Café Philos: an internet café

The above photo was taken in the late afternoon at a park close to where I live in Colorado.

I'm back -- and twice as sexy as before!!!

Thank you, everyone, for sticking with me during my recent unexpected one week hiatus. It's deeply appreciated. I've been reading everyone's comments and finding them wonderful -- although I haven't had the time to respond to them.

Also, I will be putting up links to blogs from around the net on Friday. It is great to be back! My heart is with this online blogging community.

I've missed a couple of days of blogging because my brother, his wife, and my new nephew have come to visit. Also, a Forum I help administer has required more attention than usual. But I'll be back to excessively prolific blogging very soon!

From time to time, I hear neo-conservatives say, "You cannot support the troops, if you do not support their mission." Just about everything the neocons have told us over the last few years has -- at the very best -- been a half-truth, and has much more often been an outright lie. The neocon notion that you can't support the troops if you don't support the neocon's war in Iraq is yet another example of their idiocy -- the idiocy that got us into Iraq in the first place.

For the record, I support the troops. I even support the war in Afghanistan. But I do not support the war in Iraq. If neocons are too simple minded to grasp how I can do all three of those things at once and still manage to chew gum too, then that's their problem, not mine.

I miss the old fashioned conservatives I grew up with. I always could respect them and saw eye to eye with them on many issues. But these neocons don't even deserve to be thought of as conservative. They are a ruthless, cynical new breed of something -- but that something is not genuine conservative.

Well, that's my rant for the day. Have I completely lost it or is there some truth in what I've said?

For long, lonely days and cold, bitter nights, I've been scouring the vast reaches of the internet for good blogs to read. It's not a pretty job and it's fraught with danger, but I want to expand my blog reading by an order of magnitude. So if you have a favorite blog you're willing to recommend to me, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm mostly interested in blogs that are updated regularly. Topic hardly matters so long as the writing is good. Thanks!

Kay, over at Songs Of Unforgetting, has kindly tagged me with the "Eight Random Facts About Me" meme. If and when you're tagged, you are to dutifully:

• Post eight random facts about yourself.
• Tag eight other bloggers.
  
• Post these rules.

So, here are my eight facts:

1) I paid my college room and board to study philosophy by fighting fires for the city.

2) I once owned and operated a small business with 13 employees, including my bimbo ex-secretary, who I was especially fond of, in part because she taught me -- better than anyone else -- that people with absolutely no intellectual interests could be lovely, wise and compassionate.

3) When I was 16, I hitchhiked around the Western United States, living on the streets of the cities I found myself in. At that time, I was one of four people I met who were 16 or younger. Nowadays, there are thousands of kids younger than 16 living on the streets.

4) I didn't figure out I'd married my first wife for her looks until after I was divorced -- the obvious often escapes me.

5) I was raised in a tiny Mid-Western American town of 2,500 people in which the dogs were allowed to vote in local elections on the theory they knew everyone in the community just as well as anyone.

6) My second marriage was to a brilliant, but abusive woman who herself had been abused as a child, and it created in me an intense interest in fighting against all manner of abuse.

7) At thirty-seven, I lost nearly everything I owned, including everything I'd built my self-identity on, and consequently discovered the art of dying. I haven't felt afraid of death since.

8) Apart from the seven things mentioned above, there is nothing else about me that could possibly interest anyone. That's the greatest tragedy of my life: I haven't enough personal stories to keep up my end of a good bar conversation -- a fact I feel compelled to compensate for by indulging in endless jokes about farts.

According to the rules, I should now pass this meme along, but I think I'll wait until later to do that. Thanks, Kay.

When I began writing this blog, I did not anticipate the need to take a vacation from it at times. Yet, I discovered after 200 or so consecutive posts that I felt dangerously close to running in a rut. Writing seems to demand a certain passion that is hard for me to maintain if I'm doing it every day. Hence, I took some time off from it.

