Every Friday night in Flagstaff in the summer, they show a movie in the square. Beforehand there’s usually a small performance. Last night it was the dance troupe from the community college. They were not very good and asked the audience for money to go to a competition in Italy.

Even though Shrek the Third was kind of terrible, I did have a good time, but there are a few reasons I probably won’t be going back.

• The adult to child ratio was something like 1:20. This is kind of terrifying outside of school when they’re tightly controlled.
• They only show kids movies, and not especially good ones. Luckily, I was in a really good mood and even thought Shrek the Third was funny last night.
• Flagstaff is not warm. Last week it snowed for this. This week the temperature just dropped into the 50s when the sun went down.

… here is a salute to the postmodernists.  As today’s celebrants of corybantic Romanticism, they enrich culture.  They say to the rest of us: Maybe, just maybe, you are wrong.  Their ideas are like sparks from firework explosions that travel away in all directions, devoid of following energy, soon to wink out in the dimensionless dark.  Yet a few will endure long enough to cast light on unexpected subjects.  That is one reason to think well of postmodernism … Still another, the one that counts the most, is the unyielding critique of traditional scholarship it provides.  We will always need postmodernists or their rebellious equivalents.  For what better way to strengthen organized knowledge than continually to defend it from hostile forces? … And if somehow, against all the evidence, against all reason, the linchpin falls out and everything is reduced to epistemological confusion, we will find the courage to admit that the postmodernists were right, and in the best spirit of the Enlightenment, we will start over again.  Because …. We must know, we will know.

From Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Jasmine tea cookies 

And they’re quick and easy to make!

By Robinson Jeffers

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life’s end is death.

I stepped into a Payless the other day to get out of the wind while waiting for a ride. I was faced with this abomination.

I’m not really sure how long it’s going to take me to recover.