Random Thoughts and Stray Observations

Highly Recommended

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants," says Michael Pollan in his "In Defense of Food." In fact, he admits that's the highly condensed version of the book, but the rest is also worth reading, especially where the author channels the work of the eccentric 1930's-era American Dentist Weston Price, who travelled around the world studying the dietary habits of so-called "primitive peoples" and wrote what Pollan calls an "ecological critique of industrial civilization."

Price's critique gained some notoriety in the thirties, but disappeared after World War II, only to reappear among the hippies in the late 60's.

We knew a lot of valuable things in the late 60's -- examples of what might truly be called "wisdom" -- which we later forgot, and are only now having to recall.

Among movies I've stumbled over in the past ten years or so, I can't decide whether "The Thin Red Line" is the best war movie I've ever seen or just a bunch of pretentious, sophomoric, deliberately low-key philosophizing by a director (Terrence Malick) who apparently thought of himself as some kind of a latter-day Zarathustra (he did a disappearing act in 1978, only to reappear 20 years later to make this movie, then disappear again). Maybe it's some of both; the sections by Sean Penn seem a little wooden compared to what this gifted actor usually does, but I sure like the parts played by Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas.

It's worth seeing and evaluating because it's unconventional and makes an effort, and also noteworthy in that it hasn't been seen much, since it was released in the shadow of "Private Ryan."

I haven't read "The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition" by Michael H Shuman, but I saw him interviewed on PBS early this morning, and this title is definitely now number one on my "to read" list. This guy might provide some good companion pieces to the work of Jim Kunstler, who's generally right, but always depressing.

Plans and Schemes

I'm beginning to wrap up my mother's affairs, and have no idea how long it's going to take. I'll be here a matter of months, but how many? Two? Six?

After that I'll be living in Seattle for a while. I'm signed up for a yoga teacher training class that runs from February to November. After that? Who knows?

I'm thinking of living no place in particular, and staying free to travel about as the urge strikes. That entails having very few possessions -- a few clothes, very few cooking utensils, a blanket, and a rug. I'd probably give up playing drums, as I don't want to be stuck hauling a kit around, so my musical future would be all acoustic -- guitar, doumbek, and Egyptian frame drum, a.k.a. tambourine.

I'd try to live in places where day-to-day driving is mostly unnecessary, and save that fuel allotment for the long-distance jumps. This will take some planning, but in 2008 alone I've had enough of being cooked in the summer and frozen in the winter, and I've seen too much of the benefits of easy mobility.

The painting, "Vertumnus" by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) is a portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and is composed entirely of images of fruits, vegetables, grains, and flowers.