There was a lively mind somewhere in the equation — living or dead. Pick whichever amuses you most.

#notes #july2014

In most cases, when people say a novel is good or bad, they’re wrong. Because novels can offer a variety of pleasures: an involving plot, interesting characters, beautiful prose, keen observations, titanic imagination, dialogue that is better than real life speech but not so much better that it sounds fake, an atmosphere that you enjoy getting lost in, or just a vibe that hits you in the right place at the right time.

We all value certain of these pleasures more than others, and no novel offers all of them. And our preferences for things done well and tolerance for things done badly can change from book to book.

All of which is to say I am against snobbery and don’t think, for example, having beautiful prose automatically makes your novel better than a novel with an engaging plot.

But, for God’s sake, your book has to offer something. I just read a book that fell drastically short on almost every front, and I’m intentionally not naming it because the fact that it’s an extremely shitty book is not the author’s fault.

It’s a mystery/thriller with a really good setup. Two of the main characters are interesting and feel like real people. Those are the good things I can say about it. Unfortunately two of the characters are cardboard cutouts, the prose is jaw-droppingly bad in sections, the author has a tendency to make a point and then beat you over the head with it instead of trusting you to draw an obvious conclusion, and the big “twist” I saw coming at least a hundred pages away.

But literally all of these problems could have been fixed in the editing stage. “Hey, it’s pretty obvious who the killer is because you haven’t included any credible red herrings.” “Hey, you had a character say, “now I know that love truly does conquer all,” and I threw up in my mouth. Maybe write something that sounds like a person outside a Hallmark movie might say?” “Hey, you can trust your readers to get the very obvious point you just made.” “Hey, your villain is boring and flat which makes your big reveal fall flat too.”

Again, literally all of these things are fixable. And I don’t blame the author for not fixing them. I blame the editor for not doing their job. This author is a brand name, and so the editor clearly knows that just putting that name on the cover is going to move copies, so they just didn’t bother to make the author fix the kind of early draft mistakes that many authors make.

I don’t exempt myself here! I have a tendency to apply my points with a sledgehammer in an early draft. When I’m writing to get the story down, I tend to give characterization short shrift. I could go on. But I’ve been lucky enough to work with fellow writers and with editors who have called me on my bullshit and pushed me to make my writing better.

This is literally supposed to be what editors do. But the editor in this case committed professional malpractice and left their author looking stupid because they put an underbaked draft out into the world.

Perhaps this isn’t totally the editor’s fault. Someone in publishing said to me ten years ago, “All editors do now is go to meetings and try not to get fired.” I can’t imagine this has gotten any better. But if you’re going to charge full price for a book and have it appear to be a professional product, you owe it to your readers to give them a book that’s been edited profesionally.

I was of course annoyed that I spent my time reading a novel that could have been good but wasn’t, but then I was thinking this—somewhere an author probably just had their novel submitted to this editor, who passed for whatever reason, and that author is probably sitting by their computer thinking their novel isn’t any good because a “real” editor passed on it, not knowing what a half-assed job this editor does.

Sigh. I guess I would say this—the next time you read a bad book, maybe cut the author some slack and ask why the editor was asleep at the wheel. And if you read a good book, be aware that it’s probably good because an editor pushed theauthor to make it good.

Some Sundays ago, we passed a three-hour train armed only with Top Trumps and chocolate raisins.

Ours was The Lord of the Rings. Each card includes figures for height, strength, bravery, magic and fear factor.

Straight Top Trumps gets dull quickly with only one deck. So we took liberties.

Variations

Bottom Trumps

Lowest stats win. Good cards become bad, bad good. Denethor, Gríma Wormtongue and Gollum are best. Novelty value: high. Shelf life: limited.

Mediocre Trumps

We roped in another passenger for this. Middle stat wins. Strategies will vary depending on the quirks of the set. When one player is eliminated, pivot the rules.

Mental Trumps

Starting player calls the category. Before looking, the opponent calls high or low wins. Memorising card sequences confers a theoretical advantage. In practice: random, and drags on. Interesting for a while.

Other adaptations

Ordinary card games can be adapted to Top Trumps decks. Our take on rummy was challenging: too many LOTR characters are 7 foot.

