Month: February 2024

Gordon Smith (2003) Spirit Messenger

I don’t know if I’d read Gordon Smith’s Spirit Messenger before. I guess there’s a message there somewhere. It doesn’t matter. I picked it up and read it for the first (and last) time again.

The Foreword is by Professor E Roy, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. In other words, he adds a bit of gravitas. He’s telling us this Glasgow hairdresser is to be trusted. He lists other famous men, among them Arthur Conan Doyle, who also believed the mediums could receive messages from the dead. It’s that old message, the dead aren’t really dead. The problem is with living. And we’re here for a reason. That reason is love. Whether or not we accept it is up to us.

Professor E Roy is also a member of the Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums (PRISM). That’s if he’s still alive, as the publication of this book took place twenty years ago. I’m assuming Gordon Smith is since he’s around the same age as me. I don’t know. There’s lots I don’t know.

I do know that if Professor E Roy is a member of such a group by many, he’ll be regarded as a bit kooky and needing watched. If he wasn’t already a tenured academic at the University of Glasgow his career would suffer.

Gordon Smith claims he didn’t need to be psychic to predict what the media would ask—how did you become a medium/psychic? Can you do any tricks to prove it?

He points out that people don’t continually ask the Archbishop of Canterbury how he got into the Jesus business, and they don’t ask how good he is at walking on water or raising the dead. (I might have made that bit up).

The Dali Lama isn’t grilled about reincarnation, although many might snigger behind his back about such a notion.

Gordon’s Smith book is straightforward. Here’s how it happened as a kid. This is how I got into the Spiritualist Circle. This is how I got my mentor, the seemingly well-known medium Albert Best. I hadn’t heard of him either but I had heard of his well-known Uncle George Best, an icon of world football.

I’d also watched Randal and Hopkirk Deceased as a kid. Hopkirk wore a white suit, so we knew he was a ghost. Nobody else could see him but us viewers and Randall. Obviously, he could walk through walls and listen in on conversations which he could report back. ‘Watch out Jeff,’ he’d say.

Gordon Smith is Randal. Ghosts don’t wear white suits. Some he can see, some he cannot. He needs to tune into them. They need to tune into him. He has spiritual helpers who assist the transition—the medium—between the earth planes and what most of us can’t see or feel.

The Awakening.

‘It was Wednesday 9 March 1987. I must have been up before 6.30 a.m. that I began to wake up. Somewhere between sleep and waking, a vision of a young man began to build up in front of me. I thought I was dreaming, but this dream was becoming more vivid. The young man was now fully visible. I recognised him as the brother of my workmate and close friend Christine Peebles.’

This is the beginning of Smith’s journey as a medium. He recounts what he was like as a kid. Normal. He saw things and said things that turned out to be true. But this wasn’t an everyday event. He still had lots of growing up to do. I guess we all have. Read on. https://amzn.to/48khBJ5

Celtic 7—1 Dundee.

Six first-half goals and a second-half strike by teenage substitute Daniel Kelly hit Dundee for seven. No big surprise those players that finished so strongly against Motherwell get their start. Cameron Carter Vickers came back into the team and got us the first goal in seven minutes. Nodding in a cross at the back post. Two-goal hero Idah quickly added a second tonight with another header. Matt O’Riley had seen what looked like a goal of the season come off the bar. But he wasn’t to be denied. He too scored with a header. Daizen Maeda, who had the miss of the season against Motherwell, failing to score from close in with a header, made amends here and it was all his own work. He got to the byeline and chopped back inside the Dundee defender, placing the ball beyond Carson.

At 5—0 the game is over. Dundee had started strongly with Joe Hart having to make the first save of the match in two minutes. Carter-Vickers had also fluffed his lines with a backpass that fell short allowing a run on goal. Curtis Main also had a goal chopped off after indecision by Carter Vickers and Liam Scales allowed the Dundee forward to force his way past them and power the ball into the net. Marginally, offside after a VAR call.

Callum McGregor made is six in added time of the first-half. He’d played a one-two with Taylor inside a crowed Dundee box and got his shot away.

