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Sunday, April 5, 2026

General knowledge

 Wealth building and gratitude

http://www.lmschairman.org/2017/11/the-psychology-of-military-incompetence


The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

 

The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest


How good are you remembering the titles of a book? While reading it or having juct come across it. I have been looking for this book as "The Perfect Rain" or "The Great Rain".

The language is so beautiful. It has me inspired to follow the land and the river on google maps.

Through the land description, you also get a sense of the history of the land and the people who influenced it. It is amazing how far reaching Muir's influence is. Pen is mightier than the sword. Indeed!!

Funny take on Winthrop Glacier naming as a tourist perk of the yore.

Ironically The Canoe and the Saddle by Winthrop is a northwest book like this.

"fish that is synonymous with the land"
Resource towns
"I wonder.. if the river.. will become a tame centerprice of the next Western theme park"
fathometer


Kachess - More Fish

Friday, April 3, 2026

The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

 


The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion


Recently I came across the term neutral habit while looking up about the benefit of something.

Subjectively satisfying vs objectively good ways of value responding presented in the book, reminds me of that anchoring.

Truth, good and beauty reminded me of six great ideas book on philosphy by Adler.

Walking underneath the eucalyptus tree in the afternoon, I found bleached leaves on the soil and what a dead checkered butterfly (at that time I did not know its name) but I showed it to my friend and as we were walking on, I wondered if I should have taken a picture of it and I knew I would write about it but only should I let my writing speak of it or go back and take the picture. After few steps, I forgot about it but when my friend had to cut the walk short, I had an opportunity to go back to the scene and take a picture, wondering if the wind took the dead butterfly to an unfindable spot. With the pitcure in tow, I did not have to mention that the butterfly was dead. Like the author said, beauty makes a claim on us.

"Courage was now muscle memory".

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Learning Chinese

 https://x.com/jegaevi/status/2038941698584141883/photo/1

The Landscape of Inner positions

HSK

Periodic table

This also reminds me of the two things related to language that I need to investigate:

1. Studying technical matters in a language is different - eg sciences 

Here in the periodic table, the characters include metal or gas in the name, making the assimilation of the knowledge different.


2. When you lose your grip on a language and you are unable to argue in it, you feel frustrated.

Sunday, March 15, 2026

Birds of America: Poems by Chera Hammons

 

Birds of America: Poems by Chera Hammons

The book begins witha poem on killdeer. If you are a birdwatcher, then you will understand the stories behind the birds, their calls, the place they call home that needs rebuilt every once in a while and sometimes overpowered - an owl's nest before that was actually a Cooper hawk's nest. In an Eponymous poem which follows the structure of

 "Before the catalog the art came... Before the art, the wire came.. Before the wire.."

You get the drift, nothing in nature stays the same, there is dark history of nature and Audubon.

"Our mistakes, buried in plastic bottles
                will abide much longer than our mourning" - Conservation List
"we dont know all that we are missing yet" "Every extinction has to start somewhere"

Humans role in coexisting with nature - "There would be no one to ruin anything or save it" and vice-a-versa in a curved bill thrasher's mischief.

The poems are not just observations of nature, but ironies of whom nature chooses.

"It matters how we are left" leads into erasure poetry which at once can be seen as found poetry too. You can feel that tension of human expectations in the migratory life between birth and death.

In search of meaning and hope, poet Hammons takes us down the path of finding it in nature.

Virgil Chinese poetry

 https://antigonejournal.com/2023/11/virgil-chinese-poetry/

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Footloose

 I came to pick you up from the day care

you were playing at the mini kitchen
I wanted you to play a while
then you moved to another station
a rectangular glass box with yellow and black sand in it.
You moved it up and down and wanted to open it

You were taken to the 3s class
A new area, lot to explore
you picked the paints, but your teacher said
we dont have the setup, the paint aprons...

Now I had to plead you to follow me
outside you saw puddles
you were stepping into it
my scream stopped you
Half willingly, I want you to enjoy the puddle
but I dont want you to get dirty
you did leave your footprints on the wet mud

luckily there were tissues in the car
for your muddied shoes which had
little rocks from the dry land than the wet

You found a wooden scale under the tree
you dug a little mud in the wet area
and few steps away where it was dry
you tried to no avail

You wanted to take the scale with you
I convinced you to leave it where you found it..

Curious you....
Footloose..

2/16/2018

Man and humanity

 The Discoverers vs Will Durant