I continue to be amazed by how things have matured in the Internet world over the past few years. This post is being dictated onto my phone, and is being posted to my WordPress site while I am walking around the house.
It’s pretty astonishing to me that this is possible. Only a few years ago, having one’s own website was a miracle enough. Now, I can have the website, and post to it by talking when I’m not even near my regular computer.
Who could have imagined, fourteen months ago, what would unfold in the year to come. We went from familiar day-to-day concerns, living with plans, opportunities and the usual minor daily obstacles. Gradually a new and unfamiliar set of constraints settled onto our daily lives. Things which had been commonplace, like going to a restaurant, a theater or a store, suddenly became impossible, unimaginable. Our friends and relatives were no longer accessible; gatherings of anyone not in our own household were forbidden.
Worst of all, no one seemed to know what was going on, no one seemed to be in charge. Speculation was rampant, but scattered and uncertain. Everything was turned upside down. The future was a fog. Were we destined for a medical and an economic disaster? Would everyone we know lose their jobs and livelihoods? Or their lives?
National leaders downplayed, or seemed to completely ignore, the crisis. “Just look away, folks. Nothing to see here!”. Seemingly sane voices were ignored. There appeared to be no plans beyond “it will go away.”
In Oregon, unprecedented natural disasters in the form of wildfires added unimaginable tragedies on top of the background chaos that was the pandemic. Nothing seemed normal, nothing could be meaningfully planned. One kept waiting for another shoe to drop.
Not all of life is political, but the beginning of a new administration planted seeds of hope. The development of vaccines, and hints that a rational distribution might emerge, allowed one to hope. As time passed, the ability to schedule, and then receive, a vaccine, seemed to open the blinds on what had been a dark world.
And now Spring, actual Spring, arrives with new light, new hope. Never has the Spring sunshine been as bright, never have the early buds and blossoms been as beautiful. For the first time in over a year, Spring brings hope.
After a number of years of sombermoose.com existing as a (largely ignored) unique domain of its own, the moose temporarily moved to a new location as a subdomain of gardenvarietymusic.com. That lasted a few days, and in fact, at this writing, the subdomain is still there, but not for long. The moose is back home, at its own domain, and ready for some new life.
After all the back-and-forth, some of the old content is still here, but some of it has been allowed to sink into the sunset. I hope that I will be inspired (or forced by guilt) to add some more content. If that comes to pass, it would be fun, and if not, if a blog post never falls in a forest, does anyone not hear it?
We’ve all been locked indoors of late, and I’ve taken the time to do some playing with video. Here are a couple of examples:
A pyrotechnic goat
Exploded in the moat
And little goatley parts were strewn in places quite remote
I’d never tasted flan
I’d never gotten hurt
’til falling in a restaurant I landed in dessert.
A novel that I bought
Was lacking so in plot
I started with intent to read but then decided not.
I think we need to have a discussion. Not about guns vs. no guns, but about where we draw the line. We already have a some lines drawn, but it’s clear by now that they are not drawn in a good place. It’s hard to feel safe anywhere in America anymore. Because of where we draw the line on guns.
I once met an exchange student from Europe who told me that her parents’ biggest fear in sending her to the USA for study was the fear that she might be shot and killed by a gun. They knew she was safe at home, but they were worried about her here. Such was their impression of our United States.
I think we need to have a discussion, though I know there are many people who don’t even want to talk about it. I know we’re never going to create a situation where we can guarantee safety for all, at all times. The cat is already out of the bag; there are so many guns, of so many kinds, already out there. But doesn’t it make sense that we should try to make things better than they are? Can’t we at least talk about it?
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
“Arms” is a broad category, and I wonder if the writers of the text of the second amendment had any way of imagining the technologically advanced Arms that are now available, sold today by large, wealthy, powerful companies. And what words might they have written had they witnessed the havoc wreaked by one individual shooter at a music festival in Las Vegas this week?
And did the writers of the amendment imagine that children would be shooting other children with easily accessible arms in our too-numerous school shootings? They had the foresight to suggest that any Militia ought to be well regulated. Does it not make sense that, had they known such things could exist, they would have written that massively dangerous weapons ought to be “well regulated” too, in the name of “the security of a free State”?
