...an appalling, almost pagan sight; the heavily emaciated young people loitered listlessly in the shadows of shredded tarps, the ends of which blew back and forth; some were buck-naked; it smelled vaguely of human feces that hadn't been carried completely out to sea by the daily tide; others had fallen asleep, exhausted, while reading anarchist treatises; still others spooned white, slimy meat from halved coconuts into mouths rimmed by unkempt beards.

I look forward to my next birthday because while 79 is getting up there, 80 has gravitas.

You know you're old when you email a friend about a change in your blood pressure because you know she will be just as interested as you are.

Falling. There's that long, slow moment you know you are falling, a split second of curiosity and excitement. What is going to happen? Followed, alas, by landing.

Mortality keeps life interesting.

I don't believe in heaven, I said, but I know she's there.

I don't reprimand myself for wasting what's left of my life in bed. It's hard work to be conscious of every moment. Besides, napping is not a waste of time.

My memory is full of holes.

Somebody had the brilliant idea of giving these wasps colored construction paper and my God the nests they made look like beautiful misshapen rainbows.

Doing nothing is not meditation. You are not emptying your mind. You are letting it wander around from one thing to another.

Filled with anxiety about one thing or another, one loved one or another, the planet itself.

One day I will be dead as a doornail and what will that be like? Well I'll be dead so all I can do is try to think about what I think about that

If you could map my mind, it would resemble the zigzagging dog prints in an inch of snow.

I adopted "fuck this shit" as my motto during the Trump administration and find it applies to something new every day.

Time is a mystery. It disappears, comes back, disappears again, all the while it's still here.

Most of my memories are freestanding. Think of them as dots, like punctuation, or maybe exclamation points.

You can't change the past, but if you can face it.

... what marks our era is the moaning of our bones crushed beneath the weight of empty words. There is no beauty in this crushing, and there is, alas, no escape for us now, or ever."

... "We become prisoners of our own beliefs, with no one free to escape such a fate, and this, my dearest friend, is the only democracy offered by the world."

"Truth lay in the aggregate numbers, not in the images of citizens the media alighted upon for a minute or two and then quickly left behind. Currency devaluations created more misery than any corporate criminal ever would. What the populist critics rarely bothered to countenance was the shape of things in the wake of real, systemic collapse."

These peoples had no single name for themselves but a variety of names, and sometimes no name. The use of the term Christian was very rare.

First and second century groups employed a range of names for themselves. Since these groups were very diverse their names were also different. They did not all call themselves "those belonging to the party of the anointed." It also is likely that many of these group names have been lost or never written down.

Although there must have been at least several hundred different names for Jesus peoples during the first 200 years of the Common Era, our research over the past two years of the seminar has identified only 24 in actual documents.

The one thing that unified all the groups of this movement was that they regularly dined with each other. ... Meaning and benefit emerge in meals when those of different classes, ethnicities, and social standing eat together. However, this attractive and compelling practice of diversity by groups of the anointed had some problematic examples as well. ... Both bathing and communal eating practices of Jesus groups during the first two centuries of the Common Era were important community activities. The bathing practices in particular had a strong effect across broad swaths of these communities.
As people strove against imperial pressure both of these practices healed and energized otherwise broken people and relationships providing them with a sense of belonging to a safe community.

No one in the second century would have proposed a collection of writings of 20 or 30 documents to act like a New Testament. There was little interest in a written religious authority in the second century. No one proposed it, and no one assembled something like a New Testament.

These first 200 years of the Common Era are not the territory of something to be called the New Testament. There's little organization or dogma as people and groups work on defining their identities in unsteady but creative times. The writings, the people, and the identities are fresh, free, and incomplete.

... a long silence follows his life when Paul was all but forgotten except in a handful of communities that remembered him as their founder. Nearly a hundred years after his death in the mid-second century he began to be name-checked by an aggressive group of partisans who had rediscovered his legacy. But others reacted either with hostility or with relative indifference to this obscure character from the past.

When we search these other second century writings for Paul's substantive or distinctive ideas, we typically do not find them. Even those who knew of Paul and mentioned him may not have known his writings. Acts purports to tell Paul's story, but notoriously, never once mentions him writing letters.

A century after his death. Paul held an ambiguous or even ambivalent status. The impression is not of an ancient and well-established authority stretching back to his own time, but rather of a recent introduction that various leaders feel compelled to stage manage and resolve. The flurry of literary activity, all dated approximately to the mid-second century bears witness to a significant adjustment of traditions to make room for Paul.

