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I took the Boddhisattva's Precepts & received a Dharma Name 清道

2025-07-07T21:00:00Z

I took the Boddhisattva's Precepts & received a Dharma Name 清道

Last weekend I took the Boddhisattva's Precepts in my Zen Buddhism group and received a Dharma name, Seido or "Clear Way". Homage to my linage.

Retrospective: Get Olde/Second Wind by Crying

2024-09-30T12:00:00Z

Retrospective: Get Olde/Second Wind by Crying

Retrospective: Get Olde/Second Wind by Crying (2014):

I'd probably rather nap than wonder, restlessly: will you ever be impressed by me?

Get Olde/Second Wind is a compiled re-issue of Crying's first two EPs Get Olde and Second Wind. This compilation release celebrates a decade's anniversary in the next few months and it's been on my mind again lately, it's a beautiful album.

This is one of my very Important Albums, musical things which affected me and which still affect me. I still get so much out of this album when I listen to it, every three or four years I've gone through a period of change in my life where parts of this album very deeply resonated with me. And that, I think, is what this album "is about". The two EP compilation presents a vignette of a person transitioning from adolescence to adulthood and trying to make sense of what is happening and what happened and what should happen next:

Bon voyage
Forget that olde worlde
I'm inching away from the darkest slump of my life
and I don't know if I'm coming back

Obubu Tea Farm's 2023 Spring Harvest has arrived

2023-05-30T21:16:00Z

Obubu Tea Farm's 2023 Spring Harvest has arrived

It's a new season which means my Kyoto Obubu Tea Farm member packet has come in. These packets are sent as one of the perks of being a patron of this farm. (...)

This season there are some really great first-flush Sencha which I will avidly dig in to tomorrow; they brought me the 2023 harvest of my favorite teas.

Volunteered at the [[id:20230523T181234.844289][2023 Eugene Tea Festival]] this weekend

2023-05-23T18:42:00Z

Volunteered at the 2023 Eugene Tea Festival this weekend

I volunteered with the 2023 Tea Festival, helping to run the educational workshops at Mountain Rose Herbs Annex. It was a smooth event, the first year of this tea festival coming together, but it was good. Got to meet some interesting folks and talk tea, and listen to some folks talk about tea, too.

Published [[id:20230106T115438.176673][A Short Note on Tea Water]]

2023-01-06T14:09:00Z

Published A Short Note on Tea Water

In A Very Quick Introduction to Japanese Tea Brewing I make a claim:

Boiling the water removes a lot of the non-soluble minerals in the water, giving the tea a less harsh flavor.

@nichobi@fosstodon.org on Fediverse sent a direct reply when I posted a link to that guide stating "Minerals don't evaporate, so I think you're more likely to concentrate them as a (small) portion of the water evaporates.", and I've spent some time unpacking all of this. My initial claim was non-soluble minerals would precipitate on boiling and that the remaining soluble minerals would allow for the tea to have more "places" to bind to. I'm not so sure it's that cut-and-dry any more, and in fact I think that the purpose of soluble minerals in tea may actually serve in mediating the tea extraction rather than encouraging it. In A Short Note on Tea Water I expand on this thinking and try to back-stop some of my intuition with an afternoon spent reading Wikipedia.

Added an Atom feed to my [[id:000e38de-9755-4b3a-bbb0-0dae383f570b][Tea Practice]]

2023-01-06T14:03:00Z

Added an Atom feed to my Tea Practice

2023 is a year where I will probably get more intentional about my Tea Brewing again and start up my tea journal, especially now that the Planet Computers Astro Glide lets me always have my org-roam and The Arcology Project in my pocket; previously these tea journal entries went directly in to my daily notes Journal, but I'll attempt to capture the more intent brewing sessions in to that page instead.

If I did this properly, they will be posted to the Lion's Rear Fediverse account alongside this feed, but I'm not sure how Arcology's Feed Generator handles things deep inside those date-trees

Today's session was back to back Wakoucha (Japanese Black Tea) Brewing.

New in the Archive: [[id:20230103T120044.281443][New England Forests]]

2023-01-03T12:49:00Z

New in the Archive: New England Forests

Cataloging some nice Videos I've Watched and trying to get that budding interesting in ecology, forests, and trees flowing again. Ray Asselin produces some really neat documentaries about, well, New England Forests.

Reading the Forested Landscape has me really itching to go out in to Oregon's forests -- many of them are "working forests" cut down by loggers every fifty years and most of the rest are national forests which are managed by the Forest Service, but I wonder what a bit of "forest forensics" skills could net me...

Composed some [[id:879f7b36-1df2-4a23-9666-02a0502db71a][Haiku]] [[id:20221227T215149.598150][last night]]

2022-12-27T21:52:00Z

Composed some Haiku last night

Nothing special, just bumping this feed... Winter 2022 haiku composed while in Phoenix for Christmas time

Today I [[id:20221222T175033.264169][Got Marra back with a larger frame]]

2022-12-22T18:04:00Z

Today I Got Marra back with a larger frame

In October I started wondering what to do with my touring bike -- my 52cm Salsa Marrakesh was something that I had to "settle" on when trying to buy a bike during the height of COVID-indoors-insanity and supply chain buffoonery. This fall I finally started to sit down and solve this, and ended up moving all the components to a 54cm frame at Paul's Bicycle Way of Life in Eugene. I picked it up today, and it's too cold and icy for me to ride it until I get back from holiday travels, but I am quite excited by it. They said it would take a week and I picked it up in two days, very communicative and helpful all along. I had a number of shops in town ghost me or tell me I was SoL, I was about to start calling up in Portland before I walked in here on a whim.

Going from the "midnight blue" frame to a black frame like this was a bit worrying, but the pop of color from the new BTP woven bar tape makes it really stand out nicely, and I'm not above slapping some MASH SF stickers on it 🚴

I [[id:20221222T160125.330256][Received this year's Obukucha from Obubu Tea Farm]]

2022-12-22T17:19:00Z

I Received this year's Obukucha from Obubu Tea Farm

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Four times a year I get a shipment of Sencha Tea from Kyoto Obubu Tea Farm in Japan; this is basically my only source of sencha tea and I have grown to love the experience and surprise of brewing each season's "unfinished"/unblended Aracha (荒茶). December's shipment is always a special one because it includes a special ceremonial tea, Obukucha.

It's green tea with kombu and salted ume plums and a bit of gold flake used to bring good fortune to those who drink it. It's a nice little tradition I wouldn't have inherited were it not for the folks at Obubu and my visit to them in 2018 alongside my growing interest at the intersection of Tea and Zen.

It’s really nice to be able to support a farm and directly benefit from it a few times a year! for ~30$/month the club itself is not as good of a “deal” as, say, a white2tea monthly puer membership or whatever, but it feels good to directly support a handful of farmers especially in a town like Wazuka which is having trouble surviving as the youth of the town move to cities.

it’s really fascinating to have such a “direct” relationship with my tea and it’s really changed my outlook on food and tea over the last few years. they don’t do any mixing or blending but sell 荒茶 “farmer’s tea”; you get a single field in a single season for each of their tea products and get to watch it slowly develop and change with the seasons. it’s kind of similar to shopping from the same stalls at the local farmer’s market for a few years, every time you shop is going to be different and there is some real beauty and nuance in those differences.