Rock and ROLL and it’s important

Time to rock and ROLL II

The previous  entry regarding “rock” was the “resurfacing” so to speak of the “seeking” blog and will be part  of this combination of the upcoming pod… the second part?  Well when you have Rock you’ve got to have roll.. and sometimes it feels like Led Zep when it’s been a lon, long, long lonely time since.. but that’s over now!

Roll?

Since things move so much easier on wheels (physics tells us it only takes about 5% as much force to move things on wheels as dragging them  and when things are kind of a drag we all know that right?  

However, there are a lot of types of rolling like there are communities that use huge rolling logs to move entire houses from place to place.  These people don’t have fancy stereo or bluetooth but they really know how to walk and roll.  They also know how to roll stop and drop when needed?  

Okay rolling?  WE roll a lot.  Ever since we figured out the round shape of a wheel and started using it—which was supposedly somewhere 3,000 plus years before the modern era so 5,000 or so years ago.  And so.. what are some of the most useful and least thought about “rolls” we might use to seek peace and joy?

Well in my family and in many others I suspect you can’t say the word “roll” without conjuring the word cinnamon  before it—and yet while they might be part of many snacks  and breakfast dreams.. the rolls that inhabit our lives and get little respect most the time  come in the form, not of pastry—but of paper.  Yes we are speaking of paper towels and of course the Big TP.  

Paper Towels

Americans  and we keep track in terms of dollars of course—use about 20 billion dollars worth of paper towels per year and that’s in addition to the cloth towels that we use to the tune of 3 billion worth as we buy 200 million of them annually.  But the cloth ones don’t come in rolls so let’s leave them hanging for now.  

Now the paper towels come in rolls of between 60 and 80 feet per roll and now you can start imagining how far how the rolls would stretch.. but just relax combining them with the other big paper towel player so to speak makes this far more interesting.  

Toilet Paper

This my friends is what “rolling” is all about.  We use it for so many things and like so many things once we treat it with some disregard just throw it away.  We not only expect it to dissolve we invest in it and then when it gets soiled we use industrial strength engineering to make sue it becomes forgotten.  Oh sure during a pandemic or an upcoming storm it becomes important and sought after but then see you later alligator.  Question: how many experiencing and people in our lives do we treat the same?  How many do we flush and then expect to always be there when we need them?  When the disposal thing isn’t there when we expect it how irritated and how quick are we to find someone to blame for not making sure  we have the TP?   So in the seeking peace realm maybe we should or at least could try to appreciate the TP and the people we have and will come in contact with and then let dissolve away.  Maybe just once a day consider the human interactions that are so casually treated  as temporary and disposable  and maybe offer a bit of joy during those interactions?

Now back to the paper towel and toilet paper combo…

Some initial approximations indicate that if we stretched out —unrolled” all the rolls we use annually  in America we could go to the moon and back with the stuff we use to clean our moon well over 2000 times and if instead we decided to circle the globe at the equator well that would be a significant JUMBO  SIZE roll as we could circle the planet some 41,000 times.  There is no question that this would be a very large roll and yet when the Earth is spinning would the roll be placed so that the paper came off “Over Or Under”??? 

Anyway it’s time for us to keep rolling along  and the next entry will be something about —you guessed it “rock and roll” or rock music and it’s forms.. but for now. Respect the TP and don’t forget to put the seat down- or lift it depending on the actions that need to be completed.  

Life is messy (clean it up with some paper if needed ) but don’t be afraid to leave a beautiful stain.   

Time to Rock and Roll Again

It’s time to Rock and Roll…

Last night a friend sent me a text just to check in.  When this happens in life it’s about concern and expectations and maybe it demonstrates the best part of what humans can be and quite frankly are.  This blog about seeking peace and joy has always been about experimenting with different lenses on experiences most of us have had or will have or wish to have or never want to have.  The blog has never been a prescription, never attempted to be a road map.  It has been an attempt to lay out one person’s parts for constructing a compass of sorts and long about a year agate choice was made to suspend the writing to work on some other parts of the collective soul.  Well ..those parts are now up and flowing and creating questions that this blog can muse regarding and since typing exercises  the finger muscles used while keyboarding on the piano-that flow continues one of the new streams life is presenting in my personal seeking piece and joy universe and speaking of flow it’s time to let that stream flow down this lazy river and offer it to anyone who might care to use some time seeking peace and joy.  

Enough with all the why this is a new blog after so many moments gone by—let’s “Rock” and “Roll”!!

