“Pockets” by Amal el-mohfamr

 “Pockets”

by Amal el-mohfamr

Good read recommend 

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Luolú Miller

Why Fish Don’t Exist

Lulú Miller

David Starr Jordan had spent his career identifying new species of fish.

He carefully stored and tagged thousands of them in glass jars. Then the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 hit — leaving his life's work in pieces on the floor.

In her part-history and part-memoir Why Fish Don't Exist, Lulu Miller, former host of the NPR podcast Invisibilia, writes of how Jordan — and his reaction to that moment — inspired her. 

The book is unexpected in the stories it tells as it weaves her quest for identity and an odd life story of David star jordon .

Actually a well written book, suprizing, not necessarily aligned with all of it.

“ ignorance is the most delightful science in the world because it is acquired without labor or pains and keeps mine from melancholy.”

“ web of chaos leads to a chill pessimism of everything and then there’s grand in this view it says the opposite is equally and as probable of happening”

“ and what kind into glitch helps you achieve grit - positive illusions

Maybe David Starr Jordan is proof that a steady dose of hubris is the best way of overcoming doomed odds”

Evolutionary biologist supported eugenics as a way to protect the degeneration of the species of man

An Arab proverb puts the matter bluntly: “ father a weed,  mother a weed; do you  expect daughter to be a saffron root”.

For Miller the core of the issue was do we matter or not ? 

 and she would say no we don't matter because we don't matter the odds cconfirm that there is equal chance of good as here is bad so we good

 positive and false negative but we still believe in God believe that we matter so there is room for  some hope.

 Miller does acknowledge possibility that minor interactions of people keeping one another afloat the charity people offer for one another ,and the kindness of people looking out for one another might be the very thing that tethers one to this planet ; the possibility of a web-like that are tangible interactions with people and enrich the society around them reflecting more light back into society / people/ the world and thereby strengthening it

“Humans downplay similarities between us another animals as a way of maintaining our spot at the top of our imaginary ladder.”  -  or perhaps we sit on the ladder at the top the field recognize that these other creations are closer to us though they are  still not us. 

How do you grow up and learn to stop believing peoples words about you

When I give up fish (labels). I get the promise that there are good things in store not because I deserve them not because I work for them because there is as much a part of chaos destruction and loss. Life  - the flipside of death; growth of rot . Examine each object in the avalanche of chaos with curiosity with doubt.  look at both sides wonder about the reality waiting.behind  our assumption.

Be wary of words remember that a category is at best a proxy at worst a shackle.

To turn the key to new possibilities all you have to do …  is stay wary of words.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning By Cathy park Hong

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning  by (Korean American) poet/author Cathy Park Hong

a collection of essays that examine Asians in America.  Hong analyses the "minor feelings" of shame, discrimination and racism that Asian Americans suffer in everyday lives.

I did not relish nor rejoice inter pin and her trying to get.  Sri on it. It is the fact that fro. A cues point of view we are approaching  this life very different try that does not hinge on her being Korean, it does find itself constrain. Ed by her cis and atheists poi ts of view. For she approaches the m as aggressively as many represents the other side of the issues approach theirs.

The book was meaningful  reading for me .  I now understand better the depth of the shame factor can impact an asian’s lives , the pain not of a lack of unifying identity and a anything opposite of the use is the right and best essay fodder . Other than saying I would, recommend one skip the entire chapter on education thoughts. I can understand the concept she is describing I got it.  Perhaps some of her Broad terms might be best left alone and she can return  to specific details in her  next chapter. 

e must free ourselves of our conditional existence  - be ‘awake’ to their suffering

Even if we've been here for four generations our status here remains conditional - belonging always promised and just out of reach so that when we behave we are absorbed into the main stream society

Witnesses already recruited us to become their junior partners… conscription is every day and unconscious

Our respective racial containment isolates us from each other and forcing our thoughts and our struggles are too specialized and relatable to no one else except others in our group. I'd rather leave a blank space for my pain, than have it  be easily summed up for consumption. Sow the cratered land with candy and from its wrappers will rise Capitalism and Christianity.

Moreover I had to contend with this we. I wish I had the confidence to bludgeon the public with me like 1000 trumpets against them but I fear the way to my experiences decision professional class ,cis female, atheist, contrarian tip the scales of a racial group that remains so non-specific. We had a conference appointment it was swiftly cut down after graduation banner separation we need to hit approve ourselves again and again because we were at every stage of our careers underestimated. 

Work is great and possibly catastrophic failure since failure to imagine what it means to live together dealing with inconveniently different faces.

 A flashback to a feeling from a fear and shame, a  tight animal alertness. Childhood is a state of mind whether it be an astounding return to innocence or a sudden  flashback to unease and dread . innocence of childhood its being  protected and comforted and then the precarity of childhood  is when one feels the least protective

The Color of Compromise by Jemsr Tisby

 The Color of Compromise 

Tisby revealed where the American church is compromised with the Bible teaches eg. human dignity and quality of life,safety and  in the American dream and surviving in America. Christianity‘s racial past exposes the nasty ways people of faith actively worked against racial justice as well as the deafening silence of racial moderates. There’s progress but there’s no solution yet and this when I was about to give up hope that it wasn’t going to offer solutions when he did. 

 I think one of the key points is urgency and things need to happen today and so he offers:

ARC 

-awareness :Watch documentaries, diversify your social media, access websites created by racial and ethnic minorities...

