Still Gravity

 Listen you, enjoy your time, you really don’t have very long.            Wang Fanzhi (7th century) These are 61 lines of wisdom from many sources. They are rewritten in my words. Enjoy them if you like lists.  Life is short - why waste it?  Lost time is lost forever.  Be in the present.  Enjoy what you choose to live.  See life from death.  We are here to live - be the world good or bad.  Keep all simple. Details fritter our lives.   Understand nature. Suffering is part of life.  There is no healthy aging - aging is destruction.  Happiness comes from actions.  Keep in sight what is important.  Get knowledge through reason. Learn doing.  Things become interesting if you look at them long enough.  Always question yourself.  Don’t allow thoughts to become the thinker.  A person thinking is always alone.  If you don’t know something, it doesn’t exist in your world.  Life is like a puzzle; the pieces can be rearranged for different outcomes.  Difficulties help to grow.  Be strong and self-

Cruises are weird cocktails of ship, hotel, shopping mall, amusement park, and travel agency. They are comfortable. No doubt about that. Cruises have evolved a lot since the first one was launched in 1900.  Prinzessin Victoria Luise  was a tiny boat compared to the modern mega ships. Then, why don't I like them? Here we go with some personal reasons - and I know that they will be awkward for most. Not interested in resting for days like a couch potato.  Not interested in gaining weight with "free" drinks and food.  Not interested in cheap copies of Broadway musicals. Not interested in dining with captains - except if they are called Drake, Cook, or Magallanes.  Not interested in brief stays at a port of call.  Said that, some places justify taking a cruise because they are hard to reach.  Next cruise trip… Antarctica! (We've been in only one cruise , so take my points from the angle of an unexperienced cruiser.)

The Germans "invented" the Christmas tree during the Renaissance. The cool trend got hot and by 1576 there were Christmas trees all around Europe - more or less.  The British waited to the 1800s to jump in. And the United States came on even later: the first "official" Christmas trees appeared in 1901 - caveat: German immigrants had been using the trees long before in America. The old Protestants didn't like the idea of celebrating with Christmas trees. They saw them as Catholic stuff and argued that the Bible didn't talk about such things - except if we see the cross as a tree, something mentioned in old translations because the Romans used trees for crucifixion.  It's said that Martin Luther was the inventor of the Christmas lighting. Apparently, he added candles to an evergreen tree - what a fire hazard!  The traditional "Merry Christmas" neither is ancient. Its first use was in 1699. But not like a loud and happy greeting for relatives and

Imagine a world where "I" and "me" are proscribed. Where everything is "we" and "us", even when talking in first person singular. A world where children are separated from their parents and raised by the state - read government. Where codes take the place of names and there is no individual thinking because,  What is not thought by all men cannot be true.  A society in which,  ...everything that is not permitted by law is forbidden. And the only escape is,  ...the Uncharted Forest, about which men must not think.  Russian born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum - better known as Ayn Rand and author of  Atlas Shrugged  - wrote this novella inspired on the communist regime of her country. Written in first person, this book reads like a diary.  Anthem  was published in 1938. A very interesting book that should be part of school's curriculums. It's available in Amazon  - this link is affiliate .

A city on sand and dryness  - License our images  here .                         In Las Vegas everything is possible. Even camping. Coming from Death Valley, we "camped" in the Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort, a glamping spot close to the Strip. How could the Mexican Rafael Rivera imagine the future of the torrid valley he saw in 1829. It went from oasis to Sin City in little over a century, starting with its first casino: Rancho Vegas. The rest was a matter of tourism and money and... a group of four gangsters.   Traveling the world in one place - the delusional magic of Las Vegas. 

