15 Nov 2020

Blockwalk 2020: A Photo Essay

by Steve | posted in: Adventure, Photography, Society | 0

For my Fall 2020 students at UC Davis.

So, I don’t remember what day it was, but that doesn’t really matter as I can check the timestamp on my images, but I won’t do that because it really doesn’t matter what day it was. It was a day I left the lockdown.

I don’t remember what month it was. I self-isolated around March 20, 2020. I say ‘around’ because I don’t recall the exact day, and I had to stick in a dentist appointment which meant that I had to start the lockdown countdown over again, but for the sake of brevity it was March 20. Or March 18.

All that really matters here is that I left the house and I took a walk. Not a long walk, but a walk around the block, though not the whole block because my house is in the middle of the block. So I left the rear exit into the alley with my camera, not sure what camera but the EXIF in my images knows. It was either the Nikon D200 or the D40, but most likely the D200, or it could have been the Canon SL1.

So, I’m no longer sure of the exact order of things, though my timestamps would know, and there’s a discarded peace lily story in here; the lily was shot either first or last, but I’m opting for last.

As I walked down the alley, it was only half a block, I started taking pictures. Though I speak of some plants and flowers with familiarity, there are many right within the neighborhood that I cannot identify, and that’s okay. What I miss not knowing in ignorance of their names is made up in the capture of their visual wonder. At least, that’s the plan.

Though perhaps a bit mundane, I start taking snapshots. Click-click-click-click…

I cross the street, for something has caught my eye…Isn’t that sweet! A young bird of paradise…?

Now I’m headed back home, while meandering down and across the street. There’s a lot to see, the choices are many, and varied. I’ve stumbled onto some hibiscus just begging for some attention.

Crossing the street to my house, I take a few last parting shots in the garden and up the walkway. I have no idea what these flowers are but they have a choreography that cannot be denied. They delicately dance on their stems, they dance in the shadows, they dance in the light. And if you seem to keep running into alliteration in these posts, it’s a deliberate dip in the dance.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SAV_3071.jpg

Let’s face it. This wouldn’t be Savanna without the Spanish Moss and Resurrection Fern, but let’s not forget the Crepe Myrtle, popping up everywhere with punches of pink, lavender and magenta. While it’s not one of my favorite trees, perhaps because I am not a true Southerner, only mildly invested in the culture and cuisine, or perhaps because I greatly miss the purple haze of the Jacaranda; it is, nonetheless, a lovely, delicate display akin to Southern charm and hospitality.

Perhaps I digress, but from what might that be, seeing that my reflective essay is a contemplative one?

Oh, lo and behold, a crapload of caterpillars destroying whatever they’ve found. They’re so cute…

It was a lovely walk, perhaps only 30 minutes, but it got me out of the house. There were people about, unmasked, not in my immediate space. I took one more photo heading up my walkway. What can I say, but that it was a welcome reprieve, though a but unnerving with pedestrian traffic and nonchalance in the air while an airborne virus has begun its slaughter across the nation.

It’s almost like the Death Angel roaming the streets of Egypt, looking to snatch some unwitting soul who dared depart from the blood-covered doorway that Passover eve, only this time extending those icy fingers far beyond that singular historical moment, across all the streets of America. We’re forced to draw our lines between practicality and paranoia. Yet, surely, this, too, shall pass.

I knew that when I would get home, I would not walk like this again, Not for a while, a long while.

On the balcony… I brought back this lonely lily from trash in the alley maybe two years ago, not knowing what kind of plant it was. Someone had thrown it out, yet it was green and seemed worthy of rescue. I put it on my balcony with a poinsettia rescue I have yet to see bloom. It turns out this was a peace lily, as it’s blooming like crazy now. The poinsettia may bloom this winter, I hope, and perhaps the confederate jasmine will, too.

I’ve religiously been twisting the jasmine vine, only recently learning that the entire plant seems to carry strychnine 😬 up and over the railings. I’ve only ever seen one flower on it, but the vine is now about 25 feet long and, since this type of jasmine blooms from December to May, I expect it to really perform this year. I love the smell of this jasmine. It’s like the night jasmine that intoxicates you for block after block as you ride with the top down nights across Ventura.

