the rohn report

I got a phone. It’s an iphone 11 Pro Max. Not because I’m a pro, just because I need a bigger screen. These little gadgets are amazing. Mine measures 6 1/4 inches by 3 1/8 inches by 5/16 of an inch thick - barely a quarter of an inch. Smaller than a box of crayons (8 count). It weighs just under 8 ounces and stuffed into that little glass covered Pandora’s Box (along with a battery that will run f...

I’ve started to realize that I kind of live like an alien in my little space pod on planet Earth. It seems to be a theme with me lately. Aliens. I watched The Hail Mary Project . I read The Humans a novel by Matt Haig. I listened to an interview with David Bowie which I cannot now find and started watching his 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth . They’re all about aliens and aliens interacting w...

We are designed for adventure. We were made for it. It’s a basic human need. In fact if we’re not having adventures of some sort or other we’re probably bored and sad. Maybe mentally ill. We have vicarious adventures on TV: sports, movies, even the stupid news is some sort of absurd adventure. But it’s not tactile, it doesn’t engage all our senses, our life doesn’t depend on it. It used to - the o...

Welcome to my private jungle. I am ensconced in a cabin at the center of a quarter acre plot in a suburban neighborhood of San Antonio. Outside my window, the cardinal, red as a flame, flits thru the branches of the hackberry looking for tasty berries. The foliage, meshed and merged into every corner of the scene sits at the center of the dweebil. What is a dweebil you might ask? An aerial view wo...

all everything is whatever it isand that’s the truthlet me be pragmatic herewe don’t know about it sometimesbut it’s still theretake music for examplesometimes you don’t hear itbut it’s still thereeverything is always everywherei think that’s what i thinkto keep the tunes going you have to be in synchit’s all about the synchn’synchand bananas also bananasif you want to make a smoothieuse a bananaa...

The act of writing is good for you. I love writing. I’m not happy unless I’m writing something. Not for long anyways. I write on a keyboard, I write on voice recorder on my phone (dictation), I tap out messages on the tiny touch screen, I write on grocery store receipts, I write on napkins occasionally but my favorite writing is by hand with my Pilot G-2 #10 ink pen on paper in my notebook. It’s l...

. . . the latest entry in the biography series featuring van Gogh, Prem Rawat, Leo Tolstoy, William Bradford, God, Lynn Margulis, Quetzalcoatl, Bad Bunny and me. I first got interested in Fela Kuti listening to the 12 episode Higher Ground podcast, Fela Kuti, Fear No Man . Man, that blew my mind. Check it out. He was a Nigerian musician/activist, revolutionary really and the originator of Afrobeat...

Welcome to the rohn report - Conversation with Sarah . She is a neighbor, a friend, an activist and a delightful and wise person. She’s very involved in the neighborhood where I live which is why I wanted to interview her. The Farmer’s Market at Charis Park here at Brees and Emporia in San Antonio and the Sunset Ridge Collective are a couple of them. We sat under the big Oaks in front of the Sunse...

and lightning does not travel in a straight line.” from ‘Chaos’ by James Gleick. Chaos theory is the idea that behind normal ordinary life is chaos, this is how the universe works, unpredictable, random, but behind the chaos is an elegant, purposeful ‘energy’ that is barely knowable but upon which all things rest. This is what I figured out: I’m kind of an oddball, an outcast but it’s ok. Everybod...

The horizon of the earth looks like a flat line until you get farther away. When you get into outer space it actually becomes a ball, a complete circle. It’s surrounded by cold, dark, empty space sprinkled with stars. Negative space it’s called in the art world. Humans (as far as we know) had never before been into outer space until cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union circled the globe in...

The Europeans initially thought well he probly won’t get elected. Then it was well, you know, how bad can it be, maybe it won’t be that bad, then it was, well it’ll be over someday. Nobody lives forever. Then it was like . . . where are we now? Phase 3? Or is it 4. And what happens next, now that he’s nuked Nato and brought the world to the edge of WWIII? “Experience is the mother of wisdom.” a fa...

