King Arthur's Mines - Eddie Lawrence

CLICK HERE TO HEAR "KING ARTHUR'S MINES"

Come Away Melinda - The Big Three

Written by Fred Hellerman of the Weavers, "Come Away, Melinda" was covered by Harry Belafonte, Tim Rose , Theodore Bikel, Judy Collins and Uriah Heep...And of course by this group, featuring "Mama" Cass Elliot.

One of the best anti-war songs ever...

New Poem

Winter

The glacial air bears heavily on my shoulders
as they slump towards the glistening snow.

God! I hate winter.

Scrunch, scrunch.
In the pure and penetrating endless silence
I hear only the sound of myself as I flounder onward alee.

Scrunch, scrunch.
As my boots splinter through the thin crust of ice
That has frozen over the surface of the recent snow.

But wait! There is more !
The mistral howling and wailing sure resurrect a lot of ghosts.
Spirits that call out to me.
From ahead or from behind?

I can't tell.

Ahead, the powdery, falling snow slowly begins to obscure
the path laid down by those who went before.

Yet they draw me forward, calling for me to follow.

Behind, the spirits urge me on, reminding me of the fact that
this is done. The steps behind call out-
"You can't go back...

And all along the way the warm glow of homefires
fill the homes with affability and kindness.

Poppa Meets Johnny for the first time...

STORM - Tim Minchin

John Charles Nickels

Welcome to the world!

Infant Joy
William Blake

"I have no name;
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am, Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!

7 lbs 14 oz.

More pictures here.

The Best Part of being President !

Old City Bar

A New Poem

Winter

The glacial air bears heavily on my shoulders
as they slump towards the glistening snow.

God! I hate winter.

Scrunch, scrunch.
In the pure and penetrating endless silence
I hear only the sound of myself as I flounder onward alee.

Scrunch, scrunch.
As my boots splinter through the thin crust of ice
That has frozen over the surface of the recent snow.

But wait! There is more !
The mistral howling and wailing sure resurrect a lot of ghosts.
Spirits that call out to me.
From ahead or from behind?

I can't tell.

Ahead, the powdery, falling snow slowly begins to obscure
the path laid down by those who went before.

Yet they draw me forward, calling for me to follow.

Behind, the spirits urge me on, reminding me of the fact that
this is done. The steps behind call out-
"You can't go back...

And all along the way the warm glow of homefires
fill the homes with affability and kindness.

Do not go gentle into that good night...

Richard Burton recites Dylan Thomas' Poem

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I grew up in Levittown, Long Island in the late 50's and early 60's. We had moved there in 1954 from Brooklyn. I went to Island Trees (yes, *that* Island Trees) High School, an almost brand new school district carved out of the potato fields of central Nassau County, adjacent to Levittown. Like most every kid who came to Levittown from Brooklyn, when I became a teenager, I did what was expected of me: I became a hoodlum.
Black leather jackets, garrison belts that our fathers had brought home from the war, motorcycle boots (Georgia Giants were the best) and of course, lots of Vaseline in the hair. I took shop classes, hung out at the candy store and focused my attention on two major areas of life: girls and cars.
But in 1959, something changed. Somehow I got into this English class (it was called "honors") with mostly Jewish kids who carried around copies of "Ulysses" and read the New York Times. On the weekends, they went to jazz clubs or to the movies to see films like "The Seventh Seal" and "The Mouse That Roared". And they all had read "Portrait".
We were assigned a book report to do over Christmas vacation and we could pick any book. I had some books in mind that I thought were "good" that were summarily rejected by the teacher. We didn't have Cliff Notes then, but we had Classic Comics! Finally I asked one of the other fellows what I could read. Someone handed me a copy of "Portrait". I never looked back. All of a sudden, *I* was Dedalus. I read Joyce's words over and over, absorbing their meaning and incorporating them into my own consciousness.
I therefore offer to you, one of my favorite sections, the end of Chapter 4:


"There was a long rivulet in the strand and, as he waded slowly up its course, he wondered at the endless drift of seaweed. Emerald and black and russet and olive, it moved beneath the current, swaying and turning. The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift and mirrored the high-drifting clouds. The clouds were drifting above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him and the grey warm air was still and a new wild life was singing in his veins.

Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

-- Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy."

Iwo Jima

My father went ashore on Iwo Jima with the 4th Marine Division.
He was shot in the leg on the first day and was evacuated to a hospital ship.
He was awarded a Purple Heart (his second)

Iwo Jima Today

Sea Biscuit

A Sea Biscuit's Life from Bruno Vellutini on Vimeo.

A Poem By Philip Larkin

"I came across this in a poetry anthology when I was at school. My juvenile sixth-form friends and I thought it was great because it had some rude words in it.


This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."

The Pleiades (The Seven Sisters)

The Pleiades Star Cluster

Elihu Vedder (1836 – 1923) was an American symbolist painter,
book illustrator, and poet, born in New York City.

It's Your Duty To Repudiate These Morons!

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Halloween, an Irish Tradition!

Click on image to enlarge
"There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the Cards ould Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She'd missed the snap-apple turning.

On the Festival of Hallow Eve."

Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise portrays a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The young people on the left side play various divination games, while children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play "Snap-Apple", which involves retrieving an apple hanging from a string.

Halloween is very popular in Ireland, where it originated, and is known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna (pron: ee-hah how-nah), literally "Samhain Night". Pre-Christian Celts had an autumn festival, Samhain (pronounced /ˈsˠaunʲ/from the Old Irish samain), "End of Summer", a pastoral and agricultural "fire festival" or feast, when the dead revisited the mortal world, and large communal bonfires would hence be lit to ward off evil spirits

Sarah Palin: "Fuck You!

Jon Stewart:

"He (McCain) made an interesting vice presidential choice.

I like the woods...I just don't know if I would pull my vice president out of the woods randomly.

She came out again today. She was talking to a small town, she said that small towns, that's the part of the country she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country.

You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly...fuck you.

I've never seen someone with a greater disparity between how cute they sound when they're saying something and how terrible what they're saying is.

Don't ya know, Obama, by golly, he just is a terrorist? What? Oh, you know, he just, gosh, kills babies, you know.

I'm so over the idea that only small-town America is the heart and soul. Small-town America is fine, but it's the same as cities. Cities are just a lot of towns piled on top of each other in one place.

They have this whole thing that somehow we can write off entire swaths of the country, that we are somehow...I get it. You know, New York City wasn't good enough for [expletive] Osama bin Laden, it better be good enough for you.

I can't take it anymore. After eight years of this divisiveness, we're back to this idea that only small-town America is the real America.

I get it. I'm from New York. We have a lot of gay people. But homosexuals don't have sodomy on Russian flags."

I'm A Yankee Doodle Dandy

Sarah Palin is TOAST! !

A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.

The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated.

Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

Rebirth

Autumn is coming. I can feel it.
The cool nights when I pull my bedsheet up to my chin and dream about spring.
Rebirth. The great cycle of life.
Life is renewed, but living things are not.
Living things, like all other machines
Wear out and die...
Like me.

What am I to make of this? The finite within the infinite.
From which pool do I drink?
Should I celebrate my immortality or grieve my mortality?

I despise not knowing.

Soon, it will be winter.
We will retreat inobtrusively into our cloistered sanctuaries
carrying with us the divine spark, nurturing the finespun flame
Until it is called forth again by the pleasant and friendly power of rebirth.

Spring!

For some, the vital principle will be lost forever
and they will lie still in the warm earth, their mortal remains
dissolving and their sempiternal essence dissipated back to the
Everlasting Universe.

In others, the divine spark will emerge anew,
to burn as brightly and defiantly as before.

Lebensmude

He was a heavy-set man of about 60 years old, who was once taut and muscular, but now succumbed to the inevitable ravages of time. I looked closely at his face, which seemed to be in a permanent state of slightly squinting, perplexed puzzlement. He probably had not smiled in many years. There was no joy in his demeanor, no peace in his bones, no tranquillity in his voice. He was a man who had spent the better part of his life trying to save people from themselves and had mostly failed. Now he was desperately trying to save what was left of himself. He had wanted to change the world, to cure the ills, to settle the disputes, to mediate the conflicts, to turn this ugly and sick world into the thing of beauty that he envisioned. He had entered into the lives of people and had not emerged unscathed. Instead of bringing them up to his expectations, they had dragged him down. Now, he had nothing much left and he was tired. Very tired. Lebensmude, as the Germans say so aptly, sick of life.

He yearned for renewal, to be young again and carefree. To recapture the joy of his youth. He wanted to swim in the ocean, to roll in the grass, to swing on an old tire from a tree limb, to meet a young lady and fall in love, to walk in the park holding hands on a cool, summer night. He wanted to paint, to play music, to sing, to experience all of the sensations that he had missed in his journey to wherever he was going. But most of all, he wanted to be free. Free of the lives of the people he had known, the lives that choked him and sucked every drop of blood and joy from his countenance. He had entered into the lives of sick and ugly people, and he had not emerged unscathed. And now he was angry. Very angry.

He spoke to me in harsh tones, loud and shrill, and somewhat disjointed. Like a small explosion was taking place inside his head and little pockets of energy were emerging through tiny cracks. He was, in effect, ranting and raving.

"You are young," he said, "you cannot possibly understand. To you, it is all so simple. You have your youth, you have your health and you have your mind. You have not entangled yourself in the lives of sick people, you have not walked in my shoes. You cannot possibly know."

He became suddenly more somber and thoughtful. "I have tried to love those whose paths I crossed. For me, love is the only way. To love, to sacrifice. It is the highest ideal that a person can aspire to".

I now became annoyed at his attitude. "You are a fool", I replied. "You have chosen your fate, you have walked in the pasture and you have stepped in the offal. No one forced you to do this, you did it of your own free will. Even I, at my young age, know that you cannot immerse yourself too deeply in the lives of men and women. It is like a maelstrom, a whirlpool, that has sucked you in. You have tried to cure what cannot be cured. It is the universal sickness and we are born with it. You are a fool."

If Only the Election was Tomorrow

FLORIDA: Obama 49 - McCain 43 pre-debate; Obama 51 - McCain 43 post-debate; OHIO: Obama 49 - McCain 42 pre-debate; Obama 50 - McCain 42 post-debate; PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 49 - McCain 43 pre-debate; Obama 54 - McCain 39 post-debate Friday's presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin's sagging favorability and more voter confidence in Sen. Barack Obama's ability to handle the economy are propelling the Democrat to wider likely voter leads over Republican John McCain in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to simultaneous Quinnipiac University Swing State polls released today.

Out Of Her League

"Rising up from a source deep in my subconscious. I saw a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life. I saw this in the sag of her back in her serious black suit, in the position of her hands, crossed modestly atop her knees, and in that “Mad Men”-era updo, ever unchanging, like a good luck charm." - Judith Warner, NYT
(http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/poor-sarah/?ref=opinion)

The Debate: What they said doesn't matter...

It's the visceral effect on the audience:

McCain: OLD

Obama: PRESIDENTIAL

The Universe: Simply gorgeous, even transcendential:

Dear Senator McCain

These People are Friggin' CRAZY!!!

