Free Yoga as in Free Speech not as in Free Beer

My friend and fellow yogi, Evan, posted on the Cultivate Yoga Instagram account the following about the offerings we have at the Cultivate Yoga Space, our yoga studio:

At Cultivate, FREE YOGA does not only apply in the financial realm and how we have chosen to share our offerings to the community within a gift-based model. FREE YOGA also means that the yoga we offer is free from the constraints of western practices and eastern philosophies. FREE YOGA means we recognize that a true yoga practice is eternally evolving, perpetually in motion and is unique to each and every one of our students. FREE YOGA means that we recognize every student who chooses to practice with us is on their own journey and it is our most sacred duty to create space that will allow for that journey to flow freely with space for infinite exploration. FREE YOGA means that every one of our teachers holds the freedom to completely be themselves and show up how they need to on any given day for themselves and our students. FREE YOGA means that each class we offer is unique, each student we serve is unique and each teacher who serves with us is unique - and when all of these elements align in their authenticity, an infinite FREEDOM occurs. This is FREE YOGA. Click on the link in our bio to learn more about our gift-based model.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part III | 2021年日本旅 ー その3: Yasukuni Shrine Visit 靖国神社

While on our visit to Japan we visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. In all the years I lived in Tokyo and Japan (18 all told) I never visted Yasukuni. Yasukuni is the controversial shrine dedicated to the soldiers of Japan and therefore associated with the fascist nationalists that want to restore the military imperial structure of Japan from WWII.

Every year there are protests surrounding the annual visit by the Prime Minister of Japan to the shrine which large parts of the nation and Japan's neighbors have problems with - particularly those that were treated atrociously by the Japanese in WWII. South Korea is a perfect example of one such country.

Seeding Change - Vote with your wallet to save the Amazon rain forest

Last night, Elly, Arisa and I wanted Seeding Change documentary about the depletion and destruction of the Amazon and how several corporations are trying to leverage their businesses to reverse that process.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part II | 2021年日本旅 ー その２

This is my series of blog posts on Arisa and my trip to Japan in spring of 2021. The first one is here. We are here for two reasons, 1) Arisa's father's funeral and 2) to start the discussions over the will and related inheritance that stem from his death. However, since that is personal I won't be discussing that I'll just be talking about the other aspects of the trip.

In the first post I talked about the experience of arriving at Narita Airport. Once you have cleared all of that, all inbound travelers need to quarantine for 14 days. In two days I'll be half way through. At that point I'll be able to go anywhere in Japan that our little hearts desire. Right now we're basically limiting ourselves to the local area and really only for exercise or grocery shopping.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part 1 | 2021年日本旅 − その１

So as I write this blog, I am in Tokyo, Japan. My daughter's place near the Yoyogi-Uehara station. Sadly we are here for my father-in-law's funeral. We are only in our third day and we'll be here for close to a total of 30 days. For me it has been 5 or 6 years since I've been here, less for Arisa as she and Ken went two years ago. The interesting thing about this trip is that it is in the middle of the covid pandemic. So it has been quite the experience.

This post will relate some of our experience for others that are perhaps coming to Japan.

Jessica Jones and the Great MCU Villain

So my son George recently (recently is a relative term, I started this blog post back at the beginning of March)published a blog post where he posits that the villain in Jessica Jones is the only really great villain in all of the Marvel universe. I actually don't have an opinion on it as while I have seen Jessica Jones and a couple of the other MCU shows not enough to form an opinion.

What I can say is that he is a good writer and has well thought-out his point. It has been quite a while since I've read what he has written, besides the first chapter of Challenger's Chase, so it is pretty cool to see. It's kind of like he's actually an adult! lol. Seriously though it is hard not to feel a little pride to see some good writing.

Just a quick blog post to express some pride in my youngest.