Our most successful adaptation was Trumps. Categories = suits (why not have more than 4?). A card’s suit is its best stat, and is often up for debate. Is Sauron’s suit magic or fear factor, for example?

Entertaining played in good faith.

The chocolate raisins?

Eaten.

#notes #december2013

On first hearing Black Country, New Road: I didn't like them at all. Their early material grated on my ears, and I never even gave their much-praised second album a listen. Despite myself, I caught a track or two off Live From Bush Hall that YouTube served up to me some time after its release, and I was obliged to concede I liked what I heard. Evidently a re-evaluation was in order. By the time Forever Howlong came out earlier this year I was all aboard, and bought a CD copy. Annoyingly, Live From Bush Hall isn't readily available as a silver disc (unless one gets the costly Japanese release) so I resorted to obtaining it on vinyl a few weeks ago, since which time it has returned to the turntable multiple times.

With a handful of exceptions, I never much cared for original ‘70s prog-rock, so don’t know why it should be that I greatly enjoy some 21st-Century music — such as Black Country, New Road — that is indisputably proggy.

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I've been shaving with straight razors for nearly five years now, but have yet to attempt any razor honing. Some of the razors I bought came shave-ready; the others I sent off to be honed. Since then I've been maintaining their edges with periodic recourse to abrasive 'strop pastes'. The time has come now, I feel, to at least try honing on a whetstone, and, to that end, I'm hoping to get a Shapton Ceramic #12000 stone. I'm by no stretch of the imagination a handy person, so there's no guarantee it'll go well.

In the meantime, as of Saturday, I've come into possession of a honing stone that used to belong to my maternal grandfather. It's a drab green-grey slab embedded in a hefty block of dark wood (Fig. 6), that smells very much like it has spent the last half a century in a garage. I'll try my luck with the Shapton first before putting a sharp edge anywhere near this thing, but I should like to put it to use eventually.

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The cheese of the week has been Perl Lâs, which I suspect must be the best-known blue cheese made in Wales: a renown, I would say, that is well-merited. Other mild blues I've taken a shine to lately have been Cashel Blue from Ireland and, from France, Bleu d'Affinois.

Day 2 of #AdventOfProgress has translations as the main topic. I want the app to support at least German and English.

Because I'm already quite familiar with next-intl, I've chosen react-i18next as the internationalization tool for this app. Which worked quite nicely. And the API looks quite similar to next-intl.

Not much to say here. I've spent around 1 hr implementing this. A big chunk of the time was wasted on a dynamic import, where I tried, out of muscle memory, to dynamically load the JSON files with the translations. Implementing dynamic loading of languages has, at this state of the app, no real impact. So I ditched dynamic loading in favor of statically loading the 2 languages.

That's it for today.

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60 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #AdventOfProgress
Thoughts?

Morning blaze: Silhouetted branches against a fiery sunrise sky, painting a dramatic beginning to the day.

#photography #photos #landscape

This morning I proactively made breakfast for my son: pancakes with butter and a little sprinkling of sugar. As soon as he got into the kitchen and saw it, he complained and said he wanted “mini pizza” instead. Of course. Of course, this happens the day that I proactively try to make breakfast for him. Tomorrow I'll ask him when he wakes up before making anything.

A consequence of this event is that, I now have to eat the pancakes for breakfast. I wasn't just gonna throw it away. So I ate it. It did taste good though.

The difference between eating pancakes versus eggs for breakfast, is that I'm hungry 2 hours earlier. I'm having to snack already before my morning meetings. I usually can last close to lunch time without snacking. But not today. It's because the pancakes just don't have enough protein and fat to keep me full for a longer period of time.

#Journal

Silence stops being scary when you realize it’s not emptiness — it’s space you finally own.

The Christian liturgical season of Advent might be my favorite period of practice in the year. Anticipatory awe side-by-side with anticipatory joy, all bundled in the profound awareness of how much of the world is desperately awaiting relief of one sort or another. The need for food, shelter, companionship, and all kinds of safety are highlighted by the conspicuous consumption, overindulgence, illusions of peace, and chasing of happiness that seem to mark the end of the year in our broader culture. So many people are waiting on a hope that often feels like it may never come.

