Missives from Samsara

I am fascinated by the great cities of the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some amazing metropolises. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been to Beijing, today one of the world’s largest and most modern cities. I mention Beijing in particular because of the quote below, that I saved while reading Jack Weatherford’s popular book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Before coming across this I didn’t know that Beijing was also the Mongol capital ‘Khanbalik.’ A little further research indicates that people have been living at the site of Beijing for more than 1500 years. This history reminds me of Mexico City as well, as the modern megacity was built on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, thought the Aztec didn’t settle in central Mexico until the 1200s.

For what it’s worth, here are the world’s longest inhabited cities:

• Jericho, West Bank
• Damascus, Syria
• Aleppo, Syria
• Byblos, Lebanon
• Argos, Greece

Other cities sometimes included on such lists, all with evidence of very long habitation histories, are Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Athens (Greece), Sidon (Lebanon), and Varanasi (India).

I finished four books this month and am currently reading 7, plus the one high school Human Geography text. As I mentioned in a post last week, I bailed on my one novel and took up book two of The Wheel of Time series in its place. So far I’m glad I did. The two books I find myself reaching for the least right now are The Rediscovery of America and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Nevertheless, books that I lag on usually grip me at some point and I am able to make significant progress quickly. That is happening right now with Gore Vidal’s memoir Palimpsest. My quickest read right now is the excellent Garcia biography.

The Jerry Garcia biography I am halfway through is enjoyable. Rather than a straight biography of Garcia, it’s really the story of Jerry and the times he lived through. The author spends half the book on his youth and the 60s. But hey, as a history nerd, I’m loving all the historical context.

During the description of the chaos of 1968 there is a section that mentions Jerry Rubin and the Yippies. The quote below–attributed to Rubin–which I had never heard before, is great and resonates deeply right now in the back half of 2025. I’d amend the idea a bit in the sense that who we vote for does matter quite a bit. However, as Rubin argues, it is so much more than that. It is what you buy, what you invest your money and time in, what types of people you hang out with, where and how you live, and what values you try to live up day in and day out, including what you do to pay the bills. As a social studies teacher, this is an important idea that I think we all want our young people to understand. Rubin’s quote makes the points succinctly and coming across it, I found it to be a powerful reminder.

A new season is upon us and I pulled the trigger on 8 new books to add to my TBR collection. This haul touches on many of my interests; football, memoir, writing, foreign policy and economics, and general self improvement. I’ve got to finish one of my current reads before diving into one of these, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to tackle the Zinsser memoir first. Happy days.

Everyone has heard of a ‘to do list.’ An idea that has been floating around amongst productivity nerds for a while is the related notion of a ‘to don’t' list. Today I was stuck in traffic on my way home and I was reminded of this idea. Having the same commute for 25 years has led me, unfortunately, to be a bit impatient driving home. I tend to get easily frustrated in traffic and today was typical in that regard. However, I eventually remembered (admittedly, it took awhile) the uselessness of getting angry at traffic, as my feelings one way or another were going to have zero effect on my ability to get home any faster. The advice of Shantideva and the Stoics came to mind. Indeed, “don’t get upset about things you can’t control” became my mantra today and that led me to try and think of other behaviors I should keep atop my personal ‘to don’t’ list. Here a few more that came to mind:

• Gossip

• Compare myself to others

• Doom scroll the news

• Ruminate about the past

• Think rigidly or ideologically

Easier said than done for sure, but definitely worth the effort.

I finish the vast majority of books that I start. However, every once in a while I find myself reading 100 pages (or thereabouts) into a book that isn’t interesting. For me, it almost always happens to be a novel. I used to feel the weight of the sunk cost fallacy and felt like I should finish every book I started. However, as I get older I realize that logic doesn’t work for me. Life is too damn short to read just for the sake of reading. I’ve got to be getting something out of the book.

Yesterday, I gave up on Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. For those who are interested in science and climate change, I recommend the book. It is well written and is creatively organized, but I wasn’t digging it. Indeed, I only made it through page 88 on this one. I’ll keep it around because perhaps in a different season of life, the book might resonate more. However, since I always try to have one novel going, I immediately started the second book in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

A week ago I wrote about my love of college football. However, today I cancelled my YouTubeTV subscription, which means that starting next weekend, I’m shut out from watching anymore games unless I am at someone else’s house or I decide to go hang out at a pub. Everyone’s red line is somewhere and for me I can’t cotton to supporting Disney/ABC/ESPN, or CBS, or Fox at this point. So, no football for me this year. Luckily, I can access college radio stations online and still follow along with games I really want to experience. Looking on the bright side, it is going to save me some dough and open up some free time on Saturdays.