An e-mail being circulated by Xtian fundies...

" Dear friends:

Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation by storm. From obscurity, with zero executive experience, or much of any kind, he has vaulted into the position of Presidential frontrunner. It is stunning. On the surface, it appears attributable only to his eloquent oratory and his race. But an invisible factor may be a strong spiritual force behind him, causing some people to actually swoon in his presence.

I have been very concerned that he has publicly said that he does not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven. This makes both the Bible and Jesus a liar, and it means that Christ has died in vain. A person cannot be a true Christian who believes that there are other ways of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life with God. Only Jesus has paid the price for that.

Therefore, there is, indeed, another spirit involved. And this spirit has come into our national life like a flood. Last week at Obama’s acceptance speech, that spirit exalted itself in front of a Greek temple-like stage, and to a huge audience like in a Roman arena. Omama was portrayed as god-like. His voice thundered as a god’s voice.

At the end, Democratic sympathizer Pastor Joel Hunter gave the benediction and shockingly invited everyone to close the prayer to their own (false) gods. This was surely an abomination, but it was compatible with Obama’s expressed theology, and Hunter’s leftist leanings.

God was not pleased.

And God says, “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him” (Isaiah 59:19).

Enter Governor Sarah Palin. With incredible timing, the very next day, Sarah Palin also appeared out of nowhere. Her shocking selection as John McCain’s running mate stunned the world and suddenly took all the wind out of Obama’s sails.

We quickly learned that Sarah is a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian, attends church, and has been a ministry worker.

Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing. You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her. But they will not be successful. She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated.

Back in the 1980s, I sensed that Israel’s little-known Benjamin Netanyahu was chosen by God for an important end-time role. I still believe that. I now have that same sense about Sarah Palin.

Today I did some checking and discovered that both her first and last names are biblical words, one in Hebrew the other in Greek:

Sarah. Wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. In Hebrew, Sarah means “noble woman” (Strong’s 8283).

Palin. In Greek, the word means “renewal.” (Strong’s 3825).

A friend said he believes that Sarah Palin is a Deborah. Of Deborah, Smith’s Bible Dictionary says, “A prophetess who judged Israel…. She was not so much a judge as one gifted with prophetic command…. and by virtue of her inspiration ‘a mother in Israel.’”

Only God knows the future and how she may be used by Him, but may this noble woman serve to bring renewal in the land, and inspiration.

Jim

The Bear

There's a different quality to the silence in the wilderness. I don't know if you've ever noticed it. It's a purer, more penetrating silence than we experience in the populated areas. It gets inside your head and it clears out a lot of the cobwebs, leaving more room for introspection. It has a real calming effect on the spirit. No, it's not total silence. That can be very unnerving. It's more of an honest silence, the gentle rustling of the trees in the soft breeze, the trickling of water coming from a small spring on the side of a hill, the birds chirping pleasantly and the insects buzzing around your head.
And off in the distance, the unmistakable sound of someone, or something approaching. I crouch down quietly in the brush and check the direction of the wind. Damn! It's blowing directly towards the sound. Not good. He'll have my scent in just a moment. I reach behind into my backpack and take out the field glasses. And wonder. Moose? Elk? Bison? I catch a glimpse of the brown fur and I notice the silvery tips of the brown hairs. Double damn! Ursus horribilis...the grizzly bear.
He stops and looks up straight in my direction. He's got the scent. He probably doesn't want me, but these bears know that where there are humans, there's usually human food. I do what I've been taught to do by those who say they know. Nothing. Maybe he'll lose interest and continue on. But he continues towards me, and I reach down and pull the revolver from its holster and wait. All the while, I'm wondering why I loaded it with .38 specials. They're not going to help me all that much against this bear.
He's probably about 10 meters away now, so I stand up straight in order to back slowly away. Now his dark eyes are focused directly on me. He stops about 3 meters away and I raise the revolver so it's pointing directly at his head. Right between the eyes. It's the only chance I have. We are now frozen in time, him and me, just standing there, waiting for something to happen. I'm fascinated by his elegant beauty and power. The hump behind his head is pure muscle and the long claws are used for digging. His rump slopes downward and is much lower than his head. I look directly into his large eyes. Damn, I really don't want to hurt this guy. But if you walk in the woods, and a bear bites your butt, is it the bear's fault? He's only doing what he's supposed to do. I'm the intruder here. Now I begin to see something happening.
He's still looking directly at me, but his mouth seems different. The corners have turned upwards and I can see his teeth clearly. Is he getting ready to attack? But then I realize what is happening. His mouth has curled upward into a ...smile. He turns his head slowly to the right and then again, slowly to the left. I can almost hear him thinking to himself "well buddy, I could mess you up pretty bad if I wanted to, but today is your day. Enjoy!" And he just turned and walked away.....

God, It's Beautiful...

Starry Memories

My life was like a canyon
As deep as it was wide
And I, a lonely traveler
Just looking for a place to hide.
My path was filled with darkness
And emptiness ahead.
Night after night, under starry skies
I wished that I was dead.
But then you came into my world
And darkness turned to dawn.
Your essence swept into my life
Helping me to be reborn.
Your specter crept into my dreams
Each and every night.
You wandered in my brain from room to room
turning on each light.
You'll probably never realize
How much it meant to me
That you were there beside me
Helping me be free.
And you'll probably never realize
The emptiness inside
That comes to me each night
You're not sleeping by my side.
But I've still got those memories
That swirl before my eyes.
Of you and I lying peacefully,
Beneath those starry skies.

Palin and Pegler

Sarah Palin:

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969, Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt."

According to:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014661.php

PALIN AND PEGLER.... In her convention speech last week, Sarah Palin quoted "a writer" who extolled the virtues of small-town America. Palin didn't identify the "writer" for a very good reason -- she was quoting the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

It was an interesting source for Palin to use in such a high-profile setting.

It's an odd source because Pegler, who moved further right as his career went on, ended up very, very far out. Frank (Rich) notes that he talked hopefully of the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt.

He was also known for what Philip Roth described as his "casual distaste for Jews," which had become so evident by the end that he was bounced from the journal of the John Birch Society in 1964 for alleged anti-semitism. According to his obituary, he'd advanced the theory that American Jews of Eastern European descent were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism, however outwardly respectable they appeared."

So, let's see here, the McCain campaign wants to cut off U.S. financial support to Israel, Palin is quoting a notorious anti-Semite at the Republican convention, and Palin's church welcomes the "Jews for Jesus" crowd.

No wonder Ed Koch finds these guys scary.

Alaska Women Reject Palin

Mudflats (the go-to blog for Alaska politics):

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.

So, if you’ve been doing the math… Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy…Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans.

Good Advice

“If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

An Audacious Prediction

Neither Sarah Palin or Joe Biden will be on the ballot on Election day.

Sarah Palin will self destruct and Joe Lieberman will take her spot.

Barack Obama will come to realize the enormity of his error and Joe Biden will withdraw (health issues?) and be replaced by Hillary Clinton.

Obama and Clinton will be elected in a landslide.

We live in hope. With any luck we won't die in despair!

McCain the Warmonger

Palin For President!

McCain's Poor Judgment

Candidate McCain’s Big Decision

New York Times
Published: September 2, 2008

More often than not, the role of a vice president is a minor one, unless some tragedy occurs. But a presidential nominee’s choice of a running mate is vitally important. It is his first executive decision and offers an important insight into how that nominee would lead the nation.

If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Mr. McCain’s supporters are valiantly trying to argue that the selection was a bold stroke that shows their candidate is a risk-taking maverick who — we can believe — will change Washington. (Mr. Obama’s call for change — now “the change we need” — has become all the rage in St. Paul.)

To us, it says the opposite. Mr. McCain’s snap choice of Ms. Palin reflects his impulsive streak: a wild play that he made after conservative activists warned him that he would face an all-out revolt in the party if he chose who he really wanted — Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Why Mr. McCain would want to pander to right-wing activists — who helped George W. Bush kill off his candidacy in the 2000 primaries in a particularly ugly way — is baffling. Frankly, they have no place to go. Mr. McCain would have a lot more success demonstrating his independence, and his courage, if he stood up to them the way he did in 2000.

As far as we can tell, Mr. McCain and his aides did almost no due diligence before choosing Ms. Palin, raising serious questions about his management skills. The fact that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant is irrelevant to her candidacy. There are, however, very serious questions about her political past and her ideology.

If Mr. McCain wanted to break with his party’s past and choose the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate, there are a number of politicians out there with far greater experience and stature than Ms. Palin, who has been in Alaska’s Statehouse for less than two years.

Before she was elected governor, she was mayor of a tiny Anchorage suburb, where her greatest accomplishment was raising the sales tax to build a hockey rink. According to Time magazine, she also sought to have books banned from the local library and threatened to fire the librarian.

For Mr. McCain to go on claiming that Mr. Obama has too little experience to be president after almost three years in the United States Senate is laughable now that he has announced that someone with no national or foreign policy experience is qualified to replace him, if necessary.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been one of Mr. McCain’s most loyal friends, said Tuesday that he was certain that Ms. Palin would take the right positions on issues like Iraq, Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. That seemed based largely on his repeated assertion that Ms. Palin would be tended by Mr. McCain’s foreign policy advisers. That was not much of an endorsement.

Some of the things Ms. Palin has had to say in the recent past about foreign policy are especially worrisome. In a speech last June to her former church in Wasilla, Ms. Palin said the war in Iraq was “a task that is from God.” Mr. Bush made similar claims as he rejected all sound mortal advice on how to conduct the war.

Mr. McCain, Mr. Graham and others also claim that Ms. Palin is a fearless reformer who is committed to fighting waste, fraud and earmarks. Ms. Palin did show courage taking on some of the Alaska Republican Party’s most sleazy politicians. But she also was an eager recipient of earmarked money as a mayor and governor.

Mayor Palin gathered up $27 million in subsidies from Washington, $15 million of it for a railroad from her town to the ski resort hometown of Senator Ted Stevens, now under indictment for failing to report gifts.

The Republicans are presenting Ms. Palin as a crusader against Mr. Stevens’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The record says otherwise; she initially supported Mr. Stevens’s boondoggle, diverting the money to other projects when the bridge became a political disaster. In her speech to the Wasilla Assembly of God in June, Ms. Palin said it was “God’s will” that the federal government contribute to a $30 billion gas pipeline she wants built in Alaska.

Mr. McCain will make his acceptance speech on Thursday, and Ms. Palin will speak on Wednesday. Those two appearances will go a long way to forming voters’ views of this Republican ticket.

As Senator Graham noted, Mr. McCain has to reach out beyond the party’s loyal base. “We’re going to have to win this thing,” he said. “This is not our race to lose.”

Mr. McCain’s hurdles are substantial. To start, he has to overcome Mr. Bush’s record of failures. (The president addressed the convention Tuesday night and now, McCain strategists fervently hope, will retire quietly to the Rose Garden.) That record includes the disastrous war in Iraq, a ballooning deficit, the mortgage crisis — and the list goes on.

