jrnl: added post about cold christmas

1 files changed, 110 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt
index 524e147..d983451 100644
--- a/scratch.txt
+++ b/scratch.txt
@@ -9,6 +9,25 @@ The primary tools that one needs in modern day culture are to know how to make t
 Technology is a means to an end, not an end
 
 ---
+
+### 5 minute journal
+
+I am grateful for
+what would make today great
+
+highlight
+what did I learn today
+
+
+### stoic version:
+
+1. Prepare For The Day Ahead: Each morning you should prepare, plan and meditate on how you aim to act that day. You should be envisioning everything that may come and steeling yourself so you're ready to conquer it. As Seneca wrote, "The wise will start each day with the thought, 'Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.'" Or think of Marcus’s reminder: "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil."
+
+2. Put The Day Up For Review: Stoicism isn't just about thinking, it's about action—and the best wayto improve is to review. Each evening you should, like Seneca did, examine your day and your actions. As he put it, "When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that's now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I've done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by." The question should be: Did I follow my plans for the day? Was I prepared enough? What could I do better? What have I learned that will help me tomorrow?
+
+
+
+---
 S.M. Stirling’s characters*. “History becomes myth, myth becomes legend, and legend becomes history [as people act it out in their deeds]. Time is not a straight line. Time is a serpent.”
 
 *The character was our old friend The Wanderer, here seen as an old mountain man in a sheepskin poncho, making coffee over a campfire – who suddenly, for an instant, is also seen with long black braids, a black Stetson, and the face of Coyote Old Man. 
@@ -178,6 +197,97 @@ When you live in a small space you have to be organized. Everything needs a plac
 
 People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. 
 