Throughout the first and second centuries we see not only a great deal of diversity but also fluidity and experimentation in all aspects of the life of the communities of the Jesus movements. Members of early Jesus communities grew up within Greater Israel and identified with Israel's tradition. Israel had long dealt with its diversity by orthopraxy, not orthodoxy, that is by correct practice and not correct teaching. The Jesus groups initially followed in this tradition, but competition between teachers for new teachings created new schools and began to shift the balance more toward teachings than practice.

The real situation is fluid exhibiting a great deal of experimentation. We do not have heresy and orthodoxy in competition but a whole series of schools and teachers engaged and interacting in conversation debate, and experimentation.

The movement of Gnosticism to the scholarly side removes a confusing category from our ongoing work of rethinking the history of early Jesus schools and associations. We are moving from an idea that Gnosticism was a real force, the primary heresy that threatened the pure trajectory of Christianity, to the actuality on the basis of evidence for the absence, the non-existence of Gnosticism. We must rethink the entire assumption that a unified, heretical Gnosticism played a primary role in how the first two centuries unfolded. Using Gnosticism as an analytical category seems to hide more than it reveals and if we really want to understand the writing called Gnostic we need to set aside that designation.

1. They Resisted the Roman Empire
A wide set of what we call Jesus clubs, movements for the Savior, communities of the Anointed, and schools of the Lord successfully resisted the Roman Empire. These peoples' resistance against Rome often kept violence at bay and gave their people courage and an experience of safety. A key dimension of their resistance to empire was invoking God's compassionate and strange empire, or kingdom, as later translators have it, in contrast to Rome's cruel and dominating one. These various groups made fun of Roman military power and mocked Rome's claim of divine power, even though they themselves had almost no power. The Empire of God challenged the Empire of Rome. Caesar Augustus as Lord conflicted with Jesus Anointed as Lord.

2. They Practiced Gender Bending
A wide range of Jesus peoples practiced gender bending-that is, gender roles were fluid and flexible. One of their primary identities was that they were neither male nor female, but all were "one" through different lived, experienced realities of gender pluralism. Women, and a significant number of men, rejected both male dominance and female passivity. A wide swath of Jesus groups rejected marriage and traditional families, with the envoy Paul often leading the way. Although some Anointed groups and individuals supported male dominance and demanded female obedience to men, many men shifted toward acting more vulnerable and less domineering. Women cut their hair and dressed like men. These gendered activities and actions brokered new possibilities for identity among various Jesus peoples, well beyond the regular masculine/feminine dichotomies of the first two centuries.

3. They Lived in Chosen Families
With traditional families increasingly broken and dispersed, a variety of Jesus groups started living in experimental family groups. These new family groups were voluntary; that is, they lived together increasingly outside of blood or married relationships. Whereas previously the primary relations for living arrangements were extended families of multiple generations with cousins, aunts, and uncles in the mix, Jesus people associated daily with each other according to mutual support and affection. More and more "supper clubs" became crucial and core associations of daily life. Economic sharing provided ways that members of these groups bonded. In some cases, larger housing arrangements came into play for the groups through a donor exhibiting compassion. Although most of these new kinds of families were small, occasionally a wealthy person provided larger space for bigger groups.

4. They Claimed Belonging to Israel
The largest and most common identity of Jesus groups was their allegiance to Israel, regardless of whether the groups or members came from Israel-based bloodlines. This bond applied whether they lived in geographical Israel or around the Mediterranean basin. Small and large groups understood themselves to be following the God of Israel, read Israel-based holy writings, prayed and meditated according to the various Israel-based forms, bathed ritually according to Israel's traditions, and—perhaps most of all—gave allegiance to their Israel-born teacher and leader, Jesus. Since Jesus belonged to Israel by blood and practice, the larger Jesus movements assumed and explicitly practiced Israel's ways. But after the Bar Kokhba War (132-136 CE), the second major revolt against the Roman
Empire of the people inhabiting the territory known as Roman Palestine, this allegiance was increasingly challenged.

5. They Had Diverse Organizational Structures
As was the case with larger Israel itself, the many different groups, schools, clubs, and Anointed communities had a variety of practices, beliefs, and organizational patterns. These peoples
had no central leadership and so had neither interest in telling nor the ability to tell the myriad groups how to practice or what to believe. The models for such organization were local and
occasionally regional, and so Jesus groups generally followed the diverse club organizational rules or the varieties of synagogue practices around the Mediterranean. The idea of Christian synods and ecumenical councils lay in the distant future. As occurred both in local clubs and in synagogue patterns, it was normal for different groups to dispute with one another about practices and beliefs.