Brendan Rodgers had the luxury of using whatever substitutes he liked as the second-half got under way. Findlay Robertson was booked for a late tackle on Johnston, who had a fine match, as did Yang down the right. Our wingers have been pretty dreadful of late. This was a different game with many more balls going into the box, rather than back the way.

Among all the dross we’ve signed, Idah looks a real find. His headed goal getting above two defenders was encouraging. He’s edged out Kyogo, and we’d never have thought that was possible on last season’s form. Kyogo come on and cannot score, but comes close with Carson making a wonderful save.

 Kuhn takes a place on the bench. He has done nothing to suggest that’ll change. Palma comes on and hits the bar, but he too looks reserve material. Rodgers rested Taylor, bringing on Ralston at left back. Phew. Talk about square pegs for round holes. He’s always cutting inside and playing the ball inside. We need better simple.

Hard to be critical, but every goal matters and it could come to the count. Substitute Michael Mellon came off the bench, finds himself unmarked at the back post and volleys home. Consolation goal.

For the first time in a long time I wasn’t apprehensive about this game. I think we’ll go to Tynecastle on Sunday and win. Just keep winning. That’s what we need to do. The eleven who started here is (without Hatate) the strongest. No room for sentimentality. Idah is delivering where Kyogo is not. We know our strongest team. Keep going. Rangers will drop points. Let’s not make it easy for a mediocre Ibrox team.   

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Rachel Eliza Griffiths (2023) Promise

I promised myself I’d read Promise. I’ve always a stack of books waiting to be read. This fell to the bottom of the pile and I had to keep starting it again and again and again. I got the set-up. Two black families on the edge of the sea, Salt Lake and a dirt-poor white family, living beside them in a kind of Eden.

Jim Crow laws are being challenged and then (as now) there’s a backlash. Cinthy Kindred is two years younger than her sister, Ezra, and her story, is in a large part, their story, but there are other narrators such as Ruby Scaggs, who goes to the same school as them and is the same age as Ezra. Her white skin and parental neglect doesn’t offend them. They have been drilled not to feel sorry for her. Not to feel nothing for white folk, but to keep their heads down and work hard.

‘THE DAY BEFORE OUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, ALWAYS SIGNALLED THE END of the time Ezra and I loved most. Not time the clocks that ticked and rang their alarms every morning, we knew that time didn’t really begin to end. What we meant by the time was happiness, a careless joy that sprawled its warm, sun-stained arms through our days and dreams for eight glorious weeks until our teachers arrived back in our lives, and our parents remembered their rules about shoes, bathing, vocabulary quizzes, and home training.’

Their father took a job in Hobart as a schoolteacher. Many of the villagers objected to black man teaching white children, especially a man with one arm. To being qualified and educated. The coon had it coming to him was as natural as breathing to the Scagg’s family. A landmark case in the Supreme Court is Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which declared state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students unconstitutional, only applied to Southern States. The people of Salt Point created their own rules and ways of doing things.

Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam outrage is still to come. Billy Holliday’s Bitter Fruit, which becomes the Strange Fruit of white supremacists sure of their moral right to hang black men from poplar trees, rotting in the sun, and becoming food for crows after being burned becomes part of the storyline. Ruby’s dad, Johan Ruben Scaggs III, an orphan, become part of the exclusive white men’s club when he witnesses such an event, before an uncle buys him a celebratory ice-cream cone—a rare treat.

The Civil Rights movement is on the move. Deputy Charlie is the law in Hobart. He takes his lead from his Uncle, who owns the land and the people on his land. Black men should know their place. But Ezra, Ruby and Cinthy are reaching menstruation. They’re becoming that age when men notice them. Even if they stand still their world is changing.

The Kindreds hail from a place called Damascus. They carry the weight of knowing, like Nina Simone’s song, their family and twelve children were burned and murdered by white racists. Welcome to the moron’s moron’s vision of a new America.

The Junkett family also own their home in Salt Point. They don’t carry as much familial baggage. Caesar and Irene teach their four children to be proud of who they are not what other folk think they are. They came from Virginia, seeking a new life, a better life.  Caesar’s job as a school janitor fits the stereotype of what villagers expect a black man to do. But his dignity and their self-sufficiency mark them out as being different. Offensive to Miss Dinah Alley, the niece of Mr Benedict Hobart, whose word is law.

