Firekeeping

Some notes on fire building in our condo, lest I forget.

•  using a top-down method creates long-lasting and very hot embers out of the base later of wood
• use smaller (bicep width) pieces for the base layer
• bigger logs should bracket the kindling
• use kindling (paper and thinner sticks) to create a bridge between bigger logs
• as fire continually burns down, use smaller wood pieces to maintain the bottom layer of embers, still stacking bigger pieces on top
• if no flames are visible but embers are still audible it is very easy to restart the fire with a couple of pieces of well-bridged kindling and a match or two
• use kindling sticks to transfer flames to opposing ends of new logs
• use fireplace tools to turn logs. Sometimes this is all it needs to catch anew
• regularly praise the fire as this seems to have a positive effect
• don't forget to refresh the charcoal loptr by the kindling pile

Long Live the Gods (a review)

 

I have to give it to Gus DiZerega: he can title a book well. God is Dead, Long Live the Gods was pretty compelling when it came up in the “Recommendations” list on my GoodReads. I anticipated, as the book’s tagline promises, “a case for polytheism”, a series of arguments designed to persuade the reader toward polytheistic worldviews, showing how polytheism is somehow “better” at building a functional society and relationship with the Earth. While I don’t need any persuading on the faith front, and I don’t believe polytheism is superior as a general rule, I was interested to see what Mr. DiZerega had to say.

That’s about the end of the nice things I have to share about this book.

To start, structurally I find nothing enjoyable here. The entire thing is written as if the author took a high school 5-paragraph expository essay’s guidelines far too seriously while simultaneously ignoring them. Very seldom are individual concepts and cited sources connected using thoughtful transitions and synthesis of the author’s own ideas and argument. Yet, he made damn sure to get an academic citation into almost every single paragraph of the book. It reads a bit like being browbeaten by your 15-year-old cousin who’s just discovered Reddit and now believes himself to be a philosopher. It’s shallow and poorly thought out. Based on this alone I can’t recommend reading this book to anyone.

TL;DR: The author of this book does not understand who his audience is, how to write a persuasive argument, or what polytheism is.

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