Now back to the lily…ahhh…

Peace, out.

15 Nov 2020

Christmas Walk 2012

by Steve | posted in: Adventure, Photography, Society | 0

9 Nov 2020

Icons | Iconics | Iconetics

by Steve | posted in: Culture, Internet, Media, Society, Technology | 0

ABSTRACT

Mediated image manipulation, archiving, and sharing are all critical technological aspects of Western culture and postmodern civilization. Consequently, creation, identification, dissemination, and proliferation of powerful images across media channels indicate a burgeoning area of inquiry for information technologies.

While words alone may be capable of conveying adequate information across media channels, the news industry crafts around the dual enterprise of joint word and image. Audio-visual supports of these communication devices constituting new media are standard means of rhetorical expressions in acquiring and sharing information in daily life. Media images previously bound by the constructs of analog technologies have taken on new dimensionality through participation and promulgation within — and without — media outlets of digitality. This new digital territory for the iconicity of images changes the way cyberspace adopts an icon, and the way humanity avails itself of it.

The rhetorical elements that contribute to raising media to an iconic level are countable and accountable attributes. Overwhelming sensory experiences and responsibilities associated with broadcast media ensure neither (1) time to study individual factors that render media as iconic, nor (2) interest in interpretation of such dynamics prior to public release. Yet, iconic media has a scope of inherent rhetorical wonders, threats, and dangers that beg serious academic, and professional, study and interpretation.

While this leads to deeper issues of access, privilege, and motive, only through serious scholarly inquiry can we gain understanding of rhetorical roots and expressions of the diverse entities producing the media that eventually becomes iconic. Iconic media may be global in distribution; yet, a simple, local systematic approach to dissemination of the rhetorical devices used in its construction and proliferation may help it become the seed for all future inquiry into such dynamic rhetorics.

Difficulty is not in identifying problems, but providing practical solutions. While the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly had much to say on their subject of rhetoric, other scholars have appeared, and still must appear on the media scene capable of considering the aspects, complications, and impacts of iconic media development; however, while providing a safe but creatively stimulating, new systematic approach to rhetorical construction and media messaging for a fully digitized world.

While use of the noun ‘icon’ may be similar to use of the word ‘iconic’ as a noun, their correlative relationship is included here because icons as iconics are imperative to understanding the evolutionary process for traditional icons in cyberspace, and because iconics are intermediaries— the glue, actually — between the traditional icon and today’s iconetics. Consequently, removing the noun ‘iconic’ from this volume would be partly self-defeating since the familial relationship cannot be ignored or stifled.

None of us, as a child, has a history without a pair of biological parents. It would be difficult to tell the important story of the critical growth of those people as parents if their children did not assume their respective relative roles at times, especially when the story is going to end with the noisy grandchildren taking over the family name and its responsibilities. As the traditional icon stands its hallowed ground, icons in cyberspace have been registering as iconics, largely through media proliferation of terrorist images in an entirety in digitality, and iconics collectively, in gestalt, have been living out their virtual presence as iconetics impacting artificial intelligence, robotics, humanity, and the Internet appliance with prospective agency that is capable of affecting…and infecting…digital cultures and societies.

Content from my “Rhetorics of Iconics: Terrorism, Media Informatics, Autopoiesis, and Agency in Cyberspace” dissertation, wherein this abstract is adapted and updated to reintroduce the gestalt phenomenon of Icons | Iconics | Iconetics: a book trilogy in search of a permanent publication home.

Cover images below are sample screenshots as placemarkers, and are not intended to suggest final use.