Miss Burden, the old schoolteacher’s body, had washed up on the shore. Cinthy was two-years ahead of her class. One of Miss Burden’s favourites. Ruby Scaggs hoped to become a pilot and fly in the sky. She becomes Miss Dinah Alley’s pet. In Miss Dinah Alley’s world, black girls don’t graduate and aren’t worthy of attention or education. Not that she’s educated. But she knows how the world works and her purpose is to teach black girls how it should work. Security can become insecurity with the tipping of a coffee cup and the smashing of a glass. Read on.   

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Pre-order on Amazon, Bronte’s Inferno by Ewan Lawrie

Reading is what I do. Writing, not so much. But for most folk, that’s already too much. There’s a book in everyone. They’ve got one and they’re sticking with it. So I’m in a minority. I’ve also been thinking about class. I should probably use a capital C here, Class. I was reading yesterday that less than twenty-percent of youngsters (if you’re on Facebook sorry, you’re not young) didn’t know what a ‘scab’ was. I’m the kinda guy that laughs at my own jokes, but that’s no joke.

In my head, the book about how we lost the propaganda war would so obviously have a chapter, Coal (hint, it powered the industrial revolution).I took it for granted people would know what I was talking about. Scabs wasn’t something on your knee, they were much lower than that. G for Grenfell where class and race meet in North Kensington another entry point.

The Queen (old Lizzie) gets a walk-on part. I get a walk-on part too as a Scottish Republican ‘shite’ talker. Not in history. I’m already there. Playing the back of Dr Finlay’s head as he drove away (but I can’t remember where to). And a bit-part as someone yakking in the background as Mark McManus’s Taggart. No idea what I said, but the other extra wasn’t interested either. It was £80 for hanging about, which was good money then. A lunch wagon that offered the whole gamut of gamuts. It served everything but booze. Free tastes better than salted. Like Klondike for most writers, or a life’s earnings for an afternoon’s work. Either way, we’d never had it so good. So here I was a footnote in Ewan Lawrie’s trilogy Gibbous House, At The Back of the North Wind, which has nothing to do with pub’s opening hours but does have a Foreword (do books need Forewords in the same way that in the old days the tendency was to read the Daily Record backwards, from the Sports to the so-called news stories)?

Bronte’s Inferno, a manuscript, and footnote to the history of Moffatt’s transatlantic  wanderings. Being a footnote isn’t a full-time job, in the way that being a writer is, but the pay is much the same. I wasn’t thinking of Moffat directly, but indirectly when thinking about class. Gothic encounters of the Bronte variety (like Gibbous House) need a big house, a madwoman in the attic is always a handy appliance, a ghostly encounter and symbolic fire followed by a real blaze. Hints of Dante. Can’t remember much about it, but in translation there’s a special circle of hellbound lovers of Trump, and his little Trumpian neophytes, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. The unctuous simpletons that Moffat would have dealt with and in doing so, would put on their finest regalia and become the characters he dispatches. The moron’s moron Trump is too stupid and psychopathically inclined to be anything other than fictional. Farage too unctuous to be little more than a Dickensian stereotype. But Boris Johnson does leave you with a lot of possibilities. Boris Johnson would be the perfect man to play Moffat. He has a little intelligence, no morals to hinder him and he’s a people pleaser, but only to a certain point where he can take, take, take what he thinks is his unlimited worth.

As a footnote of footnoted worthies, the fictional, ‘Jim O’Connell’ in Bronte’s Inferno I’m sure I’d get on fine with the fictional Moffat and footnote in history, Boris Johnson, in the same way I got on fine with the fictional Larry Avarice and Ewan Ruined. I wouldn’t get on with the fictional moron’s moron or Farage. I’d encourage Moffat to deal with them pronto. Read on and pre-order for less than the price of a pint of Guiness. Meet me not in the flesh.

