Tessera

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social

Prosperity: Quarter "Hold your Prosperity lightly lest it break you when it slips out of your hands." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story considers tragedy and how it remains a vulnerability regardless of how Prosperous you might be.

Prosperity: Quarter

"Hold your Prosperity lightly lest it break you when it slips out of your hands."

Prosperity definitely has its privileges, but practical limits seem to exist on how many and where. It can certainly provide the means to afford a relatively comfortable, if not necessarily carefree life, though not everything necessary to achieve and maintain that end can be inherited or purchased, or, indeed, possessed. The Prosperous remain vulnerable to most of the usual suspects. Hunger might only rarely cast a shadow across its porch, but misfortune shows no friends or natural enemies, and offers Quarter to pretty much nobody. Prosperity was never a guarantee of any happily-ever-after storylines. It might even amplify the sense of devastation at a loss, since the Prosperous do seem to possess more to lose than others. The Pre-Prosperous might not miss what they never acknowledged they possessed. The Prosperous miss their losses. They cost.

Practicing Prosperity tries to teach the Prosperous to hold their good fortune gently. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · yesterday

Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 8/06/2026 Thank you for following along! ... Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story contains a handy summary for each of this week's stories and a further inquiry with my Third Party Perspective Editor on where my writing belongs in a library catalog.

Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 8/06/2026

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as the series found its philosophical center and then tested it against civic reality. The writing ranged from the tentative conclusions of Classifying to the identity function of EnoughIsEnough, from the legal and economic argument of Moritoria to the behavioral portrait of CheapShots, from the panoramic civic lament of Anti-Prosperity to the warmly domestic homecoming of City-State. The series stood before the County Commission this week, delivering the sole anti-moratorium argument against a curious flood of anti-data center support. It also returned home to find Prosperity waiting, as it always has, in the Villa Vatta Schmaltz.

Thank you for following along! ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2d ago

Prosperity: City-State "Anywhere Prosperity lurks fully qualifies as my home and castle while I'm there." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

In this Prosperity Story, I resort to metaphor to describe what Prosperity feels like to me, maybe to everybody.

Prosperity: City-State

"I'm certain that anywhere I find Prosperity lurking fully qualifies as my home and castle while I'm there."

I think of Prosperity the way I think of an Italian City-State, a kind of autonomy, an anchor, an identity. In the same way that a person’s home, however humble, represents their castle, Prosperity serves as both the source and expression of cultural social standing. Each family in my neighborhood, a blessedly mixed configuration almost entirely unlike any gated community, inhabits their unique castle. Each, as they say, gets to be the asshole in their castle, holding an independence rare among the Pre-Prosperous. Even the very wealthy, who might live in actual castles, seem to be more owned by their relatively palatial palaces than inhabiting them. My neighborhood includes owner-occupied places next to rentals, older homes with more recent construction tucked in between on what was most certainly once the larger places’ original properties. The orderliness here does not seem overwhelming. It’s certainly not enforced by anything other than each inhabitant’s sense of civic decency. I, for instance, feel guilty if I miss mowing my lawn for a few days after it really should have been mowed, for this clutter seems an offense to the neighborhood’s tranquil sense of its own Prosperity.

For a few years, one neighbor, who lived just to the left of my castle, left his place derelict. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3d ago

Prosperity: Anti-Prosperity "… after we've Anti-ed every alternative out of existential possibility." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story represents what I hesitate to admit. That we're suffering from a spate of Anti-Prosperity sentiment encouraged by our tenaciously Anti- everything perspectives.

Prosperity: Anti-Prosperity

"…what's to become of our once prominent Prosperity after we've managed to Anti- every alternative out of the realm of existential possibility."

It seems to have become fashionable to oppose virtually any proposition. I blame the radical conservative MAGA movement for basing their politics entirely on opposition and thereby encouraging what might have always been a passion seething beneath the surface of the appearance of respectability. They opposed progress because it seemed to upset their overly delicate sensibilities. They encouraged long-discarded theories and practices in lieu of embracing modernity, which they at least pretended to believe represented evil incarnate. From there, it was a short portage to a place where any decency could be easily and convincingly opposed as either woke, whatever that was, or stupid, which never really qualified as an argument. They were opposed, whatever it was, and supportive of little other than the usual vacuous dribble: free enterprise, America (first, last, and always), and tariffs. They opposed more than the usual suspects, but some fresh villains, too: freedom of speech, which apparently emboldens enemies, free trade, which reportedly renders us all paupers, and justice, which always seemed to them to hold the wrong criminals responsible.

