Good morning howdy how hello campers how are you today? Ready for the storm? Are you all prepped out? Are you GENERAL STRIKING today in solidarity with the Minnesotans? Actually very hard to say yes to both! I am trying! But I had to buy provisions this morning! Gah! Dammit. Storms. STORMZ. This is supposedly going to be a crazy one. We were going to get a bunch of snow but now apparently we’re just going to get two days of freezing ice, then a ton of “cold” weather. Don’t much care about the cold, but freezing ice is a) not a thing I have a lot of history with, since Fairbanks was mostly too cold for it, and b) exactly the thing that fucks up the power lines. I have multiple redundant power systems on this property — gas and solar — but still. Somewhat nerve-wracking. Plus you gotta worry about water and gas. Gas would be the worst one to go out, I think. We would probably have to hide out in my office. But luckily the gas lines are underground.

Cookies! Buy Girl Scout cookies from my daughter! Delicious cookies! I had some Trefoils last night, sugar cookies. Way better than you remember! Click or scan here!

Was at the Lowe’s Hardware this morning, prepping, and boy that parking lot was a colorful one. All the day’s contractor’s parked higgledy-piggledy with their giant trailers, blind to the special trailer parking area. An entire crew of maybe 50 arborists, with their ladder trucks, doing a morning briefing, presumably getting ready to go out and cut back trees along the power lines in advance of tomorrow’s insanity. Everyone is doing their best to get ready.

Took the day off in solidarity with the strike, as much as a solo dude in rural North Carolina can do it. I will spend the day organizing my IT rack. New Times poll has Americans not supporting ICE by fifty fucking points. Fifty points! Yet seven fucking Democrats in the house voted to give them more money. One of them is a North Carolinian. His name is Don Davis. He calls me for money sometimes. We have chatted a few times. Mostly I have been avoiding his phone calls because I am not super impressed with his politics. I am sympathetic to the fact that we’re gerrymandered to fuck in this state and he has to appeal to Republicans, but come on man. Read the room, this vote was safe AF, and secondly: what is the purpose of having a representative if they can’t vote properly on the most important shit. Let’s not overthink it here.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

We are listening to Austra this morning, new album called HiRUDiN, it is very good. Very W Hotel Lobby in a Better Alternate Universe coded. Synthy and pretty with a mostly propulsive beat and gorgeous female vocals. I like it. It is my third listen. I bought her latest album, Chin Up Buttercup and am now working my way through her back catalog.

We went and saw the Monks last night.

Nineteen Texan monks from the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition affiliated with the Huong Dao Temple in Fort Worth. I totally cribbed that sentance from Wikipedia. They are walking from Fort Worth to Washington DC for peace. They started in October and they should get to DC in February. They have a rescue dog with them. He is a little worn out, the Lead Monk Man says. I don’t know what you call the Lead Monk Man. The One Who Gets to Talk maybe.

The whole endeavor is pretty hard core. One monk lost his leg early in the Journey when a truck hit their escort vehicle and it slammed into the Monk. After “recovering,” he has continued on the journey.

I should preface this by saying I have the utmost respect for the monks and I wish I could be a monk and I think silently walking across the country is extremely up my alley, doubly so if I am allowed to listen to music.

But this whole experience also made me realize I am me and there is not a lot I can do about it and the whole time I was there I was compelled to analyze, observe, mordantly comment internally. I tried to keep my cynicism in check. Buddhism is the religion closest to my philosophical bent, but I still got a lotta problems with it.

But it was still a pretty awesome experience.

Emma and I were supposed to split up — one of us go to our first HOA meeting in like two years, and one of us take Jane to Girl Scouts. But then the Girl Scouts troop decided they were gonna go see the Monks so we were like “fuck that we’re all gonna go see Monks.”

Reader, this was an event. 2020 Census had Pittsboro, NC’s population at around 4,300. It’s more than that now, it’s filling up with a big new housing development. But I’d still wager there were more people at the Chatham County fairgrounds than the population of the town. The thing about this Monks journey is it is planned, but it’s also constantly a plan in flux, because, well, they’re monks walking, they’re on foot, they’re never sure how far they’ll get in a day, they’re never sure if there will be some holdup. So the events are pretty last minute. And the events are the easiest way to see the monks, because otherwise you gotta figure out how to get to the middle of a highway with no parking or something and stand there. With basically no notice.

This event was thusly planned and announced yesterday and it was commensurately haphazard. Obviously the Monks’ helpers (volunteers? assistants? admins? chiefs of staff? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) were coordinating with the county who was rolling out the red carpet for them. I suppose this isn’t the case in every county, huh? Some of the more red states like Mississippi or Alabama maybe they had to rely on the kindness of private citizens. Who knows. But Chatham County let them stay in a high school two nights ago and at the fairgrounds yesterday. There were a few cops there, they used the fairgrounds stage, there were two gas-powered spotlights and a PA that would sound quiet in my attic. Parking was an absolute shitshow, no organization whatsoever, spilling out into the entire town, every parking lot, every nook and cranny for a mile around. Pretty last-minute planning.

And like 6,000 people.