GOP is not a viable party in a healthy Democracy

The title of this blog post says it all, the GOP as it stands today is not a viable political party in a Democracy. This is not to suggest there isn't room for "conservatives" or "fiscal conservates". I will most likely disagree with them but those views are certainly welcome in a democracy. As are the views that are probably more progressive than my own. I didn't in fact register as a Democrat until last year when I felt the dissonace of the GOP with a Democracy, the importance of removing Trump from office. I will admit that over the last year I am leaning way more progressive than I was, way more certain of systemic racism and the influence of white supremacy in not only the GOP but in our military and law enforcement organizations.

George's Youtube Channel - First three posts up

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my son is working on a YA novel called Challenger's Chase. Related to that he is creating a series of channels on Instagram, etc., but specifically a Youtube channel talking about writing drafts. He has posted his first three vlog entries:

1. Channel Intro
2. What is Writing Drafts?
3. Defining Your Reasons To Write; 11 Pros and Cons

Check it out!

Wiki is Up

So my wiki is up and running. I still have some operational tweaks to it I'd like to make but that's all they are is tweaks at this point.

https://wiki.neohawk.org

As a reminder, the wiki is the place where I am beginning to outline my political platform. What I mean by that is based on the events over the last year, the abomnination of the 45th President, the absolute traitorous and seditious policies pursued by the Republican Party, for the first time I registered as a Democrat. The GOP is not a political party, but can only be considered as such much in the way that Sinn Fein was the political arm of the IRA, Irish Republican Army.It is still part of a seditious domestic terrorist organization. The acquital of the 45th President where 43 Senators voted to acquit and immediately following the end of the Trial, Mitch McConnell condemns the former President as guilty to inciting and causing the Capitol Riot which just prior he voted to acquit him of those exact charges.

Wiki is Almost There

As you know, I have been trying to get my MoinMoin wiki back up an running. I have upgraded successfully to moin2 and even imported the pages from the previous moinmoin wiki successfully. Now I am tweaking things like security (it was wide open), need to add ssl instead of normal http and all the other normal things for "production" . Since this isn't my day job it is taking me a while to get it up and running but I am getting there. I have been taking copious notes (not really) about what I am doing to get it running correctly. I am awfully close to having it running nice an clean.

However, in the meantime it will spend more time down than up as I get it to where I want. I'm really close though and hopefully I can find time to nail it down. I'll be sure to post here when I do get it up and running. I will probably see if I can create a simple vm that takes up less resources on GCP so I can reduce costs. I can use that and the notes I take to create a tutorial that maybe people can use. We shall see.

Update

The wiki was succesfully upgraded to be accessed only by https and I believe I have the ACLs working correctly. Now I just have a few more production tweaks setting up the uwsgi emperor service.

George's First Chapter of Challenger's Chase is Released

My son George has been writing his first novel, Challenger's Chase(prologue), and instead of going the normal publishing or self-publishing route he has decided to release the book via blog posts. He just released the first chapter which can read here: https://ccghawkins.com/2021/01/02/book1chapter1/. I read a very early version of the first part of this chapter. Obviously the story is George's but you will also notice that it has a lot illustrations that go with it. Those are his as well.

Upgrading my Wiki

My last post mentioned that my wiki was down. Well in the process of troubleshooting the issue I discovered a bunch of things that I didn't know. It's good to learn right?

So there are a couple of things that I discovered during this process the first of which is that Python2 reached end of life support January 2020. I knew that MoinMoin used python 2 but I hadn't realized that python2 is no longer supported at all. In addition PIP, the python package installer announced what yesterday that it no longer supported python2, so you can install it via method. And so the more I thought about it the more I realized that I definitely didn't want to be running my wiki on outdated software particularly if a security vulnerability in python2 was discovered.

My Wiki is Down

My wiki is down. I've been playing with trying to get multiple virtual hostsd up and running and in the process I knocked them all off. You will now just get a default nginx default html page although I did customize it for my www2 virtual host.

Bear with me it'll be back soon. -ish.

