Who is Jon Black

Nothing is Useless

“In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

This morning I read a Tao story of a flawed tree but the story didn’t call it flawed but rather, useless. It was useless in the sense that it couldn’t be used for lumber and so it was never cut down allowing it to grow gnarled and huge. The problem I have with this story is that there’s no redemption for the tree. It grows old but is still useless but they praise the tree for being old and beautifully flawed.

The tree is useful. It provides shade and helps with the whole carbon dioxide to oxygen conversion (yeah, I just nerded out on you). It’s true out worth shouldn’t be found in usefulness… however, I’m under that impression that nothing is useless.

Random Screams
One of my favorite things to do when I work is found on wilcoworld.net. They have this killer feature where they stream live shows in the Roadcase section of the site. I’m listening to 05/15/2008 from St. Louis and something that grabbed me from the beginning is that people scream really loud at concerts. So loud that I’m debating whether the screams are for Wilco or for themselves. I listened to a the beginning of other bootlegs I have of Wilco and the same thing happens… people scream in the about a minute into the first song which generally is something a little quieter.

My first rock show was in 1994 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. My friend’s dad took us to see Pearl Jam on the Vs. Tour after we begged and begged. The night we went was also the night they broadcasted it all over the U.S. and we all screamed one of our friend’s names at a specific point in the concert. We couldn’t hear it when we listened back though. Lame.

Postman
I’m not sure how to communicate with postmen these days. I’ve had some stuff in the mailbox that I’m waiting to see how long it takes to get picked up.

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