ROCK

One of the new streams that will be part of this blog moving forward is the Disability Rock Opera” inspiration has brought into my adventure but we’re not going there today.  We are starting with real rock—No not Grunge, 90’s Alternative Rock, Not regal, not Old School Hip Hop and not Punk.. and not in any way shape or form disco.  We are talking the big three.  Igneous - Sedimentary—and metamorphic .  

Most of the Earth’s surface -it’s landmass etc is covered by Sedimentary rock.  This rock is formed by little bits of stuff just sitting around-d for a really long time and being under pressure for a long enough time time that it quits moving, gets stuck and hardensIt seems like a lotto ideas held by a lot of people follow this pattern and yes it seems to happen all over the world.  It isn’t shocking that most people suggest that things are just a certain way—you know “it is what it is.”  Well while sedimentary rock covers a lot of the planet guess what?  It isn’t what the world is really made of.  

Igneous

Igneous rock you know the type that comes from the center of the earth the heart of the planet and is formed from heat and lava…well that makes up the majority of the Earth’s crust and maybe life events that are explosive and create streams of flowing thoughts and emotions really make up the most significant parts of our lives and moments of discomfort and change wind up forming the shell that defines and protects our inner core?  

Metamorphic 

Now This is an interesting  type of rock.  It is formed when the Earth’s crust big plate of stuff decide to attempt to occupy the same place at the same time and these collisions have such force that completely new structures in the stone appear.  Yes this is the stuff of mountain ranges and tsunamis.  Landmarks often show evidence of metamorphic change or igneous eruptions and so it is with life.  

Each type of rock has qualities and usually is pretty easy to identify so pick up a rock or two and think about what is happening in your life right now for that is a method for exploring the next step in the seeking peace or joy process.  

We won’t go too far down the path today although it’s probably made of gravel sand and chips of the most common mined rock which is limestone  and limestone makes up the base for most roads sidewalks and driveways and along with sand works together to make concrete and cement.  Now we find so much use in this sort of rock yet we often seek and pay for diamonds and rubies, and sapphires  and emeralds which are not as much a part of our daily lives but in terms of Earth time  these stones didn’t work harder to become special or really change more than most other things on the planet.  Other than making great cutting edges and stereo record player parts diamonds  might be a girls’s best friend but give me sand any day.  Sand makes castles that help us realize that no kingdom states around as the waves of time move in and out.  Sand helps us get a grip when the ice and snow make our wheels spin and sand allows us to form glass that provides protection and let’s us see into things including the future and past with stuff like a telescope.  Sand in an hour glass let’s us have a time perspective and some illusion of control when it comes to time.  Speaking of which this blogs thanks you for spending some of yours reading or listening today.  Oh and what goes with rock?—Well Roll of course but that’s for tomorrow or the next day for sure.. Oh and if you used to listen to the pod…it’s coming back too…. 

Find some peace and joy comes what may  and understand life is messy so leave a beautiful stain.

 

curses foiled. Again while seeking peace and joy

Curses Foiled Again?  

We are in a very warm stretch of the Summer season and making a number of attempts to avoid using indoor appliances to heat food.  That means cooking things on an outdoor grill.  

A couple days ago we decided to prepare a lean cut of seasoned pork - why the entire pork menu isn’t bacon?—who knows?  However cooking on an outdoor grill even our infrared  electronic  device can be tricky since like in life heat and cold are often distributed unevenly no matter what your intentions might be.  This being the case we often find it efficient and effective  to wrap our intended feast in aluminum foil.  When getting the meat ready a sheet of foil was pulled off the roll and some thoughts came into focus.  First, the foil was thinner than usual.   This prompted the question—would this still be useful?  Of course once one question emerges the flood gates opened.  

What does being useful foil involve?  If you type it wrong all you have is a fool?  So thanks to Sr. Gregory my association with foil leaped from something a cartoon villain was “cursed and foiled again” to a method used to multiply algebraic terms.  Foil of course stands for First Outers Inners then Lasts.  If you fully understand this then add in a useable knowledge of squares between 1 and 50 then multiplying any two digit number by another two digit number becomes as easy as counting to 10 starting at 9.   There is of course the sword fighting instrument known as the oil.  It’s a long thin sword mostly impactful when you jab  or stab with it.  However, let’s do away with that and get back to the sheets of aluminum  coming from a roll.  Now cooking isn’t the only use for this.  Rumor has it that it can block the harmful rays beamed down by aliens or perhaps Russian or Chinese satellites?  Ok let’s not get into those conspiracies they never helped Jimmy Hoffa.  

