More from the Popol Vuh

Examine the new place well with your hands and eyes.
Know more about the morning star.
Discover your beginnings, find meaning for your life.
Attend to your allies, but give council only to the worthy.
Strike for life.
Improve ability to communicate.
Preserve communication that serves well.
Cooperate for the common good and practice good will.

Sound as a Dollar

We let them know that we didn't care what the did with our money so long as they didn't take a too much bigger percent of it.

So they did what they thought was best for them in the short run. There was no long run.
Now the whisper around the world of "dump the dollar" is growing so loud they are becoming as scared as we should have been.

I wish enough of us had taken pleasure in our responsibilities and duties as citizens of a republic with pretensions toward democracy.

Can you hear it passing?

The Blooming of a Lotus by Tich Nhat Hanh

I've been slowly letting go of my books so that even though I continue to add to my library, its size is beginning to diminish. One of those books I continue to learn from is "The Blooming of a Lotus."

This is a book of simple word meditations written out in strait-forward, every-day English. It is so laid out as to make it easy and pleasant to practice these healthy, doable, practical meditations with a smile.

These meditations help me to look into myself and around myself in a more tolerant, happy, and realistic way. They help me to more fully see what is really here. They help me to greater acceptance of, and gratitude for, what is. They also, in gentle, pleasant ways effectively help me to a clearer awareness of peace and joy and on to higher levels of real health and abundance.

Its a nice little book of powerful potential.
I'm glad I opened it.

Grateful and Gratifying

New Orleans is big, beautiful, lively, friendly, and tasty. I'm talking about NOLA people and their culture, geography counts for something. Seems right to talk about the Big Easy.
Up river, down river, West Side, canals, bayous its easy to find an energizing nudge in the perspective, and a good meal at the same time.
Lots of good conversation available, and when you don't need to talk you can dance your butt off to music that flows in the ears and around the whole body.
In the greater New Orleans area you can experience some of the most well matured parts of the good old U. S. of A.
I flew out of New Orleans a couple of years younger than I was when I got there. My emotional energy was cranked up a notch or two and I had a calm smile on my face that might have been broad enough to suggest just a tiny bit of naughtiness.
It's high culture laid back
The people have had some hellish weather and have handled it in a heavenly way.

Radio English.

On the two PBS stations available locally I now regularly hear "large" pronounced the same as "larch" and "news" pronounced the same as "noose."

I hope I don't get a large noose when I'm expecting news about the larch.

Philosophical Relatives

Well bro, you don't have to be my age to understand this, but it might help.

When I was quite young I was pretty sure that I understood "I love you." better than I understood "A bushel and a peck." Then, for a time, I was sure that I understood "A bushel and a peck." better than I understood "I love you." Now, I think that I would benefit from knowing a whole lot more about both.

I may come to consider that "nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all.

You think about things. You think about change. If everything is changing, what is a thing?
Everything is changing.
Thing is change.
Thing equals change.
Change is thing.
How are things, anyway?
Nice to have a little change.
What is the nature of change? Of thing?
Do questions like this keep you awake? Do the put you to sleep? They may be good for that.

Magic Table

Imagine a beautiful table.
Large and low
Easily bearing gifts

Pedigree, My Foot!

Cranes Foot is more like it. Some centuries ago someone looked at the lines of a genealogical chart and thought it looked like the mark left by a cranes foot.

Genealogy and pedigree are not exactly the same. Going back to its Greek roots genealogy would seem to mean family studies. Like a pedigree a genealogy is a record of familial decent, but it may also refer to race study.

Looking at the genealogy of 'genealogy I find it belongs to one of the biggest most important word families. It goes back to pre-historic Indo-European bases like gen-, gon-, gn-, all denoting 'produce.' German offshoots include kin, kind, and king. Its Latin descendants seem to go on forever. I won't quote the Latin words here. I will mention a few of the related phrases and words in English: race, people, beget, be born, nature, nurture, gender, general, generate, generic, gentile, indigenous, genesis, genetic, gene, and a lot more!