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Welcome To An All-Text, AI-Free Zone!

DEAR PATIENT READER (and anyone else who happens by),

Now that you’re here, a word or two:

1. If you’re eager to meet Prosatio Silban, the self-defrocked holyman in a fantastic land who teases out a meager but honest living as a mercenary cook, allow me to introduce you.

2. You may also/instead browse at leisure some rusty recollections, offbeat observations, friendly particularism, tasty recipes, unpretentious poetry, entertaining quotes, recreational science, and wry spirituality.

Thank you for your patronage, and please enjoy,

Neal Ross Attinson

Double Identity

IN ADDITION TO what else one may find in a wallet (money, DL, &c.), mine contains two cards that license me as a member of the clergy.

They’re neither what you think – I’m not a rabbi, nor will I likely become one in this life – but they do tell a semi-religious story nonetheless.

The first came c. 1999, after a friend who was a member of the Universal Life Church asked me if I too wanted to be ordained. “Sure! What do I need to do?” I asked him. After anointing my head with a frosty cold one (it was a very hot day, in the way that only Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire days can be very hot), he declared, “You’re in.” He then told me where to write and receive my free ordination credentials.

ULC espouses a single creed: “Know your beliefs and be true to them.” And because ULC is legally recognized in California (and other enlightened states) for solemnizing weddings, I have since married a handful of friends – which was, really, why I wanted ordainment in the first place.

The other ordination, also legally recognized in some places, belongs to the Church of the SubGenius. Those behind that inexplicable parody religion/religious parody/living art project published a trade paperback in 1983 which – much like DEVO, and science-fiction conventions – assured lonely outsiders that they too had a place, and a people, they could call their own. Of course, I took to it in a big, enthusiastic way.

Unlike the ULC, the CotS then charged $20 for an ordination kit. So, justifying it as for a good cause, I mailed a Jackson to their Dallas, Texas headquarters. Within a week I received an ordination card, a poster of Church frontman J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, and various pieces of SubG propaganda (some of which I distributed in the summer of 1985 at 2 a.m. in Times Square – but that story is classified.)

For a long time, my ULC and CotS “memberships” helped me feel as though I belonged somewhere spiritually important. I do that in other ways now, but I will always be respectfully grateful to the Revs. Kirby Hensley and Ivan Stang for opening their secretly famous doors and inviting me in.

Secret Signposts

HIDDEN SOCIAL NETS surround us everywhere we go, and those who know – know.

Example? Sure!

I was shopping in one of my favorite grocery stores earlier today when the guy behind the butchers’ counter noticed my black Firefly T-shirt.

“Nice shirt!” he said with a wide grin.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing.

Now, he could have added something like, “I’m a Firefly fan too.” Or “I really like that series.” Or even “How long have you been a fan?”

But instead, he indicated the leather bomber-jacket I was wearing (Sonoma mornings are cold these days) and said with a wider grin, “I see you’re a real Browncoat.”

If none of this makes sense to you, allow me to explain. Instead of stating the obvious, my fellow fan responded with another insider’s reference. You see, the shirt in question doesn’t feature the title of the show or anything like that – the only way to “get it” is if you recognize the image and motto: a burnt-umber image of the titular spaceship above the motto, “STAY SHINY.” If you don’t, then no harm done. His comment told me right away that he got it. And his grin told me that he was enjoying our little secret signpost as much as I was.

Connections. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Father’s Time

SOME TRADITIONS ARE axiomatic: just as a woman should inherit her mom’s wedding ring, so should a man wear his father’s watch.

My dad, who died at the end of January, didn’t like to faff around much. He was a happily simple man with happily simple tastes, and preferred straightforwardness in all things. That’s reflected in his choice of timepiece – a white-and-gold Timex Indiglo Easy Reader, mounted on a gold stainless-steel expansion band that conforms to the wrist without constant buckling and unbuckling. Simple and tasteful, and accurate without nerding out about it – it’s easier to say “a quarter to three” than “6:47 and 38 seconds.” After more than 40 years of wearing a cheap but rugged Casio Illuminator on a plastic strap that buckles, I actually and seriously feel “grown up.”

Maybe that’s why we inherit these things, or rather, that’s what it means to inherit them. In my dad’s absence, I am now the “man of the family” (for some values of “man of the family,” anyway, since now there’s just my sister and me), and in trying to figure out exactly what that means, it occurs to me that part of it means adopting certain cultural traditions.

Hence the watch.

Might there be the same effect as inheriting his car or house? I don’t think so, as these are not as intimate as, say, what I now wear to bed every night so that I can see what time I wake up. Or to synagogue board meetings. Or to conduct services. Or to the grocery store. Or even to simply look at and think about the man who wore it before I did, and wonder what he thought about when he looked at it.

Thanks, Dad. It’s good to feel like the man who’s your son.

Machine Time

HOW MANY HOURS do we waste waiting for our thinking machines to do their thing?

Browsers to load. Files to open. Printer jobs. Email delays. Forms to register. TFA codes to arrive. And a hundred other petty inconveniences that result in impatience, lost tempers, and general cussedness.

Now, I am a patient man, but I swear – if I had a dollar for every minute spent waiting for my machines to catch up to my schedule, I could retire to my own private Idaho. It’s a ridiculous feature of modern life that these (what used to be called) “labor-saving devices” may be actually causing more helplessness than enabling usefulness.

I have no solutions to this mishegas – what can one person do against a vast cultural tide anyway? – but I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps that Butler fellow had it right all along. Who’s with me?

