[Photo 
Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
Monkey Balls
The Elephant man – David Lynch
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.”
Well it’s alright
I have to say it, what a day . . . what a day! I rode my usual route on the bike path. The air was crisp . . . temperature in the upper 40’s . . . it felt so good on my bare legs, arms and face. I wasn’t cold, I was alive . . . on a sunny afternoon in December in Eugene, Oregon, my adopted home. I know the pavement by heart, the bumps, the inclines where I have to pump a little harder, the walkers in their warm coats and hats . . . “On your left!” . . . the kaleidoscopic light effect of sunlight flashing on and off through the many tree trunks on the north bank . . . the river rapids by the bridges and by Skinner’s log cabin. I am so lucky that I am riding a bicycle at an age now where I have outlived my Father. He so generously set me on my way in life but had a hard time enjoying his own. Thanks Dad, I wish you could see me now. I am rich in friends because I learned how to be one.
The Traveling Wilburys – George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Roy orbison, and Tom Petty. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Randomness and Chaos
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]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-crack-a-fractal-conjecture-on-chaos/
On the West Bank Trail – August and december, 2025
The photo above was taken in August, but I walked the Willamette River Trail from Skinner Butte to this spot and beyond again today in 60 degree weather and full sun. The message is as clear as ever. [Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
Camping at Comb ridge – October 2024
The open road and the desert Southwest, especially Utah, are never out of my thoughts. [Photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
The young adventurer and lover of wild places, Everett Ruess, disappeared seemingly without a trace in 1934. He was last seen in Davis Gulch, southeast of Escalante, UT, but his body was finally found in 2008 still further south on Comb Ridge, a few miles west of Bluff, UT. Comb Ridge, is a steep ridge running due north from the San Juan River. Reading Ruess’s letters to friends and family found in Everett Ruess, A Vagabond For Beauty, by W. L. Rusho, I can relate to his efforts to reconcile himself with the civilized world when he was alone in the wild one. Camped on the side of Navajo Mountain in San Juan Co., UT, on June 7, 1934, he wrote this: “I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one’s true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover one’s self. It is true that in the world such lack of reserve usually meets with hostility, misunderstanding, and scorn. Here in isolation I need not fear on that score, though the strangers I do encounter usually judge me wrongly. But I was never one to be content with less than the most from life, and shall go on reaching, and leaving my soul defenseless to attacks.”
For more on his disappearance, murder, and discovery of Ruess’s remains 84 years later, see https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-may-02-sci-ruess2-story.html
El Cascabel – Mariachi Luz de Luna & Calexico
I love this! El Cascabel – The Bell. I was pleased to see that Springfield High School has a class in Mariachi music and I was able to hear their band play a set in matching outfits at Yapoah Terrace for the December Birthday Party. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Early Sunday morning walk
[Photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
Santana Brothers – Luz, Amor Y Vida
Light, Love and Life. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
The “yapoah players” – save this space
UPDATE
I pitched the idea of a play centered on life at YaPoAh at the monthly Residents Association Meeting, December 8. The idea was well received by residents in attendance. Next step, probably in January, will be to pull together a circle of residents in one room to tell their stories and have them lead us, naturally. to the stories/themes that have the most resonance. Two residents, plus myself, are now the core group working on the idea..
ORIGINAL JOURNAL ENTRY
It’s early days, but I floated the idea for a play to be written, directed, acted, and staged in-house about life at YaPoAh Terrace. A play to feature residents’ personal stories, with humor and heart, like “What brought me to YaPoAh” and “What have I experienced here,” recounted on stage by resident actors. My vision is to have this foster a greater sense of community within a building with 220 apartments for low income seniors. An extension of my idea, brought to the fore by fellow resident Savanah Forster, is to eventually have something that could be shared with the larger Eugene-Springfield community to show what seniors can do. I posted a First Call in the December newsletter, News With A View, for people who are interested in the project to contact me. I’m interviewing the first person to step forward tomorrow, a woman who is a singer-songwriter and pianist. It won’t stop there. Stay tuned.