tao1776

Anyone who owns chickens knows the highs and lows of choosing these prehistoric relics for their eggs, antics and sometime stews. We have dealt with lice, prolapsed vent, eating something too big to digest, rats, possum and at long last a sour crop. Big Fattie McChicken is loud, talkative and opinionated. When you find her with her comb flopped to the side while standing and staring off into space you know that something is wrong. We have a dog crate which we set up as a chicken hospital. After poking and prodding and smelling and listening to her gurgling wheeze, Gaia Girl searched out You Tube and found this: HERE  This helpful video showed us what to do. We were amazed at the grossly poured out chicken vomit but in about a day she was back to normal! We have a small group of fifteen or sixteen chickens (I loose count.) Katie is the leader and the smartest of bunch. Fattie is her ambassador. Cassie is the beauty, Bernie is the wise bearded wonder. And you cannot forget ...

America is still a work in progress. From Washington's first days in office through present day Obama debate has never ceased. While Capitalism is reducing the middle class to a point of nonexistence and while the Supreme Court appears no longer so, we seem no closer to unity now than at the birth of our nation. And perhaps that can be seen as a good thing Freedom seems under attack from fictitious foes and real alike. The founding fathers implemented a series of checks and balances so that no one authority could run roughshod with their own agenda. With no unity in sight Washington now slogs through political mud and who can say where progress lay? In their wisdom, the founders designed that the Senate balances the house; the presidency the Congress; the judiciary the legislative and executive branches, the states the federal establishment. And most important of all? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereo...

In my late twenties with two growing boys, I bought a home and proceeded to add two girls to the family. All four are grown now and I am divorced from their mother. Yet I remain in the family home for another year ( my 3rd or 4th, I can't remember) longing for it to be sold. The market has hammered the price lower than what is imaginable and the many lookers struggle over the busy road that lies without the door. Sure, there are good memories mingled with the bad but the time to move is now. This home (pictured to the left) calls to me. The points to the positive are almost magical. And we all know how I like to avoid magical thinking!! I've sweetened the pot by adding the modern washer and dryer to go with the house. Plus the Vermont Castings wood stove which is irreplaceable. I'll even throw in some chickens if they like. The new home is less than half the size of my current home. It's private and quiet and it's a rental. Everything that I want. The plus f...

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. GKC  Sometimes the anonymity of being a tourist lends a temporary comfort; a comfort that eventually leads you back home to where you're left with a feeling that you haven't gone anywhere. 

Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transformation in society; and the religious man is not he who practices starvation as an example to impress society. The religious man is not concerned with society at all, because society is based on acquisitiveness, envy, greed, ambition, fear. That is, mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. Whereas, the truly religious man is totally outside of society, because he is not ambitious, he has no envy, he is not following any ritual, dogma or belief; and it is only such a man who can fundamentally transform society, not the reformer. The man who sets out to be an example merely breeds conflict, strengthens fear, and brings about various forms of tyranny. It is very strange how we worship examples, idols. We don'...

A moment not measured in time. The kind of warm day when you forget about the weather. A breeze only noticed by the caress of her hand. The prayer flags mimic her movement. Slow, without purpose; but purpose abounds. Climbing the hill for the first time, slightly out of breath, anticipation and a call to exercise find the lungs in labor as the trail slowly clears.  The temple not yet complete, the Buddhist monks found one more lesson in impermanence. A large portion of the temple had burned. And judging by the date of the fire and that of today, progress was slow. While on the ascent down the trail, we noticed the rocks for the first time. Laughingly we joked that our eyes were, "opened." Some years later I explored the hill with my love Gaia Girl while on the road with my other love, the Ghia. As I was saying, the weather was as perfect as the Tao. One rode the day as a baby in a stroller. I remember the sync and the laughter. She is earth. I am sun. Tea leav...

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Tao Te Ching We see him sitting on the back stairs or hanging over the railing with either a cigarette or a "forty" in his hand. His body emancipated, eyes protruding and his sockets are sunken into his skull like craters on the moon. The large house in which he now resides hosts twenty single rooms, a shared kitchen and a few shared privies. It lies at the edge of a small shopping center looming large as a Steamboat lodged on a sandbar just twenty paces from the alcohol store operated by a jovial man from India. It all seems surreal. This house was the place that I warned him about when he was a boy. Jokingly I would tell him and his younger brother that we should go uptown and trace out a spot so that they would know where to stand ...