To address those many problems, this country needs a leader with sound judgment and strong leadership skills. Choosing Ms. Palin raises serious questions about Mr. McCain’s qualifications.

He Did! !

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

I looked intently into his face but he turned his gaze downward. He looked like a man who had been broken by life. We sat alone in the dingy room for a long time, in silence. Suddenly he raised his head and his eyes fixed on mine. They were burning like hot coals and I knew that the volcano was about to erupt again. "I cared about everyone", he raged, "but no one cared about me. I have as much right to be happy as anyone else. I did all the right things and life was never fair to me. Look at me now, I'm alone and I'm sick and I just want to die."

"The world did not owe you anything", I replied, "and you didn't owe the world anything. It was your own responsibility to give meaning to your life, and to find happiness. The world is indifferent to our needs. We all need to be cared for, to be loved, to be indulged. The world is not cruel, it is uncaring. Only human beings have the capacity to care about each other. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. They are not cruel, they are just indifferent".

"It just doesn't seem right", he went on, "that life should not return the favor. Maybe I expected too much of people. I expected everyone to think like me and to act like I would have acted in that situation. I expected them to sense my needs and to provide me with what I needed. I was always disappointed...always".

"That is because you always expected something in return. You were selfish. Now you are angry because you didn't get the return on your investment that you had hoped for. There was a fundamental flaw in your thinking. You did not help people out of the goodness of your heart. There was no nobility in your gestures. You loved people because you wanted them to love you back. You helped them because you wanted their gratitude. You have no right to be angry. Your self pity is contemptible."
He glared at me long and hard. Perhaps I had gone a bit too far. I looked directly into his watery eyes. "I only wish that I was young again. I do not accept my fate gracefully. I resent every day that passes. I see nothing in my future but pain, sickness and death. I am just waiting each day for the next horrible thing that will happen to me. I cannot be saved. It is too late. I have only my dreams to keep me alive.
I am walking along the beach, with the ocean waves dancing at my feet, with the blood-red sun setting on the horizon. I am walking on the street in a quiet New England village with snow gently falling and the smell of wood burning in the hearths. I look into the warm, peaceful homes and I see the families gathered around the dinner table. I am sitting under a large oak tree in a summer pasture, filled with wildflowers and buzzing with insects. I am with a young lady and we are having a picnic. I am young and strong and handsome, and I am hopelessly in love. I want to sing, to dance, to recite poetry, to listen to music. There is no anger, no hatred, no envy, no pride, no sorrow, no fear. I am at peace and time is standing still, frozen in a great crystal of beauty. I want to be here forever, because I am young and happy and free".

Wake Up, America!

Senator McCain: Read your bible!!

"He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty." (Prov. 16:32)

"A man of quick temper acts foolishly, but a man of discretion is patient." (Prov. 14:17)

"He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." (Prov. 14:29)

"A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention." (Prov. 15:18)

And, from the Christian New Testament's Letter of James: "Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God" (James 1:19-20)

Rimbaud

Farewell
¯¯¯¯


Autumn already! - But why regret the everlasting sun, if we are sworn to a search for divine brightness, - far from those who die as seasons turn.

Autumn. Our boat, risen out of a hanging fog, turns toward poverty's harbor, the monstrous city, its sky stained with fire and mud. Ah! Those stinking rags, bread soaked with rain, drunkenness, and the thousands of loves who nailed me to the cross! Will there never, ever be an end to that ghoulish queen of a million dead souls and bodies and who will all be judged! I can see myself again, my skin corroded by dirt and disease, hair and armpits crawling with worms, and worms still larger crawling in my heart, stretched out among ageless, heartless, unknown figures... I could easily have died there... What a horrible memory! I detest poverty.

And I dread winter because it's so cozy!

- Sometimes in the sky I see endless sandy shores covered with white rejoicing nations. A great golden ship, above me, flutters many-colored pennants in the morning breeze. I was the creator of every feast, every triumph, every drama. I tried to invent new flowers, new planets, new flesh, new languages. I thought I had acquired supernatural powers. Ha! I have to bury my imagination and my memories! What an end to a splendid career as an artist and storyteller!

I! I called myself a magician, an angel, free from all moral constraint, I am sent back to the soil to seek some obligation, to wrap gnarled reality in my arms! A peasant!

Am I deceived? Would Charity be the sister of death, for me?

Well, I shall ask forgiveness for having lived on lies. And that's that.

But not one friendly hand! and where can I look for help?

The song is "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" by Oasis

The Great Spirit

St. Michael the Archangel

As a young lad I was obsessed with St. Michael the Archangel. So much so that I chose Michael as my confirmation name.

I recited the prayer to St. Michael after every mass:

"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen."

Recently I noticed that this prayer is used by Martin Scorsese in the opening scene of "Gangs of New York".

Imagine my dismay when I read this:

NEW YORK (AP) ― A 15th-century sculpture at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has been damaged after it came loose from its moorings and fell to the floor.

The museum says the damaged piece is a terracotta sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel by Andrea della Robbia.

It fell late Monday night or early Tuesday. It had been hanging over a doorway in the European Paintings and Decorative Arts Galleries since 1996.

Goodbye George...

I'm Voting REPUBLICAN!

Baby Beluga!

Barack Obama on Religion

Robert F. Kennedy

And here is Teddy's eulogy:

The Real McCain II

John Brown by Bob Dylan

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore.
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all.
His mama's face broke out all in a grin.

"Oh son, you look so fine, I'm glad you're a son of mine,
You make me proud to know you hold a gun.
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get,
And we'll put them on the wall when you come home."

As that old train pulled out, John's ma began to shout,
Tellin' ev'ryone in the neighborhood:
"That's my son that's about to go, he's a soldier now, you know."
She made well sure her neighbors understood.

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door.
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun,
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war.

Oh! Good old-fashioned war!

Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come.
They ceased to come for about ten months or more.
Then a letter finally came saying, "Go down and meet the train.
Your son's a-coming home from the war."

She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight.
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last,
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes.

Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist.
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know,
While she couldn't even recognize his face!

Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face.

"Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done.
How is it you come to be this way?"
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away.

"Don't you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud.
You wasn't there standing in my shoes."

"Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'.
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine."

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

"And I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink,
That I was just a puppet in a play.
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke,
And a cannon ball blew my eyes away."

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein' the metal brace that helped him stand.
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand.

War Prayer

PZ Myers

Have We Gone Insane?

Chimes of Freedom

Bob Dylan changed my life...it's that simple.

Antarctic Ice Shelf

Boston Legal's Alan Shore on the Supreme Court

Find X

Obama Has It EXACTLY right.....

And everyone else got it ALL WRONG!!!

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Closer To Free

Fast Food Mount Rushmore

Squid

Not In Our Name

We believe that as people living
in the United States it is our
responsibility to resist the injustices
done by our government,
in our names

Not in our name
will you wage endless war
there can be no more deaths
no more transfusions
of blood for oil

Not in our name
will you invade countries
bomb civilians, kill more children
letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless

Not in our name
will you erode the very freedoms
you have claimed to fight for

Not by our hands
will we supply weapons and funding
for the annihilation of families
on foreign soil

Not by our mouths
will we let fear silence us

Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples
or countries to be deemed evil

Not by our will
and Not in our name

We pledge resistance

We pledge alliance with those
who have come under attack
for voicing opposition to the war
or for their religion or ethnicity

We pledge to make common cause
with the people of the world
to bring about justice,
freedom and peace

Another world is possible
and we pledge to make it real.

Not In Our Name

The Surge Is Failing! Don't Lie To Me!

Why do I, an American citizen, have to go to other sources for the truth?

George Carlin- Still A Genius...

I Always Thought HELL was...Other People!

Fractals with Chaos

This was made with the shareware release of James Gleick's CHAOS: the Software. The software was written by Josh Gordon, Rudy Rucker and John Walker for Autodesk, Inc., with Josh Gordon doing the lion's share of the programming work.

Get it HERE

Which Side Are You On?

Tommy and Natalie Dance

Rickie Lee Jones

Nobody Knows My Name

For a thousand years
I've lay upon the Lake Victoria
I was winged and many-colored
And nobody knew my name

For a thousand years
I fell out of the sand into the Guadeloupe
And I made many songs into the air
And nobody knew my name

I fell like water
In sweet gasps of hydrogen up
Into the sea over the Bikini Islands
And I dove into the liquid concrete of sweet silver lake
The liquid concrete of down by the river
And nobody knew my name

Now I walk among them and I sing to them
And I open up my wrists
And nobody knows my name

And I translate into many hours of history
But nobody knows my name
I stood in the four winds
I stood in the four winds
I stood in the four winds
And nobody knows my name

So I walk again
Yeah, I walk every night
So I walk again
I look at you
Sweet every face
Do you know my name
Do you, do you know my name
Do you know my name
Do you know my name
Say it
Do you know my name
Say it
Do you know my name
Do you know my name
Do you know my
Do you know my name
Do you know my
My...

Wildernes by Carl Sandburg

THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood-- I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ... I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ... I circle and loop and double-cross. There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun--I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ... I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ... before the water went down ... before Noah ... before the first chapter of Genesis. There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ... ready to snarl and kill ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting-- I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes-- And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness. O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart-- and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where-- For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

Gram Parsons

If you don't know anything about Gram Parsons, take a moment to watch this video and go to http://www.gramparsons.com.

A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country

The Voyage of Life

The Voyage of Life : Old Age
Thomas Cole

And the sky cracked open,
and terrifying forks of lightning split the earth,
releasing deafening explosions of roaring thunder.
And the mighty wind blew,
creating a maelstrom of fury and rage...
And then all was quiet, and the gentle sea
serenely rolled on, as it has since the beginning of time.

I'm A Liberal...Suck on that!

I'm a fighting liberal

by Steve Gilliard

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?

Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed. It is one thing to want less government interference and smaller, fiscally responsible government. It is another thing entirely to be a corporate whore, selling out to the highest bidder because the CEO fattens your campaign chest. They are building an America which cannot be sustained. One based on the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. The indifferent boss who hires too few people and works them to death or until they break down sick. Cheap labor capitalism has replaced common sense. "Globalism" which is really guise for exploitation, replaced fair trade, which is nothing like fair for the trapped semi-slaves of the maquliadoras. In the Texas border towns, hundreds of these women have been used as sex slaves and then apparently killed,the FBI powerless to do anything as the criminals sit in Mexico untouched by law.

For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.

Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.

Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.

It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.

It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.

Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi satellite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.

It is time to stop looking for an accomodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?

Steve Gilliard
http://tinyurl.com/ytocqy

James Lipton meme

I thought this would be a fun way to get to know one another a little better. Answer the following questions James Lipton asks of his guests on Inside the Actors’ Studio, inspired by the French interviewer Bernard Pivot.

1. What is your favorite word?

quintessential

2. What is your least favorite word?

Homophobic

3. What turns you on?

Music

4. What turns you off?

Blathering

5. What sound or noise do you love?

Running water

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

Sirens

7. What is your favorite curse word?

Motherfucker

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Musician

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Politician

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

So, it turns out you were wrong!

