Notes From A Bear's Journey

   One of the funny things about growing older (and in my case, that means OLDer), is that the more you think you know, the less you seem to know (or maybe it's just that there appears to be so much more to know).  I tended to like the opening words of Editor Stephen Orr from Better Homes & Gardens , who described himself as " ...not the most precise person in the kitchen,  I love to cook but don't like to slow down to measure or weigh ingredients.  For me, cooking is more the grand gesture of making a dish.  I don't usually follow a recipe.  I taste and make adjustments as I go.  I think of it almost like making music.  That seems to be how I read, or learn, or remember, the bits and pieces seeming to come out okay in the end but far from perfect.  And lately, these random discoveries appear to be arriving at an ever faster rate.    It started with a simple visit to my grocery store for some flour,* you know, those ba...

    As a general rule, I try to stay out of politics which I should clarify as defined by "heated" politics.  What was once a time for having civil discussions and bipartisanship seems to have become a distant dream.  This somewhat came home to me after reading a short entry in London Review of Books that noted former President Obama when he made a speech regarding the killing by police of George Floyd: ... a speech that was striking for its lack of eloquence -- or urgency.  His cheerful praise for the demonstrators and moderate calls for police reform felt obsolete, the voice of a well-meaning father whose children have long since grown up.    That and an duo-interview with the 71-year old Senator Elizabeth Warren and the 31-year old Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez at the New Yorker Festival  in which the latter said that bipartisanship in Congress was basically a "vintage fantasy," one which brought the Iraq War but not a solution to soc...

Panatal photo: National Geographic    Red, Blue, it's up to you.  Here in the U.S., our Presidential election is now only weeks away and polls and predictions are flying around like  plastic bags in a windstorm.  Unfortunately, election tactics and the parties themselves are getting even nastier with fires being set, razor blades being placed in banners, fake drop boxes for ballots, and Zoom meetings being  hacked with racial slurs; and while sentiment seems to be that the end result may be a major switch to the Democratic party (blue), one could say that people overall are getting weary of the nastiness and name-calling in this election.*  One could also note this comment from Wikipedia : In politics, a red flag is predominantly a symbol of socialism, communism, Marxism, trade unions, left-wing politics, and historically of anarchism; it has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution (1789–1799).  And while both parties ...

    These days the mornings are dark when I walk my dog, my reflective vest and a blinking light on my dog's leash catching the occasional car headlight.  But the cool air and the early pre-dawn darkness provides a rare chance for me to look up and see a glimpse of the moon and planets (the city lights, even at that early hour, still casts too much light to darken the sky enough to make the majority of stars visible).  Cars are few at that hour and it is a time for me to watch my dog revel in his own "visible" world, that of smell (my dog has pannus, an auto-immune disease common to some breeds and an affliction which causes reduced and eventually complete loss of vision).   It constantly reminds me that there are many ways to view the world around us.  And let's face it, we're living in a new world, a world facing ever more extinctions and viruses and wildfires and changing climates.  We seem to have crowded ourselves into smaller and smaller pla...