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the rohn report

dissertations on almost anything about being human / contemporary and humorous observations / bulletins and notifications / tips and quips / sermons rohn.substack.com

All Episodes

7:50

new / packaging

the rohn report ·

2024/02/22

Cans and bottles and boxes and plastic encased display cards with the good stuff clearly seen inside but thoroughly protected - our products come well packaged. No one has touched it, pristine, sterile is the connotation I suppose.‘New’ and ‘packaging’ are bound together in the modern day buying experience. You buy them both. Otherwise you wouldn’t really trust the product. If your Amazon order arrived loose in a bag without any packaging, you would be like - is this really the product? It

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10:28

cars

the rohn report ·

2024/02/15

Cars, cars, cars. Cars are everywhere. In the city they scurry about like giant insects swarming the streets, swelling the parking lots and congesting the intersections. They speed across the country on interstates and connect distant points. They contain us and define us, they give us a sanctuary and shelter. David Byrnes’ famous quote from his movie ‘True Stories’ comes to mind. “Expressways are the cathedrals of our time.”We are in church then, communing with our god of modernity I suppose.

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16:51

Leo Tolstoy

the rohn report ·

2024/02/08

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in old Imperial Russia to an old aristocratic family (the Tolstoys) and grew up on the family estate 120 miles south of Moscow. They had serfs and everything. His mother died when he was two and his father died when he was seven so he was pretty much brought up by his aunt who educated him at home. Aunt Aleksandra.At the age of 16 he was off to university in Kazan, as a good Tolstoy would do. It didn’t work out, however, he dropped out during his second year. His

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10:03

football as ritual warfare

the rohn report ·

2024/02/01

I’ve been watching TV football lately. Alot. Probably more than is healthy for me. First it was the college playoffs (with my team, the Michigan Wolverines, winning it all) then the NFL playoffs started up with my team, the Detroit Lions (who are only about 50 miles from Ann Arbor the home of the Wolverines), going almost to the Super Bowl before losing to the powerful San Francisco 49ers. The games start off pleasantly enough with an inspiring song about the land of the free and the home of the

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8:43

interviewing strangers about sex

the rohn report ·

2024/01/25

it’s a great idea but i haven’t done it yet / i’m scared / sex is an unruly subject / it goes deep in the psyche / the labyrinthic forest and the clear stream / the vast sky and the soft earth / these things we knew when our sex was new / playful and friendly / virginif i asked people they might react in unpredictable ways / like repressed or expressed or freaked out about it / traumatized or romanticized or caricaturized / they might be feeling confused or trapped or bereft / they might be feeling

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4:26

yeah so it's like

the rohn report ·

2024/01/18

that was one of the craziest days in awhile sunday night / bitter cold moved inthe cat i was supposed to trap and go get fixeddisappearedmy pipes frozei didn’t know which one i should feel most anxiousabout :: the possibly frozen cat under my house orthe possibility of my water pipes exploding when itthaws and the ice disappears leaving a 3/4 inch gapinggap in my water pipe with water rushing out andprobably somewhere under the house tooor in the shed like it already did once before alreadyi decided

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16:04

cats

the rohn report ·

2024/01/12

In ancient Egypt cats were gods. According to their public art and stuff. Here’s a statue of a cat goddess. There is a cat on this royal sarcophogus. Bas relief chiseled into stone. What’s that about?Cats were not only worshipped but when they died, they were embalmed, given their own coffin and buried in a cat cemetery. There was definitely something going on with cats back there in the old BC days of ancient Egypt.Maybe it was their ability to catch mice that vaulted them into such a high

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9:07

in the cafe II

the rohn report ·

2024/01/04

A woman reading my poetry book in the cafe. She was writing in her notebook so I spoke to her and asked her if she was writing poetry. She said no she was writing reflections to take it to a deeper level, her understanding of herself and stuff.Yeah I do that. If someone is reading a book I’ll walk up to them and ask what they’re reading. Sincerely. Invariably they will share their book with me. Gladly. It’s a thing I do in the cafe. Why not? It turns out we all want to share with each other

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7:21

Aetna vs. Mt. Etna

the rohn report ·

2023/12/30

We did our Winter Solstice celebration in the backyard, me and Megan and Brittany. We choose our runes from the bag that Megan held in her enchanted hand. I got a straight line. That means be patient and let it unfold. That’s what I remember anyways. There are so many healing modalities that we have forgotten about or haven’t discovered yet, not just modernized medicine, the big business model. Health care should be free, shareable and enabling not price fixed, proprietary and disabling.