Darwin Kills

The notion of intelligent design has been hijacked by those with a religious agenda to promote. Almost all proponents of ID do in fact have a religious agenda and they must be stopped from disseminating their ideology in public schools. The trick is to separate legitimate scientific investigation of intelligent design from religious creationism. As it stands now, most scientists are afraid to even talk about the subject for fear of being misquoted or having their own words used as religious propaganda. This has had a chilling effect on legitimate science that may take decades to repair. Ideology has no place in any public school science classroom and it must be stopped wherever it occurs. But one must also recognize that there have also been zealots on the evolutionist side who want to teach mechanisms of evolution that have no empirical support. The answer is simple and clear. Religious creationism must be eliminated from school curriculums and darwinian evolution must be taught not as fact, but in it's historical context. There is enough factual science, from anatomy to zoology to fill any school's scientific curriculum with non-controversial, factual science. Any teaching of darwinian evolution or creationism or "the controversy" is nothing more than a waste of time that could be better spent on real science.

This Says It All

It's Christmas in Fallujah

Merry Christmas! !

Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. This remarkable wide-field (3 degree) image of the region shows the famous star cluster at the right, while highlighting lesser known dusty reflection nebulae nearby, across an area that would span over 20 light-years.

Merry Christmas and a Peaceful New Year to all!

Mars, the Bringer of War

I'm finally feeling motivated enough to update this site.
I'm doing fine considering the situation. While I do have Stage 4 prostate cancer, it doesn't seem to be bothering me very much. My main problem is not being able to walk, although I am able to get into the wheelchair and the recliner with the help of the lift.
I have my laptop available and it is my lifeline to the outside world. I spend a lot of time watching movies and surfing the internet.
I can be reached by e-mail at charlie@charliewagner.com and by cell phone at 516-286-5472
I finally sucumbed to necessity and bought an artificial Christmas tree. I'm certainly not in any position to get a real tree and decorate it :-(
I'm actually looking forward to the holiday season. Thanksgiving was great, even though we celebrated it on Saturday the 17th. The whole family was here and it was a good day.
I'll try to keep this journal up to date so you can check in here from time to time to see how I'm doing.
Here's a video that I found interesting. The music is from Gustav Holst' piece "The Planets" and is called "Mars, the Bringer of War":

Tommy tries to walk

One Picture........

Is worth a thousand words!!

Kind of reminds me of David Byrne standing by the side of the road in the middle of the desert with his swimming gear in the "Road To Nowhere" video by the Talking Heads.


The dark night is over and a new day is about to break.

On to 2008!!

Count Me Among Them....

"The power of righteous vexation is what keeps so many old Democrats hanging on in nursing homes long past the time they should have kicked off. Ancient crones from FDR's time are still walking the halls, kept alive by anger at what has been done to our country. Old conservationists, feminists, grizzled veterans of the civil rights era fight off melanoma, emphysema, Montezuma, thanks to the miracle drug of anger. Slackers and cynics abound, not to mention nihilists in golf pants and utter idiots. Time to clean some clocks. As Frost might have written, "The woods are lovely, dark and thick. But I have many butts to kick and some to poke and just one stick."
Garrison Keillor

Why Voters Like Values

"...values sell because they’re an antidote to the endemic mental health problem of our time: depression.

Humans demand that there be a clear right and wrong. You’ve got to believe that the track you’ve taken is the right track. You get depressed if you’re not certain as to what it is you’re supposed to be doing or what’s right and wrong in the world.

People need to divide the world into good and evil, us and them. To do otherwise – to entertain the possibility that life is not black and white, but variously shaded in gray – is perhaps more honest, rational and decent. But it’s also, psychically, a recipe for disaster, as are the psychic pressures of life in our multicultural, tolerant, globalist, egalitarian, post-1960’s era. It all leads to great uncertainty as to what is right and what is wrong. That is very conducive to depression.

The Republican Party wins elections because the Democrats – with their perceived agenda of tolerance, multiculturalism and equality – are inherently depressing." Jerome Kagan via a column by Judith Warner

When The Deal Goes Down

Dylan at his very best.

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, the moon gives light and it shines by night
When I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'r the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Time to feed the babies!

Gail and Natalie

Cuter than a.....

speckled bellied puppy on a red wagon!


Leah Nita visits Grandma and Poppa

Natalie and Tommy come to visit

Doing what we do best!

Great-Grandma Marie feeds Natalie

Great-Grandma Marie and Grandma Gail lend a hand

July 8, 2006

Tommy and Natalie

Eric's 4th Birthday

Eric, Sophie and Leah

View Slideshow HERE

Natalie and Thomas come home!

Click on the link below to see a slideshow.

Natalie has the dark hair and Thomas is fairer.

Please excuse the lousy pictures, my autofocus is apparently not working.

Watch slideshow HERE

First Pictures

Congratulations to Carrie and Tom!

Natalie (5 lbs 11 oz.) and Thomas (4 lbs 14 oz.) were born June 27

Everyone is doing just fine.

Natalie Marie



Thomas Arthur II



Father and Son



Mother and Daughter



Natalie Marie



Aunt Jen, Grandma Gail, Daddy Tom and Grandma Maria

Winds of the Old Days

When I was a young boy, about 6 years old, my mother and father took my brother and I down to Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn to the Vim store. They bought a large upright radio that was bigger than I was and even had a record player. When the radio arrived and was plugged in, I stationed myself in front of the speakers. We didn't have a television at all, and the old radio had been broken for so long that I can't ever remember listening to it.

The first song I ever heard was "Goodnight, Irene" by the Weavers and for days after that I would plead with my mother to turn the radio on and I would wait, sometimes for hours, to hear that song another time.

I was never the same again. Music, especially folk music became my life and remains so to this day. I can't imagine life without music. It would be easier for me to stop breathing than to give it up.

Pete Seeger will be 87 years old this coming May 3rd. Pete was one of "those Weavers" who spun their magic into my impressionable ears. I'm going to send Pete a note and I hope all of you who love his music do so also. Just send it to Pete Seeger, Beacon N.Y. 12508. I'm sure everyone in Beacon knows where Pete lives.

Life is like a chain, and we're all links from the past to the future. There was Woody and then Pete and then Dylan then Springsteen. And so it all comes around in a new album just released today by Bruce: "We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions"

And so the Great Mandala rolls on as it has since time began.

Crackpot?

On the subject of "crackpot" that's a term that I prefer not to use,and in my opinion, has no place in science. Some ideas have more support than others. In science, as you well know, we never prove or disprove anything, we simply say what is more or less likely. We can safely say that astrology is "highly unlikely" to be valid, based upon a complete absence of supporting evidence. On the other hand, we can safely say that QED is "highly likely" to be valid, based upon a massive amount of evidence. Some other ideas, like QM, relativity, abiogenesis, panspermia, etc. have various amounts of supporting evidence. It is up to each individual to study the evidence and consider the liklihood of each theory being correct. Sometimes a consensus emerges in the scientific community, but often times even this consensus can be wrong. The cases of Lynn Margulis and Barbara McClintock comes to mind. In each of these cases, there was a strong aversion to these theories, which later proved to be correct. As for darwinism, I have studied the evidence and I have come to the conclusion that it is not strong enough to defend the idea. Others may reach different conclusions, but where the problem lies is with those who want to elevate an unproven theory to the status of "carved in stone" truth.
My belief is that many people support darwinism because they have been taught it for so long, or devoted their life's work to it, or are too scared of being labelled "crackpot" to oppose it.
I have asked evolutionists repeatedly to present the evidence for evolution.
What they do instead, is present evidence that different species are related. The fact that we're all closely related does not say anything about the mechanism of evolution.
Prof. Gould has provided 3 main evidences, small scale mutation and selection,
the fossil record, and the historical study of related species. All of these evidences are flawed and can be shown to be unsupportive.
As for the status of "why" questions in the field of science, I agree that they more properly belong to the field of philosophy. But who decides what is philosophy and what is science? Is there a definitive boundary? At one time some people believed that mind and body were separate entities. Now, most agree that they are one.
Most of the questions we're concerned with here can be properly framed without using the word "why?". For example, we can ask "by what mechanism did life come to appear on the earth and by what series of steps did it give rise to the diversity we observe today. Same with the universe. By what mechanism did the universe come to be in it's present state and what series of steps causes it to change over time?


"Here begins Homo ignoramus. He does not know what life is or how it came to be and whether it originated from inorganic matter. He does not know whether other planets of this sun or of other suns have life on them, and if they have, whether the forms of life there are like those around us, ourselves included. He does not know how this solar system came into being, although he has built up a few hypotheses about it. He knows only that the solar system was constructed billions of years ago. He does not know what this mysterious force of gravitation is that holds him and his fellow man on the other side of the planet with their feet on the ground, although he regards the phenomenon itself as "the law of laws." He does not know what the earth looks like five miles under his feet. He does not know how mountains came into existence or what caused the emergence of the continents, although he builds hypotheses about these, nor does he know from where oil came- again hypotheses. He does not know why, only a short time ago, a thick glacial sheet pressed upon most of Europe and North America, as he believes it did; nor how palms could grow above the polar circle, nor how it came about that the same fauna fill the inner lakes of the Old and the New World. He does not know where the salt in the sea came from. Although man knows that he has lived on this planet for millions of years, he finds a recorded history of only a few thousand years. And even these few thousand years
are not sufficiently well known." -Velikovsky

I read those words when I was 15 years old. And they changed the course of my life. Not for the particular examples cited, but because of our immense arrogance. Lord Kelvin said a hundred years ago that all of the problems in physics had been solved. All that was left was to dot the I's and cross the T's.
Evolutionists and cosmologists of today display the same arrogance. They know
nothing of how the universe came to be and how the life on earth came to be. And they have the arrogance to even suggest that darwinian evolution and big bang cosmology have answered most of the questions.

Where is the outrage?

from "Boston Legal" 3/14/2006 "Stick it"

Alan Shore's closing argument

Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second and try to fathom that.

At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.

This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

*Alan sits down abruptly in the witness chair next to the judge*

Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. That's a chair for witnesses only.

Really long speeches make me so tired sometimes.

Judge Sanders: Please get out of the chair.

Alan: Actually, I'm sick and tired.

Judge Sanders: Get out of the chair!

Alan: And what I'm most sick and tired of is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled unAmerican.

U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Evidentally, it's speech time.

Alan: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you. Free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say "Stick it"!

U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Objection!

Alan: I object to government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it. They're smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!

Judge Sanders: Mr. Shore. Unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You've breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.

Alan: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."

Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."

I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights - we have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes was trying to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that room and speak for her.

The verdict? Watch it and see...

Evolution and Development

Just as development is the unfolding of an algorithm that is already present in the zygote at the time of fertilization, so evolution is the unfolding of an algorithm that was already present at a time before evolution began.
In addition, just as a mature adult represents the culmination of this developmental algorithm, so the present state of life on earth represents the culmination of the evolutionary algorithm and no further evolution can be expected.
We know the immediate origin of the developmental algorithm, it was inherited from the previous generation. But the question of where this information originally came from remains unanswered. In evolution, one would be wise to suspect that this algorithm has a long history, and probably did not originate on the earth, but came to earth from elsewhere, fully front-loaded to unfold in a compatible environment into the biosphere we see today.