As absurd as their anti-everything platform might have seemed, their tactics rubbed off on even the most dedicated of their opposition. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4d ago

Prosperity: CheapShots open.substack.com/pub/davidsch...

Prosperity: CheapShots

This Prosperity Story considers one of the more prominent tells exhibited by the Pre-Prosperous: the CheapShot.

open.substack.com

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 5d ago

Prosperity: Moritoria "…Moritoria are not regulatory achievements and do not deserve to be mistaken for them." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story focuses on a local Prosperity controversy, one where anti-data center activists have proposed a moratorium on developing our data center. This story delivers my response.

Prosperity: Moritoria

"…Moritoria are not regulatory achievements and do not deserve to be mistaken for them."

The Washington State Democratic Party approved a platform plank at their recent state convention that calls for a one-year moratorium on all data center construction in the state. I considered this plank extremely self-contradictory and a clear threat to Prosperity, especially since the party didn’t also immediately declare itself Internet Free and revert to operating as it did in the nineteen-sixties, before the intertubes connected everyone and everything. Apparently, some political consulting firm, trolling around for hot issues Democratic candidates could coalesce voters on, advised that an anti-data center perspective could attract otherwise indifferent voters to the cause, whatever that was. Data centers have become the favorite whipping boys of pretty nearly everybody, even though reliable sources suggest that most of the economic activity in the nation over the past few years has stemmed in some way from data center development. Those who insist that we must mature by despising our family of origin might easily explain this data center revulsion as a normal stage of emotional development, roughly akin to turning fifteen years old. It feels as contentious.

Prominent among the proposals for what to do about data centers stands the idea that they might be discouraged by municipalities simply declaring Moratoria on their development. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 6d ago

A self-defeating game without end ensues. Prosperity: EnoughIsEnough Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story considers when Enough doesn't seem like nearly enough. A self-defeating game without end ensues.

Prosperity: EnoughIsEnough

"Those who more than occasionally experience Enough have already won whatever race they once ran."

Contrary to the popular idiom, Enough is not always Enough, not for everyone. For some, Enough never was nor ever will be Enough, (https://davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/nextworld-enough) as I detailed in my NextWorld Story, Enough, from February 2025, which described the world emerging after we foolishly elected our current incumbent, a series that has proven to have been remarkably prescient. Prosperity seems to accompany that pleasing sense of enoughness. Whether that sense predates Prosperity or results from achieving it, I lack adequate data to say. I do sense, though, that the Prosperous well understand the theory as well as the practice of Enough to the point of exemplifying this odd little identity function. For them. Enough fully qualifies as Enough, always. The prosperous know satiation, and so actively seek to avoid it. The merely rich or simply wealthy seem to lose accessibility to their off switch. Like sharks, they live unloved, unsatisfiable and unrequited. To not know Enough means you can never stop swimming.

The Prosperous therefore experience love as well as attraction, though not usually to the point of obsession. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · last wk.

Prosperity: Classifying "…I must be the source of all the Prosperities inevitably surrounding me." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story draws two tentative conclusions, both of which I intend to hold as if they were gospel.

Prosperity: Classifying

"…I must be the source of all the Prosperities inevitably surrounding me."

This is not just a game. I have been considering Prosperity, mine as well as ours, for just over forty days and nights now, a suitably Biblical time span, and I am drawing two tentative conclusions, since I can’t seem to decide anything conclusively, nor should I. The first, which I have previously already heavily hinted at, must be that Prosperity only exists as a plural rather than a singular entity. Sanity insists that it always be understood as a multitude rather than as a singular state. It exists only in array. This translates into an understanding that no Prosperity ever stands alone. When I spot a Prosperity, this means that more must be lurking nearby. Prosperity seems to exclusively travels in flocks, herds, schools, or pairs, never “batch.”

The second tentative conclusion I simply must draw from my inquiry so far might seem as if I’m somehow cheating, and truth told, I might be cheating if Hoyle is judging. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · last wk.

