Money is a battery for storing the energies produced by human work. It’s a transformer, too, changing human work into stuff. When the potter trades pottery for the farmer’s grain, it is a device for equalizing any difference in the relative values for the goods generated by the work. In itself, it has no value, …
Category Archives: Loosely Speaking
Everyone Writes the Histories
History is such a fragile, mutable, conditional thing: History is ineffable. It’s all very well to say, no, it is what happened, it’s indelible, it is actual… So it is, an event, an action, plays out its options and leads to its conclusion. But that isn’t history. History is the story of what happened, and …
When We Abandoned Eden…
I have written about the ‘abandonment of Eden’ as the time in which our developing, evolving human intellect outpaced and replaced animal instinct as our primary means of interacting with the world around us, particularly the physical world. I have suggested that choosing intellect and self-reliance was something to be celebrated, not to be ashamed …
“What is a ‘weekend’?”
My son said yesterday evening that he’d thought it was Monday all day. I told him to wait a bit, and it would be. But as it’s a federal holiday, in fact this week ‘Monday’ will not really be happening until Tuesday. So many things we take for granted, we forget they are not, in …
Un-Natural
Trans-ness, gay-ness, bi-ness–none of these things are new to the human experience. They have been recognized in many non-Western cultures as normal and authentic for literal ages. They have always been here, though in the shadows at the edges of this dominant Western culture and disparaged as ‘un-natural’ by this and other patriarchal societies. Not …
AFTERMATH
The impassioned moment’s passed,The fight’s gone out of me;tolerance and hope set inwith a sighand by-and-bythis latest violence,outrage, assaultagainst the heart and soulwill pass–and leave me livingstilland still possessedof most of what I had; Life goes onsublime,absurd,expects the future stillmakes plansinvestsand wandersdown the middle courseagain somewhere betweenthe hopeless and the glad. Disappointmentgnaws away at faith. …
Breaking Hearts, Broken Children
The shootings here in the Springs, and then yesterday again, in a Virginia Walmart…So many families and communities torn open, devastated because of insanity with a gun in hand. The guns are a problem, but insanity is the bigger one. Sane people can manage their guns with safety and good sense. The biggest problem here …
Purdah
I am not a tootsie rollwrapped up to keep off lint and dirt.I am a human being.I have personhood and dreamsambitions, likes, desires,yearnings and creative fires… I have a life to livethat is my own. I have just angers, I have boundaries, mine,not yours. How ignoranthow arroganthow mean of youto think me nothingbut your lollipop. …
Pioneer Cafe, Montana Morning
Ladies of a Certain Agegirls no moreexcept in the heart:What Life has givenyou have takendespite the dreams you had,despite intentions and resistance;Age acquiring resiliencefor survival’s sakewhen life is hardor dull beyond endurance. Power in the circlearound the cafe tableevery morning, every dayexcept Sundays, maybe:Ladies, old and agingsocializing despite,because of Life;finding, making, sharing power’round this table…and resilience,endurance,and amusement–even some days, …
Late October Morning
Morning has broken–its edges shattered by the wind;Dawnlight leaks through the torn hem of overcast;Tree boughs new-relieved of colorflutter and bounce and danceto the strains of winter musicof the coming of colder daysand slight rain considersriding down the windas snow. by CL Redding 10/22
LOOSELY SPEAKING... 