Can you ascertain all that is happening in your immediate world? From birds flying by to the micro-organisms in your gut to the flow of thoughts in your brain to the clouds floating by overhead (assuming you are outside)? No. It’s pretty much impossible to be aware of everything but still the brain is receiving those signals, those sensory impulses, the light or the sound or the feeling is going i...

With the dawn comes the rain and the grumbling thunder. I’ve been waiting for this. Concentric circles fill the nature pool. The swimming fish circle and leap. By full light the rain has mostly gone, everything is placid and smooth again. The Holly trees are budding. Spring is here. Spring is here filling the air with fragrance, the Mountain Laurels are blooming, another tree with little white flo...

There is an epidemic of loneliness and isolation among the elderly. There is an epidemic of depression among the teenagers and adolescents, even suicide. There’s an epidemic of homelessness - people who can’t afford a place to live or aren’t mentally stable enough to participate in a society based on money and middle class values. And wow, yeah, these days we have an epidemic of bold face lying by...

Well if you haven’t heard about it by now . . . I guess you missed it. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was seen by 135 million people in 200 countries. It felt like a cultural revolution. The whole show was in Spanish, remarkable in itself for American television, and recognized the fact that ‘God Bless America’ includes all the countries of south, central and north America. He listed...

It’s darkest before the dawn. That’s what the saying says and I guess it’s true, for a condemned man anyways. But hung at the first sign of light would make it so and for the rest of us, condemned or not (and who isn’t ultimately) it’s a sign of hope and a true omen. If you’ve ever thought, while navigating this river of life, that the shoals and the rocky places were your enemies, then consider t...

The river changes daily, according to Mark Twain in his book Life on the Mississippi. He relates, in a slow, deliberate way, his adventures piloting a steamboat up and down the great river from St. Louis to New Orleans. How the slow muddy water surges and peaks, flows low in the dry season. All the subtle intonations, all the messages in the ripples and in the flat water. Every day something new a...

“The wild wind howled and the full moon shined thru holes in the billowing clouds as they passed overhead. A misty fog lay on the moors below.” That’s about all I got. The rest is hidden, occluded. I can do the words. Invective . That word appeared this morning like magic while rolling around on my back, aligning my spine with the true north and south. Maybe I’m going back to poetry. That’s how I...

For this rohn report I wanted to do a travelogue like my friend Maryann does walking around Portland, on her way to the river or down the street to the cafe for a meetup. So here it is, here’s my “Day after Christmas Urban Adventure in the Big City”. No beavers but I found a great Christmas song. When I got home from my bike ride the day before Christmas I realized that my travel bag was missing....

I started writing when I was about 10 years old, a poem for my little sister, about how she was like a spider. I don’t remember writing anything else for a while. I went thru phases. Years went by when I didn’t write anything. I don’t know what I was doing. I remember sitting in the attic of the Charles Street house in Grand Rapids, Michigan when I was 19 years old, a recent dropout from the Bapti...

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“The word ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Greek word apokálypsis, which is made up of the prefix apo- and the root kalýptein. Apo- means ‘away from’ or ‘off,’ and kalýptein means ‘to cover’ or ‘to hide’. Together, they mean ‘to uncover’ or ‘to reveal’.” Thank you AI or Aiee as I like to pronounce it, like an ancient Comanche victory yell. Another offering states, “Originating in late 14 c entury from...

what’s important is the experience not how you get there was my wise adage for the morning. I realized that while doing my yoga. Oh yeah, people have all kinds of different religions but they’re all searching for that experience. The one you can’t say what it is but only feel. Which is why there are so many religions - trying to say it. This is the golden era for American humor with shows like Kin...

I’m in the back of a van traveling down the road. The two people in the front are friends of mine. I’m in a strange sort of half awake, half dream state - like I know I’m probably dreaming but I’m enjoying it so I don’t care. We stop at an old run down gas station, it looks abandoned. I get out and walk around back. There’s a bunch of people camping out on a large concrete slab and somehow it make...

The spirit of writing hasn’t come upon me lately, no more than the rain has visited this parched terrain. The urgency to explain or declaim is missing somehow, instead I’m watching TV football and gazing out the south facing windows at the sun filled front yard. There are deep slanting shadows attached to the trees even while their leaves shine brightly. I know soon they will grow dim. Soon it wil...