FIGURES

ICONS: The Tetragrammaton rotated 90° CCW forms ‘Adam’ (Katz, 2003)

ICONICS: Swiss campaign curbing minaret growth (Goal Ag, 2009)

ICONETICS: Screen capture of Moscow bombing reenactment. Adapted image (RIA Novosti, 2010)

17 Sep 2020

Rise of the Ignoramus et Ignorabimus

by Steve | posted in: Culture, Internet, Media, Society | 0

One of the most disconcerting and pernicious changes to society over the past four years has been the rise of the ignoramus et ignorabimus, a Latin maxim for “we do not know and will not know.” Reportedly posited by German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond in closing comments of his keynote address, “Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens” or “The Limits of Science,” to the 1872 Congress of German Scientists and Physicians, du Bois-Reymond’s contested maxim referred to unknowable aspects of science. His skepticism was not without validity, though met with due opposition by other great thinkers of his day, some who successfully turned his maxim on its head; in a sense, rendering it impotent.

Nearly 150 years later, du Bois-Reymond’s contention bears new consideration concerning the realm of science; yet, nowhere near its original intent. Rather than a learned observation from within the ranks of the academy, today’s attack is from outside those ranks and in far greater numbers than du Bois-Reymond was able to conjure. This immense assault is not only being successfully waged against science, but against scholarly expertise throughout the intellectual realm, from university campuses, thinktanks, and institutes to corporate boardrooms and media networks. Suddenly every professional proclamation is suspect to credibility, and the more prominent or pronounced the source, the greater the opposition to the validity of its message. How has this come to be?

Today’s rise of the ignoramus and ignorabimus is politically, culturally, and socially rooted in left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative nomenclature and ideology. While the primary assault is against liberal entities, powerful conservative forces spin it to include themselves as victims through rhetorical devices that usurp popular media channels and platforms they own and have put in place to amplify their grievances. Distractions, deflections, and diversions are tools they use to deflate the bleating urgencies of the Other. These tools are deployed top-down across willing media channels while the complementary forces of the ignoramus and ignorabimus are deployed bottom-up. Both meet in a middle ground of reinforcement.

Blue-collar knowledge is now superior to white collar because it finally won something, a seat at the table, and can lay claim to holding the highest position in the land today.

Effectual political spin from the top down has been readily evident for several decades now. What we are witnessing for the first time in American society is a rip-roaring rise from the bottom to converge with those at the top. It’s the elevation and legitimization of those persons at the individual level to a corporate body level of what they “do not know and will not know.” These are mostly illegitimate voices that can legitimately challenge the media, scholars, and all opposing forces now because those experts are being criticized successfully at the top. Blue-collar knowledge is now superior to white collar because it finally won something, a seat at the table, and can lay claim to holding the highest position in the land today. Before taking umbrage at use of the term ‘illegitimate’ hear me out.

Every voice is legitimate and should be proffered as viable to the conversation. With that said, not every voice holds validity in the conversation. If I attend a conference of nuclear scientists, my voice will hold no credibility in the actual physics surrounding nuclear fission and scientific proliferation, despite my brief experience decades ago managing the Radiation Department for the shutdown of Unit Two at Three Mile Island, or despite someone’s heavy activism in the realm of nuclear opposition. We’re limited in knowledge and can bring no actual expertise to the discourse unless queried on what we truly know.

But that’s not true for a large segment of American society that believes it is now entitled to a seat at any table no matter the subject or required level of expertise because they are following in the footsteps of a president who does this exact thing. Further giving the uninvited ignoramus et ignorabimus reason to join the conversation, this president uses his position and media presence to dethrone the experts. What we all see on a daily basis now is someone who ‘knows better’ than everyone else about everything out there. There is no need for expertise, experience, or knowledge at all, just an overarching reach of power. Even a charlatan with immense power is beloved when he’s your immensely empowered charlatan.

That overarching stretch is relegated to all who will subscribe to it. It’s ‘free’ and it’s yours if you’re a follower and the Other who is not like you is in your sights for assault, because the message from the top down is that everyone not on board is fair game. The number one attack I get online without fail is the spiteful, “Oh, you’re a professor…blah blah blah!” Everyone’s an expert now on everything because the rules have changed: winners take all and they finally won something here so get out of their way, their word is the final word. Yet, it’s just a lie. One more propaganda tool. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking there is not a gestalt that takes place as one more damaging and dangerous rhetorical device gets added to the unwieldy arsenal of the ignoramus et ignorabimus. Lest the awful day come when we choose to absorb their ignorance out of fear, frustration, and eventual forfeiture.

