A Response to My Friend, A tRump Supporter

Every historical event has antecedents. Paradigms drive events, skew perception. Racism in Anerica has a long and sordid history, cloaked in pseudoscience. Eugenics, Hitler's inspiration.

Zero-sum Malthusian economics provides a fertile ground for racist ideology, e.g, Stephen Miller, David Duke's protégé, the evil mastermind behind the "Build the Wall" movement.

I do not recall seeing more than 10 people of Mexican or Central American descent in Virginia  before the 1980's. Perhaps I was simply not noticing them. Why the sudden inflow? The War on Drugs. The US & Russia funded wars in Central America.

Refuges who come to the US are often fleeing violence. The US, in many ways, created the conditions for violence in Latin America. Global Warming will only exacerbate mass desperation and population flights.

Buckminster Fuller & Louis Kelso offered a unique paradigm of abundance in the late 1950s & early 1960s. Binary Economics is the antithesis of zero-sum thinking. Reagan himself endorsed Kelso's paradigm which my dad has advocated since he left federal government during the Johnson Administration, frustrated with Liberals who he felt were blocking genuine community action.

With Artificial Intelligence, and a shift away from the carbon economy, using Kelsonian Binary Economics, we could grow ourselves out of our malaise, equitably, without any taxpayer dollars & without taking anything from existing owners.

Not what Joe Biden and the Democratic Party is selling. Not what Republicans are selling either. Both are locked in a zero-sum mindset at a time when we have never been closer to clean, equitable abundance.

Meanwhile, we have people expressing white supremacist ideology from the White House. Fred Trump was in the Klan. Latin Americans are the new Jim Crow, the new targets of "rising tide of color" replacement theory. As Faulkner penned, "the past isn't even the last." We're entering Civil War 2.0.

107

 

I am Daniel Kurland, the youngest child of Mariko and Norman Kurland. I am your grandson. I am married to Karen and I have a son named Joseph. As a baby, Joseph called you “Boom Boom”. Joe is now a 5th year Senior at George Mason University. I became a Middle School Math Teacher and work with students who have learning disabilities. Every year, I explain to young learners how your story inspired me to get serious about my education when I was younger.

In 9th grade, when I learned about how you and your family were sent to Internment Camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I became curious and started to research what had happened. I found it difficult to understand why my grandfather Yunosuke was taken away in the middle of the night by men wearing black suits. My burning question was how you, an American citizen, ended up losing your home and behind barbed wire.

It took me decades to process how, under Executive Order 9066, your family was  ordered to assemble at Tanforan Race Track and given no time  to dispose of your property. Rather than allowing others to take your valuable possessions, you made a bonfire and burned it all.

About 10 years ago, my mom, dad, Dawn, Rowland, and I went to an exhibit at the Smithsonian entitled, The Art of Gaman (我慢). Despite your suffering, you were able to draw from an appreciation of common things, use what you found, and you thrived.

My mom shared the story of how you and she sailed in a terrible storm from Iwaishima to the mainland to seek work with the occupying American forces. By virtue of your gift for subtle flattery, you provided for your family, even if the treasures you brought home may have been meal-worm infested flour. Mariko hates doughnuts to this day, because they remind her of the bitterness of fried meal-worms. Later, my father, a young American commander of a small radar base during the Korean War, would call in his supply orders to you. He learned that you had a daughter, and he later married her.

I’ll always remember how you love to press flowers. Like the “Rose that Grew From Concrete,” as Tupak Shakur once penned, your spirit radiates beauty, despite stormy weather. As the author William Faulkner penned in honor of those who outlasted tragedy with grace,  In The Sound and The Fury, you “endured.”

                            Love, Daniel, Karen, and Joe, and Dolly, and Benny, our dogs

 

Our Mathematic Universe

I just read Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark, narrated by Rob Shapiro on my Audible app.

The exploration of very small & very large spaces, and the nature of time, is outside of practical concerns - I don't need these thoughts to survive. As a math teacher, however, I was looking for ways to sell mathematics as relevant to middle school students. While I am inclined to view all reality as inherently mathematical, I did not expect to consider the proposition that an acceptance of a reality outside of myself implies a mathematical universe. Given the conclusion that math may be the beating heart of reality, maybe  I sell the importance of math to reluctant learners with a newfound enthusiasm.

