sense of doubt

Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #561 - The Best Brain Pickings of 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #561 - The Best Brain Pickings of 2016

Hi Mom, Just a place to stash readings today. Lots going on. My birthday is tomorrow. Dad has decided to stay in Mexico another month. I am trying to study Calculus and do my work for my jobs at the same time. I walked the dogs today and made an easy dinner (salad, rice, tofu in curry).

Not much in the way of original content here Mom, but that's to be expected. The original content will wax and wane. In fact, pressed for time as I am, and posting a day late, I am going to skip Daily Bowie posts both today and tomorrow as I cannot do both.

I always think I can do more than I can do. You would think I would have learned these lessons by now.

Hello, chris tower! As this season of reflection draws to a close, I take stock of the best Brain Pickings articles this year -- "best" being a composite measure of those you read and shared the most, and those I most enjoyed writing – in this special annual edition. The regular weekly newsletter will return on Sunday, as usual. If you're enjoying it, please consider supporting this labor of love with a donation – in 2016, I spent thousands of hours and tremendous resources on it, and every little bit of support helps enormously.

10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Identity in Literature and Life

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

There Is a Crack in Everything, That’s How the Light Gets In: Leonard Cohen on Democracy and Its Redemptions

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They Communicate

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Young Barack Obama on What His Mother Taught Him About Love

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Cry, Heart, But Never Break: A Remarkable Illustrated Meditation on Loss and Life

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear: Toni Morrison on the Artist’s Task in Troubled Times

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Science of How Our Minds and Our Bodies Converge in the Healing of Trauma

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Ursula K. Le Guin on Power, Oppression, Freedom, and How Imaginative Storytelling Expands Our Scope of the Possible

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Difficult Balance of Intimacy and Independence: Beloved Philosopher and Poet Kahlil Gibran on the Secret to a Loving and Lasting Relationship

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Bruce Lee’s Never-Before-Seen Writings on Willpower, Emotion, Reason, Memory, Imagination, and Confidence

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

What Depression Is Really Like

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Frida Kahlo on How Love Amplifies Beauty: Her Breathtaking Tribute to Diego Rivera

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

Leonard Bernstein on Cynicism, Instant Gratification, and Why Paying Attention Is a Countercultural Act of Courage and Rebellion

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

How Pioneering Physicist Lise Meitner Discovered Nuclear Fission, Paved the Way for Women in Science, and Was Denied the Nobel Prize

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

The Magic of the Book: Hermann Hesse on Why We Read and Always Will

READ ARTICLE / FORWARD TO A FRIEND /

James Baldwin on Freedom and How We Imprison Ourselves

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

- Days ago = 563 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1701.18 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

I am Christopher Tower the gmr

I am Christopher Tower (or Chris), and I am a writer of stuff. I grew up in Michigan; I now live in the Portland, OR metro area. I play Ultimate, ride a bike, and supposedly educate college persons while myself being educated in college. I am married with two kids, a beagle, a curly lab, and a fiesty pug/frenche mix. I like sushi. I love all SF, fantasy, comic books, D&D, board games, and Gnosticism. I am a Jungian. I am currently studying Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Walden University.

SENSE OF DOUBT STATUS AS OF 0705.04 - 16:45

Sense of Doubt is not currently dedicated to any themes or special interest. The subject matter is mine and may range from comic books to ultimate or from Baseball to feminist-centered media criticism. Until I feel I have enough content for multiple blogs, or until I am seized with a desire to create multiple blogs, this is it, and appropriately so. "Sense of Doubt" came about in Bowie’s Berlin period and the dark, ambient collaborations with Brian Eno. Like the Bowie of 1978, I have my own darkness that steals over me and through me, infecting everything. At the risk of sounding far too melodramatically obsessed with my own self-flagellations, this blog dedicates itself to that darkness, that infection. But it’s fun, too. Hey, I can be amusing? Or not. It’s the way of the [w]rench. Neurosis compelling action in insecure double-checking and misunderstanding evasions. It is my way.

More from the original description text that needed editing in 2015: Furthermore, Sense of Doubt is dedicated to the random. The theme is no theme. Just questions, doubt, and uncertainty. Feel the power of not knowing the answer. So dedicated on the last day of July 2006 by the Galactic Monkey Wrench.

The Galactic Monkey Wrench

This is the logo of the Galactic Monkey Wrench. I was given the nickname Galactic Monkey Wrench in college by a friend of mine who felt that I threw the monkey wrench into the cosmos at every available opportunity. Later, in discussions with my best friend, who is the Lord of Chaos (the Loc), he asked for my title and when I told him, without thinking, he blurted out "the gmr!" Since this was random and we appreciate randomness, I became the gmr, even though technically I should be the gmw. But gmw sounds like a car or some industrial manufacturing firm that makes a strange widget of which one has never heard. This acronym fetish may make no sense to anyone else, but my friend and I are quite driven to provide acronyms for many things. At the very least, it allows us to keep our conversations obscure and often private as no one knows about what we're talking.

Monkey Wrench Books

Chris's books

A Feast for Crows

A Feast for Crows

by George R.R. Martin

This book is a little slower than the others. But if you become invested in this series, it provides key information about the history of Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea. It may not contain chapters with my favorite characters ...

A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones

by George R.R. Martin

Do I really need to review this book? It's one of the best books I have ever read. Martin is a great writer. All the books are great, and I am loving my time rereading them. If you have not checked out these books, start here and get ready ...

The Golden City

The Golden City

by John Twelve Hawks

These books are immensely entertaining. Treat yourself to some strong writing, great action, compelling characters, and a mix of metaphysics and theology. The ending of this third book, which is presumably the last, is anti-climactic and so...

Pathfinder

by Orson Scott Card

This was a fun book. Not OSC's best but very good OSC nonetheless. The best thing about is the time travel, slowing, and speeding powers of the characters and how OSC engages the reader in discussion of causality and time paradox. For fans ...

Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell

This book came to me via my wife Liesel who discovered it and urged me to read it. Beautifully written with compelling characters and a sense of the magical (yet realistic, somewhat). Funny yet full of the pathos that marks a good if not gr...