Portable Holiness

ONE OF THE more mysterious details of this week’s Torah portion, Naso (Numbers 4:21–7:89), concerns the “nazirite” – someone who decides to swear off of wine and other grape products, haircuts, and engaging with the deceased.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

The Torah doesn’t explain, but Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz offers three traditional viewpoints:

1. Out of gratitude for a gift or blessing from G?d.

2. To fulfill a vow to G?d.

3. To draw nearer the Divine by achieving a measure of personal holiness.

That last point takes a bit of unpacking. For our ancestors, closeness to G?d could normally be achieved in only two ways – either through bringing a sacrifice to the Tabernacle or Temple, or by being born into one of the Levitical families who serve in it.

However, not everyone could afford a sacrifice. And while not everyone had the privilege of inheriting a sacred status, anyone could be as holy as someone who did. Being a nazirite took a dedication to principles, vigilance over one’s behavior, and a certain amount of self-sacrifice.

Though there’s no longer a Tabernacle or Temple, we call someone who holds and exemplifies those qualities a “mensch.”

Sounds a lot like holiness to me.

Put Your Hand on the Radio

A RABBINICAL ASSISTANT, two deacons, and a lay mystic walk into a radio studio.

Seriously.

Welcome to the Sonoma Valley Interfaith Radio Hour, a live and lively round-robin every Thursday afternoon from 3-4pm Pacific Time on Sonoma Valley’s own KSVY (91.3 FM and streaming/archived at ksvy.org) featuring one Jew (me), the deacons (Presbyterian and Roman Catholic), and a Christian Science practitioner. (With occasional guesting by my rabbi, by an Irish Catholic priest, and whoever else we can grab from our local ecumenical Cobb salad.)

Our informal discussions have included how our different faith-traditions understand moral and ethical ideals; life-cycle events such as birth, coming of age, marriage and divorce, and dying/mourning; the multiform flavors of our worship services; observing holidays and holy days; our understandings of/interactions with the Bible and other holy books; and how we ourselves each came to our respective “ministries.” We have deep respect for each other’s religious backgrounds and deep attachments to our own – as our Presbyterian emcee puts it, “We’re all swimming in the same direction” – and are on the air not to convert or proselytize, but to educate, entertain, and hopefully, edify.

What makes the show work, I think, is that outside of our studio, the Valley prides itself on a thriving interfaith fellowship, perhaps because we’re so isolated – we really are all we’ve got, and it’s to our evolutionary advantage to get along as well as we do; it helps, too, that we have all become such close acquaintances. Also, I find that learning about others’ religions/sacred practices make me appreciate my own that much more. Tune us in sometime and see if that’s true for you!

Silent Revolution

PROPOSAL: EVERYONE-BE-QUIET DAY.

The Idea: We were fretting about leafblowers disturbing the local birds, and wondering what the world would sound like were all the machines to be turned off for a while…

The Action: On June 1, 2026, between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. UTC, everyone in the world turns off all cell phones, computers, televisions, radios, games, leafblowers, lawnmowers, weedwhackers and cars — in short everything that beeps, rings, roars, rattles, or makes a sound louder than a normal human conversation and isn’t essential to maintaining human life. (Sort of like The Day The Earth Stood Still, but voluntary.) Conversation is optional during this period, but it might be fun (and instructive?) to enjoy the silence in silence.

The Method: Get the word out by linking this announcement through Facebook, email, Twitter, texting, DMs, Usenet, phone-pole posting, graffiti, listservs, Bluesky, letters to the editor, and whatever remains of talk radio. (Pretty please.)

Motto: “Shhh.”

The Cook For Any Price: Now With Art!

JUST A QUICK NOTE to announce that, thanks to the talents of locally famous Sonoma artist and musician Jon Shannon Williams, my e-books now have handsome new covers – which (I strongly believe) are reminiscent of The Brothers Hildebrandt (Google same if you weren’t a Lord of the Rings fan in the 1970s). Please check him/them out and bask in the glow!

Moon Shot

THE FOUR ASTRONAUTS who recently swooped around the Moon and back again – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, may their names live forever – did more than visually explore Earth’s neighboring world from close quarters for the first time in decades.

They injected into this world a burst of hope and vicarious glory sorely needed in this age of cynicism, distrust, chaos and doomcrying.

Think of it. When’s the last time you felt a surge of positivity and pride at human accomplishments? Speaking strictly for myself, it’s been more than one year, three months, and a day or two.

But watching the Artemis mission’s textbook-perfect splashdown and recovery had me shedding at least one tear of grateful joy.

This is what humans can do when we all work together, I thought, dabbing my eyes with a tissue. This is what’s possible.

I don’t know about you, but I needed that.

Skygazer’s Arsenal

A FRIEND OF MINE, rarely rendered speechless, became so when I let slip an astronomical secret. She pressed me for details, and because you might want to know too, I’m passing them along:

The reason I have 18 astronomy apps on my [smartphone] is that, although some do overlap, each has a little something the others lack. Most are free, but I have also tossed a few bucks at my personal faves. They are… (drumroll)

– Star atlases/planetarium programs: Stellarium, SkySafari, SkyView, Sky Map

– Target catalogues (where and when to look for cool, if sometimes transient, stuff): TheSkyLive, Nightshift, Stargazing Hub, Telescopius

– International Space Station trackers: ISS Detector, Heavens-Above, ISS Live Now, Spot the Station

– Weather: Astrospheric, Field Guide to Clouds

– Solar/lunar observation: SpaceWeatherLive, LunarMap HD

– Misc: The Golden Record, NASA

And there you have it. Mystery solved, I hope!

Almost all of these are available at the Google Play Store. (Nightshift is no longer in development, alas, but it’s still my go-to for current weather-satellite imagery and customized-to-my-equipment “targets.”) If you find any of these useful, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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