This morning I feel refreshed and engaged again. Thank you to everyone who patiently waited out my absence.

Last Friday, my trusty computer encountered a software problem it could not for the life of it fathom. It's response was to lock itself into a sort of meaningless endless loop -- strangely reminiscent of the Bush policy in Iraq. Thus, after years of faithful service in the cause of inane writing, it died an ignoble death. C'est la vie.

I am now working on a "borrowed" computer. "Borrowed" must be placed in quotation marks because the computer I'm working on was found in the possession of a young woman whom I used to nanny when she was a young girl. She herself no longer has a use for this computer, having upgraded to a newer model, so she has graciously "loaned" it to me on an unconditional, permanent basis. All those years of taking her to the mall when she was too young to go alone finally paid off.

That's her in the cowboy hat. Isn't she beautiful? And what a reflective, thoughtful look! You just can't nanny a kid for a few years without coming to think they're one of the best kids on earth. At least, I can't.

Just for the record, I wrote the following for her when she was 12:

All I need is you today
And this morning's sun.
Show me now your silver dolphins
Then let's have some fun.

We'll go find some skates forgotten
And turn them into new.
Then we'll drink raspberry juice
And stay out past curfew.

Leah, won't you bite that woman
So I can speak with her
(Oh, nevermind, she's not the kind
To ever appreciate us).

Yes, I see the frozen dancer
Make of glass and gold:
But let's buy cigarettes --
I know just where they're sold.

My god you're strong when you're determined --
You dragged me half a block:
Just don't drop that dancer:
You know that's Aaron's job.

All I need is you today
And this morning's sun.
Show me now your silver dolphins
Then let's have some fun.


Fortunately, she's forgotten the bad poetry I inflicted on her -- otherwise she surely would not have given me this computer.

I've slacked off a bit on blogging over the past three or four days because I've been feeling a bit under the weather. However, I'm now feeling on the mend, so I should be up to snuff soon. I apologize to anyone who's been inconvenienced by this.

Cindy is a warm-hearted woman, and this morning I got another email from her.

Nowadays, that's about all I really know about Cindy. She's warm-hearted and emails me.

Some long time ago, I knew her as well as any child can know another child. We met in kindergarten, grew up together in our small town, and graduated from high school together before going our separate ways.

More than 30 years later, she contacted me. That was two months ago.

We don't know each other nowadays, but that doesn't matter to either of us. We not only grew up in the same school grade, but in the same cinder-block classrooms. For years we were a presence in each others life. During my impressionable years, she partly shaped my notion of what a girl should be like. Although she doesn't know it, there were times when she listenned to me during adolescence that I really needed someone to listen -- and Cindy was there for me.

When you grow up like that together, it gives you rights to each other that are something like the rights of kin. You can look each other up even after a separation of decades and expect to be welcomed like a long lost second cousin.

So, I've been wondering who she is today. I suspect the two of us have very different interests from each other and I wonder if we will enjoy it should we meet again. The issue has come up because Cindy wants us to meet.

Maybe we will. And then what? Do we spend our time reminding each other of things long gone? Or do we use the opportunity to get to know the people we've become? I myself am not much interested in the past except as it contains lessons that might bear on the present. But I suspect Cindy is interested in the past, and so I also suspect that's what we would discuss if we met again. Do I want that?

How does one deal with the past when one is alive only in the impermanent present?

Well, if it were up to me, the two of us would meet for sex. That would be living in the present, it would be life affirming, and it would tell each of us more about the people we've become than any sentimental recollections of what we did in second grade could possibly tell us.

Somehow, though, I just don't think my idea of a class reunion will fly with the yearbook committee. Should I have been born in France?

Yes, it has become necessary for Café Philos to break the law.

The law made by The Thinking Blog, that is. Specifically, their law that we are only to tag five other blogs for the Thinking Blog Award. That law must now be broken, smashed, trampled on, because Ali Eteraz is back in town.