So lets’s start moving toward the seeking peace and joy connection to foil.  So this thin metal which is now being sold in thinner and thinner sheets assort of like the world today.  Our protection agains harmful things  like rays —oh wait  we’re back to the Russians?  Seriously our insulation from exterior factors has grown thinner  and thinner  so what this foil was like in 1910 when it emerged as a product is not what it is toda.  Yet if we can imagine our ideas and emotions wrapped in the silver blanket that sells around 30 billion dollars  in product, then we can handle random heating  from all environments  much more effectively.  So in seeking peace maybe finding some spiritual foil like meditation, music, prayer, or exercise is a good idea. If we experience joy maybe we can not only take some of it in we can reflect some of it back out into the world?  We can turn the shiny side in to hold in heat and produce juices that remain or we can go shiny side out so cooking can take it’s good time and we can relax and smell the goodness we are about to eat.   Sometimes it’s good not to hurry through things.  

Finally this foil becomes a container  for holding in the nourishment it helped to prepare.  Maybe something to think about when seeking peace and joy us “what containers do we have that holds in the experiences of peace and joy?  Do we share the stories that remind us and others of our peaceful and joyful moments?  Do we look for the shiny side in others?   Like the foil do we understand that the roll doesn’t go on forever?  Do we accept that seeking peace and joy is a process and the result of that doesn’t always go on forever?

Well speaking of going on forever… this entry has gone on quite long enough.  Like the pork we are making again soon, it’s time to wrap this up?

 

Relax Karma Can chill a Limerick

 For a moment let’s put down our mugs

Our prescriptions and other odd drugs

for Often it’s true 

It’s not all about you

Sometimes Karma just stands there and shrugs 

Have A Hopping Happy Holiday

 Hopping Happy?

Well we’ve probably all heard the expression “hopping mad” right?  So angry we couldn’t stand still?  However, given we also celebrate “Happy” Easter and the mascot of that holiday since created by the Germans in the 1700s has been a rabbit/bunny, it seems reasonable to suggest we might be Hopping Happy as well.  

Certain folks are probably happier than others at Easter.  Depending upon your spiritual beliefs of course  it is a day of celebration, but that’s not all.   If you like candy eat candy or sell candy or if you fix the damage done to your teeth by candy.  Then you should be happy.  Americans alone buy over three billion dollars worth of candy for Easter including 200 million Cadberry eggs alone.  Also if you make cheap baskets out of “real” or plastic Easter is your jam… oh and that plastic grass?  Who came up with that idea?  I bet it was the tinsel people sitting in a marketing meeting and somebody said :we’ve done this in silver, gold, and some other colors and Marvin in the corner chomping on the last candy cane three days after Valentine’s Day said let’s try green.”  Now Mary pulled out her world famous eye roll but just before unleashing  a smart Alec remark licked her lips and said “Yep.. let’s do it.. let’s go green and put it in Easter baskets so parents trying to convince kids a bunny brings this stuff can make it look like there is more stuff by filling these baskets up with something they will call grass.”  We’ve already  got people buying eggs and someday they’ll believe the price of them is economically significant so they won’t buy as many to color them for the baskets… and so we have cheap baskets with plastic grass and we hide some of the candy to watch our kids search around  for things that will rot their teeth…but it’s fun right?  There are a number of apps that include Easter Eggs hunting in them so you can avoid the baskets and grass, however maybe that isn’t really in keeping with the spirit of the “hopping happy” holiday?  

Seeking Peace and Joy for Hopping Happy”

Well… maybe a hopping delivery bunny doesn’t make sense.  Maybe mounds of candy in a cheap plastic basket filled with plastic grass isn’t practical when you stop to think about it?  On the other hand or other foot —aren’t rabbit’s feet lucky?—and maybe the candy we give to kids and others are little shots of colorful happiness?  Maybe peace and joy comes in small doses.  Maybe we should imagine carrying these small gifts around with us and quietly distribute them in unexpected places?  Maybe people should be able to open up a hard shell and find something sweet inside?  In short maybe we all should go for a little hopping happy now and the? 

The world is out of order, perhaps

 A segment to be found in the upcoming “book” effort—

Table of Objects—

Warning!— This table (and the book itself) May Be out of order

So it is expected that written materials, well all lengthy materials will include a table or index to guide folks  to specific chapters, pages, sections, images or whatever.  When your organizing metaphor is a junk drawer  do you really expect traditional organization devices?  Well.. there will be a table of objects with a grouping label.  Just for fun a somewhat serious attempt will be made to present objects and experiences in alphabetic order.  Well not exactly.  You see when something is “in order” people generally don’t give the order of things much attention.  If, instead, you put a sign on something  that reads “out of order” it gets immediate attention.  We aren’t saying positive attention, however, it’s attention  none theses. Like for instance when you’ve had too much soda or coffee and you pull into the rest stop and walk quickly to relieve your bladder and you scout out the restroom only to see the dreaded words—“Out of Order”  that will get your attention.  When you have a craving for M&Ms  and a moderately large handful of change  and you find a vending machine next to that noisy ice machine at the hotel and then spot the nasty taped on half sheet or paper taped over the coin slot… well you get it—out of order  makes you take notice.  