Travel writing is a broad and always shifting genre. A journal and even the captivity literature - as dramatic as it is - are also forms of travel writing.   Now most of what we have is tourism related, but travel literature didn't begin with tourism. It began with pilgrims and immigrants. Many advice to differentiate the traveler from the tourist, because the second one is the  Flâneur of our times, a casual stroller.  Curious that many old travel stories were works of fiction based on real stuff. And sometimes the tales were not written by the protagonists. For example, the writer of romances Rustichello da Pisa wrote the travel stories of Marco Polo.  Some interesting cases: The travels of the Galician Egeria to the Holy Land in the 4th century. The Basque Catalina de Erauso. Swiss adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt. Mandeville's  The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Thomas More's  Utopia. There is no foreign land; it is only the traveler that is foreign.           Robert Lou

No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.    Native American proverb. The underwater observatory of the Homosassa Springs State Park, Florida -  License our images here . Here we found a mix of state park and zoo. A zoo only for Florida wildlife. The name: "Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park". I always ask who creates these long names. Politicians? We found another seven-words-long name in a state park of the Florida Keys - " Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological State Park ". Don't make me count the number of characters. Ugly names.  The park is on the headwaters of the Homosassa River and close to the Gulf of Mexico. The floating platform of the previous photo is a relic from the past. But before I share historic photos from Homosassa Springs State Park, check  this video with some of our pictures.  Mea

Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence  by Rory Miller is a book I recommend to anyone starting in martial arts and self-defense - it's available in Amazon (the link is affiliate ). This text shakes the traditional world of martial arts on the base of its effectivity versus real life violence. It explores the differences between martial arts practice and actual violence.   These excerpts illustrate why you should read it.   Self-defense is clearly my focus in this book. What is it? It is recovery from stupidity or bad luck, from finding yourself in a position you would have given almost anything to prevent. It is difficult to train for because of the surprise element and because you may be injured before you are aware of the conflict. The critical element is to overcome the shock and surprise so that you can act. Self-defense is largely about dealing with surprise and fear and pain. Know this: Watching every martial arts movie ever

Everyone was afraid of the monster of the other side of the river. All except her. And not because she was braver than her sisters. They were all alike. Even dressed in the same colors! Her "bravery" came from a lifetime watching the monster. But no way to convince her siblings that the beast was not a threat to them. True that the strange being was scary, always busy across the wide river. Roaring and huffing from dawn to dusk, moving through clouds of dust and always followed by a flock of birds that didn’t miss a day.  The visceral fear of the monster was born from scary tales of long-gone grandmothers. Delusions of countryside ladies. One day, all changed. She was drying her delicate hair with the first rays of the sun when… the monster was there!  The hideous face with the deep wrinkles. The big round eyes with devilish glares. Closer than ever. Right across her on the other bank of the river.  She doubted in fear. Could the old tales be true? A thing dropped from the mo

We often don't see violence as a thing of women, but history if full of cases. Nazi Germany and the Rwandan genocide saw the worse of women in social violence.  Ancient history also has examples of violent acts committed by women - justified or not.  In the famous side, we got Judith beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes and Jael killing Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army - check the paintings of  Artemisia Gentileschi ,  Caravaggio ,  Lambert Lombard , and  Jacopo Amigoni .  Two centuries ago, we got the violent Amazons of the Kingdom of Dahomey.  The point is that both genres are equally capable of violence.  A common problem is when criminal women try to escape justice by playing the victim's role to secure leniency. They often switch from oppressor to oppressed and their lawyers can mount a gendered defense in court.  The last decades have seen an increase in women's crimes -  check these stats . Concerning trend.

C cooking in our campsite at Colt Creek State Park, Florida - License our images  here .         Colt Creek is a small state park in Central Florida. It's at the southern tip of the Green Swamp Wilderness Preserve. We hiked the trails and rode the bikes but passed on kayaking in the small lake.  The state park rents kayaks.  These lands were used before for cattle, harvesting pine trees, and mining. The state of Florida bought them in 2006.  On the wildlife side, we met two rattlesnakes and a few raccoons. There were coyotes singing to the moon in the chilly nights.  Our truck camper in the Colt Creek campground.  Colt Creek State Park was a quiet place with few visitors. Perfect for relaxation. More photos here .