Adopting a posture of humility, patience, and wonder in response to the deeply worn ruts of our conditioned thinking and old habits, is a radical departure from the going along to get along that seems to be the prescription for these weeks. Waiting in hope might be the very medicine that striving in anxiety calls for.

There are plenty of reasons why anxiety can spike this time of the year. From the pressure to avoid conflict as family and friends engage in rhythms of gathering and celebrating, to the retailers praying to end the year in positive financial territory, to fundraisers hoping to remind all of us that giving generously will lift our spirits and provide a huge portion of their operating expenses in the year ahead. Whether December 31st marks the end, the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, so many of us are tracking goals and objectives.

Even neighbors in deep need are paying close attention to how much medical spending they can do with their remaining benefits (perhaps as an uninsured year ahead looms large), and households who rely on cold weather rules are hoping for a chance at survival by securing one of the limited number of emergency rooms for the winter. If anything, it seems like hesitating could cost some of us everything.

Contemplation that loses the capacity to be moved into loving action, especially life saving loving action, ceases to be of much value. It follows that the essential things ought to be done, even when the invitation to a posture of waiting is so strong. Discernment between what is necessary and sufficient, and what is wanted and superfluous will be of great significance here.

With that said, I invite you into the season of waiting, and the opportunity to set things down in order that you might experience the fruits of this practice more fully.

Practices:

• An Advent Wreath- putting up a wreath with four candles creates an opportunity to count down slowly, especially if you linger on each candle for every day of that week, rather than just making note of the passing time on Sundays. The nightly lighting can make room for a period of prayer and reflection, and is a perfect time to examine our consciousness for the ways we engaged the season that day.
• Centering Prayer- abiding with God in the silence is always a beautiful idea, and in this time of waiting we can experience the tender pull between the Holy One who is already deeply present, and the further expression of that presence that we long for.
• Devotions- the daily office is full of seasonal content that will enrich this time, but if that’s not one of your practices, these four weeks can be a time to engage in reading brief devotions. See an example here.
• Embrace the Earth- is the Summer Solstice drawing near as spring lengthens into the heart of growing season? Perhaps you’re contending with snow, ice, and long hours of darkness. Whatever is happening, take time to simply observe, and be present to those changes. Let your heart take inspiration from the simultaneous holiness of darkness and light, warmth and cold, rest and revival.
• A Nativity Set- this tangible reminder of the miraculous littleness and humility of it all can be a powerful experience. Consider building it piece by piece as the days go by.
• Meditate on Incarnation- the central miracle of the coming Christmas season, Emmanuel (God-With-Us) invites all sorts of creative pondering. I like to wonder which of the water bottle in the kitchen or in the aisle in the store secretly has the ocean hidden inside it. Whether it’s cherishing something in your heart, exploring it on journal pages, or making art that expresses the beautiful impossibility of it all, this theme holds infinite possibility.

I hope these ideas are a good starting point for you, as you tackle what must be done, and make space for what can be surrendered to the practice of holy waiting.

Neera Tanden, president of Center for American Progress, asks a question of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), 13 June 2025. Questions are fine, just not in headlines. (Photo: A. Kotok)

Here's an easy way to get through your daily media reading. Ignore stories, analyses, or opinion pieces with a headline as a question. Really.

This advice is based on my definiton of news: developments that tangibly affect the human condition. If the story reports on something important, the headline will say so.

I used this definition of news to produce Science & Enterprise for 13 years. Something real had to happen: e.g., research published, clinical trial begun, grant awarded, investment secured. As a result, S&E story headlines were in the form of declarative statements, not questions.

If a piece has a headline as a question, it's a good bet that writing is either click-bait or has little that's new. And if there's nothing really new, just more questions, you're probably wasting your time.

Now please understand: There's nothing wrong with raising questions. But if you're raising questions, at least try to provide some answers.

Give this advice a try for one or two days. You will be amazed just how much of your daily reading you can cut out. And you won't miss any real news: developments that tangibly affect the human condition. The only question will be: What will you do with that spare time?

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