Notes

  • Marie Catherine Laveau was born on September 10, 1801, in New Orleans, Louisiana, when the city was still under Spanish colonial administration.
    • Her mother, Marguerite D’Arcantel, was a free woman of color with a rich heritage of African, European, and Native American ancestry.
    • The identity of her father remains uncertain due to inconsistent spellings in historical records. Some believe it could be Charles Laveau, the son of a white Louisiana creole and politician, while others suggest a free man of color named Charles Laveaux.
    • In 1819, Marie married Jacques Paris, a Quadroon free man of color who had fled from the Haitian Revolution. They had two daughters, Félicité and Angèle.
    • After Jacques Paris’s death, Marie entered a domestic partnership with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, a nobleman of French descent. 15 kids or more?
  • Voodoo Queen and Spiritual Practitioner:
    • Marie Laveau gained fame as a Voodoo priestess, herbalist, and midwife.
    • Her powers were legendary:
      • Healing the sick: She was known for her ability to cure ailments.
      • Altruism: Marie extended charitable gifts to the poor.
      • Spiritual rites: She oversaw rituals and ceremonies, blending elements of Voodoo, Native American practices, and traditional Roman Catholicism.
    • Legacy and Mystery:
    • Marie Laveau’s name is synonymous with New Orleans Voodoo. Her grave at Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 remains a popular pilgrimage site.

Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, followed in her footsteps, practicing rootwork, conjure, and various spiritual traditions.

Angel Heart.

  1. Jane Eyre’s Journey:
    1. Jane Eyre, the novel’s protagonist, embarks on her own infernal journey—a quest for identity, love, and self-discovery.
    1. Her trials mirror Dante’s descent into the depths of hell.
  2. Gothic Elements:
    1. Both Jane Eyre and Dante’s Inferno share Gothic elements:
      1. Gibbous House.
      1. Haunting secrets.
      1. Dark passions and murder.
  3. Love and Redemption:
    1. Jane’s love for Mr. Rochester mirrors Dante’s devotion to Beatrice.
    1. Redemption through love.
  4. Orphaned Heroines:
    1. Miss Pardoner, Jane Eyre and Dante’s Beatrice both grapple with loss and orphanhood.
    1. Resilience feeds the fire.
  5. Supernatural Encounters:
    1. Jane’s visions (like ghostly laughter and faraway voices) echo Dante’s encounters with spirits.
    1. Both traverse realms beyond the mundane.
  6. Symbolic Fire:
    1. Bertha Mason, locked in the attic, embodies fire and madness.
    1. Dante’s hellfire finds resonance in the Tory Party (hopefully).
  7. Moral Dilemmas:
    1. Jane’s choices—to marry Rochester despite his secrets, her secrets and him being a burnt out, blind Tory—mirror Dante’s ethical dilemmas.
    1. Both confront complex moral landscapes.Transcendence and Redemption:Jane’s spiritual awakening parallels Dante’s ascent toward light.

Redemption awaits beyond suffering.

“Brontë’s Inferno” on Amazon now.

Motherwell 1—3 Celtic

It was hardly the Helicopter Sunday of 20 years ago, but an Adam Idah double—his second goal coming in the 94th minute—with an even later 96th minute goal from Luis Palma added gloss to an unlikely win. Defeat would have left Rangers five points clear, with eleven games remaining. Celtic quite simply needed to win.

At the end of the first-half that seemed unlikely. Stuart Kettlewell and Motherwell had Celtic’s number. Sit in and let our defenders have the ball, retreat to the half-way line. Hit on the break. Mostly up the left-hand side. It’s worked for most Scottish teams such as Ross County, Hearts, Hibs and Kilmarnock are repeat offenders.

Motherwell got in the act. Celtic had more of the ball in the first-half, but few shots on goal. Motherwell looked the more dangerous team. Theo Blair thought he’d scored after two minutes. Beating the offside trap, running into space and chopping back with a back heel into the six-yard box and slotting past Joe Hart. VAR showed he was offside.

He wasn’t offside later in the half, playing in the channels between centre-backs but Nowrocki got a block in.  

Blair and Spittal combined down the right, with the latter misfiring when sighting goal. All Celtic offered was a tame Kyogo effort. But we looked to be going in at half-time with the game even.