Within hours of naming five blogs that provoke even me to thought, I discovered that Ali has started blogging again. As of yesterday, March 25, 2007.

Mark the date: Ali is not only a blogger but a mover and shaker. He is one of the internet's leading proponents of reforming Islam. He accomplishes more in a single year than most such reformers and activists accomplish in three years. And when this man can no longer make even me think, I will have passed on to the Great Weirdness.

Last November, Ali shut down his blog, Unwilling Self-Negation, in order to devote his time to launching Eteraz.Org: States of Islam. (Eteraz.Org is a strange combination of blog, forum and political organization that might, in some ways, represent the future of the internet -- or, at least one of its futures.) Yesterday, Ali restarted his old blog and so it has become absolutely necessary to tag him with the Thinking Blog Award, even though in doing so I become the sort of outlaw who would willingly violate an honor system. Oh well. I shall somehow survive the shame of it.

Do you like to think? Do you like to read blogs? If "yes" seems to you the natural answer to both questions, then the Thinking Blog Award might appeal to you.

Last week, Mystic Wing suddenly honored Anne and I by tagging this blog with the Award. No doubt he was suffering from a momentary lapse of sanity when he did so, but we'll happily accept the Award anyway.

So, what's the Award? Well, The Thinking Blog Award has been making its way around the internet since February 11th, when it was begun by none other than The Thinking Blog. The idea is simple: If someone tags you as a blog that makes them think, then you respond by tagging five other blogs that make you think.

I've discovered that while the idea is simple, executing the idea is not so easy as it sounds. There are so many quality blogs out there that make me think. So I've have some difficulty narrowing my list down to just five blogs.

One thing that helped to narrow the list is that many of my favorite blogs have already been tagged. For instance, Mystic Wing tagged Brendan's Off the Beaten Path at the same time as he tagged Cafe Philos, so that's one down. Again, most of the science blogs I like to read have already been tagged, so that's a whole category all but eliminated. Yet, there are still gobs and gobs of blogs that I would like to tag if I were not confined by the rules to just five.

Having said all that, I shall now present my list in alphabetical order.

Baghdad Burning is by all accounts one of the best and most widely recognized blogs on the net today. It is written in beautiful English by an anonymous Iraqi woman living in Baghdad whose perspective on the war is, to say the least, not that of George Bush, Tony Blair and Al Maliki. She revealingly contrasts the daily lives of herself and her family and friends with the almost obscene spin of the politicians who caused the war. Her writing transcends the immediate conflict in Iraq. It is perhaps some of the best war writing from a civilian point of view of all time. You would be doing yourself a disservice if you missed reading some of the archives too.

Burning Silo, by Bev Wigney, is both a nature and a photography blog. The photos alone provoke thought, but the detailed, professionally executed writing is immensely stimulating as well. When I read Burning Silo, I find myself wanting to get up out of my chair and set off to explore nature -- even if that means exploring only the nature in my back yard. The blog does more than make us think: It restores to us a sense of wonder too.

Church of the Churchless is Brian Hines' wonderful blog for those of us who have, or who want to have, a spiritual life apart from organized religion. Brian is heavily influenced by Taoism and good sense. I don't always agree with him, perhaps because of my notable lack of good sense, but I am always stimulated both by the questions he raises and his responses to those questions. He has another, equally good and thoughtful blog called Hines Sight.

High Plains Buddhist is, more often than not, an account of Todd Epp's insightful application of Buddhist principles to his own life. That tends to make those principles fascinatingly concrete and fresh. We get to see the Buddhist way in action through Todd's eyes, and the result is great food for thought.

Think Buddha is Will Buckingham's profound blog that covers nearly every strain of Buddhist thought, rather than focusing on only one or two traditions. Will writes beautifully, making even some very difficult ideas and principles comprehensible. This blog goes beyond thought-provoking. It's educational, too. Well worth a bookmark, I think.

