Greetings from the hut. I have completed my morning practices, including watering the apple trees. In northeast Wyoming we have been blasted by two frosts, but not hard enough to punch up the sugar in the fruit. We watch the forecasts daily. The grapes are ripening and several Amish friends are due to come pick either this week or next. I contend the clusters could stand another week of sunshine and rain—which is also forecast. We’ve finally enough of the wine varietals to combine for “wine grape jam.” It somehow tastes more delicate and, hmmm, refined?

Frenetic schedules make time fly (or at least bounce right along) and I forgot to report in the last post how efforts at limiting newscasts are proceeding. Cognitive behavior principles state that all or nothing thinking rarely works, while the Taoist symbol of Yin/Yang holds an important truth, in my view, relating to wisdom: the smidgeon of good in the not-so-good; the pinch of bad in the good. It makes me think of sketching characters—but that is another discussion. . . This morning I heard two aphorisms: What you fight, you strengthen, credited to Eckhart Tolle, and What you resist, persists—Carl Jung, and I remembered another old Chinese saying, Yield, and overcome. I wonder about Christ’s Resist not evil teaching and remember non-violent resistance—resistance all the same. But to the point, I do ingest fewer news segments and feeds, and feel less crazy for it, while understanding we must strive to be an informed electorate. The middle way?

It has been, and continues to be, a particularly beautiful late summertime. May it be so where you are.