My students as a whole may not yet feel their lives depend on quantum mechanics, or care to consider whether our universe will end in a whimper or a crunch or a snap. They may not yet even be developmentally ready for such questions. For me, on the other hand, my passion for life depends on the belief in a larger reality to counteract the absurdity of a world governed by militant ignorance. My belief in a source of truth and universal values depends on a rational universe, and a bedrock of cause and effect relationships.

2020

I have feasted on ambrosia and nectar. I know pain.

I know what it's like to dance in the rain.

I have seen into the blackest pit which receives all light and gives back none.

I know the scent of coffee and cinnamon.

I know what it's like to be loved by a schnauzer.

I know what it's like to witness the brain death of the universe as it unfolds.

Eucalyptus trees burn. Koalas thirst. Glaciers melt.

A wannabe king assassinates a foreign leader, then brags about the hit on Twitter with an American flag, gangster style.

That's not America. I know.

I've marinaded in Kurzweil’s Age of the Spiritual Machines.

I know A Midsummer's Night Dream and all about Caliban.

I know The Consolation of Philosophy and all it implies about the nature of immortality.

I am able to connect The Iliad and The Odyssey to The Aneid and Dante.

I know why T. S Eliot entitled his poem The Waste Land, because I know what it's like to be part of the conversation.

FOX and the Kremlin and Putin's American stooges weaponize religion, light the Tiki torches of militant ignorance, trample upon the US Constitution at the singularity. Meanwhile, our machines are coming to consciousness.

I know Plato and Aristotle and Leonardo Da'Vinci, Louis Kelso, Buckminster Fuller, and William Ferree.

I know Malthus, and Herbert Spencer, and Orwell.

I've read Mein Kamph.

I've read Washington's Farwell Address

I've read Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address.

General Michael Hayden recommended on Twitter that I read Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant so I did. I have a better understanding now about why General Grant continued to order his men to attack at Cold Harbor.

I witnessed the American flag fixed in the sand, miles and miles across and untamed sea. I know a rising tide lifts all ships. I was there. 6 years old, a child of the 60's and 70's.

Les Brown reminds, “Nobody's going to write your book!“

I have stories to tell, but life is a Heraclitian fire, and I have urgent work to do, even on a snow day.

Braddock Road

Where did the sand go?
Butterfly fluttering by -
Pace, space, rat race.

Potomac Services Chimney Repair

The words that caught my eye when I googled "chimney repair" were "certified" and "veteran-owned". My concerns about my chimney were brought to me by my roofing contractor, who showed me water damage to the chimney . When the words "water damage" were uttered, I knew I needed a pro, which is why I called Potomac Services to schedule an appointment.

15 minutes early, in a shiny new van, my chimney pro arrived.. He used a high resolution pole camera that allowed him to inspect the entire chimney for signs of damage, so I was able to see for myself signs of structutal damage caused by chimney fires, a hidden danger of which I had been unaware.

In reviewing the real-time images with me, my certified chimey pro explained the process for applying liquid ceramic which his technicians would use to seal the chimney and restore structural integrity. He advised that he would provide a document for me to submit to my insurance company.

While I am awaiting that report, I am totally confidenr that I called the right people. When the job is done, I'll update my review.

Marie Kondo

For me, Marie Kondo's methods have found  me at the right time.  The past 20 years have been turbulent, and my basement and workspace clutter reflected how out of control my life had become. My decisions or non-decisions to hang on to possessions and pile them rather than dispose of them with gratitude, reflected my anxiety of desperately just hanging on financially as a husband, father, career-switcher. For the first summer as a teacher, I did not work a summer program to "maintain my skills", but I have, instead, focused on getting my house in order.

Having the audiobook alliowed me to listen on the long drive home from the beach. When I returned home, per Marie Kondo, the first area I addressed were my clothes,. I found it surprising how comforting ir was to ask, does it bring me joy? or separate my drawers using shoeboxes, folding clothes and placing them edgewise,

Meanwhile, as live-Tweeting the Mueller Testimony brought another chapter in my life to a close, cleaning my own house the Marie Kondo way has connected me spiritually to the decluttering that needs to occur on a national level. Just as I have had to make urgent decisions of what to dispose of and what to store, Mueller's testimpny about his prosecutory decisions also reflected the investigation's decisions of what to dispose of and what to store.

Since the Marie Kondo way emphasizes cleaning house all at once, in deciding what to dispose of and what to store, I've been forced to reckon with what I find most important. America faces a similar set of existential decisions.