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8:09

Angels We Have Heard on High

the rohn report ·

2023/12/21

Sweetly singing o'er the plains,And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strainsGloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! I love Christmas music. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! means ‘Glory to God in the highest’. That’s what the angels said.Sing, choirs of angels. Sing in exultation. Sing, all ye citizens of Heaven above! it says in another Christmas Carol. Who were they exactly, singing in exultation? Were they real angels? What are angels anyway and why do they always seem to be

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5:18

leaves of gold

the rohn report ·

2023/12/12

the golden bough gold doubloonsthe golden calf we treasure allgold and now the ground islittered with it oh the green carpetoh blown fusefallen leavesdesiccating desiregoneyellow green and redrubies and emeralds and amethyst oh green caughtin the netof fire’s desirespun down intothe filter bedthe bosom refugeof mother natureexistence endedas a leaf and atransformation begunas dirtoh higher onesyou at the top of the treethat haven’t fallen yetwhat do you see up there ??blue sky !!endless limitless

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37:09

my neighbor Bill

the rohn report ·

2023/12/07

I live in the Terrell Heights neighborhood a few miles from downtown San Antonio. It’s a groovy place. We have our own playground/park, our own little business center, groovy curvy streets with names like Greenwich and Devonshire (where the hobbits live) and a lovely little community garden (where the gnomes live).Most of the residents (like me) live in single story residences built after the war back in the late forties, early fifties and the houses line the streets with their various rooflines

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12:22

the new future

the rohn report ·

2023/11/30

‘What we want makes us more susceptible to what we don't need’. That’s what I realized today and decided to write about it. Kind of appropriate for the season don’t you think? We buy things to celebrate baby Jesus’ birthday. What? Black Friday is gone but the Christmas sales endure. Cyber Monday, Flash Sale. Signs decorated with Christmas decorations, red and green, proclaiming 15% off on everything. That’s a deal.Anyways, what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to say . . . Well let me

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9:07

mother nature

the rohn report ·

2023/11/24

Once again winter comes and makes everything cold. Hey I don’t mind, I’m from Michigan where winters are arduous affairs, long they endure and when they finally give way - joy. The snow melts and the flowers come up thru the ground and appear as little fairy lamps or something, little maidens maybe. The cold isn’t very cold but it’s not warm. That’s noticeable. Stick your head out the door and feel the temperature. Get ready for the ride. Layer coat over shirt over t-shirt over bare skin.

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12:55

Life and death and literature 101

the rohn report ·

2023/11/16

First you are born, then you live, then you die. If you haven’t died yet then you are still alive. Unless you haven’t been born yet in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this.These obvious facts are known to all but rarely discussed. They’re considered importune, impolite and awkward. A bit of a downer too. I’d like to discuss them now.Literature, that unique human expression, I mean birds do architecture, octopi make pictures, elephants and whales and crocodiles can talk, but

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3:35

blank space

the rohn report ·

2023/11/09

emptiness / like this heavy grey skyit’s not badno need to fill up the emptinesswith thoughtscan you imagine a picture of nothing ??just a frameprobly not because nothing is somethingit’s blank space / it’s the canvasbefore the paint is appliedbefore our minds became civilizedour heart all the timenot the one that pumps bloodthe one that wants to feel gooda simple singular desireit’s hard to acquire emptinessno utility no progress being madewe have to fill the space with something stillness

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11:25

love your neighbor / love your enemy

the rohn report ·

2023/11/02

When I was but a young lad, back in 1970, I embarked on a journey to see the world. I was untraveled but ready for adventure and whatever came my way. We gathered our resources, me and my buddy, bought our backpacks, a lightweight tent, cooking stove, sleeping bags, collected some extra clothes and all of our available cash — in my case about $300, and headed out. Youthful naiveté can sometimes substitute for common sense and aspirational intentions for money. Being young and untraveled and in

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7:29

'from the north to the south'

the rohn report ·

2023/10/25

‘from the west to the easthear the prayer of the mothersbring us peace bring us peace’Since I discovered this video from a friend’s post on WhatsApp I’ve played it a bunch of times, each time discovering something new, my eyes filling with tears by the end. That’s powerful. It was powerful for me. I’m just sayin.Everybody has a different trigger but music does contain healing vibes and a way of bringing people together. It has that potential. This is a good thing.Forget politics for a moment.

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5:52

copy and paste / enter new title

the rohn report ·

2023/10/19

My friend came to visit me and we went for a bike ride. Since we are not on an ocean or anywhere near an ocean we had to ride on dry land.We went to the sacred oak tree cafe and looked out upon the city. The top of the hill is right next to San Pedro Springs and the San Pedro creek which emanates from it, except both are dry. They used to emanate. I showed her the strange incarnations of the creek - where it goes underground, where it comes back up, where the dark tunnels run underneath the

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8:17

Halloween, the spooky season

the rohn report ·

2023/10/13

Is it because it’s in the Fall, when things are dying and returning to the earth? Is it the stormy weather that accompanies the changing of the season? Where did this spooky holiday come from anyway?It has its origins, no doubt, in some medieval tradition. I don’t know, I haven’t looked it up, but seems kind of medieval, gothic atleast.My neighbors across the street have set up a graveyard on their front lawn . . . . . . simulating dead people lying under the ground. But with the possibility

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