I noted how yesterday marked the anniversary of Betty Boop’s first appearance in a cartoon. With that tidbit of information, and my curiosity turned to the cartoon flapper I then found myself rummaging around and looking at some old Betty Boop cartoons on Youtube. It turns out Cab Calloway provided the music for three Betty Boop cartoons. A small hoot… The first here actually opens with a live scene of Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra. Here again we... Read more

On this day in 1930 Betty Boop made her debut featured in the cartoon short Dizzy Dishes. An amazingly uninteresting little cartoon from today’s perspective, except perhaps for those with the most ironic inclinations… But, with it Betty is launched. She had quite a run, and I find it interesting how she still appears here and there… Read more

I’ve only just learned through a Facebook posting by David Loy that Ken Jones has died. Looking into it I see he died on the 2nd of August, from the ravages of prostate cancer. It is appropriate in some ways that is how I learned it. As I think David has taken on much of the mantle that Ken wove out of a life time of hard investigation of his own heart and the heart of the world. I had... Read more

It was on this day in 1947 that the raft Kon Tiki made it to the reefs of Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, following a one hundred and one day voyage covering some four thousand, plus miles. While the project’s leader Thor Heyerdahl’s theory that Polynesia could have been populated from the Americas has generally been discredited, the very audacity of his adventure coupled with very good filming, and a best selling book left my generation with a contemporary vision... Read more

Many, possibly a majority of Zen practitioners in North America practice within the Soto branch of Japanese-derived Zen. A consequence of this is some confusion around the relationship between ordination and dharma transmission. Through some accidents of history dharma transmission in Japanese-derived Soto has collapsed into ordination. If one digs into the structure of the denkai and denbo aspects to Soto dharma transmission one can see how denkai is the “completion” of ordination, while denbo is the actual ancient Zen... Read more

It was on this day in 1884 that the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty was laid on what was then Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. It has become the great symbol of what we might be. I know I’ve never stopped feeling the thrill of that lovely dream every time I’ve visited New York and looked out at the statue in the harbor, and as I look out at it, I recall how on occasion we’ve actually lived... Read more

Stanley Lombardo. Just sayin’ Could do worse… Read more

Any spiritual practitioner knows he gave a lot of them, those direct pointers into the heart of the matter. But, today, this one about a seed… Come said the muse, Sing me a song no poet has yet chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad each of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection. By every life a share or more or less, None born but... Read more

Louis Armstrong was born today, in 1901. Read more

According to the good folk at Wikipedia it was on this day in 435 that Emperor Theodosius II banished the recently deposed archbishop and patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, who had already retired to his former monastery in Antioch, to exile in the upper reaches of Upper Egypt. Nestorianism, the name given to the views associated with him about the nature of Christ became the orthodoxy of the farthest eastern branch of early Medieval Christianity. Nestorian churches were founded in India... Read more