This Story speaks to one of the more unique Prosperities and how it might be attracted. Prosperity: Angeli Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story speaks to one of the more unique Prosperities and how it might be attracted.

Prosperity: Angeli

"I ascribe that recovery to the presence of Angeli…"

As for angels, they seem the most mysterious presences. They are said to exist without much in the way of physical evidence. They’ve received ample literary mention over the centuries without leaving foot or fingerprints. They might most often appear when really needed, bringing with them some form of salvation. Their biggest gig was the night Jesus was said to have been born, rousing shepherds and encouraging otherwise skeptical wisemen. They managed a physical presence in that mythical manger, and glory really shone around, according to eyewitness testimony. Otherwise, they regularly appear in statuary and classical paintings, inevitably wearing halos. Popes and potentates have traditionally insisted that their decorators employ Angeli to lend a sense of divine association. Generally speaking, the more terrible the king, the more they relied upon Angeli images to sanctify their tyranny.

An early twenty-first-century person might never encounter an angel, even in passing. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prosperity: Choosers “Autocracy works after The People convince themselves they’re beggars, not Choosers.” Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story deconstructs the old adage that beggars can't be choosers to insist that some Choosers can turn themselves into beggars if they can't defend their own self-interest. Choosing None Of The Above when faced with a ballot filled with Repuglicans might be the most Prosperous choice.

Prosperity: Choosers

“Autocracy only ever works after The People have convinced themselves they’re beggars rather than Choosers.”

Beggars can’t be Choosers, or so my mother insisted. She implied that if you’re not Prosperous, you’re relegated to having to take whatever’s left over after the Choosers have satisfied themselves. This notion seems the opposite of self-determination, that bedrock principle this Democracy was founded upon. This seems the belief of the dedicated second-class citizen, who, all E Pluribus Unum aside, understands the position they inhabit in polite society and won’t raise a fuss at a little inequity between friends or fellow citizens. It defines complacency to know the rules were set up against your own best interests and to support them anyway as a self-sacrificial civic responsibility. Beggars can’t be choosers. That’s just the way life is.

The Prosperous, though, do get to choose. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prosperity: H-e-a-l-i-n-g "Out of many, one: Pluribus Unum, dammit!" Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story speaks of one thing Prosperity can't buy anyone: H-e-a-l-i-n-g, which occurs at the same inexorable pace regardless of anyone's relative Prosperity.

Prosperity: H-e-a-l-i-n-g

"Out of many, one: Pluribus Unum, dammit!"

Healing might be the most egalitarian activity humans ever engage in. It knows no privilege or favor. It moves exclusively at one seemingly inexorable pace regardless of anybody’s relative Prosperity. It keeps its own counsel that everyone must accept and that they just get to guess at. The doctors and therapists predicted six to eight weeks before The Muse’s broken ankles might be fit for use again, but that projection was tempered with a terribly deliberate ‘more or less’ neither of us missed. Someone suggested that acupuncture might shorten that time by a week or more, but, honestly, why bother? Healing wasn’t supposed to be either a race or a competition. There’s nothing to be won if one heals faster or slower than the average, which trends toward the inexorable. There might be something worth learning either way, though.

Healing belongs in that class of human activities of which no human can ever become the master. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prosperity: PitchingCodes "…another snake satisfyingly gnawing on its own tail." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story finds me in the deepest, darkest corner of The Villa's basement, failing to find the reset button after our Smart® furnace started PitchingCodes.

Prosperity: PitchingCodes

"…another snake satisfyingly gnawing on its own tail."

Prosperity attracts an ever-increasing number of so-called smart stuff. Smart® being a designation rather than a definition. So-called Smart® stuff sure seems stupid sometimes, in the same way that Artificial Intelligence intends to be interpreted with the emphasis on the Artificial part. What passes for Artificial Intelligence® barely registers as clever in practice, but the shady art of branding demands that capabilities always be inflated. Smart® cars were just tiny. Smart® phones weren’t really phones at all. Smart (no ®) people just seem self-aggrandizing, for they sure seem just as stupid as the rest of us put together in practice. So it always was and, as near as I can tell, so it will probably always be.

