Street names; Dorab; Ashtravakra Gita

Street names

The current issue in the village is street names. We never decided on any. There are house numbers, and that’s all we need for most issues.

But sometimes there are companies that demand actual street names. Recently there was a supermarket chain suggested to make me a member of their loyalty club, but I couldn’t sign up because their website demanded a street name, which it checked against a national database, so I couldn’t make something up.

Then there are large foundations, such as those connected to the US Government, whose SAM.gov system depends upon NATO’s N-CAGE for address verification. And N-CAGE too demands a street name for our association. Without a street name, no registration. I wonder how they deal with Japan, which doesn’t use street names hardly at all, even in large cities like Tokyo?

Astavakra Gita

Translator’s preface to the Ashtavakra Gita (Bart Marshall)

In Vietnam when I was twenty-one a hand grenade or mortar round–the circumstances made it difficult to determine which–blew me into a clear and brilliant blackness. For the next thirty-seven years that glimpse of infinite emptiness, so intimate, so familiar, kept me looking almost obsessively in esoteric books and far corners for an explanation of myself. Then, “suddenly,” the veil, as they say, was lifted.

A few months after that occurrence, as my interest in reading began to slowly return, I found myself drawn mainly to the sayings and writings of old masters. What did Buddha have to say? What did Christ? Lao Tsu? Patanjali? I wanted to read them with new eyes.

Oddly, in those thirty-seven years of seeking, I had never read the Ashtavakra Gita, and indeed was barely aware of its existence. Then recently, as I sat at the bedside of a dying friend and teacher, another friend placed it in my hands. I opened it and was astonished. Here, in one concise volume, was all that needed to be said.

Dorab Framji

I learned yesterday of the death of Dorab Framji of Tiruvannamalai at the age of 92. A Parsi (Zoroastrian) from Bombay, he was one of the few living disciples of the advaitic sage Sri Ramana Maharshi (who left the world in 1950).

Dorab accompanied his father on visits to see Ramana as a child. He moved to Tiru permanently when he grew older. His home was five minutes walk from the ashram, just next to the Osbornes.

He had the reputation of being gruff and grumpy to strangers but was exceedingly kind to friends. I was privileged to stay with him for a month in 2019 and, in retrospect, am sorry that I did not take up the invitation to spend more time with him. (Maybe I should have stayed till he himself would throw me out, and not run off to visit Madurai and Kerala?)

His moving story is told in the ashram newsletter, Saranagathi.

Links

“Better to die there”: Palestinians mourn Ein Samiya Eviction

Palestinian toddler hit by Israeli army gunfire dies

Solarpunk conference, “Children of Peace”, diary

On Friday there was the DocAviv screening of “Children of Peace”, a documentary made by Maayan Schwartz on the second generation of kids who grew up in the village. It’s based on conversations with friends who grew up with Maayan. Some of them have returned to live in the village; some have made their home in different places around the world. A central theme of the film is the mixed identity that some of them feel, as people who have grown up with the narratives of both peoples and the ongoing conflict; the ways in which the conflict penetrates the village itself. It’s a powerful film, I think, though it’s hard to see it as someone who doesn’t know the people and the village might.

at the film festival (director and interviewees on stage)

After the film we went with son 2 and his partner, daughter and her friend, and a few others to sit in a café. My son and his partner have just reached a decision to try living apart for a while, so this was a bit sad for all of us. We met with an old friend B – a German theologist who decided that her home was in Israel and somehow succeeded to get residency here. She has a young daughter who she is raising as a single mom. She didn’t choose an easy life but it seems to be working for them.

I don’t often go to Tel Aviv, so I’m usually surprised by all the changes. The number of high-rises that are going up and continuing to proliferate; the city’s vibrancy and pluralism. For a comparatively small city (less than a million), it has a very complex human landscape, from very rich to very poor, with refugees from Africa, ex-pats from around the world, artists and counter-culture types, financiers, LBGT people, vagrants, beggars and sex workers; just about everything that you would see in larger capital cities around the world. But this is just my perspective as someone living in a small village. An interesting place to visit; happier where I am.

Yesterday there was the conference [1] on Solarpunk. I learned quite a lot. There were artists and visionaries that not only seem to spend their lives dreaming about an alternative reality that they have imagined down to the smallest detail, but who are finding practical ways to transition towards it. My take-away was the size and breadth of the maker and hacker community, who are finding and sharing home-grown solutions that could help replace capitalism and dependence. There’s a great resource called Appropedia [2] that shares some of these.

