the weather (again)

this turns out to be a prescient post. to recap and continue:

snowiest winter
second warmest spring

hottest summer
severest rapidest storms
widespread outages

superlatives get tiring.

fact of life

when your kid drives into a severe thunderstorm alone and emerges with person and vehicle unscathed it becomes a rite of passage for you.

rites of passage mark our progress from one stage to another. today i move from fine to frantic to wordless relief, thereby fulfilling the stages of separation transition and re-incorporation. this completes another step in my parenting an independently mobile teen.

modern living

HOM takes a conference call at six one at seven and begins a day long meeting from eight. naturally he leaves for work with the shadows of the night, and my day gets off to a groggy caffeine laden start.

globalization exacts a toll that we pay with our biological functions.

new trick

J2 produces a heartily aromatic soup for dinner which challenges my identification skills. turns out her secret ingredient is tea. thé. it looks like my next pot of soup is going to incorporate a generous dose of pu'er. talk of a pot within a pot.

boteh

n. motif in textiles. possible fertility symbol. [f. persian botteh cluster of leaves].

perhaps if more men in their middle ages were aware of the significance of this design it may not figure so prominently in their ties.

respite

our house hunting is on hold for now owing to favorable sentiments from our landlord. this means we get our location and off street parking but have to forgo cheaper and smaller. J2 feels done out of an exciting enterprise. i feel blandly and unadventurously thankful.

when life is a series of marching changes, even a short coffee break is welcome.

2 year cycle

our landlord wants to increase our rent, so J2 and i are enthusiastically house hunting.

our wishlist:
same location
cheaper
smaller
off street parking

yeehah!

auschwitz/nanking

today i realize with a start that the horrors of the holocaust and the horrors of japanese occupation span the same time frame. the atrocities are so repugnant that i forget we are able to inflict so much on so many.

our societies respond with opposing paradigms. the west remembers with continuing memorials. the east honors by moving on.

holocaust museum 2

first they came for the communists, and i didn't speak up because i wasn't a communist.

then they came for the trade unionists, and i didn't speak up because i wasn't a trade unionist.

then they came for the jews, and i didn't speak up because i wasn't a jew.

then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.  

- martin niemöller

six decades later we enshrine the lessons of the kristallnacht in our books and our rhetoric, and sometimes prefer to forget that political and intellectual apathy flourish anew in fresh guises.

holocaust museum

may God protect us and our children from the mindless devotion a charismatic leader can whip us into.
may we find the courage to form opinions.
may we dare to stand for our convictions.