Oz

If you have time over the holidays, I recommend reading some of the original "Land of Oz" books by L. Frank Baum.

They were written for older children or younger adults, so they're an easy read.  Most can be finished at one sitting.

Many characters will be familiar, but the books are different than the movie; not better, not worse, just different.  If I had to characterize it, I'd say the movie is a more complete story but the books create a more complete world.

They are all in the public domain, and can be downloaded or read online for free at Project Gutenberg, HERE.

Ancestral Mathematics

Transcribed from a photograph of a poster, found on Reddit:

Ancestral Mathematics

In order to be born, you needed:

2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
32 third great-grandparents
64 fourth great-grandparents
128 fifth great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
512 seventh great-grandparents
1,024 eighth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents

For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years.

Think for a moment-- How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? --did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment…

Star Trek: The Novels

 

Excerpted from The Klingon Gambit by Robert E. Vardeman, ©1981:

"Status report, Mr. Sulu," Kirk demanded as he made his way to the command seat. 

"Klingons are increasing the attack, sir." 

"Estimates, Scotty." 

"We canna survive more'n ten minutes at this rate, Cap'n!"

Kirk slammed his fist against the armrest of the command seat. He couldn't fight. He dare not open fire. The Enterprise might outmaneuver the Klingon ship, but it couldn't outrun or out-fight it. 

"Captain, awaiting your order to fire.…"

It was hard being a young Star Trek nerd in the 70s. 

Cable television hadn't come to our city yet.  VCRs were expensive, and we didn't have one.  Star Trek was in syndication, but wasn't broadcast by one of our three local stations.

So, to bridge the gap, we had the Star Trek novels.  They came out fairly regularly, and I could pick one up at the Waldenbooks in the local mall for just a buck or two.  

Reading one of the books wasn't a lot different than watching an episode.  The characters were familiar, and I liked them.  They were an easy read.  There wasn't anything particularly challenging, but they were a fun way to spend an afternoon.

I found a bunch of old ones at the used book store, and I'm enjoying reliving a little bit of my youth.

Do a little dance…

 

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE, if for some reason you think you need them.

Easy

 "It's easy to be a saint in paradise."  ~Captain Benjamin Sisko, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

A Great Risk

From Slashdot:

With labor shortages already weighing on Europe's economic rebound, wage inflation will persist for longer if the Great Resignation -- the post-pandemic trend of people leaving the workforce -- carries on, the bank said. "It reveals a far greater potential risk of structurally higher wages," Morgan Stanley wrote.

I'm on the side of higher wages, myself.

3 Covers

Three covers of Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street, all different and all wonderful:

You can listen to the original on YouTube HERE. You can read the lyrics HERE.

Happy?

 Excerpted from the article "Enjoy!" by Sandy Grant:

In our societies, we experience fabricated leisure – a kind of planned ‘free time’ that is sandwiched between typically unpleasant work times. And we are bombarded with advertisements that promise we will have a great time if only we get the latest phone or the latest computer game. Ours is a culture that, under the guise of consumption, actually counsels the renunciation of enjoyment. In such a society, wants come apart from pleasures. If you get an expensive car because that’s what you think your status requires you to have, that is not the same as enjoying it. The individual who succumbs to this idea does not relish owning the car. She just thinks she must have and display it. We inhabit a world that devalues pleasure while apparently serving it up in large doses. Rather than enjoyment playing a central role in people striving to become otherwise than they are, our culture works a strange ascetic turn. I am what I desire. I am what I consume. We are absorbed in an existence as desiring and consuming subjects, living as though we really are just those selves and no more.

You can read the whole article online  at Aeon, HERE.

Shavasana

Shavasana
by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,

I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day

without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,

the same lesson in how to join
the darkness, how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,

how generous the ground.

I found this poem at Jules of Nature, and she found it at Gwarlingo.

Eastern Perspective

If you have five minutes or so, this is beautiful and worth your time:

(You can watch it at the BBC HERE.)

Thanks, but

And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, ‘Your eyes have seen all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings; so will the Lord do to all the kingdoms through which you pass. You must not fear them, for the Lord your God Himself fights for you.’  ~Deuteronomy 3:21-22

That's nice, I suppose, but I don't really need any empires defeated at the moment.  I could use a little divine help navigating the phone system at the credit card company.

Blocking

 

This has become a popular form of creative writing, and I've seen some beautiful poems and prose created by blocking selections of text.

I can't do it myself, because marking in a book just feels wrong.  But I enjoy seeing what other people created.

Bagism

 

Which led to this:

And for the younger members in the audience:

Bagism was created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono as part of their extensive peace campaign in the late 1960s. The intent of bagism was to satirize prejudice and stereotyping. Bagism involved wearing a bag over one's entire body. According to John and Yoko, by living in a bag, a person could not be judged by others on the basis of skin colour, gender, hair length, attire, age, or any other such attributes. It was presented as a form of total communication: instead of focusing on outward appearance, the listener would hear only the bagist's message.

Read more at Wikipedia, HERE.

Downside

 

I might create a Twitter account just to follow Jeff Tiedrich.  He's HERE.

shh

shhh, it's fine is on the web HERE.  The artist has chosen to remain anonymous.

It isn't really a "comic" in the traditional sense.  It's more like illustrated commentary.  I think its wonderful.