Barry Graham's Blog, page 91

Reflection on Memorial Day

Reflection on Memorial Day:

Perhaps because I have written frequently that I deplore violence, or perhaps because I’m a Zen teacher, people often assume that I’m a pacifist. I’m not…

"The eraser marks intended to attain the anonymous indicate more surely the signature of a name than..."

“The eraser marks intended to attain the anonymous indicate more surely the signature of a name than the ostentatious penholder.”

- Michel Foucault

The Whitey Thor by Barry Graham & Vince Larue

Reading Bridges, Books, Toilets

It’s easy to differentiate between language and reality or actuality. We can say that a text is “just words,” but a bridge and a street and a mountain and a toilet are real.

The bridge, the street, the mountain and the toilet are as real and unreal as the text, and what meaning, or reality, they have comes from our reading of them. But we usually know that we are reading a text, and we usually don’t know that we are reading a bridge.

What Is It Like to Compare Everything?

In English, when asking for a description of an experience, we usually ask, “What is it like?”

Perhaps it would be more useful, in writing and thinking, not to automatically fall into comparison, but, instead of showing what it’s like, aim to show what it is.

Hiroshige died in 1858, the year after he painted Asakusa...

Hiroshigedied in 1858, the year after he paintedAsakusa ricefields and torinomachi festival. The world he depicted is gone, like him, and yet his images are so vivid, so spacious and yet so exact in their detail, that looking at them I feel as though I’m looking through a window, just like the cat in this scene.

strugglingtobeheard:Teamwork

strugglingtobeheard:

Teamwork

Portland Votes Against Fluoridation, Despite Bribes by Healthy Kids Healthy Porltand

Pro-fluoridation group Healthy Kids, Healthy Portland’sbribing of minority organizationsdidn’t work. The attempt to put fluoride in Portland’s waterwas soundly defeated yesterday - for the fourth time.

I wonder if they’ll now try spending money on outreach and care rather than dogma and tokenism. Perhaps they could even try talking to people instead of trying to buy them.

Powell's Books: There's a book for that

Powell's Books: There's a book for that:

artemiswinter:

powells:

marigold1900:

How to Talk Yourself Out of …

plastic surgery: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

tattoos: In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

haircuts: Sweeney Todd (multiple authors)

Oooh, let’s make this a thing…

prep school: The…

Racism and Classism in the Argument for Fluoridation in Portland's Water

Today is the final day of voting in the Portland special election that will decide whether fluoride is added to the city’s water.

Most U.S. cities already have fluoride in the water. Portland is the largest city that doesn’t. Portland residents have repeatedly voted against it. Recently, the city council decided to implement it anyway, but enough citizens signed a petition to call a special election.

Science is on the side of those who are pro-fluoridation; there is evidence that it...