WW: Concentration

Half A School

“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education.

"My request is:

"Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.”

(From a letter written to teachers by a Holocaust survivor. Teacher and Child, Haim Ginott.)

(Photo courtesy of Sam Shrestha and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Winter kill

(Deer bones found on the forest floor.)

Competitive Meditation

Finally! A competitive sport I can letter in. If any corporate types are reading this, I'm looking for sponsors. I'll sew your logo to my robe.

(By the way, the reason the Bangladeshis always win these tournaments is because they bring 110 percent to their game. And as any Zen coach will tell you, that's a lot of nothing.)

I hear the WWF is looking for a merger. (That's the wrestling organisation, not the wildlife fund.)

This Saturday, at Zenola Gardens! Extreme Zazen! BE THERE!!!

(Get it?)

WW: Cat-petting meditation

(Just like the Buddha used to do.)

Street Level Zen: Monastery

"I woke up this morning and my girlfriend asked if I'd slept well. I said no, I made a few mistakes." ‪

Steven Wright‬









(Photo courtesy of Marilyn Cole and Wikimedia Commons.) ‪

WW: Giant Pacific signal crayfish

(This is the giant Pacific signal crayfish [Pacifastacus leniusculus]. Individuals can reach 7 inches – at which point they're real lobsters – but this one's only four.

Oddly, few eat these here, though they're the both the biggest and best-tasting crawdads in the Western Hemisphere. Commercial licenses are available, and some folks are already making a tidy living in a developing market. [My grandfather, born in 1900, made pocket money in his first decade by catching these in Portland creeks and selling them to Jake's Grill.]

The signal crayfish is now threatened – mostly theoretically, to date – by invasive species from elsewhere. Ironically, it's also wiping out native stocks in Europe, having been introduced there last century to replace the fishery in some of those very species, which had been greatly reduced by an epidemic.)