A life update, and some personal thoughts

The final day of May this year is proving a hot and humid one, which probably describes more days in the last thirty-one than not. A thunderstorm is in the forecast for later, of which we've had a few this month. That said, a lack of rain has left the streams low, and the soil in most places dry and hard-packed. The wave of oak-pollen that annually sends my nose into distress seems to have peaked, so that four days have now gone by without the need of allergy medication, or of a fresh tissue near at hand. The relief is welcome, and makes long walks in the evening more enjoyable.

Some further observations. The foliage in the forest has waxed in all its spring-time glory, shedding most of the flowers that dominate the early part of the season, instead taking up the dense foliage and lush greens of summer.  From dawn to dusk, bird-song fills the air, and while the cherry blossoms have come and gone, now our garden is alive with roses red and pink, and strawberry plants heavy with fruit.

First strawberries of the season.

Landscapers, plumbers, painters, pavers, tree-trimmers, general-contractors, and others fill the neighborhood going about their work, spreading mulch, installing upgraded water-heaters, and laying cement to a new stretch of sidewalk.

Swim-clubs are now open on the weekends, and the Spring season for most high schools sports is at an end. Soon we'll see "congrats grad!" banners in windows and written across the back windshield of cars, and see articles in the paper on the best ways to pay for college. At night, the smell of smoke from fire-pits will likely be on the air, as well as the sound of popular music filtering over from some nearby pool party. On a quieter night, one can listen to the crickets and bull-frogs pandering their songs to the stars.

Venus and the Moon.

From a personal point of view, May has been a strange month in a number of ways. I won't discuss them in a specific way here, but mention them in passing because of the broader ideas they elicit. Foremost, I believe that mental health is a feature of experience that I, at least, too often neglect. The landscape of thoughts and images in the mind seems to be a central feature of how one appraises and experiences the world. To a considerable extent, it seems to dictate what we notice, how we feel, and what weight we give to certain things that happen to us. I've heard it said that thoughts define our reality, and while I'm not certain of that statement's truth, my conscience at least doesn't rebel at its claim.

Of late, I have often thought of that line in Hamlet that reads, "...for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Of my own situation, I've preferred to take a neutral point of view--that what has happened these last few months is intrinsically neither good nor bad, but will be defined and contextualized with the passage of time. This is what seems to happen with historical events more broadly defined: their significance is determined not by how it felt in the moment, but by how it shaped the years and decades and centuries that followed. Our present selves may deem what happened today as having extreme significance--that after today, "everything is different." On the other hand, our future selves will have lived through the day after, and the-day-after-the-day-after, and day after that.

For better or worse, I think those future selves will be in a better position to determine how good or bad some decision or moment turned out to be than I am today. Significance, perhaps, requires context, and context requires distance to see a thing in a broader sense. To paraphrase Machiavelli, seeing the mountain requires going to the plains, and seeing the plains requires going to the mountain. In that sense, I prefer at present to suspend judgment.

What the future holds I cannot say, but the month of May at least has proven interesting. Pretty soon we'll have blueberries to pick out back, and mosquitoes to dodge on our evening walks. Likely there will be plenty of work to do, friends to visit, and projects to take up. Lately I've taken an interest in computer science, and am curious to see where that takes me. I'm  also looking forward to a little travel later in the summer, and perhaps performing a bit on the bassoon. We'll see how all of that goes.

For now, I think I'll go and make some lunch.

Happy Sunday :)

Huzzah for the National Spelling Bee 2015

Eighth-graders Gokul Venkatachalam of Chesterfield, Missouri, and Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, were co-winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday.

Congratulations to the both of them, and to everyone who participated in or supported this year's National Spelling Bee. I always enjoy watching the final rounds on ESPN, and this year was no different. Thanks to all for your efforts :).

A full press release can be read here.

Arrived on my pile...

I went to the library earlier, and came back with a few interesting titles: 

"The Warrior King and the Invasion of France" (1988), Desmond Seward--This one looked interesting, and should serve as a good preface to Dan Jones' excellent book on the wars of the roses, which I recently finished (see review here).

"The Making of Modern Japan" (2000), Marius B. Jansen--A comprehensive history, to look at it. The writing is a bit dense in the early going, but we'll see how it turns out.

"In These Times: Living in Britain Through the Napoleonic Wars, 1793--1815" (2014), Jenny Uglow-- sounds like a neat book about life in England during the age of Napoleon. I'm looking forward to starting this one.

"A Random Walk Down Wall Street, 10th ed." (2011)*, Burton G. Malkiel--A classic and highly-recommended work in the world of investing, about which I've heard a lot and yet have not read. Feels very readable in the early going, and will probably be the book I read over breakfast each morning.

*Looks like there's an 11th edition now available.

"Very Good Lives" (2008), J.K. Rowling--A published version of the commencement address the author gave at Harvard in 2008. I've actually seen that address (so can you, here), but it might be worth perusing in printed form again. 

An interesting thought

"Love doesn’t drive people mad, it drives them sane. Desire, in its different forms, can drive people to do anything. Love never drives people to kill or steal or cheat or worry.

"Love reveals itself when you release your need to have the object of your affection, and see that there’s no reason to make it yours. That it exists at all is enough. To love something is to disappear in its favor — to die to your own interests so that it can be what it is."

That is by David Cain of Raptitude, from an essay you can read here. Very insightful, and full of ideas worth pondering further.

*THE WARS OF THE ROSES: THE FALL OF THE PLANTAGENETS AND THE RISE OF THE TUDORS* (2014)

That's the title of an excellent book I've just finished reading by Dan Jones. I found it enjoyable, and an interesting narrative of English dynastic struggles during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and how image-management, a series of assertive rulers, and the death of basically anyone with a claim to the throne not named "Tudor," served to bring the Wars of the Roses to and end, and secure the Tudor position as kings of England.

At base, the central argument of the book centers on the fragile nature of English kingship in that period, and how the risks associated with this particular institutional arrangement showed up in a major way following the death of the Henry V and during the reign of Henry VI. An excerpt makes this very point:

...the Wars of the Roses and the destruction of the house of Plantagenet did not really come about because two factions divided by blood were destined to atone through war for the sin of deposing Richard II. All the evil of the fifteenth century was not embodied in a villainous Richard III, and more than the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York provided instant salvation. Rather, this was a vicious and at times barely comprehensible period of deep political instability, which stemmed ultimately from the collapse of royal authority and English rule in France under Henry VI. In a system in which law, order, justice and peace flowed so heavily from the person of the king and the office of the Crown, Henry VI's reign (and his afterlife between deposition in 1461 and his death ten years later) was a disaster. The English system of government was robust in the 1420s and 1430s--robust enough to deal with a minority of nearly two decades. But it was not robust enough to deal with an adult king who simply would not perform his role (p. 339).

The book is interesting throughout, and I would recommend it.

 

Cheesy quote of the day

"Always be thankful for what you have no matter how much or how little."                                                                                                                                                                    ~EternalOptimist

Linked book

"The Magic of Thinking Big" (1959)
By: Dr. David Schwartz

A bit old, but fun and quirky in its own way. Would recommend.