Flight Safety in Indonesia

NYT Magazine - What really brought down Boing 737 Max. A highly experienced pilot takes one step by step through this analysis that claims the plane was not the problem but everyone wants to blame the plane - Lion Air, Ethiopean Air, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Trump pressuring the FAA,  Two of them crashed and they're all grounded. The author says he's no fan of Boing but in these cases it's poorly trained pilots that didn't act properly when an emergency happened - and corruption and greed. We live in Indonesia and flew Lion Air once to Java. Next time boat and train.

Jim Harrison quotes

https://www.azquotes.com/author/6322-Jim_Harrison

I remember Bob Watkins mentioning Jim Harrison with Kobun Chino and him.

Thanks Gregory.

Steve Frost's latest art

Steve Frost is a Catholic priest with quite a web presence. He comes out with new art or writings quite often. Here are some new brushings.

A Poem by Lawrence Burns

On a Wing and a Prayer

Can a poem speak,

angel or arrow,

soft truth or swift answer—unavoidable?

Imagine the flight of a faded pink diamond kite.

Aloft by a string. Balanced between Icarus’ youthful illusions  

and Bellerophon’s bitter regrets.

Oft admonished, we are extolled, “focus on being in the present.”

How best to do this?

I want [to] fall in present (sic).  As in: to fall in love; not to fall in line.

The kite in my mind—it trembles in the breeze, painfully alive: albeit, aloft.

I’ve long imagined that I’d emerge, epiphany-like into the present

as if it were the epicenter of some to-be-determined, right moment.

Arriving concisely with some precise insight; Aretha Franklin shattering my illusion with a song?

A shattered egocentric exoskeleton: freed self, [finally] enjoining with life’s melody.

And still, I meander, discovering multiple epicenters, all falling in to the present. Alive.

The creek bed is still and yet the waters meander. 

There is no “it”. No “moment.” Only melody. Wafting. Forward.

A soft pink kite flutters. Almost errantly. Aloft and rising slowly,

while the waters move swiftly

in the dawn.

May, 2019

Lawrence Burns 

(son of Marilyn McDonald who wrote A Brief History of Tassajara)

RIP Sally Rasberry

Nice article on Sally in Santa Rosa Press Democrat. First met her through Michael Phillips. Condolences to her husband Michael Eschenbach. Sally wrote a number of books, some with Michael Phillips and one with fellow Sonoma County creative icon Carol Rae named “The Art of Dying: Honoring and Celebrating Life’s Passages.” She told her husband to leave her body alone for a day after she died. Farewell Sally. - Posted in Death and Dying (thanks Elin for alerting me to this)

In Utero

Knew Stephen Colgan in 1987 when I was head cook at the SFZC City Center kitchen. He and past wife experience Elin were good friends and she had a room for a while in a place near the ZC where he had a room too. He posted this poem on Facebook. Wow. - dc

In Utero

by Stephen Colgan

sometimes
when my mother slept
I would stay awake for a while
as the wombspace settled
the swirling yellows and pinks
slowly turned to
peaceful blues and grays

Jane Hirshfield new poem

Homs - just published in the New Republic

A New Poem from Bhikkhu Moneyya

Unfinished Symphony

Einstein on Religion

Albert Einstein was ridiculed for what he wrote about religion, told he should stick to science - in print and on TV - by people who could only think in terms of their literal beliefs. Someone just paid a huge amount for his "God letter."  - that's an article in Guardian. Here's Wikipedia on his religious and philosophical views.