Norin

Funny enough, that was one of the reasons for not taking the job at the time.

There were, in fact, cool rocks.

Way back in 2017 I was offered a job managing a small retreat center in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere along the shores of Lake Superior.

The pay was exceptionally low, but it came with housing and food. 8 months out of the year would have been spent just being there and keeping the place in order, the other 4 were for hosting guests.

I went back to school instead.

The fuck was I thinking? I could have ridden these shit years out as a weird hermit.

Withheld wages don’t normally “cry out either,” so I think Ol’ James might have been speaking poetically.

James 5: 1-6

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

Dawg, someone find this man and throw eggs at him.

I have all the sympathy in the world for the workers here, but I fucking hate the New York Times.

This paper (like most media) enabled the 1st Trump presidency by giving him all the attention as a candidate in the 1st place.

Then they sold themselves as principled opposition and made a pretty penny doing so.

Now they’ve done all that shit again this time around.

Fuck um.

If you’re curious about the guy, he’s worth reading. His Letters and Papers from Prison and Ethics are the two dealing with all of this. Ethics is unfinished, because he was moved from a standard prison to a concentration camp before they eventually executed him.

Not many, but my hope is that anyone interested enough does a little research.

Bonhoeffer’s pacifism is a complicated matter. He believed in nonviolence, but also participated in a plot to kill Hitler.

To summarize him a little…. Sometimes we need to abandon our principles to care for others. My goodness is less important than the wellbeing of those who are oppressed.

I tell people that I’m a pacifist in the same way that Bonhoeffer was.

He does stupidly well with the ladies. Kavorka for days.

I teach philosophy at a community college.

I have learned from my students that their high schools didn’t ever require them to read a whole book or write much of anything. They also didn’t teach them some essential computer skills.

Strangest of all, it is apparently a common practice to award a base grade of 50% on all assignments, even for missing work.

So, my introductory philosophy class, which I have designed to be very easy (you likely get an A for showing up, talking, and turning things in on time) ends up being more difficult than anything they’ve ever done in school so far because I’m asking them to read 10 or so pages a week and write around 500 words a week.