Emil du Bois-Reymond concerned himself with what he saw as relatively immutable limitations to science. We must concern ourselves with how we stand against the continual onslaught from unlearned masses of people who think they know better than we do, better than science. In reality, they know little to nothing, but they do know how to use the simple media apps at their disposal and have been granted legitimacy to do so. Arguing with them is not the answer. Letting them know they don’t need to be jealous because it’s never too late to get a proper education can do wonders. Most importantly, and subject to attack as elitist…though we may rightfully earn such privilege, and despite the juvenile name-calling it provokes out of anger and envy…we should know that intellectuals are being confronted mostly by a bitter society that does not know and will not know, and truly despises smart people for all they’ve learned to know.

18 Aug 2020

Book 3: Finished!

by Steve | posted in: Commerce, Culture, Society | 0

Happy to have worked with so many authors from around the world to complete my third edited volume. And happy to have had a say in the cover, which, I’m comfortable saying is mine by choice. Thanks to my publisher, IGI Global, for approving the final concept and making it the official book cover. Feel free to recommend this book to your university library. I’m showing it off here, so, please enjoy, maybe leave a comment? More to come on the book at a later date.

16 Aug 2020

Uncertain Daze

by Steve | posted in: Society, Spiritual | 0

The most sobering reality we can reach is the place where we acknowledge that a lot, perhaps most, of the suffering we have in this life we bring on ourselves. I’m not saying everything is our fault. But if you think back, you will recall a terrible time you experienced, and you must admit that it was a consequence of your choice. Owning the ugly when truly ours, frees us from self-delusion and displaced blame. Truth does this. Truth sets us free. We need it, especially today against strong delusion.

My local TV lineup without cable nets me roughly 30-60 channels. That includes some local Atlanta transponders. They’re religious channels. Tonight, I watched the Gaithers sing in London, and enjoyed it. Afterwards, Joni Eareckson Tada came on with maybe a 5-minute message. Tada, survivor of a crippling accident, is well known, as her story is profoundly inspirational. I listened, as I had not seen her in years. Joni knows intimately the horrors of a personal decision, as she was paralyzed from the shoulders down as a teenager after diving into the Chesapeake Bay where the waters were reportedly too shallow.

Joni talked gently, carefully, and sensitively about everything we can do to address the coronavirus pandemic, such as pray: pray for a mighty work of God given the circumstances, pray for everyone affected, pray for God to take it away. She made it sound like the whole world is suffering. And her solution is to pray. Pray it all away. It’s here now, killing us, and that’s what we need to do. Pray…

God answers prayer. I have experienced it. I believe. But how is a prayer for God to right things we’ve brought upon ourselves biblically sound, or any expectation that we should have no consequence or evidence of responsibility for our own choices? I’ve prayed for God to assuage the damage, the suffering, from a bad decision. The decision was most difficult. And God gave me great grace to make it through consequential disaster. But I owned it before God, even when others caused my pain and destruction. Because they were mere symptoms, the root of distress was my decision, made under pressure, and with ample miscommunication, even deciding with the best for others in mind motivating the decision.

The United States is reeling from a mismanaged pandemic. We had months of warnings as we watched in horror as China, South Korea, Italy, and Spain went down. And our national response, then and now, remains indignant. We permitted persons in power to politicize the covid-19 pandemic. People in power are the root of the ravaging of this pandemic here. We can pray for easing the disease all we want, it won’t touch the root of our malaise. Other virus-damaged nations are on the other side of the pandemic and consider the U.S. a threat to them now. Because they’re not experiencing a live pandemic anymore. It’s no longer a pandemic in China, and chances are, acting quite drastically, China did not pray it away.

And there’s the hypocrisy. Not a political peep out of Joni Eareckson Tada. No pissing off the donors. Her calls for prayer placate everyone looking for relief from the awful symptoms of this frightening situation we, unfortunately, just happen to be in. Waiting for when we’ll all be able to once again sing Kumbaya is all that matters. When, in truth, all our current covid-19 distresses, we have brought upon ourselves. We deceive ourselves if we think the Joni moment isn’t a political one. And a strong, deliberate one at that.

