The inventor, Tim Niemier, launched the original sit-on-top kayak in 1971 with his company Ocean Kayak. His admirable goal is to “get a billion butts on boards and boats.”
My motto is a billion butts in boats because I believe the water makes us all humble and better people on our small planet.
Tim Niemier
The Kickstarter level that includes a Origami Paddler ain’t cheap, but neither are kayaks and paddleboards, especially when you factor in the equipment that you need to haul them, and the hassle of storage. This folding watercraft eliminates those issues, which are a huge “barrier to entry” as the business bigwigs like to say.
This past Saturday evening, my friend Phil passed along a 2012 New Yorker essay by Ray Bradbury. Phil knows that Ray‘s my favorite author. But he probably didn’t realize that Saturday was also Ray’s birth date (a cause for celebration at my house).
Phil texted the article to a group of friends, because it’s about “fire balloons” – also known as sky lanterns, Kongming lanterns or Chinese lanterns. They’re small hot air balloons made of paper and fueled by a small fire source at the bottom.
I can neither confirm nor deny that Phil and his “biker gang” (a bunch of middle-aged folks who go on a late night bicycle ride on the night of the full moon) have launched a few fire balloons during their evening excursions on the bike trail.
Ray Bradbury’s essay about fire balloons is really a lovely tribute to his grandfather, and his childhood memories of Fourth of July and family:
I’d helped my grandpa carry the box in which lay, like a gossamer spirit, the paper-tissue ghost of a fire balloon waiting to be breathed into, filled, and set adrift toward the midnight sky. My grandfather was the high priest and I his altar boy. I helped take the red-white-and-blue tissue out of the box and watched as Grandpa lit a little cup of dry straw that hung beneath it. Once the fire got going, the balloon whispered itself fat with the hot air rising inside.
“The balloon whispered itself fat…” — most of us who fancy ourselves writers would give our right hand and our Smith-Corona for the ability to craft such gorgeous imagery.
But I could not let it go. It was so beautiful, with the light and shadows dancing inside. Only when Grandpa gave me a look, and a gentle nod of his head, did I at last let the balloon drift free, up past the porch, illuminating the faces of my family. It floated up above the apple trees, over the beginning-to-sleep town, and across the night among the stars.
Ray Bradbury’s writing was magical, but the process wasn’t. The dude got up every morning, sat down at his typewriter, and cranked out “content.”
Ray wrote brilliant short stories, novels, essays, TV and movie screenplays, poems… In interviews, he often recounted a story from his childhood, when he went to a traveling carnival and saw a performance from a magician named “Mr. Electrico”:
Seventy-seven years ago, and I’ve remembered it perfectly. I went back and saw him that night. He sat in the chair with his sword, they pulled the switch, and his hair stood up. He reached out with his sword and touched everyone in the front row, boys and girls, men and women, with the electricity that sizzled from the sword. When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.
Wednesday’s Washington Post had an interesting article about “toxic positivity”… that term was new to me, but the article made a lot of sense. A positive mental attitude is a good thing, but not if you’re using it to gloss over, ignore or deny underlying issues.
“It’s a problem when people are forced to seem or be positive in situations where it’s not natural or when there’s a problem that legitimately needs to be addressed that can’t be addressed if you don’t deal with the fact that there is distress or need.”
Stephanie Preston, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
“’Looking on the bright side’ in the face of tragedy of dire situations like illness, homelessness, food insecurity, unemployment or racial injustice is a privilege that not all of us have. So promulgating messages of positivity denies a very real sense of despair and hopelessness, and they only serve to alienate and isolate those who are already struggling… “We judge ourselves for feeling pain, sadness, fear, which then produces feelings of things like shame and guilt. We end up just feeling bad about feeling bad.”
Natalie Dattilo, a clinical health psychologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston
For the first (and we pray last) time in our lives, we’re dealing with a very trying trifecta:
Coronavirus pandemic
Collapsing economy
Racial inequalities fomenting civil unrest
It’s weighty stuff. And it’s perfectly normal if it weighs you down.
“Recognize that how you feel is valid, no matter what… It’s okay not to be okay.”
Natalie Dattilo
It’s also perfectly fine to spend our pandemic times “one day at a time” instead of some sort of “everything is fine” charade.
“Making the best of it is accepting the situation as it is and doing the best you can with it, whereas toxic positivity is avoidance of the fact that we’re in a really bad situation.”
Jaime Zuckerman, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Philadelphia
So don’t “put on a happy face” if you’re using it to mask some underlying distress that you need to address.
Chuck Cleaver is one of the best songwriters in the known universe. He’s also a funny dude, in his own unique, gruff-yet-lovable way.
Chuck’s in a band called Wussy, and he and the other lead singer/songwriter in that band, Lisa Walker, do a live set of songs every other Friday night on Facebook. (On the alternate Fridays, their bandmate Mark Messerly plays a set. All the videos are here and are well worth checking out.)
The songs are brilliant. The between-song banter is the icing on the cake. It’s funnier than most network sitcoms. Here’s Chuck from a few weeks ago, going on a rant about old folks. (At age 62, he counts himself among that number). I can relate. My daughter drags me up to St. Vincent de Paul nearly every Sunday because if you’re 50 or older, you get a 25% discount:
In my Catholic grade school, this was a popular saying for the nuns who were my teachers:
But I prefer this take on idleness:
“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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