The intent here is not to be annoying yet why not take advantage  of the out of order organization principle?  

Hmm?  

Actually sometimes compromise is the best route.  So If you look really closely to the objects table you might figure out that within the “categories” the objects are listed in order—reverse alphabetical order.  

Why “reverse?”  Generally because it will slow the reader down a bit and let things get a breath.  From the youngest  of ages we teach children the alphabet in alphabetic order  usually by singing that song.  We can recite A to Zed in record time, however doesn’t it take a bit more time and thought to do that in reverse order?  The objects in here mean enough that taking a bit more time is warranted.  Therefore, the section on “keeping Things Together” will start with Zip Ties and wander through to Athletic Tape.  

Before moving forward or backward maybe we should demonstrate that the traditional alphabet  isn’t getting completely disrespected.  After all, it has a long celebrated  developmental history starting way back in the ancient middle east and is sort of known to actually settled a bit by the time of the Roman Empire.  Of course the letters and the word alphabet come from ancient Greece  and speaking of ancient grease I just smelled some Mcdonald’s fries.  Anyway, after J became the final letter added to the modern alphabet  around the 16th century and the & sign didn’t hold onto the 27th spot, we had a system which could be used to “order” everything.   There are more things to be known about this and when you get to the “education” category you will learn more about writing, reading, math, and yes the alphabet and numbers too.  For now we will move ahead and simply acknowledge that the topics here might not fall into an easy order yet if we think about it we might ask—“Does life, time, and/or our experiences and the meanings we give them follow a lock step linear scheme?   

For now remember this

ZY X W V U T S R Q O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A —  Oh where’s the P?  Running down your leg.. didn’t we tell you the restroom was out of order?

 

A Double Shot Woohoo

Little things Help Everyone Keep It Together

 Keeping It Together in a Crazy world

Sometimes when you look in a junk drawer a bit of brilliance comes not from what you find so much as from what is missing. Today, I discovered zip ties, some bread ties (see “Daily Bread,” a very much used roll of medical tape, duct tape?—you really need to ask?, and a box of unused staples.  Now the staples were not the jewel-encrusted gold variety introduced by King Louis XV of France you understand, they fit the classic swing line model that has been in use for darn near a century.  There’s a small bungie chord and a few loose screws.  

Well before  we are accused of having a few screws loose—what’s missing from the list above?  The missing “gem” is a reasonable assortment of paper clips.  There is one.  It has been straightened  in order to slip one end into a small electronic device that has a reset button inside a small hole.  But I’m afraid that’s it.  There are 30 billion with a B manufactured and sold every year and only 1 ONE I SAY in my junk drawer!  AND since once we get past a case (24) of something and sometimes only a six pack, common knowledge of what some number means gets a bit fuzzy.  So let’s pause a moment shall we?

Thirty Billion 30,000,000,000  paper clips strung together would circle the Earth at the equator  more than 20 times and possibly 25 times.  You could string 30 billion paper clips together  and circle the globe then go to the moon and back.  Let’s not use the clips for that as we don’t want to encourage the idea of taking our red-tape and paperwork mountains off the planet.  

Why is this object so much coveted?  This object has served in four long-remembered  functions that need highlighted here.  

One of the objects in the junk drawer is my first harmonica.  The story of it will appear in another place —you know objects in your life that have meaning show up in a bunch of places and in one end of that harmonica?  You guessed it—a paper clip holds it together.  How long has this been there? Well it allowed me to do a train whistle at least a decade before Steve Jobs showed us the texting phone calling music player some people have now.  

On more than one occasion I’ve picked up any of several pairs of eye glasses only to come away with more than one piece in my hand only to find that a little screw has wandered off to the place where socks in your dryer and the right sized Tupperware  lids hide. But instead of being more than a little screwed a paper clip slides into the small hole and with a quick little bend the ear piece is useable and off you go.  

Missing a button in a not too obvious place?  Bingo!