-relationship: starts with people you know ask them about their particular circumstances,  find new places and hang out, do you want an activity with people who don’t look and act just like you / me

-commitment- Trade something do something now : join -donate - create -act

-Reparations: For slavery ,for Jim Crowe, for redline property law educational opportunity - I like the idea of every black  receive free tuition in a Christian college or grad school

• Add the lamentation gospel songs into the hymnal
• Make Juneteenth a national holiday
• Publicly denounce racism

I

As God told Joshua “be strong and in good courage “ as he faced the most difficult role of his life God ordered Joshua to have strength & courage and then just working faithfully execute is much the same way the church today must receive God’s command show strength and courage to come out.

Hunt Gather Parent By michaeleen doubler

 Hunt Gather Parent 

What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

By Michaeleen Doucleff

Doucleff  with her three-year-old daughter in tow set out to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania

Helpfulness

 

The creation of the nuclear family remodeled how we parent,but also how we learn to parent  - the shrinking down of the nuclear family, - individualism reigns supreme,

Acomedido. -paying attention then acting

How to train:

1.Let them practice

• The task should be real and make a contribution
• The task should be doable
• Never force a task
• Grant unto child a membership card - a sense of belonging to the family 
• Awareness of interdependence and connections 

2. Model 

  Family membership day

20-20-20

Minutes - feet away - silence 

Reconsider the child’s role in the family

3 acknowledge -the foundation for the parent child relationship:

T-togetherness 

E-encouragement 

A-autonomy 

M-minimal interference

Intrinsic motivation makes a person dance in the living room at night when no one is watching

Praise can undermine motivation instead try fluid collaboration 

1 sense of connectedness

2 autonomy my making a decision for themselves

1. Competency

Expect children to misbehave

Stop arguing with small children

(Disagreeing is ok - being disagreeable is not)

Don’t over stimulate children 

 Parenting tools

• parent with calmness
• Parent with touch (toss, physicality)
• Parent with awe - take a child outside
• Ignore it

Everyday tools

-learn the look

• explain natural consequences of actions
• Employ questions
• Responsibility 
• Action not words
• Master ignoring 
• Discipline through practice: stories  drama 

Not demanding nor bossy

Autonomy

Share : practice. -  modeling. - acknowledge 

Invisible safety net

Limit how often you ‘direct’ and/or ‘command’

Stop speaking for your child

Minimal interference

Team parenting

   Team

   Encourage

   Autonomy 

   Minimize interference 

Sleep - don’t fight over it- let child self regulate

   Model acknowledge practice

The selected works of TS Spivet. By Reif Larsen

The selected works of TS Spivet 

Spivet embodies the uneasy balance of innocence and insight prevalent in depictions of children

And here obsession is more than an attempt to exert control over quotidian uncertainties; it becomes a whole system of ordering a life against tragedy. Finding both comfort and a modest sense of adventure in precision, Spivet maps everything

With this novel, Reif Larsen seems to be announcing himself as a compassionate observer of prodigy incubated in emotional isolation and, at the same time, as a potentially eviscerating contestant on “Jeopardy

The novel is full of these easy demystifications: that brilliance doesn’t nurture, that attraction is more than a compatibility of I.Q.’s, that life surprises us, that people aren’t always what they seem. It would not be necessary to consult the author bio to know that Larsen has an M.F.A. — the novel is creatively written, sometimes quite beautifully so. But it is plagued by that sense of writers’ workshop insularity: it doesn’t aim to mean much.

Marginalia - “The reader’s attentions are consistently shifted, refocused so that suddenly the experience of reading a novel becomes not a refuge from the distraction of Internet life but a more insistent facsimile of it.”

Is one of the most  important molecular biologists in the world, whose research has thus far saved thousands of lives, and as we come in contact with more diseases resistant to penicillin... however here he is just another Arab man with fifty crabs who is harassed and whose life work is being destroyed. 

Art of Losing by Elizabeth Bishop

 Reflection on losing to death a spouse of years 

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Faith precedes the miracle By Spencer W Kimball

Faith precedes the miracle

Dividing of the Red Sea came from the indomitable faith of their leader Moses  and he never losing hope

Moses, elijah, Abraham could not see clearly the end from the beginning 

How do I demonstrate my faith. - develop , ask for HF to grant me indomitable faith in and through his son

No earthquake, no thunder, no lightning, but the still small voice of the Spirit of God. it saved my life. It was a spirit of revelation to me .Wilford Woodruff

Numerous examples to illustrate that the Lord is actively working with his faithful followers as much today as ever.

Visions from space ... an outline of angelic and celestial communications with earth whivh may not be explicated  by anything other than extraterrestrial

God lives and is willing to communicate to us if we reach out to him ; simply because one has not personally had an experience does not refute the fact that others have and testify of it

A great book by a great man to assist in your own development of faith.

More Stories of the old duck hunters By Gordon MacQuarrie

 More Stories of the old duck hunters 

By Gordon MacQuarrie, a collection of in the woods of Wisconsin ( you will recognize many a location - he loves the Brule, don’t we all); he wrote for a sporting magazine back in the 30’s & 40’s.  

Actually I’ve now read three of his books(call it my mini- trifecta). I read them when I have a hard time falling asleep and I just lay in bed and read them and dream about fishing,  I didn’t ever hunt and my fishing skills are zero , I’m not even a fisherman compared to these guys, but hey they are my dreams cut me some slack . his  books are really compilations of articles he wrote for sports magazines and journals and daily papers back in the day. he died in the late 50s I believe. I got them as e- books from my library. Just grab anyone of them even if you don’t want to read, they are fun to read.

Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s

Before the coffee gets cold

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? The fact is only your attitude of perceptions are things you can change. Good not great yet enjoyable More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time. Why and what outcome would you be looking for?