Our new Smart® irrigation system controller, trademarked “Irrigreen”, failed us during our recent absence. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prosperity: InPassing "… might it just slip by unaware that it was ever anywhere special?" Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story finds me noticing that Prosperities often emerge InPassing.

Prosperity: InPassing

"… might it just slip by unaware that it was ever anywhere special?"

Washington Highway 28 up and out of East Wenatchee, Washington, in the direction of Quincy, terrifies me. It’s a standard sixty-per-hour two-lane that climbs up through orchards and precipitous views, with a few passing lanes to drain off the race car drivers’ frustrations when they find themselves behind drivers like me, freely exercising their Prosperities. I feel the sensation of the highway tilting at odd angles, as if trying to shake me off one of those impressive cliffs overlooking Crescent Bar or The Gorge Amphitheater and into the Columbia River far below. I drive this road slow, continually feeling as if I’m oversteering. I accumulate a line of Speed Racers behind me who seem dissatisfied with my frantic-feeling forty-five.

I understand that for many, even vacation driving amounts to just another segment in a never-ending racecar race. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you for following along! Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending July 23, 2026 Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story contains a summary of each of this week's Prosperity postings and a story on great good fortune. Thank you for following along!

Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending July 23, 2026

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived through the most consequential week of the series so far. The writing ranged from the self-knowledge of Stingy to the book signing revelation of Discovering, from the fragility of Damnocles to The Muse’s literal BreakPoint on an uneven Wenatchee curb, from the WrestlingAngels who populated an impossibly long afternoon of hospital logistics to the Ghostlies haunting a smoky, uncertain present. The sword of Damnocles fell this week — not as metaphor but as fact. The series has been preparing for exactly this moment for thirty-three installments.

Thank you for following along! ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prosperity: Ghostlies "…after a period of swirling smoke obscuring past along with potential." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperiti...

This Prosperity Story reports how Ghostlies haunt futures, not just pasts.

Prosperity: Ghostlies

"…after a period of swirling smoke obscuring past along with potential."

Wenatchee, Washington, the self-proclaimed Apple Capitol of the World, turned out to provide the perfect backdrop for The Muse’s fell swoop and resulting Prosperity transformation. It was ungodly hot there that week, with forest and range fires encircling and intermittent strong winds relentlessly pumping obscuring smoke. The surrounding foothills, brutal barren mountains to my eye, faded in and out of focus, in and out of apparent presence, appearing mostly ghostly rather than in any way substantial. I had previously spent no time in the area, so it served as a near-perfect blank canvas upon which to represent whatever I might imagine about our future and present. Following The Muse’s BreakPoint, I imagined plenty but of little substance. Our accustomed Prosperities had abandoned us there in this curiously welcoming wasteland, opening us to suggestions of replacements.

Our imaginations were encumbered by all we had experienced before.

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 2w ago

How Fresh Prosperities come into existence: through WrestlingAngels. Prosperity: WrestlingAngels Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story discloses how Fresh Prosperities come into existence: through WrestlingAngels.

Prosperity: WrestlingAngels

"…an inevitable side effect of switching out former Prosperities for some cranky new fresh ones, of WrestlingAngels."

Fresh Prosperities do not necessarily quietly surrender themselves into existence. The process more closely resembles WrestlingAngels, for while they might eventually surrender, they rarely do so quietly. Fresh Prosperities might be said to be inherently noisy, fussy, as if equal parts impatient and impertinent, aching more to be conquered than accepted. Perhaps they are chartered under a variant of the No Free Lunches Rule, which seems to insist upon satisfying some twisted notion of worthiness before acquiescing into any acceptances. Those who insist that they somehow deserve any Prosperity seem ready and waiting for some form of rude awakening, for, like angels themselves, Prosperities are nobody’s pushovers, and might well insist upon disturbing conditions, not the least of which includes accepting the budding realization that Prosperity gets to choose who wins and who loses them. Since not a single beneficiary in the history of this universe so far, ever once deserved their eventual Prosperity, every angel’s insistence upon deciding for can prove to feel at least alarming, often worse.

When The Muse managed to break both ankles in one literal fell swoop, the resulting BreakPoint left a formerly stable Prosperity gasping. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: BreakPoint "…might some surprising Prosperity settle in for the duration of even this?" Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story describes how fresh Prosperities sometimes arrive, as most important things, occurring at least convenient times.

