Internet Flamewars: For the Record
For the record, I tend to agree that Internet Flamewars are just kind of sad and not worth the time. I say this as someone who has infamously engaged in them at various points as well. (I think my wife pretty much tunes them out too at this point). Like everyone else though, I tend to get caught up in them. It’s so easy to get all agitated sitting in front of your computer at the distant voices and just start typing shit in response.
It is probably good to remind ourselves that the people on the other end are just like us, normally. Which means, they may be obnoxious and passionate bastards at times but are probably with their good points as well. I need to remember this as much as anyone.
I’m reminded of XKCD at this point:
Wedding at Green Gulch
R and I went out to Green Gulch again today. This is the second time this month after never having gone there before. My friend, Nathan went with us and he’s staying here at the house for a few days after coming down from Seattle. (Mostly, he’s spending time with my Nintendo Wii but we’ll see…)
The wedding was between Ryan and Yuhuan, two members of the San Francisco Zen Center. Ryan and I used to work together 13 years ago at Spry, back when “Internet in a Box” was the big product there and I was a webmaster. Ryan went on to Amazon and I went to Microsoft following this. I met Nathan through Ryan and the community of Burning Man people that he hung out with in Seattle back when Ryan had no particular interest in Buddhism. Independently, we both moved to the Bay Area and reconnected at various points largely though Nathan.
The wedding was a nice, brief ceremony. It was conducted by the abbot there at Green Gulch and largely consisted of the bridge and groom repeating their precept vows followed by more traditional wedding vows. The gathered attendees chanted the Metta Sutra together as well:
[...]
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
[...]
Afterwards, there was a vegan reception and we got a chance to hang out with some other Zen Center members that Ryan knows and some mutual acquaintances of Nathan’s and mine from the private e-mail list, Void, that Nathan runs. Two of the people that we spoke with, Walker and Evan, were a couple that had met while living at Green Gulch. He and she were able to explain quite a bit about the day to day life of living at the monastery, which was very interesting to Rebecca and me.
While we were out there, I made a point of tracking down where Shunryu Suzuki’s memorial marker was placed. When we had been out last time, I hadn’t realized it was there and only found out after we returned. Given his pivotal role in American Zen, it seemed a worthwhile thing to do.
Remodeling and House Work
This is a boring homeowner post. Be warned!
R and I have some money right now that we’re wanting to do useful things with, investment-wise. Our home has, at a guess, lost 10% in value since we bought it a year and a half ago.
While I still have the rebuilding of our brick porch to consider (yowza!), I’ve thought about having our bathroom or kitchen remodeled/redone. Both were partially done by previous owners, who did a kind of craptastic job with parts of it. For example, the tile floors are cracked in places because the subflooring had more flex than the large tiles could accommodate.
Then there is the back room, which is a separate addition off of the back deck. It is where the washer and dryer live but most of the space is used as a meditation/ritual space. The flooring is nasty, cheap vinyl (with a rug over it right now) and the subflooring isn’t the greatest. Since one of the main crawlspace access points is underneath the room, I’ve seen it from below often enough.
So, it wouldn’t hurt to invest some money into redoing or improving parts of the house. I have two general questions though, and they are both Bay Area related:
1) Where does one find reliable people to work on these things in the area? - As we all know, contractors are a dime a dozen but, as we learned with our old house, they often mostly suck. I’d like to find some reliable in the East Bay to do work for me on this stuff, like a kitchen remodel.
2) What are ecologically sound resources for this work? - There is an “EcoHome” place nearby that focused on ecological building materials. Before I had any work done, I’d want to talk to these people.
In the short term, I think I’d like to see our kitchen redone to be actually nice and the floor and walls ripped up in the back room and replaced with a nice wood floor, clean walls, etc. and a real partition for the laundry machines so they aren’t simply behind the curtain that we put up.
We also have two tiny windows (roughly two feet by two feet) on either side of our fireplace in the living room. We’ve thought of having these replaced with nice glasswork or something but we have no idea of where to find people for that sort of work.
Any thoughts or suggestions from people?
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