Archive - Jan 2015
January 21st
The Sacred Scarf
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 01/21/2015 - 21:14The freezing rain glazed the highway as we crept homeward. Unconsciously, I ran my fingers over the blue scarf. During another winter’s storm, my sister slid off the road. I’ve known those moments myself, the car sliding, out of control, everything happening all at once yet seeming to take forever, and then life forever changed. I felt my mother’s presence in the yarn.
I have no idea when she got the yarn. It was probably over twenty years ago, perhaps when one of my daughters was born. Throughout much of my life, my mother was always knitting, and the basement was full of yarn she had picked up for one project or another. Yet has her tremors got worse she couldn’t continue her knitting.
When we cleaned out her house, I agreed to talk the yarn and fabrics, and now I have a garage full of fiber projects waiting to be completed. My daughters have taken up where my mother left off.
The scarf is narrower than the scarves I made as a kid. The width is more like that of a priest’s stole. Did my daughter knit it out of yarn that had been intended for her baby blanket? Was the circle somehow completed when she knit the scarf and gave it to me? Were we somehow connected through this sacred scarf, my mother, my daughter, and I?
We passed cars that had slid off the road. Cars like those that held my sister and mother years ago. Unconsciously, I ran my over the blue scarf. I felt the warm of the cloth, of my mother’s love, my daughter’s love, and knew that we would make it safely home.
January 20th
That Vision Thing
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/20/2015 - 22:53And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
At vestry this evening, we talked about our church’s budget, the upcoming annual meeting and how all of this relates to our hopes and aspirations, to that vision thing. Driving home, I listened to some of the State of the Union speech, and I suspect any parts of that vision thing in the speech will get lost behind the partisan rancor.
It seems as if we are losing sight of that vision thing, that oratory is getting lost. I won’t comment on the budget President Obama will be presenting. I won’t comment on the budget the vestry has approved.
Instead, let me reflect on a comment at vestry. One person talked about how budgets and visions are not separate things. Budgets are moral documents. They reflect what we really believe. Budgets should be how we pursue our visions. Instead, too many people’s visions seem to be only about specific budgets.
Our vision needs to include those around us, those that are different from us, and those that shall cross from shore to shore years hence.
January 19th
MLK Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 01/19/2015 - 21:06And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when alll of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3
Martin Luther King Day.
The CHC Blog post: Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day!
The Universal Health Care Foundation Blog post: You May Say I’m A Dreamer…
The HealthJustice CT Blog post: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”
January 18th
Cyber Zettel
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/18/2015 - 10:41Time to clear out some of those tabs I’ve left open. On Facebook this morning, upon seeing that a friend had changed his profile picture to say, “Je Suis Charlie”, I summed up my thoughts with
You know, if someone shoots up the Westboro Baptist Church some day, as much as I support freedom of speech, even for them, and as much as I abhor gun violence, I will not post on my Facebook Wall "I am the Westboro Baptist Church".
Another person posted a link to an article about Pope Francis’ words on freedom of speech, which started a lively discussion. On that one I added,
While we must strongly defend freedom of speech, even the freedom to say really stupid or hurtful things, that freedom doesn't mean that it is necessarily wise to say stupid or hurtful things. As one friend once said, the freedom to be an asshole doesn't mean you have to be an asshole.
Instead, we should be looking at what our intent is and what the impact is. For example, do we post cartoons of Mohammed with the intent of curtailing extremist violence? Is that the impact we are really having?
The other day, Susan Campbell shared a blog post, asking What means “freedom of speech?”, pointing to a BBC post about Muslim girls being hugged by members of a K-Pop band I don’t know Muslim traditions that well, but my understanding is that it is not acceptable for Muslim women to be hugged by men that are not their husbands. The girls, and the K-Pop band members acted in ways unacceptable to the girls culture.
One of the things I’ve been focusing on, is trying to better understand other cultures. So, on my reading list is Being Muslim in France by the Brookings Institute.
As I think about this, my mind wanders to the Amish, with their Ordnung, which is perhaps the equivalence of Sharia law. What is the relationship between Amish ‘Demut’ and Muslim modesty?