Rumi's poem "The Fragile Vial"  may have the answer.   A True Man stares at his old shoes and sheepskin jacket.  Everyday he goes up to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat. This is his wisdom, to remember his original clay and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.

Cloudland Canyon - License our images  here .         Another Georgia canyon painted with the colors of the fall. This is the western edge of Lookout Mountain. It was known as Sitton Gulch. The Cloudland Canyon name came with the state park created in the 1930s.  We hiked the rims and went to the bottom for the waterfalls. All was dry. Winter is coming. No creek at the bottom of the canyon. 

The idea comes from the wisdom of the American Indians - in this case from the Sioux or Lakota. It's all about keeping an eye in the bad wolf that brings out the worse in us. An old man spoke to his grandson. "My child," he said. "Inside everyone there is a battle between two wolves. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth." The boy thought for a moment. Then he asked, "Which wolf wins?" A moment of silence passed before the old man replied, "The one you feed…"  

The busy campground of Highlands Hammock State Park, Florida - License our images  here . This state park is in a big hammock northwest of Lake Okeechobee. The main campground was full and also all the primitive sites  on the other side of the park were reserved. Not the best of the stays in such a busy campground. Smoky camp.  The trails  - photos of another trail here - of this park are beautiful, and the loop road is great to ride bikes - only three miles. This Florida state park was built by the  CCC Corps  of the 1930s. There is a museum in the park.  Inside the museum of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Check this video for more of our photos from this park.  During our stay, we visited  Bok Tower Gardens . Also known as "Bok Mountain Lake Sanctuary" or the “Singing Tower”, the tower is amazingly beautiful. It's on top of Iron M

Everybody knows one or two bad critics - sometimes more. They are those folks that point our faults with ill intentions.  Do they matter? No. They don't count. Keep pushing forward and forget about them.   President Theodore Roosevelt put it well in a speech at the Sorbonne, France, on April 23, 1910. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with thos

Mountains around South Pittsburg, Tennessee - License our images  here . This is a memory from 2005. The spot was close to South Pittsburg, a small town on the banks of the Tennessee River by the Sequatchie valley. Nearby - in the direction of the picture but in the state of Alabama - is Russell Cave National Monument. We didn't go because we were traveling north towards the city of Nashville.  Russell Cave is one of the oldest archaeological sites in the southeast of the US. The cavern was a shelter for locals for thousands of years. The remains of campfires are dated between 6550 and 6145 BCE - this was over 8,000 years ago. Interesting place to visit.

Napoleon was... Napoleon. No presentation needed. Think what you want about him, but he said some interesting things.  Ability is nothing without opportunity. Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man. And if he didn't say them... the lines still sound very true.

This is a hard to answer question. Some say that was Ovidio with his  Tristia . He wrote the letters during his exile in the times of Augustus.   LITTLE book, you will go without me — and I grudge it not — to the city. Alas that your master is not allowed to go! Go, but go unadorned, as becomes the book of an exile; For others, the first place goes to Saint Augustine of Hippo with his  Confessions . This text was written between 397-400 AD.   Passing hence from infancy, I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me, displacing infancy. And what about the Spanish world?  The first one there was  Memorias  from Leonor López de Córdoba. Written between 1401-1404, this lady was a confidant of Queen Catalina of Castile until vanished from the court.   Sepan, pues, quienes vean este escrito que yo, doña Leonor López de Córdoba, hija de mi señor el maestre don Martín López de Córdoba y de doña Sancha Carrillo, a quien dé Dios gloria y paraíso, juro por este significante de la cruz que yo adoro,

Building in Miami reflecting the sun - License our images  here .         Square and rectangular geometric patterns are boring to the eye. Why? Monotonous repetition. Lack of surprises. In the case of this building, all the bets are on the brutalist architecture of the 1950s - the one in which socialist and communist countries were "masters" because of lack of money and good taste. Apartments enclosed in these styles feel like offices. Or even worse, they feel like jails - are they not the same? A circle has no end. Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation

