A monthly collection of morsels and scraps from my table.
Rebellious Sons
I have three sons: wily eleven-year-old Thor, the dancing magician (pictured), who should have been named Loki; big-hearted bull-at-a-gate Oak, a sensitive, physically vigorous ten-year-old; and dogged, defiant, five-year-old North, whose spirit animal is a musk ox colliding head on with another musk ox.
I’ve got my hands full, and that’s without taking my seven-year-old daughter into account.
Even though I’m outnumbered, their daily rebellion against me is small scale and manageable.
When it comes to more challenging father-son conflicts I rely on my David: The Alpha Chimp routine:
I know it won’t work forever (David: The Alpha Chimp is getting old) so I have been looking to the bible1 for guidance on what to do with wayward sons.
It’s quite straightforward really. In Leviticus 20:9 it states:
All who curse father or mother shall be put to death; having cursed father or mother, their blood is upon them.
Quite right.
And in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 there is practical advice on how best to put them to death with help from friends, family and the wider community:
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.
It’s put my mind at rest.
Overheard in a Second-Hand Bookshop
Recently I spent three-quarters-of-an-hour in a second-hand bookshop browsing the old Penguin classics with the orange spines.
I was tempted by a copy of The Fall (Camus) and The Third Man (Greene) but decided against spending money and bringing more things into the van when it is already full.
Just before I left, Jean, her friend, and their respective husbands, crossed the threshold, carrying in broad Yorkshire accents, and plenty of brio, which reminded me of my extended family, who range from Derbyshire, through Manchester and right up to Hebden Bridge.
The husbands went immediately to their section of choice, picked up a historical writer and proceeded to converse amicably.
Jean and her friend brought up the rear, the latter noticing a book that drew her interest.
‘Dave,’ she said, addressing her husband, ‘you’ve got this book.’
No response from Dave.
‘Dave… Dave… Dave…’
Still no response.
‘Dave… I said you’ve got this book.’
Still nothing.
‘Dave, you’ve got this book haven’t you.’
‘Dave.’
‘Yes I have, yes,’ said Dave.
After failing to get any significant buy in from Dave, she turned to her friend Jean:
‘Do you read Jean?’
‘No, I can’t see can I,’ replied Jean.
‘Oh no.’
Silence.
‘I just read the, what is it, the television guide,’ said Jean.
Threads
Putin never wanted this war.2 He was provoked by the continued expansion of NATO’s3 eastward boundary, a calculated strategy lead by America that threatens to incite worldwide nuclear conflict.
Everybody should know this by now. Plenty of sane and sensible people have laid out the situation clearly enough so that we can see it for what it really is: American imperialism. Take this discerning example, or this, or this. Putin himself spent two hours explaining his stance to an American journalist here.
While the conflict grinds on, perpetuated by empty-hearted blackguards like Boris Johnson, more people will die, and money will keep flowing to investors who have financial stakes in the military industrial complex, and investment firms set to profit from reconstructing war-torn Ukraine. It’s a fantastic business model: catalyse the conflict; sell the bombs to destroy everything; then secure all the lucrative rebuild contracts - it’s just a shame about all the dead kids.
This cynical strategy has been proliferating since it was conceived in America after WW2. President Eisenhower, at his 1961 farewell address, warned of the necessary evil4 he had helped to create, and handed over responsibility to his successor John F. Kennedy who, in a doomed attempt to foster peace, took on the military industrial complex Eisenhower had warned of, vowing to shatter one of its primary architects, the CIA, ‘into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.’5 Within a year of making that promise, he was shot dead in the back seat of his presidential limousine, murdered by his own people.6
God knows what it will take to slay this American basilisk. Perhaps it is unstoppable, and in the not too distant future, the last barrel of oil dredged from the spent earth will be used to fuel the rocket engine of one final intercontinental ballistic missile, its fifty megaton payload descending on Russia/America/Britain to wipe out the few remaining people desperately trying to survive the global thermonuclear war.7
None of it really matters as we have no real influence over the course of events anyway.8
One thing we can do is attempt to maintain our own personal dignity and clear-eyed integrity whilst being assailed by lies. By resisting the Two Minutes Hate and twisted Newspeak disseminated by the Ministry of Truth we can lift our attention from the poor-Ukraine-Putin-is-evil propaganda put out by The Party and see what is really at stake.
Our western civilisation may well be accelerating toward its final demise9 but we will get there much quicker if America keeps on with its imperious and domineering agenda and Putin, threatened with annihilation, presses the big red button.
If this happens, our everyday lives will become a horrific hell:10
Men and Women
A refreshing stream of sanity and truth from Darren Allen; not for everyone.
If you can read this without having a wobbly or getting offended, there might just be hope:
After the Harvest
Early rise, step outside: a cold autumnal morning.
The cold cling of damp air, settling on exposed skin.
Horizon aglow: pink and yellow.
A sudden flutter of dark feathers. The bird lands on the awning above me, out of sight.
That was a large one, I think to myself.
Moving slowly, I take a peek: blue-grey cloak; long, dagger-like beak; telescopic eye.
The heron passes asking what are you missing when you only look for big things? A selfish wish never comes good.11
It sits by the smoking chimney for a few minutes, looking out over the bare barley field with binocular vision.
After the farmers have harvested, herons sometimes visit the fields, looking for rodents.
I watch as it watches. Such intimacy is a gift.
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The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version
He’s plenty busy consolidating power, exercising autocratic control, extending his presidency, strengthening relations with China, and doing down government critics with arbitrary prosecution, lengthy prison terms, violent attacks and other reprisals.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet Union no longer exists, why does NATO? The Soviet Union’s counter alliance with several Eastern European countries, the Warsaw Pact, came to an end in 1991.
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Excerpt from President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address (1961).
JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass (2008)
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs (1982):
Other than sheltering the refugees who have fled to Britain, one of whom I met in Findhorn recently.
It has been more than four decades since scientists began warning of the inevitable consequences of trying to pursue limitless economic growth on a finite planet. Since that time, as the limits to growth have become more and more clearly visible on the horizon of our future, a remarkable paradox has unfolded. The closer we get to those limits, the more they impact our daily lives, and the more clearly our current trajectory points toward the brick wall of a difficult future, the less most people in the industrial world seem to be able to imagine any alternative to driving the existing order of things ever onward until the wheels fall off.
Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead by John Michael Greer (2016).
Hunting the Stag by Polly Atkin. From Much with Body (2021).