I didn’t finish this book by Jenny Odell, but I read enough to come across this arresting, beautifully conveyed idea about how we experience time. The first example that comes to my mind is how long the next three and half years are going to feel to many of us who are disgusted with the current political environment in this country. Other examples include:

• Scrolling online, when 10 minutes can quickly turn into a 45 minutes or more, in a blink;
• Parenting young children, when the days (and nights!) can sometimes stretch on for what feels like forever, but the years pass by at lightning speed;
• Waiting for test results or a scheduler to call for a needed appointment, leading to the sense that days have become weeks;
• Commuting, when the 30 minute drive feels ten times longer than the same 30 minutes at home engaged in your favorite activity;
• Vacations, when the the weeks and days leading up to it crawl by, but the vacation itself seems like it is passing by at double time;

More evidence that Buddhist teachings on Emptiness ring true.

I am reading a book now called The Gift of Aging. In a chapter about the dying process the authors make the statement you can see below, that hearing is the last of the senses to fade during the death process. Digging in a bit, it seems hospice workers frequently notice that people who are dying and who seem unconscious often respond to the voices of their loved ones. This study supports these anecdotes.

My wife, being a devout Buddhist, has very specific instructions I am to follow were she to pass before me. Central to her wishes are keeping people away who are overly emotional, as well as playing Buddhist prayers on repeat.

The quote below got me thinking about what I want to hear if I am lucky enough to die at home with people around me who can carry out my wishes. The conclusion I have come to is that I don’t know and that I need to think about it, then make sure my wishes are known.

In the past I have assumed I would want my favorite music to be playing. But that isn’t an easy ask as I like a wide variety of music, and I would likely want to make sure aggressive tunes were not in the playlist. That means if music is my answer, I’ll need to make a playlist and make sure my spouse knows about.

Another possibility is to simply have my loved ones with me, talking to me so I can pass with their voices in my consciousness. However, like my wife, I wouldn’t want anyone to be too hysterical, as I am Buddhist enough to know that I want a calm mind as much as possible at the very end.

A third possibility is to have mantras that I love playing. There are many beautiful, long mantras available on YouTube that I have discovered over the years that might fit the bill. The ones I like definitely calm my mind and would be familiar to me, which I think would be helpful.

As of now, I still don’t know. However, I now realize this is something I should try and figure out. If I will be able to hear through to the end, ideally I am hearing something that is calming and brings happy memories. If and when I figure this out, I’ll post about it.

I love college football. Growing up, I was mostly an NFL fan. Nowadays though, I watch football on Saturdays, not Sundays. I’m not sure I know why I love one so much more than the other. I root for a school I didn’t even attend (although I root for my alma mater too, they just aren’t as easy to follow since they are FCS and aren’t on TV very often). I root for Stanford, where my dad went to school, because that was the first team I learned to love as a kid. I think the first in person game I ever saw was the Big Game in either 1978 or 1979 (in Berkeley).

One thing I know is that my love for college football generally evolved over time. Indeed, my growing interest coincided with the rise of cable programming and the ubiquity of college football on TV. It also helps that about 15 years ago, Stanford started winning and for a few years were one of the country’s elite teams. Rooting for a team that wins is really fun and in my case stoked my interest. Now, though they are not very good, my memories of winning are there egging on my interest. “There’s always next week…or next year.”

This time period also coincided with the rise of Oregon football. Oregon State has also had some great teams over the past 25 years. When those schools do well, I found myself rooting for them too. The web of relationships between schools and conferences also played a role because I increasingly found myself rooting for Pac 10/12 teams against teams from other conferences. So, in addition to watching Stanford, I often found I had a rooting interest in a ton of other games every weekend, as well. I suppose this sort of logic could also be applied to the NFL in the sense that a fan would have a rooting interest against their favorite teams' conference rivals. However, for me, it was the college match ups that got me juiced.

That leads to another element of college football I like: the randomness of the match ups. There are so many colleges with Division I football teams that there are some really unique matchups between schools. With the new conference alignment, Stanford’s schedule is filled with schools they don’t have a history of playing. Increases my interest. Better than watching the Chicago Bears and New York Giants play for the 200th time.

Like all sports, college football is also filled with drama. For me, movies and TV shows often lack drama because they are either predictable or for some other reason I am unable to forget that I am watching something that is scripted. Saturday football can still surprise and many games come down to the wire, decided by randomness, amazing athletic ability that is a joy to behold, or something else totally unexpected. The Play comes to mind, as a Stanford fan.

Finally, I also used to make the argument that the players were playing for the love of the game; that they weren’t mercenaries. Sadly, that argument no longer holds. The money sloshing around college football has finally made its way into the pockets of the players and all of college athletics have been changed by the new NIL rules that are in place. I’m not sure I like the changes and I worry about what it will mean for schools like Stanford and Oregon State moving forward. Nevertheless, for better or worse, I’m still happily tuning out the bad craziness in the news and following along.