Seventeen-year-old Lennon Millar (sign him?) spun away from McGregor marking him on the edge of the Celtic box. His cutback to Spittal was perfectly weighed to leave him with a one-hit strike from the edge of the box which curled into the corner of the net.

Rodgers made changes to the team at half-time. Loan signing Adam Idah is one of the few success stories. Kuhn looks like more money wasted. And it’s difficult to see him having a future at Celtic, but, of course, I hope I’m wrong. Up until now our loan and summer signings have been disastrous. None of them look ready to replace the old guard. We all know about the £80 million banked and it sickens us. Neglect of that scale has handed Rangers the advantage in a two-team race for Champions League riches.

Adam Idah’s first goal was every bit as good as Spittal’s, if not better. Greg Taylor had one of those games when he was picking out passes to Motherwell player’s feet. His cross into the box was more in hope than expectation. Idah got in between two defenders and steered it home.

Celtic dominated from then on. We know what to expect from Diazen Maeda. Faultless effort and backtracking work. His headed miss from inside the six-yard box after been teed up by Yang, was the kind only the Japanese international specialises in. When it seems easier to score, but he doesn’t.

Yang coming on for empty-jersey Kuhn made a difference on the right. And  it was from the right Alistair Johnson cut back from near the touchline. Idah still had to ghost in front of two defenders to stab it home. He was even sensible enough to take the ball into the corner in the 95th minute and run the clock down.

Luis Palma’s late-late goal was checked by VAR for offside. It wouldn’t have affected the result. But we know from previous seasons this title is going to the wire and we’re second favourites to win it. I’ve a sneaking suspicion we will (but not the Scottish).

Of course, I hate Rangers and I’m biased. We’re not great. But they’re simply mediocre. I’ve little doubt we can beat them home and away. It doesn’t seem that long ago when we beat Dundee United 9—0. Every game seemed not only winnable but a matter of guessing how many we’d score. Now every game seems lose-able. Brendan Rodgers was quick to reassure us he’d signed a three-year contract and he intended to honour it. Lose this title and he’ll have no say in the matter. Dereliction of duty in all things Celtic springs to mind. We’re on the ropes, but we can still land killer punches. It would be easier on the nerves if we didn’t keep doing it at extra-time of extra-time.     

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Joan Didion (2005) The Year of Magical Thinking.

The Year of Magical Thinking has been an international bestseller, been reprinted over twenty times and is perhaps the best-known of her books. The subject she specialises in is death, which we’re all familiar with, but nobody seems to want to talk or write about it.

In Duncan Williamson’s short story Death in a Nut, Jack (no relation) lived with his mother in a cottage by the shoreside (Williamson was born in a tent on the shores of Loch Fyne). His mother won’t drink her morning tea. She tells her son that Death will come for her that day. Sure enough, Death appears as an old man with a shining scythe on his back. He asks Jack for directions to the cottage they live in. You can guess what happens next.

‘Go to the literature,’ Joan Didion tells us. ‘I’ve been a writer all my life.’

Screenplays, in particular, like The Panic in Needle Park, start with the status-quo. That’s the set-up.

Quintana, the beautiful child Joan Didion and her husband, John Murray, adopted when she was three-days old admitted to the sixth-floor ICU at Beth Israel Hospital, New York, 25th December 2003. We know from Didion’s subsequent memoir, Blue Nights, Quintana doesn’t make it. Which is a nice way of saying she dies.  

John, her husband, also dies on the 30th December 2003 (Death in a Nut, book 1). He has a heart-attack. The kind doctor friends of the family called ‘widow makers’. When the paramedics came, they performed a theatre of dance. Shocking him back to life and cutting his chest open. He was already dead. It was just a matter of putting him on the gurney. Wheeling him away and pronouncing his dead body, dead on arrival. Didion recognises this sad truth later, when she’s more herself.

Just because her husband of 40 years was dead didn’t mean that they’d stopped bickering. She called it the void. ‘There is no real sense of the meaning of the word “dead” when applied to someone who was alive just days ago.’