On The Value of Theories and Hypotheses

The only reason for having theories and hypotheses is to guide
experiment. They have no value on their own as truth.
The very idea of "selecting" between competing theories is
ridiculous. It brings us no closer to the truth. The way to
decide among competing theories is to test them, not decide
which is probably true based on some theoretical calculations
or by using some trick, like Occam's Razor.
After you collect all of the data, then you can draw
conclusions as to what is or is not likely. And one theory will
usually emerge as superior. Truth does not flow from the human
imagination, it flows from experiment and observation. That's
the only thing that has value. Speculation is interesting and
keeps the mind amused and helps us to design experiment, but it
serves no purpose in it's own right.
Of course, the number of possible hypotheses is infinite.
The human mind can create an unlimited number of scenarios to
explain any observed phenomenon. But if that is true, it's not
just a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. It becomes quickly
evident that all possible hypotheses can never be tested.
This may not seem to be a problem until you consider that if
this is so, then the results of *any* experiment will never be
conclusive. The scientific method becomes incapable of proving
anything, ever.
But this is not catastrophic because fortunately, science is not
in the business of proving and disproving things. The business
of science is saying what is most and least likely. In addition,
what is sometimes referred to as "scientific truth" is a very
fleeting phenomenon at best, and is inversely proportional to
investigative effort. In the past, scientific truths lasted a
long time, because very few people were looking very much.
But as time goes on, their lifespan is becoming increasingly
shorter. Science finds itself today leading mankind, not to a
single, absolute truth, but to multiple, indeterminate, relative
ones. Rational science is supposed to eliminate this uncertainty,
but it does not. In fact, it contributes to the chaos. Look at
what we deal with on a daily basis. Studies of various kinds are
reported every day with wildly varying claims. This is good for
you today, but it was bad for you yesterday. Substance after
substance is demonized by alleged "scientific studies" that tell
us things that we know are not true. Sugar is evil, salt will
kill you, eggs will give you a heart attack, fat is poison,
blah, blah, blah. Science is not making things clearer its making
people crazy. So what happens?
They look for an anchor, something that doesn't ever change,
that is constant and supportive. So they turn to God and religion.
It's inevitable. I don't agree with it, but I understand it.

Facilitated Variation

For years I have been arguing that the neo-darwinian view of evolution, the slow accumulation of beneficial variations over time, has never had any empirical support. I have argued that science has failed produce any empirical evidence, either observational or experimental that supports a nexus between the trivial effects of mutation and natural selection and the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems.

I'm glad that people are beginning to notice this glaring defect.

"In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer has been that small genetic mutations accumulate over time to produce wondrous innovations such as eyes and wings. Drawing on cutting-edge research across the spectrum of modern biology, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart demonstrate how this stock answer is woefully inadequate."

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300108656

Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma (Yale University Press, $30).*

(*just so there is no misunderstanding, these guys are opposed to intelligent design and have the misguided confidence that this new "patch" will somehow mitigate the growing belief that some sort of intelligent input is an absolute requirement for evolution.)

Now, just like Punctuated Equilibrium was proposed to explain the gaps in the fossil record, so a new "theory" has emerged to attempt to explain this glaring dilemma.

"The key is what they call “facilitated variation.” By this they mean that an organism does not merely tolerate environmental perturbations or developmental accidents, but in fact adjusts to the disturbances and incorporates them into its physiology or development. This buffering facilitates variation in traits by channeling environmental or genetic irregularities into integrated pathways of response. Furthermore, random inputs in the form of environmental perturbations or genetic mutations do not produce random outputs, because the outputs are shaped by the organism’s adaptive responses. Although genetic mutations may be random in their effects on the DNA sequence of an organism, facilitated variation implies that they may be far from random in how they affect the development of the organism. Facilitated variation therefore views the organism itself as playing a central part in determining how environmental and genetic variation is expressed

http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/110512.html

"...random inputs in the form of environmental perturbations or genetic mutations do not produce random outputs, because the outputs are shaped by the organism’s adaptive responses."

That sounds an awful lot like "adaptive evolution", which sounds an awful lot like "directed evolution" (Barry Hall, are you listening? You were RIGHT!)

My, my, my....the organisms are responding to their environment, not just tolerating it? Now let me see, where have I heard THAT before?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B1553205C

Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture

Some exerpts from Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture.

Read the whole lecture HERE.


"Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed."

"I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'"

"The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves."

"I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'"

"I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body"

A Typical Conversation

“As for the claim that you cannot create order through only random events—true enough. Except evolution is not random.”

I think you mean natural selection is not random. Are you saying that mutations are not random too?
I’ve discussed this issue many times. Natural selection is not random in the sense that all offspring do not have an equal chance of survival. Those better suited to their environment will have a better chance. Those less suited will have a lesser chance.
But natural selection can only act on what is already present. It has no power to create, assemble or design the variation it acts on. According to neo-darwinists, this variation is the result of random mutations. So, it’s disingenuous to say evolution is not random.
In addition, the jury is still not in on the randomness of mutations. As you see from Sean (Carroll)’s article, he pretty much puts paid to the Modern Synthesis. Mayr was wrong when he expected the genomes of vastly different species to differ vastly. As Carroll states “Natural selection has not repeatedly forged eyes from scratch. Rather, eye formation has common genetic ingredients, and a wide range of eye types incorporate parts, such as photoreceptor cells and light-sensing proteins, that have long been under the command of the Pax-6 gene.”
So, variation does not flow from random mutation, it flows from a pre-existing set of toolkit genes that pre-date the appearance of the adaptations they control.
And we’re left with the question: “where did these ‘toolkit’ genes come from?” They could not have arisen by mutation and selection because these mechanisms can only act at the organism level. For a “toolkit” gene to evolve, it would have to be present and functional in some organism. But we know now that these genes pre-date the organisms and the adaptations they control. They preceed all that comes after them.
They are “Genesis” genes.

PZ Myers Says:

Nonsense.

Evolution is not random, although it contains random components. Our chemistry is driven by stochastic processes, but no one claims that metabolism is random. Well, at least no one with any sense.

Regulatory genes have homologs in single-celled organisms. We are talking about genes that modulate the expression of other genes, and of course these are present in organisms that don’t have eyes. That is no big deal at all.

Also, these genes are found in families. They arise from duplication and divergence of precursors. Your objection is no objection at all, but simply yet another testimonial to your cluelessness.
Paul,
You wrote that “Evolution is not random, although it contains random components.” but you really mean to say that evolution is not random because it contains non-random components.
The fact that there is a non-random component to natural selection, the differential survival ability based on fitness, does not make the entire process non-random, just like the presence of random components does not make the whole process random.
You wrote: “Our chemistry is driven by stochastic processes, but no one claims that metabolism is random. ”
Agreed. The presence of stochastic processes
does not mean that the whole process is stochastic. Any more than the presence of non-random components makes the whole process non-random.
But the point is, that natural selection can only act on what already exists. The fact that natural selection has one non-random component does not overcome the fact that the variation is allegedly (by neo-darwinians) generated by purely random processes. In addition, as I have said many times, there is no nexus established between the components of mutation and natural selection and the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems. You simply cannot get from point A to point B.
You wrote: “Your objection is no objection at all, but simply yet another testimonial to your cluelessness.”
I might have let this go, and let you have the last word but you’ve always got to throw in the zinger. You have absolutely no scientific explanation for the existence of these “toolkit” genes. The development of form depends upon turning on and turning off genes at different times and different places. This is controlled in part by regulatory genes, which, as you say, have homologs in single celled organisms.
But the question still remains. Where did the regulatory genes come from and who (or what) programmed them to orchestrate the the symphony of development, to activate the genes at just the right time and in just the right places to create the final product: an integrated, functional system made up of multiple structures and processes?
"It is clear from Mr. Wagner’s last post that he probably has a firm belief in his statements and I agree that logic and reason will not sway him. However, I do enjoy these types of posts as they get you to think critically about such statements, and they give you an insight into some of the muddled thinking of ID proponents.

"But the question still remains. Where did the regulatory genes come from and who (or what) programmed them to orchestrate the the symphony of development, to activate the genes at just the right time and in just the right places to create the final product: an integrated, functional system made up of multiple structures and processes?"

This statement of Mr. Wagner’s really highlights the origin of his confusion and that of many creationists. The assumption is that a Genesis event must have occured. Without it, you can not explain your existence. Science does not deal with assumptions, it deals with data, therefore it can not include an assumption about God. Does this mean God does not exist? No it only means there is no testable data to point to a Creator’s involvement in the existence of life. Any IDers or creationists reading this, please remember that word ‘testable’.

Evolution does not disprove God, it instead simply shows that life is alot more complicated than originally envisioned 2000 years ago by the authors of the Bible.

I hope that in replying to these posts, we can help show non-scientists the flaws in ID or creationist reasoning with clear and concise rebuttals."
I went back and looked and sure enough, I capitalized “Genesis”. That makes it look like I’m referring to a supernatural event, which I’m not. I used the word “genesis” in the sense that they are the origin, rather than the result of a process of evolution. In my world, the world of science, god plays no role.
You say “Science does not deal with assumptions, it deals with data,”. This is true. But evolutionary theory (neo-darwinism) is based wholly on an assumption: that a nexus exists between the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection and the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems. There is absolutely no empirical data to support this audacious conclusion, yet it is the foundation of modern evolutionary thinking.
The main flaw in your thinking is that you equate the scientific consideration of intelligent input with religious creationism and a supernatural being. While it is true that a majority of ID proponents are religious creationists and their “intelligence” is god, that should not preclude science from investigating a phenomenon that most likely resides in the natural world and will eventually by explained by the scientific method.

And so it goes....

Intelligent Input and Evolution

No one who has looked at the evidence objectively can deny that humans have evolved. They have evolved culturally, morphologically and technologically in the time they have been on the earth. In addition, our kinship with our other primate cousins is clear. That all primates most likely had a common origin is obvious.
What is not obvious, however, is the mechanism by which these changes have occurred. In this matter we are still pretty much in the dark. Evolution is a process, that is strongly supported by empirical evidence. But it remains a process looking for a believable mechanism. Random mutation and natural selection are mechanisms of evolution and it is possible to accept the reality of evolution on a scientific basis and deny the claim that mutation and natural selection are capable of achieving it.
Intelligent input is also a mechanism of evolution, without any empirical support. But it is clearly obvious to me that random mutation and natural selection are insufficient to explain the complex systems that human beings possess as well as the cultural, intellectual and social components of our collective humanity.
What we observe in humans (and other living systems) are means adapted to ends. We see structures supporting other structures and we see processes supporting other processes. We also see that these structures and processes are integrated into functional systems in such a way that they all support the overall function of the organism.
Science has failed to establish with empirical evidence, any kind of believable link between the trivial effects of mutation and selection and the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems. Some important component is missing.
It seems to me that such a level of organization simply cannot be achieved by random processes and requires insight. Some kind of intelligent input seems necessary.