The key idea for me is to focus on understanding and accepting other people’s cultures. As an aside, I sang at a Jewish service honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. on Friday night. Besides the Jewish prayers, there were Muslin prayers, Bahai prayers, as well as a wide representation of Christian traditions, including Catholic, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, and Quaker.
Another friend posted a link to 7 cultural concepts we don't have in the U.S.. There are ideas of embracing the imperfect, continuous change, of innovative fixes. There are ideas of valuing time outside in nature and of togetherness inside.
In response to an article in the American Bar Association Journal, Parents investigated for allowing their 'free-range' kids to walk home alone, I posted:
I walked to and from the bus stop a quarter of a mile away every day starting in kindergarten. And when I got home I was free to wander the neighborhood and surrounding woods. It wasn't until I was about seven that I started exploring the whole town on foot and bike by myself.
If a neighborhood isn’t safe enough for a ten year old and six year old to walk in, then we need to make the neighborhood safer. And, here I reflect back on my work in health care, we probably should be encouraging everyone, parents and kids, to get out and walk more often in their neighborhoods.
Another window I have open is The Long Memory – Loafer’s Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind by Utah Philips. It is an incredible collection of recording by Utah Philips that a friend posted about on Facebook. The friend had set listening to all of this as a goal for 2015. I’m going to try as well.
Recently, there has been a cluster of earthquakes around Connecticut, so a few tabs that I have open are related to that. I like looking at the USGS Earthquake Map. Particularly, I like zooming to my location, and then setting the options to show the past months earthquakes nearby. When I zoom to my location, I note my current latitude and longitude.
I click on the little gear in the upper right corner of my screen, and then click on Search Earthquake Archives, I set the minimum magnitude down to 1, and then set a rectangular geographic region to be a few degrees on either side of where I am. For example, if my location is 41.741°N 71.888°W. I might set the region to be from 40 to 42 degrees North and 72 to 70 degrees west. (Note to indicate west, instead of east for the longitude, use a negative value, e.g. -72 to -70)
Another page that I like is the Latitude/Longitude Distance Calculator from the National Hurricane Center. Knowing my own geo coordinates and those of the earthquake, I can calculate how far they were from where I was. The latest bactch were about 65 miles away. There are a few good geocoders out there if you want to find the coordinates for other locations, like http://geocoder.us/
January 17th
Hacking Brooklyn Ferry
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/17/2015 - 18:27It is Saturday, a day of rest. I am visiting my brother-in-law and his family in Hanover, New Hampshire. Fiona is off hanging out with her cousins. I have just gotten back from a walk around the Dartmouth campus, playing Ingres, hacking portals.
I pause to read Crossing Brooklyn Ferry as part of the MOOC that I am taking. How curious it would all be to Walt Whitman, a MOOC, the internet, this laptop. How curious it would all be to Walt Whitman, Ingress, GPS, cellphones. Hacking Brooklyn Ferry.
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island,
I first lived in Brooklyn in the days before the cellphone, when the internet was limited to a select few. I commuted from Brooklyn to New York, not by ferry, but by subway. Years later, I lived on a sailboat, a sloop, Whitman would have said, on the west side of Manhattan. I often sailed the waters Whitman wrote about, jibing and tacking amongst the vessels in the bay. Again, years later. I walked the streets, hacking portals in Ingress.
Yes, how curious it would all be to Walt Whitman, and yet, to hop to a different poet,
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
I return to Whitman. Later, I come across “ as I lay in my bed” and my mind wanders to Wordsworth.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I sit on my brother-in-law’s couch, and think about Wordsworth’s daffodils and Whitman’s “ curious abrupt questionings” and then my phone buzzes to notify me that a portal I had captured is now under attack. My resonators will be destroyed and the portal will be captured again by the resistance.
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
Of course, this is not just in the game of Ingress. It is also in the game of life and struggling to write something meaningful. Yet I continue to struggle, continue to write, continue to hack portals only to be recaptured.
“Flow on, river!” Whitman exclaims, and Joyce replies, “riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay…”