‘Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.’

This is Didion’s refrain from Magical Thinking. Limbo was for the living. She was reminded of how, before John died, he had complained about wasting time (writing time is precious) on writing a piece about Natalie Wood. Yet she can’t seem to think or do. Her failure is not just that of a widow but also a writer.

A writer’s job is to remember. When she sits down and begins her outline of what happened to her on 4th October 2004, she was doing her job. Making sense of the world. Her habit of mind had changed from grief to mourning. Greif puts death in the nut. Mourning lets death washes back to shore and unfold oneself, stand upright with his (or her) sickle. Grief is passive and past tense. Mourning is always present.

‘Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.’ Read on.

Notes.

1. The Ordinary

2 The Nature of Grief

3. Mourning Ourselves (plural)

4. Letting Go

“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.” But eventually, we must release them. Letting go doesn’t diminish our love; it allows us to move forward while honoring their memory.

5. The Power of Shared Knowledge

“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control.”

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Tilly Let Loose on the Day

Tilly cut loose from the day

Brightness like a red balloon

Utterances dumbstruck with gravity

Details don’t matter

Holding onto her giggling

A healing prayer

Look at me

Look at me

Look at me

She says

How can I Iook away?

Time crawls to her battle cry

Full fathom hazel eyes

Blink away tears

A defeated joy

Uncatchable and unthinkable

As the mote in God’s eyes.

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Amy Cuddy (2016) Presence Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.

Amy Cuddy (2016) Presence Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.

I usually give books like Amy Cuddy’s Presence short-shrift. Fake it till you make it seems to me like pebbledash. Yet it works and she shows her workings. How and why it works. She traces her ideas back to polymath William James, who helped to develop psychology as a subject of study outside philosophy, or perhaps inside?

‘Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.’

I’m reminded of Buddhist precepts of right thought, right deed, and right action. But here the action comes first. A way of nudging the brain with incremental changes to the body and, therefore the mind. Brain plasticity.

I used to occasionally help out with Michael Quickly who has cerebral palsy. He did not have to big himself up to feel confident or adopt the Wonder Woman posture to help his self-confidence. He was just a boy that drooled. His mum and dad took a decision to follow a strict exercise routine twice a day for six days that changed over the year and needed ideally four volunteers to work each arm and leg and ‘reprogrammed’ his brain. Did it work? I don’t know. We’d have to have two Michael Quickly’s one who did the programme and one who didn’t. Twin studies would be ideal. We don’t have that. But the science behind Cuddy’s belief is impressive.

The dowager’s droop, for example, adolescents and teenagers develop from being on their phone has nothing to do with content, but the way strained neck muscles shorten shoulders into a bump and droopy posture that becomes imprinted on the body.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of belief too. How do we know what’s true? It seems sacrilegious that the moron’s moron, a psychopathic narcissistic rapist, who in a single word, I’d classify as evil, will be the next President of the United States.

I explain that to myself by the way beliefs are constructed. 170 million Americans can be wrong not because of the facts, but the way they have been manipulated. Facts are rarely written in stone and when they are, as Moses showed, you can fling them away in a pit of anger because facts are more often an expression of feelings. 170 million Americans have become locked into fear-mongering of the basest beastliest kind, which breeds hatred of the other. Them and Us. They are always on the outside trying to gain entry.

Cuddy shows that them and us also plays out on the body. The external world can make us shrivel inside. Our bodies keep the score. Nudge theory. Facts are how we feel and who we present ourselves as we face the world.  170 million psychopathic narcissist or conservatives in the language of politics, doesn’t fill me with confidence in humanity. Why shouldn’t we fake it, if everyone else is too, makes me a conservative too.  

Cuddy outlines her ten principles of Presence (yeh, I know ten seems come from the Commandments set in stone stereotype, so if they don’t work blame Moses, not Cuddy).

1 Presence is about approaching our biggest challenge without dread, executing them without anxiety, and leaving them without regret.