You're Doing A Heck Of A Job, Shrub...

I wrote this just before the 2004 election. Wow!


"After hearing Kerry's speech yesterday at NYU, I've decided to vote for George Bush. The logic is simple, yet powerful: why should we let him off the hook? He made this mess and he should clean it up. Keep him in office and make him undo the damage that he's done. Why should us poor Democrats have to save his ass? All of his life, people have been bailing him out of disasters of his own making. Why should we let him simply turn this mess over to Kerry and go peacefully back to Crawford and smirk? For once in his life he should stand up like a man, admit that he was wrong and correct his mistakes. Then he might be able to go to his reward standing on his own two feet, head held high instead of crawling on his belly like a reptile."

I'm a Liberal (and proud of it!)

"...if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies."

John F. Kennedy, 1960

Gerontion by T.S. Eliot

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.


Read the entire selection HERE

Why I Became A Yankee Fan

When I was a little boy, I lived near Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. You could walk down to Eastern Parkway and then up to Ebbetts Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. My father often bad-mouthed the Yankees, as did other kids in the neighborhood. I was a Dodger fan, true and blue.
When the New York Mets appeared in 1962, it seemed only logical to transfer that allegiance to this new team and continue with my disdain for the Yankees. At first it seemed like a good idea. We won 4 pennants and 2 World Series and while there were a few "ouch!" moments, my loyalty remained strong.
I haven't given up completely on the Mets, but it hasn't been looking very good for the last couple of years. Should I abandon them altogether? I don't think that's possible. I still live with the hope that they can turn the team around and become the team that I would like them to be.
But what of the Yankees? I have been a New Yorker all my life. Why does it have to be one team or the other? Can I not like the Yankees if they're in a pennant race or a World Series? Should I root for Boston or Atlanta or St. Louis? Can I not have respect and admiration for their accomplishments?
Let's face it, the Yankees are a class act. Every player who puts on the Yankee pinstripes is proud to be a Yankee. The team is run well by a competent owner and dedicated, competent managers. The players know what's expected of them and they do their jobs, often very well. It would be absurd to hope that a team from another city would beat them based on an intra-city rivalry that goes back to 1955.
So, I hold the Yankees in the highest regard and I hope that they win the Championship Series and the World Series. And I still hold out hope that the Mets will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix and maybe regain their credibility and my respect.
Until then...Go Yankees!!!

My Latest Crisis

10 fucking years of suffering, ruined kidneys, neuropathy and enough medicines to kill a horse.

I should have started thinking for myself 10 years ago.

A Google search of "hypertension" led me to several good papers on the subject.

Hypertension can be primary (95%) or secondary (5%)

Primary hypertension is usually mild and responds to medication. It's cause is unknown.
Secondary hypertension is more severe and often is the result of KNOWN, TREATABLE causes and is almost always curable.

I discovered that the main type of secondary hypertension is renovascular and the main sub-cause is renal artery stenosis.

No one ever bothered to check my renal arteries. Not even the Chief of Nephrology at a major hospital.

I asked for a Renal Artery MRA (angiogram).

The results?

Major blockages in BOTH renal arteries. 99% certainty that this is the cause of all my problems.
And no one ever bothered to look.

Bottom line:

They put an expandable stent in one of the the arteries to open it up. The other side is completely closed and cannot be reopened. The kidney is atrophied and useless. Now we have to wait a week or two to see if the good kidney rebounds and the blood pressure and creatinine drops.

If I hadn't asked for the MRA, the other renal artery would have closed up in short time and both kidneys would have expired. It would have been Dialysis City for me.

I'm thankful that the technology was in place (interventional radiology and endovascular surgery) and I thank the doctors for their hopefully successful intervention. But I can't help being a little bitter that this was not diagnosed 10 years ago and that up till August 23, 2005, nobody had bothered to look at my renal arteries. It could have saved me a lot of grief.

Alan Fredericks

Alan Fredericks has died.

Those who knew Alan Fredericks probably identify him as the editor of "Travel Weekly" and a prominent travel journalist.

But to me, as a 15 year old teenager growing up on Long Island, he was much more. Each night, I would go to my room and turn on my radio and wait patiently for the opening theme song, "Night Train" by Ernie Englund. I kept notebooks full of musical information on songs that I heard, including title, artist, label etc. Often, there would be call-in contests to identify a song or artist and once I even won a copy of "You" by the Aquatones.
But the best part was the record hops. Alan used to bring the WGBB mobile trailer to supermarket parking lots and high school gymnasiums across Long Island and feature live bands. We could see local groups like the Rocking Chairs (A Kiss Is A Kiss) and the Belnotes (I've Had It). Once I even saw The Mello-Kings.
We got to see plenty of live Rock and Roll in those days by going into the Brooklyn Paramount theater to see Alan Freed's Rock and Roll Show or Murray the "K". But there was nothing better than going down to the parking lot of the local supermarket and coming face to face with live bands and if we were lucky, to talk to them. It was also a great way to meet girls, most of whom wouldn't be seen dead with us.

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!-then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation -- "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory -

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said

"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

I Sit In A Chair and Read the Newspapers

Smoke

by Carl Sandburg

I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.

Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind.

I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.

A Good Solution

Last winter, I discovered that my blanket was too long at the top and too short at the bottom. I had an extra foot of blanket tucked up under my chin and my feet were sticking out from under the blanket at the bottom of the bed. So I asked Gail to cut a foot off the top of the blanket and sew it onto the bottom, which she did. Now everything is fine.

Oh, by the way, I must remember to set my clocks back an hour this fall...

My Talk With God

It started just after midnight, Monday February 14th. First came the shortness of breath, followed in moments by the rales. I woke up Gail and informed her of what was happening. She wasn’t even out of bed when the gurgling started. My breaths became shorter and shorter.
I knew I was in a world of shit.
I threw on my shoes and a jacket and headed for the car. By the time I got there it was painfully obvious that I had only minutes before my window of life would close completely, perhaps forever. North Shore-Long Island Jewish hospital (the *good* hospital) was 20 minutes away. Fortunately, I was less than a mile from the Nassau University Medical Center (the county hospital). Gail dialed 911 while I struggled to keep breathing. I was literally drowning in my own body fluids.
The cops were there in minutes. I was unconscious when I arrived at the hospital and the doctors were fast, efficient, and very young! I thought to myself, “I hope they know what they’re doing…” But I knew right away that I wasn’t going to die. I watched intently as they went about their business, like they had done it a thousand times before. Not like on ER! No shouting, no rushing, no emotion. The breathing tube was inserted, the IV installed, the Foley in place, the respirator hooked up. It was only a matter of minutes. This is all still clear in my consciousness. After all, I was standing right there watching them the whole time.
I began to notice that the room was getting very bright, like someone had opened the window and the warm sunlight was streaming in. It got so bright that I could no longer see anyone in the room. I began to walk towards the one figure I could still see, down the corridor in front of me. As I approached, the figure did not become clearer, but more amorphous. A great wave swept over me, a sensation of complete peace, joy and contentment. As I approached the figure, it stepped aside and I looked into the beyond.
I saw a young man nervously trying to get up the courage to ask a pretty girl on a date. I saw an old man, sitting quietly in front of his beloved wife’s casket, his head buried in his hands. I saw a young father, scolding his son for writing on the wall with a crayon. I saw a soldier, pinned down in a trench, praying to God that he would live to see his daughter get married. I saw my mother, walking across the street in Brooklyn to the neighborhood hospital, where she would give me life. I tried to understand what I was seeing.
And then, God spoke to me.
“This thing you call time, is an artifact, composed of eidetic simulacra. Imagine that you are wandering over the surface of the earth for all eternity. Every point on the earth’s surface exists simultaneously, even though you are not present at all locations. So it is with time. Every point exists simultaneously, even though you are not there. The human mind creates beginnings and ends. There is no past, no present, no future. It’s all the same thing. Every moment, every event, every joy, every tragedy exists simultaneously. Only in your world, your mind, your reality is time linear, with beginnings and ends.”
I pondered this for a while, trying to absorb this simple yet profound truth. Then I spoke to God.
“I want to go back. Send me back to Afghanistan. I’ll assemble an army, I’ll hunt down Osama bin Laden and convince him of the error of his ways. I’ll teach him about love and tolerance and humanity. I’ll save all those innocent people.”
But God said no. “You’ll strike up a conversation with him. He’ll try to convince you that his actions are justified. You’ll listen and be convinced. You’ll join his cause and become an Ayatollah like Cat Stevens and move to Iran.”
“Send me back. Send me back to Memphis. I’ll find Elvis, I’ll take away his drugs. I’ll tell him that we love him. I know that he will listen”.
But God said no. “You’ll ask him if you can ride in his plane, come to Graceland and eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches. You’ll fall in love with his daughter and want to marry her.”
I sensed that I was losing and that I would soon be beaten. I tried one last time. “Send me back to Calvary. I’ll talk to the Romans and convince them not to kill Jesus. If they don’t listen, I’ll help him escape, hide him in the desert. If they hurt him, I’ll treat his wounds, nurse him back to health, follow his teachings.”
But again, God said no. “You would listen to his teachings, but you would not follow them. You would call yourself a Christian and claim to follow the precept ‘Resist not evil: but whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also’, but you would make war on innocent women and children for the flimsiest of reasons. You would call yourself a Christian and you would claim to follow the example of Jesus to ‘judge not, lest ye be judged’, yet you would be filled with moral indignation and self righteousness and permit envy and hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. You would believe in your heart that ‘if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor’, yet you would allow children in poor countries to go to sleep hungry, perhaps to die of malnutrition while you gather up to yourself great wealth, far beyond your simple needs.”
God continued on. “I will not send you back in time because time belongs only to me. This is why I am who I am and you are who you are. All you have is now. That is the difference between us. Eternity belongs to me and I reserve it for myself. It is, you might say, the one real advantage that I have over you. You cannot change what you call the past and you cannot affect what you call the future. Now belongs to you. Do you want it?
“Yes I do.”
I turned slowly and began to walk back down the corridor. The bright light began to fade until it became almost impossible to see anything. Soon it was totally dark. I heard a voice calling my name and I slowly opened my eyes. It was Gail, standing at the side of my bed.

The Attic

I visited my old neighborhood recently, where my mother still lives, and there by some unseen, yet strongly felt force I was drawn to the old attic. I hadn't realized how many things were stored there, things that I had imagined had been disposed of long ago. And yet, there they were. It is a delightful, yet frightening experience to revisit the old memories and to look back upon the path that has been followed to bring us to our present place. Each tattered remnant marks with crystalline clarity a point where life could easily have taken a different turn, and by doing so, have produced a different outcome.

One cannot help wondering if these paths were bound to be taken, as set down by the hand of fate, or chosen as a result of carefully reasoned free will and unerring judgment. Also, one cannot help wondering if it really makes any difference at all which is the truth. What is clear however, is that I have spent the better part of my life meandering from side to side, widening the banks of my river, but never cutting deeper into the channel. I do not hope to break any new ground at this point, only to deepen what is already there.

