Now I Make the Moves, 36th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): After my walk yesterday, after the subsequent thunderstorm, and after I posted to WDW, another tree fell in the neighborhood. A pine, just like the tall, tall trees that surround and tower over my house. I get spooked every time a tree falls, partially PTSD from 2020 when a tree fell on my house, shattering the roof, and partially from the assumption that a falling tree will probably be my demise. 

Impermanence. If a tree falls and no one takes it as a reminder of the ephemeral nature of existence, does it contain any karma?

I don't want to sound like one of those pundits constantly complaining about misleading headlines in the New York Times and other mainstream media, but today The Guardian ran a headline, "Mitch McConnell leaves rehab center to continue recovery from fall at home," with a photograph of him in a wheelchair, wearing a jacket and tie, being led from a stately-looking room. He looks old and he's in a wheelchair, but he still looked far healthier that I imagined he would. Quite frankly, I suspected that he was either already dead or at least brain-dead.

It wasn't until one clicks on the headline for the full article that one finds a caption stating that the photograph was from last May, and McConnell was in the Capital being taken to a policy luncheon. I thought it was quite deceptive of The Guardian to use a photograph that appeared to depict what the headline read ("leaves rehab center") when for all we know he left the center in a stretcher or on a gurney. Or in a hearse. We still don't have proof of life.

I found the winner of today's "hilarious but true" typo in an online forum about climate change. "The bulk of the evidence suggests that if we stopped our emotions, global temperatures would stabilize (+/- a few tenths of a degree)." The poster obviously meant "emissions," not "emotions," but either way they still have a point - if we control our emotions, or more precisely, if we stop allowing them to control us, our outlook and behavior would stabilize. And when we stop flying off the handle and upsetting others, their outlook and behavior stabilizes, and so on in a karmic feedback loop. 

I'm going to try and start thinking of temper and anger as "carbon emotions" and see if that helps me reduce their emission.