+## Cold Christmas Walk
+
+After a week at Grayton we moved down the coastline to our favorite place in the Florida panhandle: St George Island. This is the wildest, least developed area I know of in the Florida panhandle. We've visited St. George more than any other spot and we never tire of it. We'd spend more time here if we could, but it's not a big campground and everyone wants to be here.
+
+This is where we holed up for the cold front that swept across the United States around Christmas. Even down here the panhandle, where the clear tropical waters still looked inviting, the temperature dipped into the low 20s. I had to put on socks for a week and regular readers know how I feel about socks.
+
+The problem with cold is that it tends to keep me indoors -- I have to fight a tendency to sit around in the bus that doesn't exist when the weather is warm. To avoid falling into the trap of inaction I forced myself out on a long walk in the cold. There's a trail leading right out of the campground here to a point that sticks out into the Apalachicola Bay. It's a wide sandy trail through a slash pine forest. I've been quite sure what species "slash" pines are. The name comes from the turpentine making process, which involves slashing the tree to collect the sap, but there are several species capable of making turpentine. 
+
+Whatever the case the tall pines are popular with Bald Eagles. I saw four in the five miles I walked. Along with seemingly every yellow rumped warbler in America. I mostly stopped birdwatching while I was here, mostly because every little bird I saw flitting in the bushes turned out to be a yellow rumped warbler. Florida in winter is just yellow rumpled warblers all the way down.
+
+Despite the cold and the wind I saw a suprising amount of wildlife out and about, even a little yellow rat snake that came out to grab a bit of sunshine and maybe a bite to eat before the freezing cold of Christmas Eve set in. 
+
+Gap point, as the end of the trail is called, was a windy, wild place when I was out there on Christmas eve. I had the place to myself, save for the occasional circling eagle.
+
+While I'm not fan of the cold, if it *has* to be cold, Christmas is the time to do it I suppose. It does feel right for the world to be cold on Christmas. Maybe even snow. But that didn't happen. We had a good holiday anyway.
+
+## cuts from wired piece
+
+
+[[SEE COMMENT: In his 2010 book Shop Class as Soul Craft, Matthew Crawford sees the need to be capable of repair as more than just a desire to fix things. He sees it as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence on stuff. The more I began to work on the bus the more I understood what he meant. Your stuff will never again fail you because you can repair it.
+
+Yet these days of high technology, products are often covered with stickers warning you that even undoing a screw will void the warranty or risk injury. Companies like John Deere have even argued that it is illegal for the owner of their machines to repair them. This is creating a world of passive consumption devoid of personal agency. Crawford calls the person who wants to fix their own stuff, the Spirited Man. This figure becomes the antidote to passive consumption. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff." The spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." 
+
+Since I first read Shop Class I have decided it’s better to go down swinging. It’s not just me either. I see this in the work of filmaker Van Neistat, who explicitly took the Spirited Man mantle and ran with it. But also in the thousand people without filmmaking skills who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. The spirited man or woman doesn’t want to be passively entertained, or coddled. They seek to take part as co-creators in the world. We’re not along for the ride, we’re here to stand at the helm, trim the sails and steer the ship.]]
+[[Could cut or trim Crawford from above, and then move this paragraph here?: There aren't many Travcos left in the world, but in June of 2016, after a few months of haunting Craigslist I found one for sale in the mountains of North Carolina, in the sleepy college town of Mars Hill. A couple who restored vintage trailers found the bus somewhere in Tennessee and tried their hand at fixing it up. Then they changed their mind and put it up for sale ]]
+
+
+
+
+## Birthday in Grayton Beach
+
+After New Orleans we hightailed it to Florida, looking for some warmer beaches. Our first stop was Grayton Beach, where we spent Elliott's birthday -- in the white sands with afternoons warm enough to swim.
+
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-15_164430_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3246" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-19_155619_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3248" class="picwide" />
+
+The sunsets were pretty spectacular too. We'd go down in the evenings, along with lots of other people to watch the sunset. Most evenings there would be at least four or five groups of people (not campers), often in identical clothes, who had hired a professional photographer to shoot family portraits. It was funny watching photographers trying to wrangle 10 people in matching outfits into a pose while the light faded. Made me feel good about my decision to abandon photography as a career back in college.
+
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-19_161117_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3249" class="picwide" />
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-19_161757_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3250" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-19_161809_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3251" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+
+By the time Elliott's birthday rolled around the warm weather had retreated unfortunately, but does any kid *really* care about the weather on their birthday? A rainy birthday is still a birthday. Your sisters will still descend on you before you're out of bed, clamoring for you to open their gifts.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_064257_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3252" class="cluster picwide" />
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_064302_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3266" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_064330_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3253" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+
+We've always let the kids start their birthdays like Christmas -- giving each other their gifts in the early morning. It's my favorite part of their birthdays, watching them be kind and generous and loving to each other. Elliott's eighth birthday was no exception. He's kind, smart, fun, strong, caring, adventurous, and the best little brother his sisters could ever hope for. I am biased of course, but I know some people think kids have to stay in one place to grow up well, and Elliott (and his sisters) is here to tell those people they don't know what they're talking about. 
+
+I am not crazy about how fast they are all growing up -- a speed that seems to be exponentially accelerating too -- but it brings me great happiness and joy to see how they've grown and I am excited to see what they have in store for the future.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_085141_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3255" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_084849_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3254" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_085921_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3256" class="cluster picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_094759_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3260" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+You do have to watch him though, take one sip of tea and your whole army might get wiped out.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_092146_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3258" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_092216_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3261" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_092205_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3259" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+Despite my losses on the tabletop battlefield I did manage to get some cake.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_140114_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3263" class="picwide" />
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_140130_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3265" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2023/2022-12-20_140128_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3264" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+
+
+
 ## New Orleans
 
 After Galveston we headed north, bound for New Orleans. We broke up the drive with a stop at one of the gates of hell, located in Sea Rim, Texas. Sea Grim as we call it. Do not go there. Ever. For any reason. We had to abandon the bus there that night and retreat to a hotel. The next morning we went back, fired up the bus, and did not stop driving until we were safely over the state line in Louisiana -- successfully [escaping Texas](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/06/escaping-texas) again, but this was definitely our closest call yet.