So, there you have it. My list of five blogs that rise to the challenge of provoking even me to thought. I haven't really done any of them justice here in my brief descriptions, I'm afraid, but perhaps at another time I can give each the detailed review it deserves. I would like to thank Mystic Wing for honoring Anne and I with his tag. It was more fun than I at first thought it would be to make the above list. And perhaps Anne, if she gets the time (she's been very busy lately) will offer her own list of five blogs that make her think.

UPDATE: I've been tagged two more times for this same meme, and post my response to the tags here.

About a decade ago, two sociologists studied the Illinois town I grew up in. They looked at their data, then pronounced the community one of the 50 most stable small towns in America.

Stable.

Growing up, I hated that stability. It meant only the seasons changed. Everything else stayed the same.

In that town, you had to put change under a microscope to see it. Folks would talk about a new car --- their own or someone else's new car --- for weeks on end. There was no point in talking about anything else, because nothing else had changed.

By the time I left my home town for college, I had come to hate even the very word "stable".

Perhaps the worse thing to never change in a small community can neither be seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor touched. That's your reputation.

You get a reputation early on in life before you even know you have one. It's spread by gossip, and the gossip proceeds you. Even when someone in the town doesn't know you, the odds are excellent they know of you.

Some will say reputations can and do change in a small town, but that's not entirely true. The fact is, they can be added to, but not subtracted from. Once a thing is known about you, it sticks to you.

It is sheer irony reputations are intangible. Ironic, because a reputation has a discernable, almost physical, impact on how people treat you. Many folks can stand face to face with you, yet look right beyond you and see only your reputation. Maybe you're being nice to them, but if they've heard you're sarcastic at times with others, they will be on the look out for a twist in every word you say --- then they think they hear clearly what you didn't mean at all.

Because reputations are almost tangible in a small town, so are memories. Even if you've forgotten something about yourself, others won't have. There's always someone who remembers what you said in second grade, and someone else who remembers who you played with in third, so that, were you to gather together 50 people from the town, you could fairly well reconstruct a man's whole life in the town.

A wise man once said, "We have so many memories to forget before we can know who we really are." In some ways, it is almost impossible in a small town to know who you really are. That's because it is almost impossible to think of yourself apart from the town's memories of you. You become confused, and think your memories of you are you. When you try to think of yourself, you so often end up merely comparing yourself to your reputation and pointlessly arguing with it. "Am I really who Sue thinks I am?"

I couldn't stand the memories of myself. Neither my own nor anyone else's memories of me. Instead, I wanted to become myself, so I left town.

Dear Paul,

Let me first extend my deepest apologies for the lateness of my response, as mid-semester is providing me with a considerable load of work. You asked me what I made of your assesment that human beings like to give human personalities to non-human things; I think I would have to agree with your assesment overall.

I'm sure we've all come across people who can describe the "personality" of each of their pets or, as you pointed out, name their cars. As you have pointed out that a personality is a predictive model of behavior, it makes sense that humans may find "comfort" in ascribing human personality to non-human things.

I think human beings are driven to look for a purpose in things, even where there really isn't one. Since we are human and, therefore, understand human traits the best, we look for these traits in other things an, thus, work to personify them. Of course, this is not the best way to go about things because while bearing teeth may be a smile indicating happiness in humans, a dog that is bearing its teeth is likely none too happy.

When certain events happen, we often want to think they are part of some larger plan. That's why we see so many religious baffoons blaming terrorist attacks or hurricaines on "decaying morality." We want to think things happen for a reason.

I think human beings want comfort and predictableness along with purpose. In a world where so much is uncertain, people will try to find meaning. Therefore, I think it only "natural" that humankind developed a concept of God/s (possessing a predictable personality) and religion (typically aimed at serving the purpose of God/s). What do you make of this? Is human creation of God and religion a way to address the human need for purpose? Or do I have it all wrong?