2 To be present, we must be able to access our authentic best selves

3 The way we tell stories to ourselves matters; if we don’t believe our stories, why would anyone else?

4 We should focus less on the impression we make on others and more on the impression we make on ourselves.

5 When we’re present we convey conviction, passion, and confidence without arrogance.

6 When we’re present with others, we invite them to be present with us.

7 Feeling personally powerful frees up bandwidth, reduces anxiety and allows us to see challenges as opportunities rather than threats.

8 Our bodies shape our minds, our minds shape our behaviour and our behaviour shapes our outcomes.

9 When we feel powerless, our body language shrinks, when we feel powerful, it expands.

10 When we expand we become powerful and become present.

Cuddy argues we are stewards of our own lives and often we have lost our way. Our bodies can teach us the way home. It’s difficult to disagree, but we should also refrain from using it as a stick to beat the poor and oppressed.

Luke 12:48 (New International Version): “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Stewardship is not singular, whereas accountability is. Wealthy individuals should not take their greater economic and political advantages for granted, but should be mindful of their obligations to contribute positively to the world and perhaps even pay some taxes. (Discuss?)

Notes

Key Ideas from “Presence”

  1. Mindset Over Content Preparation
    1. Discuss the shift from focusing solely on content to considering how we present ourselves.
    1. Share Cuddy’s quote on preparation. Wonderwomen stance. Shoulders back. Stand like a soldier taking orders from yourself. Powerstances.
  2. Internal vs. External Impressions
    1. Explore the impact of self-impression versus others’ perception.
    1. Emphasize the need to prioritise self-awareness/self-love as centring.
  3. Confidence without Arrogance
    1. Explain the difference between true confidence and arrogance.
    1. Cuddy’s quote illustrate this concept.
  4. The Power of Presence
    1. Describe how powerful individuals communicate differently.
    1. Discuss the significance of eye contact and speech patterns.
  5. Identity and Tools
    1. Delve into the idea that confidence stems from self-belief.
    1. Relate it to carrying “tools” rather than “weapons.
  6. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
    1. Explain how our expectations shape our interactions.
    1. Cuddy’s perspective on this phenomenon.
  7. Embracing Change
    1. Reflect on the melancholy of leaving the past behind.
    1. Connect it to personal growth and transformation.
  8. Trust and Respect
    1. Explore the warmth and competence dimensions in initial interactions.
    1. Discuss the golden quadrant of being warm and competent.

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John Vaillant (2023) Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World.

John Vaillant moves from the taiga of The Tiger to  ‘thinking like a fire’ in the boreal forests surrounding Fort McMurray (Fort Money) in Alberta, Canada and the evacuation of its almost 100 000 residents in May, 2016. His argument is that these fires can no longer be considered the exception to the rule, but the rule itself in an Anthropocene warming world we have created by our increasing use of fossil fuels which destroys our planet.  

A firestorm cloud over Fort McMurray 45,000 feet tall, puncturing the stratosphere, creating its own lightning, hurricane-force winds and created its own weather. Full trees candled and homes burnt at the rate of $1million a minute. Valliant shows how ‘Operation Gomorrah’ which created Germany’s Nagasaki by testing and refining the methods of firebombing cities and the flammability of materials killed around 20 000 civilians in Hamburg in similar shoebox houses and created atmospheric conditions in which scientists were asking if Canada had detonated a nuclear bomb.   

Just as Vaillant used The Tiger as a metaphor for a changing world, he uses Fort McMurray to show how we have come to the point where ideas about change to the status quo and the appearance of normality clash. And we were lied to again and again and again by the fossil fuel industry leaders, most notably Exxon-Mobil and the Koch Brothers and their followers in the 1980s. Their alumni included President George W.Bush senior and junior and most Vice Presidents. The moron’s moron, President Bush has pledged to start where he stopped after last running his mouth off and ‘drill baby drill’. The next American President in waiting made another pledge (boast) to spend $20 trillion on a railroad from Alberta to America which makes no economic sense as oil-tar-bitumen businesses go bust. Insurance companies withdraw from supporting the fossil-fuel industries and their ‘stranded assets. Even the mighty Exxon, who took a couple of hundred million dollar write-down on tar-sands at Fort McMurray moves down in value to less worth than a store that sells groceries and outside the top ten companies in the United States.  