Prosperity: BreakPoint

"…might some surprising Prosperity settle in for the duration of even this?"

That Sword of Damnocles works in seemingly inexorable ways. Each Prosperity, as I’ve already proposed, stretches only into finite if indefinite space. Each inevitably ends. This nature encourages the convection that inspires fresh Prosperities to emerge from within an often deep sense of catastrophe or loss. The most important things happen at the least convenient times. This homily has been an article of faith underlying all of my many Prosperities over at least the last three decades, and, upon more careful reflection, most probably for much longer. I believe that at any moment, an event could occur that could utterly upend every expected trajectory, opening previously unimaginable possibilities. Yesterday, The Muse quite literally stumbled into one.

She was exiting a bus after taking a tour of another Port’s properties as a part of a scheduled Port Commissioner gathering. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: Damnocles "Most of them must be lost in use." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story concludes that, unlike wealth, Prosperities are not natively inheritable. Mine will most likely seem mythical to my progeny.

Prosperity: Damnocles

"Most of them must be lost in use."

We, natives of the Inland Pacific Northwest, were blessed with some of the most beautiful wild country in the world. Since we were the last part of this continent settled, we have also been the last despoiled, though our scenery’s eventual demise seems certain. Through recent summers, wildfires have become more common, and each burn turns its victim into a generational eyesore. Indeed, its virginity will never be restored. Burn woodland covered in many-centuries-old forest, and you’re left with a ghost. No one now alive will see that parcel recovered. Neither will their grandchildren.

In our valley, wheat fires seem by far the most common, and while they destroy, the crop was likely insured, and the land will be returned to productive use the following year with fresh pot ash fertilizing whatever’s planted. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: Discovering "I suspect the Quantum plane recognized my presence, as did I." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story finds me Discovering a fresh Prosperity, one that had probably been stalking me for the longest time.

Prosperity: Discovering

"I suspect the Quantum plane recognized my presence, as did I."

Once I started Discovering my Prosperities, my discoveries began to expand in earnest. The exercise was apparently not merely a matter of Discovering another Prosperity, but of stumbling upon others, many others. Having only started Discovering these additional Prosperities, I lack sufficient sample size to declare the potential I might have plugged into, but this series appears limitless from here. An unknown number of undiscovered Prosperities seems to stand before me now. I cannot see into any future, but this unknown certainly feels as if it’s infinite from here. Infinite could mean the equivalent of unknown. I need not necessarily interpret it as being an unimaginably large number. A single unknowable will do, but the potential seems much greater than any finite number, even though I could not possibly know how many additional Prosperities might be necessary to maintain this sense of infinite potential. I might estimate as many as an odd billion or so.

My point in even mentioning this phenomenon might be to merely highlight the accompanying feeling. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: Stingy "…especially when in the presence of behaviors that just irk the crap out of us." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story describes what happens when I encounter Stingy behavior in the obviously Prosperous.

Prosperity: Stingy

"…especially when in the presence of behaviors that just irk the crap out of us."

Prosperity might encourage generosity, but not automatically, never inexorably. Some seem to respond to it by suddenly turning inexplicably Stingy, as if the very presence of plenty prefaced a threatening shortage. This response does not seem at all uncommon and almost seems expected sometimes. I learned to respect others’ apparent Prosperity, to tiptoe around its perimeter with extreme care without assuming an overflowing cup inside. Those in the finest houses seemed more likely to stiff me when I went collecting for their newspaper subscription, often short of “change,” and expecting me to return to get paid. Those who lived in more ramshackle houses tended to be more generous. I was never really moved to wonder why, if only because I didn’t really want to understand. I figured I was witnessing some psychological syndrome manifesting, and that I might be better off not knowing the details behind it, lest it be contagious and spread by sharing poisoning knowledge of it.

Stingy might be an extreme form of self-protection, and, as with many of the more common forms of self-protection, it seems, at root, self-destructive. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Join me Saturday, July 18, 11 am-2 pm PDT, Book & Game, Main Street, Walla Walla, for my Cluelessness Book Signing and some meaningful aimless conversation! Cluelessness could be your secret superpower, too!