6. They Had Persisting Oral Traditions
Writing did not dominate the life of the early communities of the Anointed to the same degree as surviving documents have dominated how we have imagined their life. There was nothing like the New Testament in the first two centuries CE. Throughout those centuries, Jesus peoples celebrating, arguing, and debating combined many forms of speaking and writing. Reading—as in all Mediterranean cultures� was done together publicly, especially when the few people who could read would read to a whole group. But often there was no reading. There was significant writing among the different groups, but this writing was part of a boisterous, complicated community dialogue, group reading, ritual practice, and—most of all—intense discussion. Much material overlapped Israel's developing readings of Torah, the Prophets, and Wisdom literature, the writings increasingly being set apart, designated as particularly meaningful for the life and identity of these peoples. Other writings were letters between communities, partially developed stories, and songs from within communities. Important writing was also done through a few words etched in stone and referenced as rules or statutes for Jesus clubs and associations.

Tesla: An electric vehicle and clean energy company.
SpaceX: A space exploration company, focused on reusable rockets and space travel.
X (formerly Twitter): A social media platform.
The Boring Company: A tunneling company focused on creating underground transportation systems.
Neuralink: A company developing brain-computer interfaces.
xAI: A new artificial intelligence company created to compete with OpenAI.

Last year, Musk told CNN’s Don Lemon that he has a ketamine prescription and uses the drug roughly every other week to help with depression symptoms.

Good things happened to Donald Trump. He did not earn most of those good things. He was born, he was discovered by a revolutionary television producer, and he was pushed into an investment against his will. And from those three bits of good luck came the equivalent today of more than $1.5 billion. That sort of tailwind could paper over a litany of failure and still fund a lavish life, and there is no evidence that in 50 years of labor Donald Trump added to his lucky fortunes. He would have been better off betting on the stock market than on himself.

Our reporting shows that the character traits that would become most identified with Donald Trump during his presidency were set in his early twenties through his relationship with his father. His instinct to fight everything without regard to cost or time or further reputational harm, to file lawsuits more like an angry trust funder than a businessman weighing risks and reward. His de facto definition of loyalty as a one-way street. His tendency to see himself as a victim of jealousy and unfairness. His belief that his instincts, which typically meant his desired reality, were superior to any reasoned analysis by experts. All of it emerges in his relationship with a doting, if cold, father.

And whereas the German people acknowledged collective guilt, expressed remorse, made financial reparation, tried to educate itself and future generations about what had happened, and has worked to abjure racism, successive Turkish governments and the Turkish people have never owned up to what happened or to their guilt. They continue to play the game of denial and to blame the victims. (p. 505)

A president described a regime change in the style of the 1930s as desirable: "You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster." What we need, he thought, were "riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great." He couldn't quite pull off this scenario in January 2021, but it was not for lack of trying.

All the letters quoted in the text from the Prime Minister are � the reader may be astonished to learn � authentic, as are the telegrams, newspaper reports and official documents, along with the correspondence between Venetia Stanley and Edwin Montagu.
However, the letters from Venetia Stanley to the Prime Minister are entirely invented.
Paul Deemer is a fictional character.

"When I knew I was writing in part about gay rights, I wanted my readers to literally hear the voice of my main character; to take this from a political arena to a personal one--and so you get to hear Zoe [a music therapist and musician in the book's story] pouring out her heart and soul to you through her songs."

Infertility, miscarriages, stillbirth, gay rights, parenthood, religious beliefs, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, being saved (spiritually), alcoholism, divorce, lesbianism, same sex marriage, music therapy, changing sexual orientation at mid-life, overt efforts to change another persons sexual orientation, water dowsing, homophobia, abortion, attempted suicide, and Westboro anti-gay pickets, charges of sexual molestation, and false accusations.

. . . a court-trial to determine which party (of a divorced couple) will get access to viable in-vitro embryos that are currently in frozen storage. The embryos were conceived while the couple were married, but now that they're divorced they both have plans on how to use them. Will they be implanted in the womb of a woman in a same sex marriage or in the womb of a woman in a "good Christian" home (i.e. heterosexual marriage with a man)?

Scenario 1 ... Collapse Avoidance (This scenario is fictionalized in Kim Stanley Robinson's novels New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future.)

Scenario 2 ... Collapse/Rebirth (Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games unfold in this scenario.)

Scenario 3 ... Collapse/Survival scenario. (This is the setting of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.)

Scenario 4 ... Collapsed Extinction (Adam McKay's film Don't Look Up and Alan Weisman's imaginative nonfiction book The World Without Us are portrayals of this scenario.)