Vaillant shows quite clearly how climate change was recognised by the father of the hydrogen bomb as a danger to the American way of life, which then, as now, was all they were really concerned about.   

California Wildfires: These have been burning with increasing frequency intensity due to global heating. The fire season lasts all year.

Alaskan Wildfires: The state of Alaska has witnessed severe wildfires in recent years.

Chilean Wildfires: Chile has faced extensive forest fires, exacerbated by climate change.

Siberian Wildfires: Vast areas of Siberia have been ablaze, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Portuguese, Spanish, French, Swedish, and Greek Wildfires: These countries have all experienced destructive wildfires.

Vaillant estimates wildfires will take hold in areas thought outside the norm and will affect 1 in 6 Americans. Areas previously thought too cold (minus 60 degrees Centigrade) or too arid, even hit us in Scotland with all our rain. The reverse of what was thought possible with the warming and greening of the Artic and climate and water feedback loops.

J.P. Morgan Chase the largest financier of the fossil fuel industry in July 2020 suggested to its shareholders (the richest 10% and owners of most assets in our warming world) that now was the time to get out ‘if the human race is to survive’. In the meantime, the richest ten percent have created contracts that mean we need to keep giving these captains of industry increasing amounts of money for destroying our planet and fossil-fuel bombs that will fall on our children and children’s children’s heads. A zero-sum game.

I told my sister to read this book and think about moving. She’s surrounded by Canadian taiga trees, but she won’t, of course. Like those in Fort McMurray. Like the rest of us, she doesn’t think it will happen to her. We’re conservative in the wrong way and duped into supporting the richest people in the world tear up and pollute our planet. Been lied to and duped. Vaillant is optimistic, I’m not. I’ve read the runes. Read on.

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Celtic 1—1 Kilmarnock.

Kyogo give us the lead we deserved just after thirty minutes. Ralston did something unorthordox. He crossed the ball from the edge of the box. Kyogo, in the land of the giants, got his head on it. But this is not a team that can add to their lead or hang onto their lead. We all know it’s going to be a header. We’re trying to see the game out going into the last few minutes. Ball wide. Ball into the box. Goal. Dave Watson 92nd minute.

Ironically, Kilmarnock had another chance before the 95th minutes were up. Murray cuts inside and has a one-on-one with Hart. But the Celtic goalie makes it look easy.

It was pretty easy to pick out Celtic’s starting eleven. It would be pretty much the eleven who started against St Mirren. But although Bernabei has technically done well, we knew Greg Taylor is simply better. He also doesn’t make stupid fouls look easy. When Beranbei came on, he gave away a stupid foul out on the touchline, near the half-way line. Ball into the box (obviously). Joe Hart has a decent save. He’d a few decent saves from corners and free kicks and free headers. Ralston doesn’t prevent the cross. Bernabei, of course, was brushed aside for the Kilmarnock equaliser.

Before that, another substitute, Bernardo, had a great chance from about eight yards to make it two-nil. O’Riley had a few efforts on goal. He did here as well. But his mishit shot fell to Barnardo, middle of the goals, near the penalty spot. He made space and put it over the bar.

We are under no doubt how McInnes’s teams play. Long balls into the corners and sitting in deep. No different from his time at Aberdeen, where he did a reasonable job, while playing some of the most dull, nullifying, Walter-Smith type football, you don’t have to imagine. You see it week in week out.

This is a spineless Celtic team. My da would have called them fannydancers.  We can’t score goals. We can’t defend. None of our wingers like going forward. Kuhn, even this early, looks like money wasted. Celtic have brought in dross after dross. Sad to say, the initiative is with an equally poor Rangers team. The difference is they don’t draw or lose games like this (let’s hope I’m proved wrong). They have consistency. Of course, Celtic were booed off. We weren’t mugged. We were there for the taking. Dreadful by any standards other than the metrics of possession. It’s impossible to look away. Equally hard to watch them. We pray for the return of Carter Vickers and, in particular, Hatate, as if they are messiahs. That’s how low we’ve got. This has all the skid marks of Neil Lennon’s last season in charge.   

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