Hey, that's good marketing. It grabs attention and we're talking about it.
jcs
I'm staying with my boyfriend because of his dog. Am I horrible?
Is there a Parisian who doesn't do rock climbing, Pilates, or ceramics?
I'm going to the Maldives but I'm composting, does that make up for it?
Just between you and me, who's ever bought fruit on the metro?
So, what do we do with the people on the wrong side of the escalator?
Has anyone ever found the exit at Chatelet, or is that a myth?
This flood was devastating to the area. It is also quite shocking to look up at the aftermath and see dead animals in the canopies of trees. My family owns a ranch that was fortunately far south enough to only be indirectly affected by the flood. We worked all weekend to clear debris from fences and swing gates and, thankfully, did not see any corpses in the water.
Death toll update:
More than 100 people people have died after devastating floods hit central Texas. Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp that sits along the Guadalupe River, has confirmed that 27 campers and counselors died in weekend floods. Ten campers and one counselor are still unaccounted for.
And those at Camp Mystic did their very best to save the girls, even at the cost of their own lives:
Camp Mystic owner Dick Eastland died while trying to rescue campers during the catastrophic flooding in Kerr County, Texas, as shared by his grandson in an Instagram tribute on Saturday.
“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” George Eastland wrote. “That’s the kind of man my grandfather was. He was a husband, father, grandfather, and a mentor to thousands of young women. Although he no longer walks this earth, his impact will never fade in the lives he touched.”
A Camp Mystic employee, Glenn Juenke, told CNN Eastland died “remaining a true hero until the very end.”
“Eastland tragically lost his life while courageously attempting to save several young children,” Juenke said.
The breaks worked similarly when I worked hourly shifts in the US:
- <= 6 hrs: 1x 15m paid break
- > 6 hrs: 1x 30m unpaid lunch, 2x 15m paid breaks
It was most common to be scheduled for 6 hr shifts so the company could avoid paying for the extra break.
Here's the IBM 305 RAMAC, which stored up to 3.75 MB in 1956, less than 70 years ago. Imagine what computers will be another 70 years from now.
OPSEC. I have history disabled on my phone. If anyone were to somehow access it, they would have more difficulty figuring out who is close to me.
I've lived in a region where ethical non-monogamy is so normalized that I look at the photo and think "ok...?"
Sermon transcript, pt. 2
In Daoism they teach that, over time, the soft overcomes the hard. The water wears down the rock. The wind takes out the mountain. The grass upends the concrete. The meek inherit the earth. Violence may win in the short run but, in the end, love always wins. Jesus said this Kingdom of God is in our midst - it's hiding in plain sight. Heaven is already here: inside of us, above us, all around us.
On my mom's side, my granddad was a Baptist preacher, but on my dad's side, my Grandpa Talarico never went to church but he was one of the most generous, compassionate, moral people I've ever met. He was an immigrant from Italy whose family saw firsthand the dangers of mixing church and state. He settled in the Texas hill country and, on Sunday mornings, he would take these long walks through the wildflowers and live oaks and he would take me with him. He said it was the best chance to see G-O-D: the Great Outdoors.
Biologists tell us that everything in nature is connected and evolving toward greater union. Anthropologists tell us that our ability to share and cooperate is humanity's superpower, and astrophysicists tell us that the universe is just gentle enough to make our existence possible. This universe of ours is nothing but gratuitous grace.
Teilhard wrote that the very physical universe is love. We see it in the harmonies of music, the principles of mathematics, the patterns of nature. We are all expressions of that creative power. We are the universe becoming aware of itself. As children of God, children of the cosmos, we are loved unconditionally, indiscriminately, infinitely. No achievement can add to it. No mistake can take from it. No amount of church-going or church-missing can change it. That's truly deserving of the title "Good News."
We are made by love with love to love. I call that love "God." You may use a different word, and that's okay. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. We can cure the disease of Christian nationalism. We can protect against the virus of religious extremism with healthy religion.
The great faith traditions of the world have so much to offer us in this time of global crisis. Hinduism's ahimsa provides an alternative to the logic of violence. Buddhist meditation provides an alternative to the abuse of our attention. Judaism sabbath provides an alternative to the demands of capitalism. And in a world where everything can be bought and sold including the earth itself, native American traditions provide an alternative to ecological extraction.
It's hard - it is so hard to protect your spirit in a world trying to kill it. That's why we need faith communities like this one. That's why we need stories and traditions and practices that heal our soul and transform our mind.
Every time in this sanctuary that we say the prayers, sing the hymns, sprinkle the water, eat the bread, drink the wine, we're tuning our hearts. Our Buddhist friends tell us that compassion takes practice. Neuroscientists tell us that we can become kinder, more empathetic, if we work at it. Things like love, peace, and hope - they require strength training. A gym for the heart. And so every week, we gather here to sing our songs and tell our stories just for the opportunity to, in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, "dwell in the ultimate" together just for a moment. And that's almost better than a cold glass of beer.
I invite you now to your own reflection on these words.
As of early-2000s, both novels were required reading in my high school central Texas curriculum.