...to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. (p.81)

Melting polar ice caps leading to weather disruption, sea level rise, and coastal flooding.

Rapid climate disruption leading to extinctions, crop failures, and far-reaching economic impacts.

Flooding, wildfires, extreme weather leading to mass migrations.

White supremacist and nativist attacks on immigrants and minorities, with conspiratorial falsehoods and stupidities spread by demagogues seeking power.

Volatile stock markets, runs on banks, credit and bank defaults, currency failures.

Cascading failures of political leaders, leading to cascading failures of public institutions.

Mass and social media spreading mass deception leading to mass delusion leading to mass hysteria.

Authoritarian regimes preying on fear and resentment, eventually replacing or compromising democracies.

Food shortages. Water shortages. Supply chain disruptions. Decline in both health and health care, and increases in violence. Electric grids and internet crashes due to weather events or terrorist action.

Not offering pronouns implies that other folks should either intuit or know your gender simply from how you look. This perpetuates two false assumptions: first, that everyone's social constructions of gender expression are the same and, second, that gender expression always indicates gender identity. Sharing pronouns not only aims to dismantle both these assumptions, but also creates a safer space for trans and gender nonconforming folks to share our pronouns and be gendered correctly, too.

TRANSGENDER �
Transgender is an adjective that describes people whose gender identity differs from the gender they were assigned at birth.
�
Here's a quick rundown of some terminology suggestions:
Transgender can be shortened to trans.
�
Trans man / trans woman
� Trans man or transgender man refers to a man assigned female at birth.
� Trans woman or transgender woman refers to a woman assigned male at birth.
� Include a space between trans and man or woman, as omitting this space is often used by trans-exclusionary folks to imply that trans men are not "real" men, but rather some kind of modified version: a transman.
�
Trans masculine / trans feminine
� Trans masculine is an umbrella term that can refer to someone assigned female at birth who does not identify as a girl or woman. �
� Someone assigned female at birth who identifies as non-binary could use the label trans masculine, but not trans man.
� Trans feminine is an umbrella term that can refer to someone assigned male at birth who does not identify as a boy or man.

Transness is a noun that refers to being transgender. I discourage people from using transgenderism because the suffix '-ism' denotes a doctrine, act, practice, belief system, or ideology - none of which apply to being transgender.

Transsexual is an outdated term, most commonly used to describe a trans person who has undergone medical transition, namely surgery. For various reasons, including that many consider transsexual to be pejorative, I strongly advise against using transsexual unless someone uses it to describe themselves.

NON-BINARY
Some individuals' gender does not fit society's current understandings of only “man?' or “woman," and they use non-binary to describe their gender identity. Non-binary is an umbrella term that people use in different ways; �

CISGENDER
In short, if you are not transgender, you are cisgender. That is, if your gender identity matches the gender you were assigned at birth, you are cisgender.
�
TRANSITION
Any steps a person takes to affirm their gender identity. While many folks might think of physical or medical procedures such as surgery or hormone therapy, transitions do not always include these things and can include many others, such as different pronoun usage, wardrobe or name changes, haircuts, and more.

Many used to refer to transitioning as a “sex change." This is largely outdated now, given that sex is not simply male or female (see the section on biological sex), and most trans people do not feel that transitioning is changing their gender, but rather affirming it.

For this reason, we've even seen the introduction of the term gender affirmation, which some use in addition to transition, and others as a replacement.
�
GENDER IDENTITY
The internal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity is often shortened to just gender, although this can sometimes result in confusion because many folks mistakenly believe that gender is the same as sex. This is false!

BIOLOGICAL SEX
Often shortened to just sex, this technically refers to one's reproductive and sexual anatomy, physiology, and biology, usually categorized into a binary of either "male" or"female;" but is most often used to refer to a person's gender assigned at birth. Biological sex is far more complex than we are often taught. �

SEXUALITY
The classification of one's romantic, sexual, or emotional attraction toward others (e.g., gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, queer, asexual, etc.)
�
QUEER
� Queer is an umbrella term that can encompass a variety of sexual and gender identities.
�
GENDER EXPRESSION
This refers to how folks present their gender, including how we talk, how we act, how we look. Gender expression is bound to gender roles by social construction and can change based on time period, culture, geographic location, and other socially influenced factors. �

LANGUAGE IS AN EVOLVING TOOL
� The language I've provided here is widely used and accepted as common and respectful, but if someone you meet uses different language to describe themselves, I always suggest reflecting that language. Listen to the trans people around you.