Touring the USS Alabama  in the summer of 2012 - License our images  here .         The USS Alabama was a South Dakota-class fast battleship that served during WW2 in the Atlantic and the Pacific. 2,500 sailors managed this gigantic mass of floating iron that got a bunch of battle stars during the war - nine to be exact.  The good part is that the "Mighty A" or the "Lucky A" never lost a soul to enemy fire - even if there were deaths from friendly fire. Its air defenses downed 22 Japanese warplanes.  Now the immense ship born in 1942 seats in a corner of Mobile Bay with views of the high-rise buildings of the City of Mobile and the Interstate 10.  Turrets and canyons are the most impressive thing here. The two tons shells could reach a target 23 miles away. The powerful barrels only could shoot 395 times before needing replacement. What a costly beast.       Some say tha

The attic was a door to his past. A place of old memories. Faded toys of his grown children, dusty and meaningless trophies, and a lifetime of useless crap.  One day, he found a forgotten box in the darkest corner. It jailed old pieces of his mind on a bunch of yellow papers smeared by ancient typewriters. These were stories born under the sign of chaos. The box ended downstairs, and the digital retyping began.  Running out of life, these short stories were the only things he could give back to the world. Finally, the old man defeated his kakorrhaphiophobia. No more worries. Just peace. 

Nightfall in Raccoon Mountain, Tennessee - License our images  here .  We arrived with the sunset to Raccoon Mountain RV Park for an overnight stop. There was enough light for a short hike of the surroundings. The caverns were already closed.  Racoon Mountain was part of the Cracker Line of the Union Army during the Civil War. They opened this supply route in 1863 after the Union defeat in the battle of Chickamauga. The soldiers named the line - I guess because they got a lot of crackers.   The mountain has "raccoon" in the name, but we didn't see any - Did the Union soldiers eat all of them?  Peaceful night surrounded by huge motorhomes.

Businesses are fine, busyness is the problem. Too much busyness has mutated us from human being to human doing. Now we can't stop and be still.  Amazing that the ancient Seneca touched this in  On the Shortness of Life . In consequence, when the pleasures have been removed which busy people derive from their actual activities, the mind cannot endure the house, the solitude, the walls, and hates to observe its own isolation,

I always remember his series Cosmos from the 1980s. Some interesting views from the American astronomer .  Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space. Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars. We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. The nitrogen in o

The popular Dock Street - License our images  here .   Rustic and aged, Cedar Key was one of the "big cities" of Florida. It's surrounded by tales of American Indians, Spanish Conquerors, and pirates. That's why there are a few museums. True that its buildings still smell to the old frontier.   The old Cedar Key Cemetery with its tombs decorated with shells and the picturesque Dock Street over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were good places for pictures. Later, the Steamers restaurant provided lunch. Tasty fish with views of Atsena Otie Key, the original site of the town. Some ruins survive over there.  The thousand-mile walk of  John Muir  of 1867 ended in this town. Impressive the many adventures of this explorer. He wrote a book about this trip called A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf - link is affiliate to Amazon, meaning that if you buy it, we get a small commission without additional c

Daniel B. Woods published Sixteen months at the gold diggings in 1852. The book tells his experience as a forty-niner in the Gold Rush of California - before that, he was a schoolteacher.   Woods got to California through a Mexico of just 7 million inhabitants. The country was plagued by robbers and guerrillas and his journey was dangerous.  Later, he met a San Francisco of tents and adobe houses drown by sickness, alcoholism, and suicides. There, he had a close encounter with death, At that very moment there was the sharp crack of a pistol in the store adjoining, and separated only by a cloth partition. Daniel B. Woods was a religious man and draw inspiration and strength from  The Pilgrim’s Progress , a popular theological fiction of the 1800s.  In his book, he talks of their interactions with the American Indians.  At the River Mercedes we saw some Indians, called Savage’s Indians, from an American with that name, who shot the chief and took his place in the tribe. He also tasted g

Sunset in the Suwannee River - License our images  here .         Days of rain over the spot where the Suwannee River gets wide and mighty. Days of camping in a hidden corner of Florida with soaked hiking and wet cooking by the campsite. Beautiful spring with cold waters that got noticed by  William Bartram  when he walked around here in 1774. Nice natural pool. Manatees come in for the warmer waters of the springs in the cold nights of winter. We saw a few, but a couple of them were pretty special.  Mom with a baby. 