Finally…nearly all glue works so well that once you turn it upside down to get some on the surface you are hoping to hold together it clings to the glue container or creates a glue bubble.  Well not if you stick a paper clip in the hole immediately after using the glue or to break through the glue bubble if you were not thinking about it at the time because it was super glue and your fingers are now sticking to each other.  

It would be good to give credit to the inventor/designer of the clip that we use today and it would be great to credit the folks who invented the wheel and perhaps also assign some blame to the folks who thought neck ties were necessary at all let alone expected business wear.  So we don’t really know.  There were patented devices in the 1860s but the clip really didn’t get popular until the 1890s.  There’s a big statue of the paper clip in Norway where the name of the clip is “gem” and of course that means credit is expected there, however  the gem design is not the popular bent steel loop set we use.  Before the paper in most the English speaking world red tape (yes that’s where the term comes from) was used to hold paper together.  

Now the paper clip is the universal symbol indicating an additional self-contained file has been attached to a sent document such as an email.  “Clippy” is the little Microsoft character that served as AI help within some of their most popular software offerings.  

Well that brings us to the place where we try to pull all this together into something that makes sense  to keep together.  In our world today it seems like many people try to get the benefits of keeping people and thoughts apart.  The paper clip has been a little warrior in the battle to keep things usable and together.  It’s hard to measure  how important keeping things together can be, however if you want to walk a mile in my shoes  in order to understand some of the things that keep my thoughts together  you can find out just how far you’ve walked  by linking paper clips to each other and when you’ve reached 49,106  or so you’ve gone the extra mile and that my friend is greatly appreciated and will bring Peace and Joy to this here life.  Bottom line it takes a lot of little things to keep your sh## together.

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

 Give Us today Our daily Bread

Now we’re going to start with the notion that “bread” has many forms and many names worldwide.  Of course Texas Toast is not the same as a crumbly crouton.  Also in the U.S. most of us think. Of a loaf of sliced bread not realizing that prior to Otto Rohwedder’s 12 year effort that came to fruition in 1928 (less than a century ago) sliced bread didn’t come from the store in a plastic bag with red, blue, and yellow dots on it or any other bag for that matter.  Because sliced bread per se wasn’t a thing.  This of course leads to many questions like how in the world did we make a grilled cheese or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in 1843?  Well it’s likely we didn’t.  So what did we eat with tomato soup?

Well there are some things this and future generations will never know.  However there are somethings we do think we do know about bread.  Like we sort of think that bread became a known food thing somewhere around 12,000 years ago most likely when York the cave dweller said “I could really go for a Wooly Mammoth  on Rye.” Well maybe not.  However it seems that a flat bread  is recognized as the first form of bread and records indicate  it dates back that far.  Now bread has evolved and served many purposes.  We might think that bread as a slang term for money was a late 1960’s and early 70’s thing.  Wrong again. Bread was actually used as currency during some periods of history which probably was the forerunner of cooking the books?”  After graphite became a material used for writing and drawing and before the widespread availability of industrially manufactured rubber, bread was used as an eraser.  This of course led to the small student’s explanation to his school teacher—“well.. I have lots of mistakes and my homework is only part done because my dog ate some of it and part of my pencil too.”  

Okay let’s move to a bit more current era.  In the United States current data indicate that there are somewhere around 100 varieties of bread sold in stores in restaurants, and in specialized bakeries and we eat a lot of it.  The latest stats show that every man woman and child consumes around 53 pounds of bread a year.  However, fret not.  Wheat is the most frequently used grain to make bread and we produce our share and then some.  In the late 1990’s and ever since then the state of Kansas alone has produced enough wheat to feed the entire planet.  In fact, in 1997 statistics showed that Kansas produced enough wheat to bake 6 loaves  of bread for every man woman, and child on the planet.  There’s a lot of choosey mothers out there so I doubt if Skippy or Jiff  can claim the same.  

Okay that’s enough about the bread—how about the “daily?”

In the “Lord’s Prayer”people request their daily bread.  Maybe in seeking peace and joy we could focus on being satisfied with having our circumstances be such that we only sought food  and other possessions needed to get us through the only day we ever live which of course is today.  There are people going hungry and daily bread would be great for them and there are people who have enough bread to provide loaves (and fishes) for everyone on the planet  for days and days and days and days  (you get the picture.  The point is this… there is probably enoughbread out there  so that everyone could have some daily and we would probably live fuller lives if we lived each day on what we have instead of trying to collect material things that often grow stale and grow green stuff that only once in a great while turns into a cure for disease.  In short perhaps there would be more peace and joy if we appreciated our daily bread and offered to share enough that everyone  had a slice.