the rohn report

Once again winter comes and makes everything cold. Hey I don’t mind, I’m from Michigan where winters are arduous affairs, long they endure and when they finally give way - joy. The snow melts and the flowers come up thru the ground and appear as little fairy lamps or something, little maidens maybe. The cold isn’t very cold but it’s not warm. That’s noticeable. Stick your head out the door and fee...

First you are born, then you live, then you die. If you haven’t died yet then you are still alive. Unless you haven’t been born yet in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this. These obvious facts are known to all but rarely discussed. They’re considered importune, impolite and awkward. A bit of a downer too. I’d like to discuss them now. Literature, that unique human expression, I mean bi...

emptiness / like this heavy grey sky it’s not badno need to fill up the emptinesswith thoughts can you imagine a picture of nothing ??just a frameprobly not because nothing is somethingit’s blank space / it’s the canvas before the paint is appliedbefore our minds became civilizedour heart all the time not the one that pumps bloodthe one that wants to feel gooda simple singular desire it’s hard to...

When I was but a young lad, back in 1970, I embarked on a journey to see the world. I was untraveled but ready for adventure and whatever came my way. We gathered our resources, me and my buddy, bought our backpacks, a lightweight tent, cooking stove, sleeping bags, collected some extra clothes and all of our available cash — in my case about $300, and headed out. Youthful naiveté can sometimes su...

‘from the west to the easthear the prayer of the mothersbring us peace bring us peace’ Since I discovered this video from a friend’s post on WhatsApp I’ve played it a bunch of times, each time discovering something new, my eyes filling with tears by the end. That’s powerful. It was powerful for me. I’m just sayin. Everybody has a different trigger but music does contain healing vibes and a way of...

My friend came to visit me and we went for a bike ride. Since we are not on an ocean or anywhere near an ocean we had to ride on dry land. We went to the sacred oak tree cafe and looked out upon the city. The top of the hill is right next to San Pedro Springs and the San Pedro creek which emanates from it, except both are dry. They used to emanate. I showed her the strange incarnations of the cree...

Is it because it’s in the Fall, when things are dying and returning to the earth? Is it the stormy weather that accompanies the changing of the season? Where did this spooky holiday come from anyway? It has its origins, no doubt, in some medieval tradition. I don’t know, I haven’t looked it up, but seems kind of medieval, gothic atleast. My neighbors across the street have set up a graveyard on th...

Featured in today’s BBC online is this article: The weird sound from the early Universe . Scientists figured out back in 2005 that there had been a primordial hum permeating the universe since shortly after it was born. It spread out at half the speed of light thru the plasma (ionized gas) which was all there was of the universe at the time - a deep bass note with a wave length of 450,000 light ye...

I want to write about my dad. His name was John. John, Rohn, get it? I imagine him in his aspirational phase: young, newly married, intent on raising a family and finding a congregation to minister unto, his ordination in hand. He did find a place, in Hudson, Michigan. A Baptist church in need of a pastor. I don’t know why. They hired him on and that was his first time. Being a pastor and all, doi...

I know it sounds unbelievable. One time I opened the back door to let her in and I distinctly heard her say “ankyoo ” in her meowy voice. I mean she could have come in the cat door but she wanted me to open it for her. Another time, just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in my meditation chair on the front porch having my quiet time and Kybo was meowing around looking for strokes. Her voice had a ple...

Stone pillars, T-shaped megaliths 15 feet high, quarried and carved out of the limestone rock with flint tools and set in circles around . . . what? I can only guess, now 11,000 years later. That’s how long ago this place was built. 11,000 years ago they hadn’t even invented farming yet, not really, maybe a few gardens here and there, by chance. They wouldn’t build the pyramids or Stonehenge for a...

They’re designed for it. Even with your eyes closed you can see light. Even with your hands covering your closed eyes you can see light. Some kind of light. If you close both of your eyes and cover one eye with one hand and pet your cat with the other hand you will notice the difference between one covered closed eye and one uncovered closed eye. The purpose of these experiments is to demonstrate...

This is my front lawn as of Thursday afternoon, August 31, 2023 after a long hot dry summer which doesn’t seem to be over yet. In the Spring it looked like this. We had rain and the sunflowers activated. Their seeds had been lying on the ground all year, waiting for their chance. Hundreds of them sprouted and grew, tall and proud. Many times I stopped to look at them, their faces uplifted to the s...