Also yesterday we met R, who is back from Cyprus for a couple of weeks and is planning to go again as soon as his partner gets her visa. It’s good to see that they are finding a solution in a nearby country that doesn’t seem too culturally and geographically remote and fits both of their needs, perhaps. R is working on ways to distribute the book that they have been working on for a few years. They see it as not just a book but a vehicle for change.

[1] Solarpunk conference links. YouTube links below have been converted to Invidious redirects (see https://redirect.invidious.io/)

Real Solarpunk Technology

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/R5o2SXBlQ9A

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/dckMS3s8t4iQ1DRMDdBk94

Empowering Future Communities

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/x-KAjLCLaEE

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/gtAWuNwUGVAvcLyMYkDCj6

Is Solarpunk Just Another Style?

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/U20OFV-M8V0

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/mttsLKtY3ZprrAJN89Sng9

What’s Holding Us Back from a Better Tomorrow?

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/EqQhoWbM1z0

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/mB5oxCG7mH5FYbuUubN1uA

[2] Appropedia: https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia

Phone messaging | Int’l Rescuers Day | Diaspora connections

After hearing from Ivan Zlax about Telegram and its founder Pavel Durov, I felt that it may be time to ditch the program from my phone. He dug up an old bio about him in the Internet Archive that has the following:

In 2005, Pavel completed his training at the Faculty of Military Studies of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare. While training with the Faculty of Military Studies, he served as Platoon Commander of the Philology Department. Upon completion, he was awarded the title of Lieutenant of the Reserve Force.[2]

There have been numerous articles by Moxie and others regarding the security of Telegram, but this is the first time that I heard these details of Durov’s past. I don’t get the feeling from reading his posts on Telegram that he is turning over user data to three-letter agencies, but I also don’t feel like he is being sufficiently open about things.

I have been looking at replacements for Telegram. One thing I considered was Delta Chat [3]. It has the advantage that one does not need to worry about not being able to communicate with existing contacts who do not use Delta Chat, because it simply repurposes email protocols. It sets up PGP automatically so that one can communicate securely with those who are on Delta Chat. This is a little like Signal, which uses ordinary SMS to send and receive messages for those who do not have Signal.

Parallel to my interest in privacy I have an interest in simplifying and minimizing interaction with my phone. This is also in line with recommendations for good operational security, because the less applications (and data) are on the phone, the smaller the attack surface. Some weeks ago I removed both email and NextCloud from the device. If one doesn’t intend to use a dumb-phone (which are considered to be very insecure due to their reliance on old-fashioned protocols), the best thing is to bring the use of a smartphone closer to the level of a dumb-phone.

For now I have left Signal on the phone, and use it as an SMS replacement. A few of my contacts have Signal and do the same. But i don’t feel inspired to recommend Signal to others. For one thing, it uses Amazon servers. If there were a decentralized messaging app that could also replace SMS as the phone’s default messaging service, I might use that instead, but I haven’t found one. I think it is possible to bridge between Signal and Matrix, but that defeats my purpose of minimalism.

Meanwhile, I continue to use Telegram on my computer as our family group is quite heavily invested in it (tons of family photos and videos, etc.) International Rescuers Day ceremony

Today we had the International Rescuers Day ceremony near the Spiritual Center. This emulates the event promoted around the world by the GARIWO organization. They actually refer to it as the “Int’l Day of the Righteous” but Prof. Auron, who initiated our local event, prefers the term “rescuer” to “righteous” due to the latter’s possible religious connotations.

This year the village awarded the prize (which has no monetary value) to the Ta’ayush organization [4] and to the Afghan journalist and feminist activist Atefa Ghafoory, who wasn’t present – she lives with her child in Sweden these days, after suffering quite badly at the hands of the Taliban. The annual event takes place in a dedicated area under the olive trees below the spiritual center, and we were lucky this year with the weather.

I was happy to hear from the Ta’ayush founder afterwards that David Shulman is still active in their activities and is writing a new book about these. His earlier short book, “Dark Hope” is excellent.

Int’l rescuers day

Einat, the new director of the spiritual center, invited a professional photographer for the event, which, though I haven’t seen the results so far, was a good idea as an olive grove has its challenges for photography: under the blotchy sunlight, many of my photos had areas that were either too dark or overexposed. I didn’t find a good way, in darktable to deal with the overexposed areas, though one article did at least address the issue.

I liked a photo that Manuel had posted on Hubzilla, so I thought to follow the photographer. She is on Diaspora, on which I currently have no current connections. I enabled the diaspora protocol in Hubzilla’s admin and added the add-on in the applications panel, but still no luck with adding her.

My solution for people in non-compatible social networks like Twitter and Facebook is a bookmark tool bar folder that I check occasionally. Works fine for me.