The more I learn from different traditions, the more I find each group claims that their intellectual and cultural forebears are the people everyone likes and says the others descend from the ones everyone dislikes. I grew up in liberal, progressive households and schools. I learned that people who worked for liberty and freedom, and who fought against slavery and tyranny were the ones our traditions descended from. I learned[…] Keep reading →

Doing things consistently and daily for a long time enables you to notice nuances, which increases self-awareness. Since I have a six-day exercise cycle that I begin on the first of each month, in months with 31 days, I like to vary what I do with the extra day. In December I did two things. Sorry for the long post, but what I describe below felt like a meaningful experience[…] Keep reading →

First, context: When, over a decade ago, I started my experiment avoiding packaged food for a week, I discovered why my mind debated with itself over minutia like “should rubber bands count as packaging,” “what about stickers on fruit,” “what about food already in my cupboard,” and so on. As soon as I started, I found I could answer all those questions by doing. Most didn’t matter. Those that mattered,[…] Keep reading →

I keep meaning to write a post on the pattern I keep seeing, but for the time being, I’m just going to collect and list examples of it. The pattern isn’t perfect and anyone who thinks I’m suggesting it is misunderstands me, but the pattern I see is: When society conflicts with men, we say men have to change or take responsibility. When society conflicts with women, we say society[…] Keep reading →

I thought we’d have another day or two hitting 90 F (32 C), but the forecast for the next ten days shows the highest temperature will be 86 F, so I figure it won’t hit 90 again this year. I didn’t use air conditioning in my apartment for another summer. A few nights I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. I didn’t write the number down, but[…] Keep reading →

You’d think the problem with sleeping in summer weather would be the heat and humidity. I wake up sweating several nights per summer and it’s annoying. I don’t want to touch the sheets and it’s hard to fall back asleep. Still, I think of many places that are hotter and more humid than here where people have lived for thousands of years. Also, after a few nights of it, I[…] Keep reading →

I’ve eaten ten or twelve juicy ripe peaches and about that number of bowls of heirloom tomato gazpacho in the past two days. I got them from volunteering. I brought food that a store was going to throw away. The store produce isn’t as flavorful as the fresh, local produce in season in the height of the summer from farmers markets. Other volunteers bring different things from different places. It[…] Keep reading →

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the New Yorker wrote about how people who are suffering from loneliness are finding help from artificial intelligence. Some people can’t help loneliness, not out of character defect but circumstance. It gets the reader thinking about the elderly, for example, who outlive everyone they’ve been close to, or it describes as worse, if those who remain are senile. Sorry to give away the[…] Keep reading →

I have to add to what I wrote last month on How the liberation of living more sustainably feels. In that post, I wrote I left out scope and scale I left out the scope and scale of the difference. Taking off wet socks feels liberating and surprisingly pleasant if you forgot they were on, but it’s still just physical sensations for your feet, a part of your body. Unlike[…] Keep reading →