Browns Lose Divisional Playoff Game to KC

The Cleveland Browns played in their first divisional round of the NFL playoffs since 1994 today. They lost their first divisional playoff game since 1994 too. However, while I am disappointed and am not disappointed in the season,the result of this game or the team. This season and this team went way beyond anybody's expectations. At the beginning of the season I was hoping for a winning record 8-7 or even a reach of 9-6. We ended at 11-4 and won a wildcard spot. Finally, we played in the divisional round of the playoffs. This season was a huge success!!

Thank you Cleveland Browns!!!

Historical Second Impeachment

Donald Trump was impeached for the second time today by the House of Representatives. While the vote pretty much split along party lines, 10 Republicans were brave enough to choose the country and the Constitution over cultish, seditionists and domestic terrorists. While it is clear that there are a significant number of GOP representatives that are choosing cult and sedition over the constitution, including Ohio House Representatives Jim Jordan and David Joyce, the sole true patriot of the republican representatives from Ohio was Anthony Gonzalez.

Problematic Politician Privilege

Saw this post on twitter tonight:

Live on @KCBSRadio, @RepGaramendi says members of the House have already written up new articles of #impeachment and @realDonaldTrump will "absolutely" be impeached again if he's not removed under the 25th. He says impeachment will be rapid and come "early next week."

Day of Trump Sedition - January 6th 2021

Today, January 6, 2021 will live in infamy along December 7th, 1941 Pearl Harbor Day. In the case of Pearl Harbor a fascist country of Japan bombarded a air assault on a Naval Base on Sunday morning in Hawaii. This attack kicked off America's entry into World War II. Today, the 45th President of the United States called on "protesters" to a go to the Capitol and fight which they did. These seditious insurgents stormed the Capitol where the our elected representatives were carrying out their legal and constitutional duties. They had to be evacuated and some had to hide in offices.

This result was foreseen by many, including myself. The GOP's complete repudiation of any ethics whatsoever allowed this to happen. Certainly Democrats are not blameless. Yesterday I found a blog post from 2009 with the comment of "be afraid, be very afraid" to a video that goes on to interview supporters of Sarah Palin. It demonstrates the immense amount of not only ignorance but plain stupidity of average Americans. They didn't understand policy terms or care, the were "fans" of Sarah Palin. Democrats have not understood the the republican party has been creating this monsters for two to three decades now. The result of that effort have ended in a Trump presidency and the violent sedition we he ordered his supporter to do today. The Democrats have turned a blind eye to this because they also are vested in the money of the system and the benefits of the system. This fact is apparent when our politicians received covid-19 vaccines before our front line workers.

If today wasn't motivation to become more active I don't know what is.

Google Cloud Playground

I have been playing around with the Google Cloud Platform. I have deployed a MoinMoin Wiki on a Debian vm. You can access it here: wiki.neohawk.org. So today I was leaving myself some notes on what I had done so I won't forget where I was and I realized that it counts for by "blog" to do list item. So I can check it off. I have transposed (i.e. cut and paste) it below.

Hara Hachi Bu 腹八分

Hara Hachi Bu (腹八分) is a Japanese proverb or saying that means eat until you are 80% full. In the Okinawa Program, they identified this as an Okinawan Proverb and I certainly can't contest that statement as I don't actually know if its origins were Japanese or Okinawan. In the end its origin is/was irrelevant but the fact that I read about it again recently in the Okinawa Program is helping me define one of my goals for this year. I am adding the practice of Hara Hachi Bu to my daily routine.

Happy New Year! Welcome 2021!

Happy New Year!!

It is finally 2021! The year that was 2020 is finally completed and most of us made it through. For the 350,000 plus Americans that did not make due to the criminal behavior of the US President, you have my sincerest condolences.

2021 will see Joe Biden become President, and we will see a vaccine delivered however slowly that may be such that we can get back to a non-pandemic lifestyle. It will be a time of celebration, of release, of great joy. There will of course be the normal life difficulties but compared to 2020, we will see a resurgence of optimism and spirit! And I hope for each and everyone of us best wishes and good health for the new year.