Today was Hatsubon for my father. Obon is the season in Japanese culture where our ancestors spirits come back to visit. It developed from a traditional Buddhist story about giving to relieve the suffering of our deceased ancestors into something very Japanese including dancing and emptying out the major cities to go visit relatives in the country. My mother and I went to the Oregon Buddhist Temple for the hatsubon service. I think most of my Jodo Shinshu religion is all superstition, but it’s what I grew up with and part of my tradition.

I think the local Buddhist services seem artificial. I remember religion in Japan, and religion was something you did when you needed it. Rice harvest, putting up a house, marriage, death, and not as regular Sunday as you’d think. You were Buddhist at funerals and you were Shinto at marriages and festivals. I suppose we were fake Xtians at Xmas time, too. Back to the service: I suspect that the Japanese immigrants to the US needed something to do while the Xtians were off doing their Sunday thing and the local Sunday service is what they came up with.

Here’s my petty bit: my sister couldn’t be bothered to show up. She was busy moving her business. I’m sorry, but I helped move a real fabric store once, and hers is nowhere near as big.

I tried spending the rest of the day being lazy, and I almost succeeded. Then I started filing all the paid bills I have stacked up. But tomorrow is our yearly summer street cleaning I had to start weeding the curb across the street. The school district doesn’t do much about keeping the weeds out of the street, so it’s up to a couple of us on the block to do the weeding for them. It went from

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I had to go to Home Depot to get parts for the brush cutter so I also bought a replacement lamp for my “office.” My mom has been complaining about how dim the light in the room is, and the desk lamp is intermittent. So the light went from

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The new lamp doesn’t look very fancy in the photograph, but I like it. It cost twice as much as the plain one they had for sale. It is also a lot brighter than the old one and it’s fluorescent, i.e. supposedly more energy efficient.

So, in retrospect, if I hadn’t watched golf (while restoring my sister’s web site on my mom’s orders) I probably could have dug out another stump today too.