Why I Am A Patriot

This post is a little bit late for the Independence Day holiday, but here in Utah, the bigger event is July 24th: Pioneer Day. This holiday celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, which of course began the experiment in society that we call American Zion.

Even though we just celebrated our bountiful patriotism less than three weeks ago with fireworks, watermelon, and parades, more celebration is scheduled for the upcoming long weekend. So in the (albeit somewhat localized) patriotic spirit, here’s a statement on American culture that we can all appreciate, courtesy of Bill and Max from the Big River Show, a website documenting their travels down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans this summer. They’re currently near St. Louis and debating whether to continue down the Mighty Miss or take an alternate route down the Tenn-Tom Waterway to Mobile on the Gulf Coast. Check it out via this link (because I’m having problems embedding the Revver vid into this blog)…

Why I Am A Patriot

Now that’s a Declaration of Patriotism that I can really get behind! Especially the bit about Hemingway. The guy was a real scrapper.

The Far Shore Awaits…

When my friends ask me what it’s like to live in Utah, I just show them this video:

Geek Soundz

This is most excellent.

Backyard Bemused

I’m sitting out on our back patio in front of the little black metal fire pit, trying to decide if the alternating blasts of woodsmoke and cold breeze are worth the effort of putting another log on the fire. In the distance, I can hear irrigation sprinklers (even though this is our fifth day of unseasonably cool and somewhat wet weather) and the occasional dog-bark conversation between yards. Every once in a while a peacock cries. I’m not sure who has a peacock in our neighborhood, but it’s somewhere in the block or so behind our house, near the hill. Brief bits of conjunto waft across the horse fields from another neighbor’s house. Earlier it was a local garage band, playing a sort of “adult” punk which merged bad 90s SoCal Epitaph styles with the equally bad 90s alternarock of Collective Soul and Live. Ugh.

Cars are still driving up and down our street, even though it’s 10:30 on a Sunday night, which would normally be a pretty quiet time. It must be because so many people are off work tomorrow for the Memorial Day holiday. The cemetery here in our quiet Utah farm town has been full of flowers and minivans all weekend, and I expect tomorrow will be even busier. Maybe I’ll take Tenzin up Blacksmith Fork Canyon for a little hike, or maybe we’ll just play in the yard in hoodies and flip-flops.

I know I should be completely jaded about my ability to sit out here in my backyard in a ragged sweater and sneakers, updating my blog and downloading a few new records, with chilly fingertips and my laptop keyboard illuminated by a little gooseneck USB lamp and a dying campfire. But I’m still surprised, and bewildered, and definitely awestruck by this technological transformation. What wizards we’ve become, mowing our lawns to an apocalyptic metal soundtrack buzzing from tiny white earbuds! What shapeshifters, what alchemists!

The Great American Blog 2.0.

Welcome to Thirty Spokes Pt. II — another attempt at my blog, which petered out in May 2007 after sputtering along for several months. I’ve been feeling the urge to start it up again as of late, so here we go, on WordPress instead of Blogger.

What can you expect? Writing about libraries and library culture, punk rock, parenthood, natural history, photography, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, jazz, electronic music, vegetarian cuisine, Buddhist meditation, and whatever other scattered topics I can manage to yammer on about.

The name of the blog comes from a verse of the Tao Te Ching, a roughly 2500-year-old Chinese philosophical treatise by Lao Tzu. I referenced it in my first post, back in January 2006; here’s an updated version.

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In void, utility.

Behold the turmoil, the inner/outer/secret lives of slow household objects.

Joyous ghosts in clean machines. They whisper with great enthusiasm!

The careful examination of minutiae. Footnotes. The careless emptying of diaper pails.

Sentence fragments and long summer days of bee-buzz emptiness. Sober transcendence.

Meditations on quiet teakettle moments, aided by uphill hikes and slow-falling snow.

The thirty spokes converge at the hub. Form follows function, but function is born of emptiness. Purpose: found in big-sky contemplation of breadcrumbs and bedsheets.

The sign awaits the seeker. The sign fortifies the thinker.

In this spirit, a fine translation of the Tao Te Ching’s 11th chapter by Alan Taplow, circa 1982. You can read more here.

THE EMPTY

While thirty spokes are the substance
of the cartwheel,
The empty space within the hub and between
the spokes permits the wheel to be useful.

While clay is the substance of the vessel,
The empty space within permits the vessel
to be useful.

While doors and windows are cut
as the substance of the wall,
The empty space within these enclosures
permits them to be useful.

Thus:
Form is generated by what IS.
Usefulness lies in what IS NOT.