All of these things that I see connect me to the rest of the world and to the events in which my life is intertwined with the lives of others. But standing here, I sense that I am completely alone in the world. I have drifted through peoples lives, like a river flows through its channel, touching each rock and branch, exploring each swirling eddy and current, but leaving no hint or evidence that I had ever been there. My goodness, there's a lot of dust on these old memories. Once, they had meaning and value and were carefully stored here when their usefulness was over, as the great flow of life advanced to newer and uncharted regions. But now, their only value is to me, insofar as what they represent. They are the stations of my life, where my train has passed, and I, the lonely passenger, looking out the window into the mist, feel unable to draw their attention.

(uncle eddie, mom, grandma, 1923)

I'm sitting by my daughter's bedside in the pediatric ward of the hospital. She has just come down from the recovery room and I am waiting for her to wake up. In the bed across the way, a young boy, around 14 years old is asleep. His father sits at his side, his eyes half closed in weariness. It seems like he has been there a long time. After a while he begins to stir and gets up and walks over to the window. We exchange a brief glance and I sense the recognition in his eyes. Then the surprise. "Mr. Wagner!" he says. "Do you remember me?"

Unfortunately, I don't. "I was in your class in 9th grade". I struggled with the face but I could not produce the name. "Billy Daniels" he went on, "I was in your 4th period science class at Island Trees Junior High". Good God almighty, I thought, that was almost 25 years ago. He must be 40 by now, just ten years younger than me. We talked for a while about my daughter's accident and he told me about his son's knee, which he damaged playing soccer.

Then he asked me if I was still teaching. He seemed happy to hear that I still was.
"I'm a teacher too", he said, obviously proud to be able to tell me this. "Do you remember that story that you told us about the zoroastrian temples along the Jersey Turnpike?" He began to laugh like a kid. "Well, I still tell that story to my students! And it's just as funny now as it was when I first heard it".
I still tell that story to my students too.
"And do you remember telling me that you hoped that someday I would become a teacher and you hoped I would have a student just like me?" Sure I remembered. I say that all the time when students aggravate me. "Well, I did, and you were right. I've got plenty that are just like I was. And I never forget that. And that makes all the difference".

They say that life is like a river that flows deep and wide. But I think that it's more like a chain, and each one of us is a link to the past and to the future. I began to realize that every kid that ever sat in my room carries a little piece of me with them when they leave. And every one of them is forever a part of me... and I am a part of them.

Patti and Patty

Patti Smith, left

Patty Smyth, right

Listen to "FREE MONEY" by Patti Smith

Listen to "GOODBYE TO YOU" by Patty Smyth

Mystery

Some time ago, I found myself walking along the beach. As I looked out over the ocean, sunlight sparkled on the gently rolling swells. At one point in my view, the beach, the ocean and the sky seemed to merge into one. There is something compelling about the ocean, and I was a lone water-gazer upon this beach. Mountains have a certain grandeur and likewise canyons and forests. I have seen them all. But the ocean is special, and I always feel the need to venture as close as I can without getting wet. But at some certain point in time, I am always constrained to remove my shoes and socks and place my feet into the swirling waters. It is a holy baptism of life.



On this particular day, as I walked further down the beach, I saw a young boy who looked to be about five or six years old. He had dug a deep hole in the sand just above the water line and was going back and forth with a paper cup, dipping water from the ocean and pouring it into the hole. I watched him for some time and finally asked him what he was doing. He replied that he was going to empty the whole ocean into the hole. Since the water disappeared down the hole each time he poured, he assumed that it would only be a matter of time until his task was accomplished.

When I was a young boy, I looked out into the night sky and marveled at the beauty of the stars. I began to learn about the stars and the planets, and I soon took to the task of counting the number of stars that I could see. I would lie on my back on the beach and divide the heavens into sections, counting each one carefully and adding them up. Twenty, forty, eighty...one hundred! When I was older, my father bought me a small telescope and I soon realized that there were many more stars than I thought. I learned in school that there were almost 2500 stars that could be seen with the naked eye on a clear night. I soon realized that some of the points of light were not stars at all, but huge galaxies, filled with countless numbers of additional stars. Even today, with our most powerful telescopes, the farther we look, and the better we see, the numbers of stars and galaxies keeps ever increasing. Needless to say, I have given up trying to count the stars in the sky and just as surely, that little boy will someday realize that he has a better chance of getting the whole ocean into that little hole than he does of ever understanding the mysteries of the universe.

Friday Top Ten: Doo Wop

Doo-wop is a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music popular in the mid-1950s to the early 1960s in America. The term was coined by a DJ, Gus Gossert, in the 1970s referring to (mostly) white Rock & Roll groups of the late 50s and early 60s. It became the fashion in the 1990s to keep expanding the definition backward to take in Rhythm & Blues groups from the mid-1950s and then further back to include groups from the early 1950s and even the 1940s. There is absolutely no consensus of opinion as to what constitutes a Doo-Wop song, and many, many aficionados of R&B music dislike the term intensely.

Find out about Doo Wop HERE:

I used to have many hundreds of 45 r.p.m. records but they were in very poor condition, having been played repeatedly on cheap "phonographs". Here are ten of my all time favorites. Just click on the link to hear the song:

Bad Boy - The Jive Bombers

The Fool - Sanford Clark

You Cheated - The Shields

Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley

Pledge Of Love - Ken Copeland

Pledging My Love - Johnny Ace

Oh Julie - The Crescendos

Little Darling - The Gladiolas

Roses Are Blooming - Joe Therrien Jr. & the Rockets

Roses Are Blooming - The Silvatones

Chi-Wa-Wa - The Silvatones

OK, 11 of my favorites!

Cries in Darkness

I wish I had written this, but I didn't.
Compliments to Pissed_Off_Patricia at Blondesense

I wonder if he ever hears them. When the president of the United States is alone in his bedroom at the end of the day and he turns off the light, I wonder if he hears them. Does he ever hear somewhere in his head the cries of a soldier as he lays dying? Many say that a wounded and dying soldier will cry out for his mother. I imagine that’s right. I imagine that’s exactly what goes through a dying soldier’s mind, his mother. As he feels his life slipping away, why wouldn’t he want to cling to the woman who gave him that life. She was his source. I wonder if the president ever hears that cry and if he doesn’t, how does he avoid it?

Perhaps he might hear the cries and screams of the tiny children who lay dying in a land far away from the presidential bedroom. Or maybe it’s the sound of mothers and fathers caressing the bodies of their lifeless children. What must those sounds be like? Do they curse the man whose soldiers dropped the bomb or fired the shot? Do they wail at the top of their lungs or do they suffer the deep and retching sobs as only a mother or father can? Do you think those sounds ever make their way to the president’s pillow? How can he avoid hearing this sad concert of sadness?

Maybe there are reasons the president doesn’t hear the mournful cry of the dead and dying, the living and hurting. Maybe he’s praying. Maybe he prays out loud. Maybe he prays as loud as he can to drown out the voices and the sobbing.. Maybe he prays himself to sleep each night and maybe he thinks if he prays loud enough and long enough the cries will fall silent. If he prays, what is he praying for? He’s probably praying that the voices will stop and leave him alone. Will his prayers be answered? They won’t.

Another morning will come, another day will begin. He will have managed to make it through another night. The sun will rise and he may escape the darkness and the voices for one more day. But with the new day will come more voices, more deaths, more pain, more suffering and those new voices will await him on his pillow tonight. Tonight there will be more voices and they will be louder. He will need to pray louder and longer than he did last night. Will he be able to avoid the voices forever? Cries from the darkness never go away. No matter how loud or long he prays, the voices will be patient and they will linger until one day he will be unable to pray any longer or any louder and then he will hear them. He’ll hear them and he may go mad, because once he listens to the sounds of their pain, he will hear it forever. The next cry in the darkness may be his own.

Just a Theory?

No!

JUST A STORY!

Friday Top Twelve

Along with "Nebraska" and "Ghost of Tom Joad", "Devils & Dust" is one of Springsteen's finest.


1. Devils & Dust
2. All The Way Home
3. Reno
4. Long Time Comin'
5. Black Cowboys
6. Maria's Bed
7. Silver Palomino
8. Jesus Was an Only Son
9. Leah
10. The Hitter
11. All I'm Thinkin' About
12. Matamoras Banks

Mencken's Creed

H.L.Mencken
http://www.io.com/gibbonsb/mencken/

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty…
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech…
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

And so do I...

Friday Random Ten

A lot of blogs do a Friday Random Ten.
You're supposed to write down the first ten songs selected at random from your Ipod. I've learned a lot from this. Mostly that a lot of people have really crappy taste in music.
One problem for me is that I don't have an Ipod and I don't intend to get one. When I'm home, I listen to music from my computer pumped through my awesome stereo system. When I'm driving in the car, I listen to the radio. All other times, when I should be paying attention to what I'm doing, there's no music. And no cell phone. It distracts me from the really important work of thinking and daydreaming.

Anyway, here's my Saturday Random Ten, culled from my computer playlist:

Land of Hope and Dreams- Bruce Springsteen
A Face In The Crowd- Tom Petty
I Walk The Line- Johnny Cash
Tumbling Dice- Rolling Stones
Chimes of Freedom- The Byrds
Wonderful Tonight- Eric Clapton
Thrasher- Neil Young
Lilac Wine- Nina Simone
Sing, Sing, Sing- Benny Goodman
Lonely Boy- Paul Anka
Nation of Shopkeepers- Graham Parker

OK, Random Eleven...

Medical Update

It's been six weeks since my surgery and I must say that I'm almost back to normal. My left arm has mostly recovered its full function and my incisions are mostly healed.
The timing was perfect since I wouldn't have been doing much in February and March and now the cherry tree is beginning to bloom and the pear tree is in full bloom. Spring is on the way and I'm even beginning to think about my travel plans for the summer and fall. It just doesn't get any better. You can have that attitude so long as you don't concern yourself with what the rest of the idiots in the world are doing.

As Carl Bernstein recently said:
"For the first time in our history, the weird, the stupid, the coarse, the sensational and the untrue are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."

Maybe for the rest of the world, but certainly not for me.

You Can Be Too Thin, After All

From today's New York Times editorial page

"The whole notion of what constitutes normal weight and overweight may have to be rethought."

And when they finish with that, they can rethink the notion of what constitutes high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

But then, how would they be able to justify selling billions of dollars worth of useless pills to people?

We're Seeing Things Falling Apart

"The consequences to a society that is misinformed and disinformed by the grotesque values of this idiot culture are truly perilous. For the first time in our history, the weird, the stupid, the coarse, the sensational and the untrue are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
Carl Bernstein

Never was this more obvious than the appearance of Ann Coulter on the cover of Time Magazine.

When I was a kid, we used to joke about it: "Life" (magazine) for people who can't read and "Time" (magazine) for people who can't think"

Eric Alterman wrote:
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7545644/#050419)

"Time’s cover story/whitewash of Ann Coulter will make it impossible for serious people to accept what the magazine reports at face-value ever again. It is as if Time had contracted a journalistic venereal disease from Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and is now seeking to lower itself to their level in pursuit of their ideologically-obsessed audiences."