There was a time not too long ago when I thought I wanted to be a nomad and travel around in my van. Van life. I bought a van and started equipping it to live in while I traveled around in my nomadic life. Now I’m driving a Prius, a city car, and the van is for sale. The thought of traveling around in a van seems really awkward and arduous to me now. Of course if I had a fully equipped van with al...

It’s going to rain. This is what I promised myself when I saw the 10 day forecast on my computer. The heat wave over. The obstinate dominance of the Sun finally subsumed by something more nuanced - the rain. And now for something completely different - cooler weather and rain. I sure hope it rains. It could still go all along outside us and miss us completely. I’ve seen it before. On weather radar...

I just went to the mailbox, walked over hot asphalt in bare feet to get there, and it was all junk mail. A flyer entitled ‘2023 PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX BILL INFORMATION’. All caps. ‘Snooze and save’ said another flyer, even larger, with a beautiful woman making a bed, all lower case. I think it’s a furniture store. There was a GIANT movie ticket, or facsimile thereof, 8”x12”, just to make sure you g...

Welcome to Barista Interviews. This is the third in the series. Katie from Rose Hip Coffee and Ali also from Rose Hip Coffee were also featured. Baristas really do play a mythic role in society. They have been playing their role, serving up the drinks, talking to the patrons, ever since the time of Gilgamesh in old Mesopotamia when he encountered Shiduri, the bar maid, on the beach at the edge of...

The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets is finally available. It took long enough. It’s available in hardcover or paperback here . I know, Amazon is an insidious and capricious corporate entity. They’re also the most convenient platform to publish on. Or atleast the only one I could manage. So anyways, there it is. It’s about being human, or atleast about how we have been human. Sometimes comically, som...

paid subscribers First of all I’d like to say thank you to all the paid subscribers of the rohn report. I’m deeply grateful, and I just turned payments back on : ) I feel less disabled and more in a rhythm of writing. Typing speed is back to half of what it was, carpal tunnel symptoms are abating. There are 14 paid subscribers, if you’re curious, and 169 regular free subscribers. Most of the rohn...

I keep hearing about lonely elderly people. Living alone in a house with no spouse or kids. Just holding on. It’s in the news. In the Netherlands they have a special check out line at the grocery store that goes slow so the elderly lonely people can have someone to talk to. It was on Facebook. Can you imagine that? To arrive at your old age and discover yourself all alone? I can. That’s how my lif...

Once again I have nothing for the newsletter. I have spent the last week in an agonizing exercise of futility trying to marry my pages word document to KDP’s publishing platform. My head hurts just thinking about it, but it may finally be bearing fruit. ‘ The Ancient Book of Magic Secrets ’ wants to enter the life of the world. It’s been 8 years since the project was born of fire and rain and a de...

Avdiivka, before the war, was 30,000 people living in a comfy bedroom community on the outskirts of Donetsk, Ukraine. Then came the invasion of February 2022 and Avdiivka ended up on the frontlines. It was bombed and then bombed some more. Donetsk was occupied - the Russian army just a few miles away. Now, a year later, it’s pretty much been reduced to rubble. They’re under threat of attack every...

it’s thursday and i’ve got nothingno sweet epiphanies / no exciting adventures i try to write every week if just to process my own inner journeycalibrate my perspective with the reality of thingsthat’s a useful exercisebut lately it’s been mostly resting and healing and not even bike ridingthat’s where i get alot of the themes and sub-themes - from up on my bikei miss it / i need the inspiration h...

part 1 :: visiting I remember when I was a little kid, a rug rat actually. Television was not well established yet and even if you had one there were only 3 channels, if the weather was right. Anyways my parents would take us kids out visiting to a neighbor’s house for the purpose of having a conversation. There we would sit around the coffee table in the living room and talk. The adults would sit...

Pain has a voice. That’s what I’ve learned. Or rather my body has a voice, many voices and pain is one of them. Carpal tunnel syndrome squeezes the space in the wrist where the nerves and blood vessels pass thru into the hand. It can cause numbness, tingling, muscle weakness and pain - especially at night. One night I was lying in bed with my hand brace on feeling the pain traveling all over my ha...