I was invited by my daughter Yukyo (Emily) to join a potluck at Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland on December 26. There was a catch. Delicious vegan dishes were shared by the dozen or so monastery members plus myself, but then we went to work shelling, by hand, three or four bushels of dried corn from the monastery gardens. It will ultimately be ground into cornmeal for polenta and other dishes. We also shelled several varieties of dried beans for monastery meals over winter. [Photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
Shelling beans in the dining area. Entrance foyer to the left, kitchen to the right.Yukyo shelling dried pole beans.
Besides shelling corn, I ground one of the corn varieties into corn meal using a hand crank grinder. Two passes through the grinder did the job. Needless to say there are machines that will do this, but the meal was worth working for.
I can relate. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Excerpts from a Christmas essay titled “What Kind of World is Being Born?” written by Vinson Cunningham, featured in the December 25, 2025, New Yorker magazine newsletter. ” . . . All of us are surfing events, responding to tectonics deeper than we know. Only time will tell what we’ll be forced to sit and think through and attempt to describe.
[Continued . . .]
These days surrounding the winter solstice are dark, dark, dark. Nice time to think about what we might make together when the light returns. Merry Christmas, no matter how sharp the birth pains. Fear not!“
Celestial Transients. Artistic rendering by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American magazine.
Happy Solstice! As good a day as any to talk about ” . . . Celestial transients, which are astronomical objects that appear suddenly from nowhere and usually disappear soon after, that contradict the standard truth that the universe changes predictably and slowly over billions of years. They include what the typically staid National Academy of Sciences called “the most catastrophic events in spacetime.” [Quote from a Scientific American newsletter article titled, Mysterious Bright Flashes in the Night Sky, December 16, 2025, by Ann Finkbeiner and Clara Moskowitz. [Click on image to enlarge].
This is a relatively long read, but well worth the time it takes if you are feeling self-important at the moment. Prepare to be humbled by the immensity and the mysteries of the cosmos. Astrophysics is experiencing a golden age, thanks to the tools . . . orbiting telescopes, ground based radio telescopes, stellar and interstellar probes, etc., and the ever greater computing power available to process data. Of still greater importance is the international cooperation of scientists made possible by the World Wide Web.
Go to www.scientificamerican.com to sign up for the free Today in Science newsletter. You can then choose from specific newsletter topics like: Mind & Brain, Health & Medicine, etc.
Oregon Mozart Players Candlelight Concert 2025 at Central Presbyterian Church, Eugene, OR
I’ve volunteered for the Oregon Mozart Players off and on for over 25 years and was happy to usher once again for this year’s Candlelight Concert. Beautiful music for the season. The program included Alessandro Scarlatti’s Christmas Cantata, as well as a Concerto Grosso by Archangelo Corelli, and Suite III from Ottorino Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. Even the names are musical. My favorite was a 20th century Christmas Suite by English composer, Alec Rowley, based on traditional English carols. [Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
From an article titled 2025 Was David Lynch, by Jessica Winter in the December 12, 2025, New Yorker newsletter comes the following in a discussion of the Lynch film, The Elephant Man. “[Lynch] was not an empathic director but, rather, an uncommonly compassionate one. The word compassion comes from the Latin for “to suffer with”; it means to be present in another’s suffering, which is, in essence, the experience of watching “The Elephant Man.”
[Continued . . .]
In Catholic theology, to be present in another’s suffering is a means of breaking down false divisions between people. Love and community are inconceivable without compassion, and a void of compassion made possible the sadness, despair, and horror that shaped this past year. That void makes our humanity feel contingent, negotiable. Are you an animal or a human being? Am I a good man or a bad man? In the film, Lynch dissolves the scene before the question is resolved. Outside the film, no one who should ask is asking.”
Every year around this time I bake one of these cakes. I tried a new recipe this year and I’m happy with the result. The cake is light and springy but moist. There is Bacardi dark rum in the batter and the topping is chopped walnuts. The glaze is butter+sugar+rum. I have to share this or I could easily eat the whole thing. Yum! [Photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
This article [see link below] in my Scientific American newsletter is, like others, not fully within my grasp because I am not a mathematician. But I can sense the implications. I also believe, for good cause, that very complex phenomena accessed theoretically and/or mathematically can also be recognized/perceived by simple observation aided by intuition . . . another illustration of the fact that everything is connected; nothing exists in isolation. “The whole is necessary to an understanding or the parts, and the parts are necessary to an understanding of the whole.” [Quote from Synchronicity, The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski]
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… this is my way. (Anonymous)
Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