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Thank you for following along! Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 7/16/2026 Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story contains a summary of each of this week's Prosperity postings and a story about a range fire. Thank you for following along!

Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 7/16/2026

This week's Prosperity dispatches arrived in a week that ranged from the moral architecture of ResponsibleFor to the liberating grace of Freely, from the Fleeting Prosperity of Portland's lost most recent golden years to the non-Mammon discovery of an ancestor's homestead patent, from the faith-based initiative of MakingSpace to the fish tacos and wildfire of Bounty. The road trip that found Evan and Sara Parker Wallace's eighty acres in Umatilla County — and nearly stranded us inside an evacuation zone — produced this week's essential installment. Prosperity simultaneously means Bounty and danger. Lightning doesn't need to strike in the same place twice to leave an indelible mark.

Thank you for following along! ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: Bounty "Lightning doesn't need to strike in the same place twice to leave an indelible mark." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story follows me through a typically extraordinary mid-July day and through the evening meal. Prosperity allows The Muse to call an audible and accompany me into some family history together.

Prosperity: Bounty

"Lightning doesn't need to strike in the same place twice to leave an indelible mark."

By Mid-July, the Sweet Onion harvest is about over. My own modest patch needs pulling. We eat fresh this time of year, with Sockeye Salmon and the ever-present Steelhead readily available. The Muse’s cucumber crop seems happier than we’ve ever seen one, thanks to her new drip irrigation system. The fig bush has almost become a tree, continually splashed by the backyard pond fountain. It groans under the presence of an unprecedented number of rapidly ripening fruits. These are a reassuring green with the most alluring pink flesh inside. I decide that we’ll have fish tacos for supper and buy a bag of small, freshly made Masa tortillas for the purpose. A grilled eggplant, thoroughly saturated with olive oil before I set them on the top grill rack, completes the menu.

The salsa seems similar to what I’ve concocted before, with only the precise contents different. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prosperity: MakingSpace "…I will need to make some space for a miracle to occur." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story insists that one key to Prosperity must be MakingSpace for it to appear.

Prosperity: MakingSpace

"…I will need to make some space for a miracle to occur."

Aging must be the process by which I successively outgrow stuff. Yesterday, I finally culled three pairs of jeans I once believed that I might one day fit into again. Yesterday, inexplicably, I finally acceded to the should-have-been-easier truth that I wouldn’t be fitting into them again. I set them aside. Suddenly, my pants drawer had more than enough space for my remaining wardrobe. The Muse mentioned that she probably had a few things to add to my collection destined for the Goodwill, and all was just a little better with our world, or at least, finally threatened to be better. I had retained some prior Prosperity which had been steadfastly preventing fresh Prosperities from entering. Even if I wasn’t itching to acquire any Prosperity, those remnants had rendered my present more cluttered than Prosperous feeling. I had probably been demonstrating some principle to myself then.

Often, I finally figure out something I had been trying for ages to get myself to understand. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4w ago

Prosperity: Mammon "Might this realization have been my purpose in beginning this inquiry ... ?" Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story starts discovering a few of the non-monetary, non-Mammon equivalent Prosperities, which seem infinite.

Prosperity: Mammon

"Might this realization have been my purpose in beginning this inquiry in the first place?"

The word Prosperity immediately conjures up visions of money wealth, often, by logical extension, also images of stuff that requires money wealth to acquire. The Prosperous do, often, possess lots of stuff, more than what the struggling seem to acquire. Indeed, the lust for stuff that can only be acquired with money often proves to be the undoing of those who struggle to achieve Prosperity, as if they necessarily need money to achieve what might pass for it. Such convictions might be common to members of any acquisitive society such as ours, for aren’t we hammered with messages designed to convince us that we must acquire or suffer horrible consequences? Heaven forbid that we ever find ourselves falling ever further behind Those Damned Joneses!

But the array of stuff that might be acquired by money, and, indeed, money itself, including credit, covers perhaps the most infinitesimal part of what Prosperity might fully entail. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4w ago

Prosperity: Fleeting "Prosperity seemed to come so easily then. Now, it seems Fleeting. " Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story finds me rediscovering just how Fleeting Prosperity can sometimes seem.