We’re not all guilty. Many of us have changed our behavior, locked down. We wear masks. We’re not reckless, and we understand our God-given responsibility to speak the truth, not make it fluffy and religiously attractive. You’re not a hapless victim to a deadly virus if you’re a willing accomplice to poisonous attitudes and selfish behaviors that you refuse to own. But we are a spoiled society. Rotten. And bitter at the core. That’s all clearly coming out now. We best not be blind to that revelation.

These are perilous times. Christian care and compassion insists that we pray, while Christian responsibility requires us to act in order to redeem our circumstances and not sweep that responsibility under the prayer rug. This is all being brought upon us by men, not God. We reap what we sow. We have sown the repugnant error of religious hypocrisy in this nation, breeding pharisees, liars. The Church needs to repent while there is time, especially before it seeks to court others in any real push to revival.

Some of us elected this pandemic and will do so again. All the while blaming the other as we call fellow hypocrites to prayer that we might endure four or more years of what we religiously bring upon ourselves, our children, their children, and our nation. We can vote out what’s destroying us and our nation, that with designs only on power, wealth, fame, and greed. In God’s eyes, we are both responsible and accountable for our choices, and their unwelcome fallout at times. Only owning it will ever free us. We own our vote. And all its consequences. We own our silence when we don’t vote. That’s democracy.

And I’m not saying we’re under the judgment of God as a nation as we’re not in that kind of dispensation. We are in a dispensation of grace. God is not judging nations. If he were, what was the hold up with Germany that millions had to die over 75 years ago? What about Stalin’s purges? Rwanda? The list goes on and testifies, despite so many persons anxious to judge others today. No, circumstances, and grace, not judgment, rectified those awful times.

But God is judging some of us today. Before you nod your head and think it’s gays and abortionists, know that you’re wrong. The Apostle Peter said now, this dispensation, today, is “the judgment of believers.” So unless those gays and abortionists are believers they’re under grace without judgment at this time in history as the Christ intends. When’s the last time if ever you heard that coming from the pulpit? Never, because the speaker needs to self-incriminate. If, as Christianity Today reported, less than 1% of pastors who view porn would admit it to their congregations, we’ve found the root to the hypocrisy and self-righteousness problem, and the thrust behind the words of Peter and related biblical admonishments.

God hears the prayers of those who own it, who confess their sins, admit their faults and mistakes, then do what is required to restitute or rectify their awful situation, if he has given them power to do so. Lest we be a people, like Isaiah said, who draw near to God with our mouths, but, in reality, our hearts are far removed. Truth is, God is not a Democrat or Republican, and is not bent on influencing the Republican party, as he needs them not. Religious people are, though. Religious people who voted for Trump because they want Mike Pence to be President. It was a long shot. It didn’t work, it won’t work, and Americans are all fighting a terrifying pandemic now because, as is obvious, we are dying by the tens of thousands, and these men have other agendas: personal, global, questionable.

On the same channel, a lead singer for Gold City cries out, “I’m not going to let politics steal my joy.” And there you have it. Politics and joy are strange bedfellows. We made this bed, now we must sleep in it. While, for many of us today, rest is not available for entry. Rest assured, our present condition is timely and deliberate. Two years ago at this time, well-dressed caravans burst on the scene to try to add fear to our newscasts, and our election. Perhaps they took their money for their staged event to yield access this year to something more expeditious, like a pandemic, primed to ravage the country as it forces us into our first national mail-in election. Who could have predicted such a timely, devastating event?

Meanwhile, the actual source of the coronavirus remains unknown with focus on Wuhan, just a hop, skip, and a jump from China’s northern rival Russian border. Could China have been set up? For an important election across the Pacific? What’s the death of a few hundred thousand mostly old people when billions of dollars in oil are still being sanctioned, and more time in power needs to be bought to remove them?

