The last of the Christmas ham is diced and in the pot with two packages of dried peas, diced onions, diced carrots, and diced red bell pepper with an eclectic mix of seasonings. Last evening I put the peas in water to soak; today after work, the dicing was done and flame was applied to the concoction.

So why pea soup?

I needed to focus on something real after my recent posts and struggling through James Galbraith's book. I checked out a second book at the same time that I checked out the Galbraith book; it was a work by Noam Chomsky. I decided to return it to the library unread and to look for a very different kind of read. I found Lisa Jones' work titled Broken. It tells of the experience of a non-Native individual on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. It speaks to just how different various travellers in this time and space experience America in the 21st century. So much of our environment is much the same: news, music, television, civil law, clothing styles, national politics, and the economy. On the other hand, the impact of these upon the individual and the meaning ascribed to these in the course of one's individual experience is so greatly varied. When one listens carefully and observes clearly, one comes to the awareness of an immense variation in the contemporary human experience. This opens us to the richness of the human experience. Let it not discourage us from the struggle for sincere and genuine communication. For starters, let us acknowledge that it is a struggle.