I believe that most people who advocate for gun safety believe that gun ownership ought to be legal. I believe most people believe in your right to own your hunting rifle, or your handgun, or your shotgun. But was the amendment language, crafted over 200 years ago, intended to allow a single individual to amass an arsenal of weapons capable of killing and injuring over 500 people in a matter of minutes?
One would hope that the large national organization originally created to promote safe and respectful use of firearms and firearm sports would be leading the way on this discussion. I’ve personally lost hope that that organization cares.
So maybe we can have the discussion. Maybe some of our political representatives will lay down their party hats for a bit and join in. I don’t want to worry all the time that my children, my grandchildren, my friends, my neighbors or myself might be mowed down by a weapon of war owned by an unwell or antisocial individual.
If we can have our discussion, I don’t think that we will ever completely solve the problem. But maybe we can move the line on how our second amendment is implemented to a better, safer place, for “the security of a free State”.
Mike McCornack
October 3, 2017
I want to work with you on some rules of device etiquette. These days I think we all often find ourselves alone while among others because of our devices, and we don’t know how to make it better. So here is my first attempt at some guiding principles for how we might manage our devices in social settings. Please read the suggestions, think it through, and help refine, improve or maybe replace the list. Perhaps together we can find a a way to find each other again, in spite of our devices.
Device Etiquette, draft one
One of my favorite Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoons features a dog walking behind a lawnmower which has cut an erratic path through the lawn. The dog’s owner on the porch is admonishing the dog and hollering “Bad dog! You call that mowing the lawn?”.
When I complain about my technology I feel as if I’m following the example of the man on the porch: witnessing a near miracle, and complaining about its lack of perfection. All in all, it is amazing that this stuff does what it does as well as it does. Still, it sometimes feels necessary to complain.
One of the great pleasures of my life these days is the freedom to get out of the house and go for a walk, pretty much at will. I find walking to be a deeply pleasurable activity. The physical activity is healthy, of course, but the mental lift the walk provides is real, as is the space to think in an unfettered manner.
I am walking in a suburban area, which is a mixed blessing. There is beauty in the area where I walk, but there are also roads, and I have made an unsettling discovery about roads while on my walks. There are motor vehicles on roads.
Okay, so this may sound a little obvious. But what is new in this discovery is how violent motor vehicles are. I am a veteran driver of motor vehicles, and as such, I take their benefits for granted: they are self-contained, pleasurably air-controlled environments, and they get to places quickly. What I now observe from outside of the vehicles is that they are also very, very loud, unnaturally faster than other things in the environments through which they travel, much larger than the people they contain, and very inhuman in their behavior and appearance. From the point of view of the pedestrian, they don’t seem to belong in some of the places they travel. When walking down a quiet street, watching the birds and squirrels, and enjoying the suburban flora, an approaching car sounds like an attacking Smaug, the fearsome dragon in The Hobbit. The scale of the car’s roaring sound and speeding presence is so far removed from the sound and appearance of the neighborhood, that it shocked me the first few times it happened.
The sound of a motor vehicle from the outside is different than I thought it was. As a driver, I knew the sound as the not-unpleasant hum of the engine. As a pedestrian, I hear the sound of the engine as a roar, the sum of the many rapid little explosions that make an internal combustion work. And the sound of the motor is only part of the sound. The other unexpected sound was that of the tires on the road. The friction that causes the car to move forward on the road creates a harsh, vitally present white noise that sounds as if it is ripping the fabric of the tapestry of the gardens of the suburban neighborhood. It is a sound that doesn’t belong to what you see as a pedestrian.
I am not a Luddite. I will not be writing letters to the editor, or blog posts, demanding the elimination of motor vehicles. I still drive, and will continue to do so. But I also think I will increase how much I walk, and I will try to find walking places where there are no motor vehicles. And I will also think about how much I am driving, and where, and whether or not it is necessary. I would rather not be a violent part of my environment if I don’t need to be. And that may be my new perspective: driving is a violent activity, and one should be violent only when violence is necessary.
I stumbled across this old carol in a recording by the choral group, “The Sixteen”. In English, it’s usually called Rocking or The Rocking Carol. I loved it immediately. It’s simple, but haunting.