I’m not bashing Joni Eareckson Tada. I admire her. But we are here as a result of decisions by people in power. We didn’t need to be here. We were warned, amply, loudly, with more than enough time to act responsibly. Voting it in, then praying it away, is asking God to fix things, now that you got what you wanted, when you still don’t understand why that ‘thing’ was being withheld from you in the first place. It’s for our safety and well-being; which are comforts that, by choice, Americans may no longer be experiencing right now.

If we don’t choose wisely and responsibly this November, we may never freely have such comforts again. God wants responsible behavior from us, not tons of pious prayers to supplant our human responsibility to love and care for one another, for the stranger among us. Prayer without action keeps us trapped in denial, in private misery, essentially, a partner to destruction. And as the wisest man who ever lived said, “Hell and destruction are never full.” Sobering, yet we are alive now and can, no we must, right some of our wrongs. Keeping in heart and mind that there but for the grace of God go we all.

8 Jun 2020

Generating Gratitude

by Steve | posted in: Culture, Society, Spiritual | 0

By now, millions of us are feeling the stresses of a new decade ahead even as we stay home in lockdown. But life goes on as usual for many. Yesterday, I went to check the mail, and saw my friend Al across the street seemingly returning from a walk. We yelled greetings over the traffic, and would have said more but traffic was so steady, we gave up. Perhaps expected to be grateful for what little encounter we had.

My primary shortcoming in this life is gratitude. Having lived a full life, I’m not really very thankful. And it’s paying off lately, trapped at home, in memories of better days, memories that are hollow offerings, as I can’t go back. I’m realizing just how much of Lot’s wife is in me that I never really knew, in attitude. Charles Demuth knew, and shared what he knew in My Egypt.

My Egypt by Charles Demuth. Property of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Here’s what the Whitney Museum of American Art has to say about Demuth’s startling piece:

My Egypt depicts a steel and concrete grain elevator belonging to John W. Eshelman & Sons in Charles Demuth’s hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Painted from a low vantage point, the structure assumes a monumentality emphasized by the inclusion of the lower rooftops of neighboring buildings (suggesting the more traditional architecture of smaller family farms) at the bottom of the painting. In Demuth’s image, the majestic grain elevator rises up as the pinnacle of American achievement—a modern day equivalent to the monuments of ancient Egypt. A series of intersecting diagonal planes add geometric dynamism add a heavenly radiance to the composition, invoking the correlations between industry and religion that were widespread in the 1920s. Nonetheless, Demuth may have intended the title to allude to the slave labor that built the pyramids, intimating the dehumanizing effect of industry on the nation’s workers. Moreover, the pyramids and their association with life after death might also have appealed to the ailing artist, who was bedridden with diabetes at the time of the painting’s execution.

But Demuth isn’t in a situation where he “may have” an intent, and the intent of the copy above which is beneath the image on the museum’s website is wrong. At least, partly. We don’t have a historical account that attributes the Hebrews as slaves in Egypt building “the pyramids” but we do have a written record of the Hebrews as slaves left to wander in the desert for 40 years while yearning for a return to slavery. Nonetheless.

That’s what Demuth felt. I was born a short distance from Demuth’s home in Lancaster, well a few miles as the crow flies, in Harrisburg, and my boyhood was spent in Pennsylvania. Even as an adult, I owned a home a few hours from Lancaster, and had a modeling agent based in Lancaster who got me jobs for more than a decade. So much for which to be thankful in just those few sentences.

Lancaster is the heart of the Bible Belt in Pennsylvania. Think Witness with Harrison Ford and the Amish. Demuth was heavily influenced by the rampant religious culture of his home, he could not help but be. Even the Whitney notes the “heavenly radiance” in his painting, which is no doubt a reference by Demuth to the “cloud by day” and “fire by night” that accompanied the Hebrews who wandered the desert for 40 years after being freed from slavery in Egypt. God shines down on Demuth’s Egypt, on the Hebrew slaves, and on my Egypt.

But God has expectations on being freed from Egypt, and desire to return is not one of them. Those Hebrews suffered in that desert, and the Apostle Paul says they did so partly so that we might learn from them. They suffered for their ingratitude, ungratefulness. Wanting to be back with the “leeks” instead of with the manna they were provided, they brought malaise upon themselves. They grew dull in that desert. Bored with living. Disenchanted.