Super weird carnival-meets-rapture vibe to the whole thing. You ever see The Leftovers? Remember the season in Texas with the weird-ass group of loonies at the gates to that town? A lot like that. Apocalyptic Jesus freaks with PAs, with offensive conservative signs. Even he, however, was taken aback and appalled by this woman who was trying to get him to agree that all Jews were evil because of the passage in the bible about the money lenders in the temple and it was too much for even this apocalyptic Jesus freak. No, lady, he was just mad at those Jews, not all Jews. She had her bible out trying to prove him wrong and now the apocalyptic Jesus freak seemed like the voice of reason. Dreaded dudes selling bootlegged Monk t-shirts like they were a band. Snack carts. A woman was selling flowers. Lots of these things are obviously traveling with the monks. Like the hangers on to a Westerosi army or something, hedge nights and comfort women or the modern, erm, Buddhist-meets-late-stage-capitalism equivalent.

Now I know the monks don’t talk, so I was wondering how this whole thing was going to work. I was hoping that it would just be the monks sitting on stage not talking and we’d all, I don’t know, look at the monks and all feel some sort of transcendent experience? I don’t really know what I was expecting.

What it was was a five minute Buddhist prayer, which was awesome. Jane loved it. Didn’t make any noise. Maybe we got a Budding Buddhist on our hands.

Then Big Daddy Monk Man, who is in his late 40’s, giving a very long lesson. He asked for a show of hands of how many people had been to a Monk Event before and/or seen one of his speeches online and oh. my. god. Like… a third of the audience? A quarter? Now, I know this dude just spoke at the other end of the county the night before, but that’s like 45 minutes away and why would you go to both as a casual Monk Observer? I supect a ton of these people were on the road with the monks! What a way to live your life.

I mean, I get it. He spoke of people who have cried as they watch the monks walk by. People who couldn’t even look at the monks. People who shook people who sobbed. He spoke of the thousands of letters the Monks get and how each night after they have walked all day, they rest and read letters from the people who walk by them. The Monks are bringing comfort and joy to thousands of people as they do this walk. That is… That is deeply moving and worthy of profound gratitude and respect. I feel it.

He said he wasn’t going to give his regular talk again since so many people had seen it, so he did a Q&A. He’s no seasoned south-by speaker, and didn’t repeat the questions, and his answer to the first question lasted nearly an hour.

He spoke of loss and how we must live in happiness after those we love have died in order to honor them. Dude spoke a lot about death.

A teenager asked him if he advice for teens and he had a hilarious rant about screens, calling them “your lover” and how weird it was to take “your lover” to the bathroom.

The other monks just sat behind him on the stage, arrayed like the Supreme Court or something. And I gotta say, I mean, after a long day of walking 50 miles, I would be completely content to just sit there, not saying a word. I wonder if they doze off. I hope their chairs have padding. Those monks are hardcore.

The whole place smelled like pig shit, it is a fairgrounds after all, and thousands of us stood there lapping up this wisdom. It was good shit, all stuff I agreed with. We need to be more kind. We need peace. It is all, dare I say, common sense, and it is somewhat confusing to me why people are so attracted to this specific man saying these things, but you cannot deny the power and profundity of the whole affair.

Jane sat on my shoulders and mostly listened intently, occasionally willfully slapping my face with her LET’S BE KIND sign.

The girls in the Girl Scout troop are, after all, just kids, and the Big Daddy Monk was going long. We stayed about two hours, he had no sign of slowing down. As we gathered the girls and began our long (long, long) walk back to our car, the Big Daddy Monk was talking about AI and let me tell you people, that Monk was speaking my language.

As we walked out, someone told the Apocalyptic Jesus Freak to fuck off, and he was like “you just got talked to about peace for two hours and it didn’t even last out of the parking lot.”

And you know what? Dude had a point.

I am working on our worker’s comp audit, which means I need to collect updated Certificates of Insurance from all of our vendors, which number about 50. I had one for each vendor, my record keeping is good, but one or two had expired since our last payment to them, so I had to email them and ask for a new one.

As I was writing this, one of them emailed me the certificate and said “here it the certificate, which I mailed to you last February.” This woman is a paragon of passive aggession, always, always, just unstoppable, every time I talk to her. And, forgive me father and Big Monk Man, I sinned.

I wrote back: “Good to know. I am suitably chagrinned. Thank you so much. Never change.”

I shouldn’t have done that.

Fucking internet, man. Makes monsters of us all. Yesterday before we went to see the Monks, I got all bent out of shape because someone was wrong on the internet, just pissed me off. I was gonna write today’s whole edition about it, actually, before the Monks moved me. And they moved me! They did!

Maybe tomorrow.

Jane was great, Jane liked the monks. Did she get any of it? She thought the part where he said “you could be spewing out diarrhea and you’d still be clinging to your lover staring at its screen.” Not wrong! Been there!

I carried her back to the car, not a mile, maybe half a mile, on my shoulders the whole way. The Monks made me feel good enough that I didn’t mind at all.

Thank you, Monks.

Moody and quiet for you today. Mostly new, couple oldies thrown into the mix. Jane and I listened to “Love Songs on the Radio” this morning and I told her how much I used to love that album, how it was my favorite record for a few years. I explained Slowdive and Mojave 3 and how big Slowdive is now and happy I am for them but how I wish I could see Mojave 3 again. Did she care? Well, if she didn’t, she has gotten very good at sympathetically listening while secretly indifferent, and that’s a great skill to have, so I will take it either way.

Have a lovely weekend. Be careful in the storm. Think of the Monks. Stand with Minnesota.

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