Prosperity: Fleeting

"Prosperity seemed to come so easily then. Now, it seems Fleeting. "

A quick trip over to Portland never fails to remind me just how Fleeting Prosperity can seem. Indeed, all history seems like a mere flash of memory along that more-than-familiar route. We pass places I fondly remember from my own pre-history, forever transformed by what came and went alongside me. It seems that much of my life occurred along that two-hundred-forty-five-mile route: good, bad, and even a little of the ugly, for those, like me, who were raised in the Inland Northwest were never quite able to completely separate ourselves from the sea. We more or less routinely traversed the barren Columbia Plateau to enter the Cascade fairy land and on into country that seemed endlessly green. Everything seemed so clean there, the brown, barren Earth replaced by cooling rains and a soothing rainforest. It seemed downright British over there.

I later lived in Portland, moving there in the year this country turned 200. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4w ago

This Prosperity Story considers how liberating Freely giving away can be. Prosperity: Freely Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story considers how liberating Freely giving away can be.

Prosperity: Freely

"… liberating everyone involved."

Prosperity increases the possibility of simply giving stuff away. Once I’d accumulated plenty, I occasionally exceeded my ability to properly appreciate and maintain some of my previously precious possessions. What I had seen as essentials sometimes became more like burdens. An occasional yard sale balanced this scale, where my Prosperity translated into an ability to make somebody a really great deal on something they needed much more than I did. The Muse and I eventually abandoned the usual pretext for conducting such sales and dispensed with putting price tags on anything, explaining to anyone who stopped to browse that everything was going for the same low price: Free! Not even that price guaranteed that everything found a new home, but we completely eliminated the commercial hassle usually associated with such undertakings. When we relocated from Maryland to Colorado, we gave away the larder refrigerator and the hide-a-bed in the basement mother-in-law rooms. We felt instantly lighter when we passed those burdens into somebody else’s delighted care.

Yesterday, I finally managed to give away a patio table that had been gathering grime in what was originally intended as a flowerbed beneath the sideyard's enormous Snowball hedge. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4w ago

Prosperity: ResponsibleFor "…vulnerable to every odd pebble inadvertantly flying around." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story reveals what Prosperity renders one ResponsibleFor.

Prosperity: ResponsibleFor

"…vulnerable to every odd pebble inadvertantly flying around."

Responsibilities shift when Prosperity appears. Before, the arc of responsibility might have extended no further than one’s self, if even that far. Afterward, it inevitably becomes ever more expansive and more inclusive, often extending far beyond personal home and hearth. Those unprepared for this shift might feel put upon when it happens. When did they suddenly become responsible for everybody else? The worst might even curse their new dependents, wondering why they can’t stand on their own damned hind legs and fully support themselves for a change. These are useless questions bordering on deflections, for if successfully deployed, they might lead the newly prosperous into preposterous positions, undefendable under any condition. This has absolutely nothing to do with religious conviction, but plays into principles included even in the decidedly feral Laws of the Jungle. One need not embrace communism to comprehend to whom and to what one must be ResponsibleFor.

At root, it’s simply self-preservation to help support one’s civilization, each of which inexorably includes both owners and renters, along with a few apparent deadbeats incapable of even supporting themselves. ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · 4w ago

Thank you for following along! Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 7/09/2026 Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...

This Prosperity Story contains a summary of each of my six story postings this week and an update on the goings on around The Villa Vatta Schmaltz. Thank you for following along!

Prosperity: Weekly Writing Summary for the Week Ending 7/09/2026

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived on the Fourth of July and kept arriving through a week that ranged from political fury to philosophical depth to barefoot mourning. The writing moved from the Phreedom of the incumbent’s Mount Rushmore performance to the elusive nature of the Promising, from the composter’s quiet testimony in TheHeap to the expanding universe of Affording, from the NoThings that populate our lives to the SymbolicProsperity found on bookshelves and in the soles of absent barefoot shoes. The series found its most intimate register this week. The foundation holds.

Thank you for following along! ...

@pureschmaltz.bsky.social · last mo.

Prosperity: SymbolicProsperity "…they bear the weight of my very identity, my Prosperity." Find the rest of this Story on my PureSchmaltz Blog: www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz... Or, find it in my PureSchmaltz Substack Library: davidschmaltz.substack.com/p/prosperity...