Disenchantment. It’s a mysterious place to be. A desert of the heart. Parched, sleepy, and lonely. It’s not that nothing helps, it’s that disenchantment doesn’t care if it’s helped. It’s over it. It’s apathy run amok. Not in the sense that it’s time to break a pandemic lockdown, but in the sense that lockdowns don’t really matter. There’s nothing to break.

According to the Whitney, Demuth suffered from diabetes. He knew debilitation. He knew non-debilitation from healthier days that one would long to return to, to own again. Heaven has its perks, but the silos bursting with grains call us. Technologies beckon. We want more to pile on our more. It’s never enough.

But the problem is that we aren’t even grateful for all that we’ve had before, let along what’s coming. And that’s the rub. What was coming for Demuth, what’s coming for me, what’s coming for you, is a state of immeasurable loss. What’s there to be thankful for?

Everything. All of it. Every waking moment, every next breath. We don’t understand it, we didn’t ask for it, but we’re in it. When the memory worms in to seduce, I’m renewing my mind to be thankful I had it, not yearning to return to it. And when it’s unrelenting, bombardment of former days and great loss, I’m thankful I had those moments that led up to the loss. No, I’m not happy about loss. I’m looking for renewal. Loss leads to newness. Can I bring my dead pets back? No. Were we wonderful together? Yes. All the lost faces and relationships? Gone. But a prayer goes up for those who live yet come to mind.

Speaking of pets, this is Riley. Riley is a stray that has lived in the neighborhood for at least four years. Riley has a lump on the mouth, making eating difficult. Riley stayed on the porch for several weeks while I took care of her, unable to bring her in as we have three cats already. So Riley stays outside.

You may not see it, but Riley loves me. She’s loving me through that the gaps in her metal mesh chair. Riley is a sweetheart. She’s grateful each and every moment. I don’t give her everything she wants or needs. But I loved her back to health recently. Yes, I feel guilty not giving her an inside home.

Despite circumstances, obstacles, and shortcomings, we connect, perhaps realizing we are grateful for one another. I love Riley. Do I need her? I don’t know. Maybe I do. I’m grateful she’s alive. She’s a Godsend. I want to give her a permanent home, make her life easier.

Our neighbor cut down all the trees and foliage on his property, and that means the morning glory vines we shared between us were hacked off to nothing but a few loose vines. It was a bad decision on his part that affected others, including birds and squirrels that relied on that greenery. One squirrel, especially, has been, well, squirrely, knocking plants from the balcony and eating what it can get of the birdseed.

It’s been a few weeks, and the morning glories are back with a vengeance. Bursting forth in unison, in harmony, almost in gratitude. They learned the hard way. As did Demuth. As do I. Renewing the mind for gratitude strikes at the heart of living a wonderful life. it’s relief. And it’s worth it.

9 Apr 2020

Professional Provocateurs and Their Raging Discontents

by Steve | posted in: Culture, Media, Society | 0

One highly active media character who defies recognition is the professional provocateur. While the start of this character depiction in the U.S. political system can be traced back to one seminal figure in the 1980s: Newt Gingrich, who early in his televised career learned how to manipulate mass media with a mere suggestion, it’s the quiet, unchallenged sand undetected spread of the provocateur phenomenon that is a real threat today.

Two years ago at this time, during the run up to the critical 2018 mid-term election, Gingrich popped up on television screens with the claim that he had one word for the moment that was going to dominate the discourse: caravans. Donald Trump appeared in news stories at the time parroting the same rhetoric.

METHOD

1. Throw it on the table.

2. Leave it there.

3. Never return to it.

The goal of the provocateur is not to provide answers or get into debate. The goal is to take something without question, and make it questionable by throwing it on the table. Generally, the questionable item has no viable answer, which allows for perpetual pondering and endless guesswork on the part of the receiver.

The goal of the provocateur is not to be liked. Being liked is symptomatic and negligible. The mission is to get attention, hold attention, and expand that attention across mass media platforms by promoting rage.

FIRST AMENDMENT

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