Hopeline Video

Did not update the website last night because of a thunderstorm. The rain was needed. Saw Wall-E last night. Cute movie.

I was a bit of a slug this weekend. A time for work and a time for rest.

I decided I will open the church for meditation this summer. If someone shows up, we will sit. If no one shows then I will go through the items in the back room. Several books, tapes, magazines and other items were added to the Sangha collection. This past Sunday I reorganized the cushions and went through the books currently in the library and changed their labels. I would like to get the tapes on to CD or DVD (whichever is appropriate). I have the tools for a video tape to DVD transfer but not a cassette tape to CD.

I plan to put together a list of the books in the library. I took a snap shot of each book in the current library and will incorporate the newly added books in the coming weeks. Who would have thought that a cell-phone camera could be so useful?

As long as I'm fully present this work can serve as a meditation tool.

Below is a special video about Hopeline. Feel free to add it to your website or blog.

Traces of the Trade

Last night, the church hosted a showing of the documentary, Traces of the Trade, along with a discussion afterwards.

Traces of the Trade explores the experiences of descendants of a family that made its fortune in the slave trade. A very thought-provoking documentary.

One of the discussion questions was about embarrassing or uncomfortable interactions with African-Americans.

An incident from childhood worked its way back to the front of my mind. I thought about sharing it with the group but I couldn't. It hurt too much. I thought about writing about it in this blog but only the emotions and the impact it had on both players in this incident (beyond the immediate reaction to the incident, I can only speculate as to the impact on the other person). I still cannot speak or write of the details of the incident itself.

I'm having trouble even writing about the emotions. All I can say is that it still haunts me even after over 30 years and it ranks as the dumbest thing I've ever said to another person in seriousness. I've said plenty of dumb things that were meant to be jokes; things that get taken the wrong way, intentions not made clear, ignorance or simply poor taste. I said this thing out of ignorance of such a magnitude that someone might have assumed that I had some kind of mental handicap, but I was not joking.

I find myself unable to write any further about this incident despite the emotions roiling within and the thoughts doing battle in my head. Just too much to write about in a coherent way.

Work - Fun Balance

I found myself spending too much time on non-work related stuff so today I did things differently. Work with periodic short breaks for non-work. Worked pretty well and got a few things off my to do list.

My color printer is evil. It turns a seemingly simple job of printing invitations into a stressful chore, every damn semester. Features don't work consistently, random errors, printing in a layout exactly the opposite that I requested, not retaining the settings, taking up multiple sheets of paper and of course the random paper jam. The printer works fine for smaller jobs but for some reason the damn invitations causes it to go crazy. These things are printed on regular size sheets of paper and then cut and half so there goes the unusual paper size excuse. The amount of work that goes into these things - oh crap - I remembered the envelopes. Oh, the fucking envelopes. Really, this damn thing takes way too much of my time. Lots of people better show up for this event.

Rented Kung Fu Hustle from Netflix. Great movie. Stephen Chow must have realized that Kung Fu movies are rather absurd so he took it way over the edge. Don't eat or drink while watching this movie, otherwise you might choke or redecorate. Kung Fu action with cartoonish comedy and a bit of sweetness thrown in. I might buy a copy of this movie.