Chronicles in Ordinary Time

Same title above, different texts

Daunted: to lessen the courage of: [to] cow, subdue obstacles that would have daunted a man of less intrepid mind —Adeline Adams   merriam-webster.com
Daunted: English meaning – Cambridge Dictionary
Daunted is the past tense of daunt, which means to make someone feel slightly frightened or worried about their ability to achieve something.

I keep wanting to write about the CONVICTED FELON and his atrocities…
But these number in the dozens per day, and I really don’t want the atrocities to breathe.
On to more important things…

A Very Particular Tree

One of the odd things about being a freelance Illustrator is being asked to spend hours and hours making an odd and seemingly overworked idea for a client. The image above was the background for a novel that focused on a more-than-human woman. Her wings had been torn off by a villain. The tree and its root system had something to do with metaphysical nature.

A very long time ago, I carried a small notebook in my back pocket, in which I would write pieces of wisdom I found in the world around me. Often small writings on posters, and in stone on buildings I visited. Sometime in this century I left the pocket notebook on a shelf and started writing words I found in a document I call Pocket Wisdom. It currently fills 207 letter-sized pages.
“A French priest conducting a retreat, said:
“To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from that moment at which we identify [pigeon-hole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love.
“We are to be children of the light, and we are meant to walk in the light, and we have been groping in the darkness. The creative act helps us to emerge into the light, that awful light which the disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, and which the Hebrew children saw on the face of Moses when he had been talking with God on Mount Sinai.
“If we are blind and foolish, so were the disciples. They simply failed to understand what the light was about—these three disciples who were closest to him. They wanted to trap Jesus, Elijah, and Moses in tabernacles, tame them, pigeon-hole and label them, as all of us human beings have continued to do ever since.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

I am by nature a recluse. A recluse who has lived with the same woman for more than 49 years; one who has helped to raise three adult children, with three grandchildren. And yet, I am still a recluse. In my twenties, I began to experience and understand the notion of daring to love. It involved learning to love people I barely knew; from a book that may still be here in this house, I began to understand that Love is a Verb.
Our daughter is in her 40s. She is a senior gig worker for a company that stages events—inflatables in the warm weather; now they are moving into Casino events. A few years ago, she shattered her foot in a workplace accident and worked in the following summer wearing a ‘peg leg’ a device to shift her weight to her knee rather than her foot. Her list of accomplishments is large. She recently talked about how all three of our adult children choose Extreme lives—activities that involve taking risks. My wife is extreme herself, with few limitations. She places herself with people I never would talk with. She carries $5 bills around, to give to people with cardboard signs.
She was very annoying when I met her; and very much like a young woman who annoyed me at my previous university. Fortunately, my to-be wife did not kick me under the table at meals in order to get me to pay attention to her. People make odd choices. I recognized in my future wife that she was more like the person I wanted to become than I would get to, on my own. After a year, I realized that I had a calling that included her.
We continue in that calling, although I have a hard time describing what the calling is. It seems to have a component of reaching out to people with what our callings permit. We had a street kid living with us early in our marriage, for a time, he was a live-in babysitter. I never heard from him after he left to move into a different environment. As the kids grew, my wife would come downtown to the government office I worked in. Mainly to ride home with me. They took the bus to where I worked. As we walked back home she talked with people I avoided. Back When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, I saw people talking to themselves all the time. Frequently arguing with themselves. In this time period, I still see people talking with people I can’t see. The Internet and digital phones…
I watched “Woman in Motion” again the other night, [Paramount]. The story of how Nichelle Nichols changed the world. You may be more familiar with the name, “Lieutenant Nyota Uhura” of the Starship Enterprise. Gene Roddenberry wanted to create a galaxy where people were not segregated by skin color, place of birth and upbringing; instead, a galaxy where people could aspire to do more. From the late 1970s until 1987, Ms. Nichols and her company, Woman in Motion, were employed by NASA to recruit women and men of non-white ethnicity to enter NASA’s training program for future space missions. She cris-crossed the country speaking and engaging individuals who wanted to be more. Because of her efforts, women and men of non-white ethnicity entered the space program, particularly for the Space Shuttle program.  

License to Kill
I watched Casino Royale the other night. I haven’t watched Bond movies for a long time. I did not like the concept that someone has a License to Kill. I enjoyed Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Aliens, and I have admired Judi Dench for a long time.
I will be watching Daniel Craig’s other Bond movies. The whole concept of License to Kill has taken a different slant under the current Presidency. He orders the killing of people from the air, over the water, without the least concern who is on the boat. Killing to send a message. As has gone on in Gaza for too long.

Killing ordered by the Secretary of War, without a declaration of a war, is a War Crime.
German officers, after Hitler killed himself, were tried for War Crimes at Nuremberg.
Think about that.

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water