Mount Mitchell on the left and Grandfather Mountain on the right - Photos: Still Gravity.  These are amazing memories recorded in old 35mm images. Two decades ago, we embarked in a road trip tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway with the kids.  The long drive went on from North Carolina to Washington D.C. Waterfalls, old mines, the tower on the summit of Mount Mitchell, the scary walking bridge over the deep cliffs of  Grandfather Mountain, and the too many overlooks to count over the oldest mountains of North America.  On the side of the humans, impressive tour of the  Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the largest house in the country.  It was always fun to travel with the children. But life keeps going. Only the memories remain. 

The bridge was falling down in 1014 from the hand of Olaf "the fat", "the stout", or Saint Olaf - Olaf Haraldsson .  And then, the Icelandic poet Sigvat the Skald had the brilliant idea to compose a song to celebrate Olaf's victory.  But, of course, you won't find a "fair lady" in that version. Hardcore Viking stuff.  London Bridge is broken down— Gold is won, and bright renown. Shields resounding, War-horns sounding, Hild is shouting in the din! Arrows singing, Mail-coats ringing— Odin makes our Olaf win.

I didn't know it. My teachers taught me that the Spaniards brought the horses to America during the conquest. This was a half-truth. This really was about the return of the horses.  Happened that horses evolved in North America and later moved to Eurasia through the Bering Land Bridge . They got extinct during the Pleistocene in this continent and returned as domesticated animals with the Spanish conquerors.  And then went wild again here. But now we are talking of the mustangs .   A full circle story.

Things repeat. Nothing comes from nothing. Creative recycle.  This fragment of "Mop the Pet Cat" from  The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Tales in Words of Three and Four Letters  from Aunt Fanny - the penname of  Frances Elizabeth Barrow - makes me remember Dr. Seuss.  I. O Ned! the sun Is in the sky, And you in bed— O fie! O fie! II. Get up, get up, And go and run Out in the air, For it is fun. III. Sit in my lap, As you may do, So I can tie The bow for you. IV. Now get the cap, The new red top, And let us go To see old Mop, V. My old pet cat, Who has one eye— For one is out, Let me say why.

The old city of White Springs, Florida - License our images  here .         Sleepy place at the banks of the Suwannee River that once was a popular destination. A sign over the rusting store by the only traffic light in town says that the business opened in 1865. Nearby is the old bathhouse that used to attract travelers from the north coming for the waters of a mineral spring to recover their health - here you can see the bathhouse at its best times. Now White Spring is a small rural city. Even the barber left.  Suwannee River, the old bathhouse, and the state park with its musical tower.  We camped in the neighboring Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. The park is at the banks of the Suwannee River - a blackwater river . It has a carillon tower and a museum about Stephen Foster, "the father of American music&q

Aiming - License our images  here .   You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.             Rabindranath Tagore Goals are the first steps in planning for the future. They are targets for our "energy weapon", for our efforts. But like it or not, there are impossible goals. Goals must be achievable, or we are deceiving ourselves.  We need to know our wants to set goals. Most important, we must know ourselves. Our capabilities and limitations. Only later, we can create the actionable pieces. Because like the Chinese proverb says, you only can eat an elephant one bite at a time.  On the way to reach goals, celebrate successes and learn from the failures. And remember that the journey is as important as the destination. Keep focus on the aim, because aiming everywhere means reaching nowhere.  W