Short and Sweet

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Who doesn’t like something extra nice crossing their feed? There’s so much nastiness to scroll through, and if it doesn't come directly, then it's indirect, by being quote-tweetedly shared by its critic. Seriously. Every June, vulgar visuals are broadcasted, not only by celebrants but by their critics.

And besides that, there’s the crazy complex busyness. The feed is a mess, posts with text commenting on a screenshot, all quoted-tweeted with yet more text followed by ellipses because the guy couldn’t be more concise—that kind of thing.

It has me missing the old creative constraints of 140 characters. (Yeah I’m one of those guys. I actually enjoyed the challenge. 🙂 )

So, a guy like me enjoys seeing the simple tweet of a short nice poem cross my feed. Limericks, I like. Haiku are nice, but for too many, they’re little more than interrupted prose. One old friend used to post nothing but three-lined shout outs, counting 5-7-5 syllables. I like to try for something with a little more of that traditional flavor. (To be sure, I have much room to grow and would like to.)

If you’d enjoy seeing the poetry I’m dropping on twitter, you can. At the end, I add a π, as a searchable endmark. (π reminds me of ποίημα / poiema, and it can also abbreviate Penjammin, so yay. 🙂 ) Anyway, it allows me to point you here: penjams.com/twitterpoems. Much of these are prompted poetry, written spur of the moment for fun and practice, but here’s a favorite haiku:

Morning mist floating
Up in early Autumn light…
Just pick a shape cloud!

Have a great week everyone.

-P

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Super Conservatism

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Often, I see my takes as not only conservative, but super conservative. Other conservatives may disagree from time to time, but that seems due to their accepting the compromise of yester year. Let me explain.

There's this article I read long ago: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy by Alexander William Salter. The article ended with this line: “[T]he state is constitutionally hostile to conservatism. For the sake of preserving ordered liberty and protecting inherited faith and folkways, conservatives should reject the state’s legitimacy. Failure to do so is fighting a war on the enemy’s terms.”

Salter sees conservativeness as more of a preservation-orientation than a creed. This frees him up to sort inherited wheat from chaff. He makes two points regarding the modern state: (1) that it is a relatively new institution and (2) that conservatives, in defending the state, make a concession to the left of yore- something that they should draw from rather than concede. He explains: “The polylegal system of the High Middle Ages, in which the authority of kings, local nobility, trade guilds, free cities, and the Roman Catholic Church competed and often checked the abuses of each other, is an important example and one that should be of obvious interest to conservatives.” How many present-day institutions revered by conservatives (but not by anarchists) are compromises to leftists of long ago?

Well, to Salter, governing institutions need not include the pretended monopoly of legitimate force of the state. He also argues that such a monopoly makes the state particularly useful to anti-conservatives because those of a small exogenous culture might find forced influence of the common folk from on top to be easier than persuasion. And, well, there's more in the article: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy over at theamericanconservative.com.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Free-will & Premortalism

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This is a bit of my episode with Dr. James Spiegel in which we discuss his article on the Premortalist Free-will Defense. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Dr. James Spiegel: . . . The free will defense is the other major response. And it says that a God would want human beings to have genuine relationships with one another and with God himself, and in order for that to even be possible, we must have significant moral freedom. Otherwise, we are automatons or robots or our actions (or potential behaviors) are so restricted that we can't really genuinely have loving relationships with one another. So God granted us a certain moral freedom, and as it happens, we have abused that freedom. And that's where all of these horrible things like murder and genocide and rape have come from. We've abused what was originally a good gift for a good end, and so it's our fault, not God's. That's the free will defense.

Penjammin: How is the premortalist modification to the free will defense- how is it different?

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Culinary Liberty

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This is my interview with the Culinary Libertarian, and we discuss how liberty and culinary matters go together. Get the full discussion below. -P

Penjammin: So tell me about the culinary libertarian thing. Now, I got an idea. Either it could be just those are two totally different things that are kind of conjoined together, or they could have some sort of inter-dynamic, mutual influence upon each other. I'll let you tell me.

Dann: Well, it's a little bit of both. And sort of the embarrassing answer is way back when I thought it was a good idea to do a podcast because-

Penjammin: Wait wait wait. We're recording one right now. [laughs] But alright go ahead.

Dann: Well, back five or six years ago, they weren't even, I don't know the history of podcasts, but there were a few of them, and it was still kind of a new-ish hip thing to do. I was following a libertarian at the time who said, you should make a podcast. And I said, well, okay, I'll make a podcast. Actually the thing that came first was the website. And he had a deal to get hosting. And you get a deal through hosting if you buy through his link. And I thought, well, if I'm going to buy through a libertarian's link, I probably ought to make a libertarian page because this is how dumb I was. I didn't know that I could [go without] that. So the thing I knew about was food. (And the thing I still know about [is] food.) And I was learning about libertarianism, about politics . . . So I thought, well, let me put the two together…

For more, check out the links and hear the whole episode below.
Our full discussion
Culinarylibertarian.com
Cooking For Comfort: One-pot Meals You Can Make
x.com/culinarliberty

The Episode:

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Father Alone

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Father alone will know all about it,
Pain that will trade for the joys up there.
Further along, we won't mind a bit,

Shedding old wounds too deep to forget,
Even if born of hate or warfare,
Even if Father alone knows about it.

Old backs still give. Old knees still quit,
Waiting for upgrades to old earthenware.
Further along, we won't mind a bit.

We'll wander in wonders, with banana splits
As, under the bridge, flows the last care
Where Father alone will know all about it.

Hardships enlargen, grow big hearts with grit,
Vessels that may hold the more heavenfare.
Further along, we won't mind a bit.

It is well worth it. The pieces will all fit,
Sometimes no friend can explain the nightmare.
Father alone will know all about it.
Further along, we won't mind a bit.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.