Scientists estimate that about 2 percent of the population is intersex. Many intersex advocates assert that this is a significant underestimation because so many individuals do not know that they are intersex; advocates suggest the number is closer to 5 percent of the population. ... In similar statistical comparisons: about 2 percent of the world population has red hair, about 2 percent has green eyes. No one is claiming red hair or green eyes don't exist.

The Lord to mee a shepheard is
� want therefore shall not I.
Hee in the folds of tender-grasse
� doth cause mee downe to lie:
To waters calme me gently leads
� Restore my soule doth hee:
he doth in paths of righteousness
� for his names sake leade mee.

What the British called “the Great War of 1914-18 remains on the margins of American cultural memory, apart from the periodic Wilsonian refrains. From Europe’s suicide pact in 1914, the United States stood aloof—joining the conflict in 1917, it is believed, only to sort out a mess that was quintessentially European.
Yet that moral superiority is misplaced, or at least a little blinkered. America had fought its own great war only half a century before, during which 620,000 died—more than the combined American death toll in all its other conflicts from the revolution to Korea, including both world wars.
... ...
Here are American parallels with Kennan’s 'seminal catastrophe� that defined twentieth-century Europe.

Thus when I asked about an Anabaptist or Mennonite perspective on theology, I expected to receive a referral to several articles or a book that would guide me. Instead, the question produced shrugs and statements of “I don’t know.� (p.86)

The Nonviolent Atonement, by J. Denny Weaver
The Nonviolent God, by J. Denny Weaver
John Howard Yoder: Radical Theologian, by J. Denny Weaver, Earl Zimmerman, Zachary J. Walton, Gerald J. Mast, Ted Grimsrud

Quilt of Souls is a tribute to everything I learned about slavery, the resulting African American servitude in this country, and the bravery it took for many women of that era to eke out a semblance of dignity from a culture of white supremacy that tried to deny them their basic humanity. Books, articles, documentaries, and movies have detailed the plight of African Americans before slavery and during and after Reconstruction. But it is past time to tell the story of how this same group, particularly Black women, uplifted themselves and overcame injustices while shielding their families from a host of retributions. I wove their words and lives into my heart, just as Grandma sewed the lives of her loved ones into my quilt of souls.

I took a seat next to Grandma as she began pulling out pieces of Mama all's and Miss Jubilee's clothing from the bag that sat before her. Tears began to well up as I realized their clothes would finish my quilt, that Miss Jubilee's fabric would join with Ella's in its center. Along with Ella, her fabric would hold all the other pieces together. How fitting: the grand finale and the closing frame for my quilt of souls.

“The Enlightenment as most people actually experienced it had fewer wigs and masked balls than we might imagine today, and far more pain and muddling through.� � “The truly pressing theme in their art, music, theater, philosophy, and theology was not, in fact, the triumph of rationality. It was instead how to manage catastrophe.�

Handel's Messiah has a good claim to being the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. It is heard and sung by more people every year than arguably any other piece in the classical repertoire.

"Why do I always give myself the most difficult missions? The most difficult farm, the most difficult husband, and now this damaged child without a name?"

"P.R.A.Y, I asked. It's the only opening I can devise to initiate what I want to plead for. Don't throw them out. Our blue-purple hydrangeas. Don't throw yourself out, and me neither. Hold us for a while yet. There is beauty also in flowers that fade. Their last hour provides stuff for contemplation. Contemplate it for me. For whom do you in any case want to refresh the vase? It's our last flower arrangement with a history in this room. Remember, you salvaged the vase. And stuck it together. And it never leaked."

"M.Y. O.N.L.Y C.H.I.L.D, exclamation D.O.E.S H.E. K.N.O.W I A.M D.Y.I.N.G H.E.R.E, question mark."

"Why only now love you with this inexpressible regret? . . . Am I vain in thinking you will miss me?"

The meritocratic conviction that people deserve whatever riches the market bestows on their talents makes solidarity an almost impossible project. For why do the successful owe anything to the less-advantaged members of society? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that, for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient; finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents is our good fortune, not our due. A lively sense of the contingency of our lot can inspire a certain humility: “There, but for the grace of God, or the accident of birth, or the mystery of fate, go I.� Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life. (p. 227)

Can you direct me to the nearest ayahuasca ritual?
Can you sell me some vine of the dead?
How do I register to be an Indian?
How much Indian are you?
Can you appraise my turquoise necklace?
Can you sell it for me?
What's a good Indian name for my horse/dog/hamster?
How do I get an Indian name?
Do you have an Indian saying about death?
What's a cultural Indian thing that would fit into our funeral service?
How do I find out if I'm an Indian?
Are there any real Indians left?