The Oldest Child

by Charles Simic

The night still frightens you.
You know it is interminable
And of vast, unimaginable dimensions.
"That's because His insomnia is permanent,"
You've read some mystic say.
Is it the point of His schoolboy's compass
That pricks your heart?

Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie
Under the dark cypress trees,
Trembling with happiness,
But here there's only your beard of many days
And a night moth shivering
Under your hand pressed against your chest.

Oldest child, Prometheus
Of some cold, cold fire you can't even name
For which you're serving slow time
With that night moth's terror for company.

"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

What is "Blink" about?

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

You could also say that it's a book about intuition, except that I don't like that word. In fact it never appears in "Blink." Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings--thoughts and impressions that don't' seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It's thinking--its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with "thinking." In "Blink" I'm trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on in inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?

How can thinking that takes place so quickly be at all useful? Don't we make the best decisions when we take the time to carefully evaluate all available and relevant information?

Certainly that's what we've always been told. We live in a society dedicated to the idea that we're always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. As children, this lesson is drummed into us again and again: haste makes waste, look before you leap, stop and think. But I don't think this is true. There are lots of situations--particularly at times of high pressure and stress--when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world.

Read the rest of the interview with the author HERE

Individuals Think Better Than Groups

"The years between 1950 and 1965 were the golden age of American nonfiction. Writers like Jane Jacobs, Louis Hartz, Daniel Bell and David Riesman produced sweeping books on American society and global affairs. They relied on their knowledge of history, literature, philosophy and theology to recognize social patterns and grasp emerging trends.

But even as their books hit the stores, their method was being undermined. A different group rejected this generalist/humanist approach and sought to turn social analysis into a science. For example, the father of the U.S. intelligence community, Sherman Kent, argued that social science and intelligence analysis needed a systematic method, "much like the method of the physical sciences."

Social research - in urban planning, sociology and intelligence analysis - began to mimic the hard sciences."

David Brooks (New York Times April 2, 2005)
Read the entire article HERE
(user name: RKRAMDEN, Password: busdriver)

My Talk With God

       It started just after midnight, Monday February 14th. First came the shortness of breath, followed in moments by the rales. I woke up Gail and informed her of what was happening. She wasn't even out of bed when the gurgling started. My breaths became shorter and shorter.
      I knew I was in a world of shit.
       I threw on my shoes and a jacket and headed for the car. By the time I got there it was painfully obvious that I had only minutes before my window of life would close completely, perhaps forever. North Shore-Long Island Jewish hospital (the *good* hospital) was 20 minutes away. Fortunately, I was less than a mile from the Nassau University Medical Center (the county hospital). Gail dialed 911 while I struggled to keep breathing. I was literally drowning in my own body fluids.
       The cops were there in minutes. I was unconscious when I arrived at the hospital and the doctors were fast, efficient, and very young! I thought to myself, "I hope they know what they're doing..." But I knew right away that I wasn't going to die. I watched intently as they went about their business, like they had done it a thousand times before. Not like on ER! No shouting, no rushing, no emotion. The breathing tube was inserted, the IV installed, the Foley in place, the respirator hooked up. It was only a matter of minutes. This is all still clear in my consciousness. After all, I was standing right there watching them the whole time.
       I began to notice that the room was getting very bright, like someone had opened the window and the warm sunlight was streaming in. It got so bright that I could no longer see anyone in the room. I began to walk towards the one figure I could still see, down the corridor in front of me. As I approached, the figure did not become clearer, but more amorphous. A great wave swept over me, a sensation of complete peace, joy and contentment. As I approached the figure, it stepped aside and I looked into the beyond.
       I saw a young man nervously trying to get up the courage to ask a pretty girl on a date. I saw an old man, sitting quietly in front of his beloved wife's casket, his head buried in his hands. I saw a young father, scolding his son for writing on the wall with a crayon. I saw a soldier, pinned down in a trench, praying to God that he would live to see his daughter get married. I saw my mother, walking across the street in Brooklyn to the neighborhood hospital, where she would give me life. I tried to understand what I was seeing.
      And then, God spoke to me.
      "This thing you call time, is an artifact, composed of eidetic simulacra. Imagine that you are wandering over the surface of the earth for all eternity. Every point on the earth's surface exists simultaneously, even though you are not present at all locations. So it is with time. Every point exists simultaneously, even though you are not there. The human mind creates beginnings and ends. There is no past, no present, no future. It's all the same thing. Every moment, every event, every joy, every tragedy exists simultaneously. Only in your world, your mind, your reality is time linear, with beginnings and ends."
       I pondered this for a while, trying to absorb this simple yet profound truth. Then I spoke to God.
      "I want to go back. Send me back to Afghanistan. I'll assemble an army, I'll hunt down Osama bin Laden and convince him of the error of his ways. I'll teach him about love and tolerance and humanity. I'll save all those innocent people."
       But God said no. "You'll strike up a conversation with him. He'll try to convince you that his actions are justified. You'll listen and be convinced. You'll join his cause and become an Ayatollah like Cat Stevens and move to Iran."
       "Send me back. Send me back to Memphis. I'll find Elvis, I'll take away his drugs. I'll tell him that we love him. I know that he will listen".
      But God said no. "You'll ask him if you can ride in his plane, come to Graceland and eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches. You'll fall in love with his daughter and want to marry her."
      I sensed that I was losing and that I would soon be beaten. I tried one last time. "Send me back to Calvary. I'll talk to the Romans and convince them not to kill Jesus. If they don't listen, I'll help him escape, hide him in the desert. If they hurt him, I'll treat his wounds, nurse him back to health, follow his teachings."
      But again, God said no. "You would listen to his teachings, but you would not follow them. You would call yourself a Christian and claim to follow the precept 'Resist not evil: but whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also', but you would make war on innocent women and children for the flimsiest of reasons. You would call yourself a Christian and you would claim to follow the example of Jesus to 'judge not, lest ye be judged', yet you would be filled with moral indignation and self righteousness and permit envy and hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. You would believe in your heart that 'if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor', yet you would allow children in poor countries to go to sleep hungry, perhaps to die of malnutrition while you gather up to yourself great wealth, far beyond your simple needs."
      God continued on. "I will not send you back in time because time belongs only to me. This is why I am who I am and you are who you are. All you have is now. That is the difference between us. Eternity belongs to me and I reserve it for myself. It is, you might say, the one real advantage that I have over you. You cannot change what you call the past and you cannot affect what you call the future. Now belongs to you. Do you want it?
       "Yes I do."
      I turned slowly and began to walk back down the corridor. The bright light began to fade until it became almost impossible to see anything. Soon it was totally dark. I heard a voice calling my name and I slowly opened my eyes. It was Gail, standing at the side of my bed.

Where's Charlie?

Just got out of the hospital. Triple bypass followed by a small stroke. Thank god I was in NY, not in Hawaii. I'll have a full report just as soon as I can get this damned left hand to work properly.
What else did I have to do in February anyway?

Backflow

I was sitting on the dunes just above the surf on a warm September evening when I first saw Mary. The sun had not yet set and the golden rays were glistening on the swirling waters breaking chaotically on the beach. The colors were beautiful; golden yellow, deep azure blue and sparkling green. The water was flowing chaotically around clumps of sand and rock near the shore and spray occasionally burst onto the face of the dune. On one level, it was totally unpredictable and the water could take any number of different paths as it flowed onto the beach and receded back to the great mother sea. It would be impossible to predict what path a floating object would take as it bobbed, apparently aimlessly, just beyond the breakers.

But there was a kind of serene order to it as the various pathways became clear and a certain order emerged from the chaos. Life itself has this same kind of appearance. On one level, it appears chaotic as people move about and change their jobs, their homes, their loves. A single event can change a person's life forever, and it is impossible to anticipate or control these events. But as I look deeper, certain patterns seemed to emerge as the chaos slowly goes out of focus and the orderliness becomes evident. People live, they die, they marry, they love, they hate, they laugh, they cry and they get hurt. Not much ever seems to change if you step back from your own personal situation and view the great panorama of existence. Surely the world is unfolding as it should whether or not it is clear to me how or why.

Mary had gotten up and taken her shoes and stockings off and was wading in the shallow pools of swirling water. As I watched her longingly, my soul was nearly exploding. I was standing at the very center of the wild heart of life. She was like a sea-bird that had just alighted as she stepped gracefully among the rocks and the swirling rivulets of water. Her skirts were pulled up above her knees, to avoid the spray of water that was dancing around her feet. Her legs were bronze and smooth and the tiny droplets of water glistened like diamonds on her skin. Her hair was blowing carelessly in the warm breezes as it fell here and there around her bare shoulders. I watched her for a few minutes but I couldn't see her face. I got up and began to walk towards her and as I did, she turned her head around slowly. As the setting sun splashed across her face, I could see that she was without a doubt the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen.

I turned to my brother, who was sitting next to me on the sandy shore. "Who is she?" I asked. "She's a senior at our school, I think her name is Mary." Now I remembered. Seniors had very little use for freshmen, and the joke was that the only time a senior would notice you was if you dropped dead in the hall, and they had to walk around you. Mary was a cheerleader but her life did not revolve solely around school. She had a boyfriend, who had graduated and he also had a car. He would be waiting for her each afternoon and they would drive away together, undoubtedly to adventures that I could only imagine in my wildest dreams. But the hopelessness of my situation certainly didn't dissuade me from my longings. I became obsessed with her, and followed her each day as she passed from class to class. Sometimes I would even cut chemistry to go to the cafeteria where she would eat her lunch and I would sit there and just watch her and silently plan our lives together. Each day I would adamantly vow that this would be the day I would speak to her. But what to say? I went over and over in my mind how it would go. But I never got up the nerve. Never even once. By June, my hopes had diminished and finally she graduated and as far as I was concerned, I would never get the chance again.

When we returned to school in September I was filled constantly with a great emptiness. Actually, there was no reason at all to come to school any more. But gradually the pain subsided as new adventures filled my days and I began to look forward to the following year, which would be my senior year. Sometime around Halloween of that year, news began to circulate that a girl from our school was pregnant. The school officials were quick to point out that although she had attended the school last year, she had graduated and no longer could be considered to be under their moral guidance or responsibility. We soon learned that the girl under discussion was none other than my beloved Mary. Information was very hard to come by because in 1961 there was a tremendous stigma attached to these kinds of occurrences. Most people adopted the view that the less said the better. Would she marry the boy? Would she raise the child herself? Would it be put up for adoption? No one seemed to know.

The approach of the holiday season distracted our attention. Soon it was New Year's Eve, 1962, and I had just turned 18. I was allowed to accompany my mother and father to the local tavern where we would welcome the New Year. I was cautioned that I would only be allowed one glass of champagne, at the stroke of midnight, but after a short while, my parents lost track of my activities and I was on my own. I found the whole situation rather depressing and kind of silly. Here I was on New Years Eve, in a bar with my parents. I began to think about my predicament. Most of the girls I knew were still under age, and certainly would not have been allowed to accompany me to a bar. Those girls that were old enough to drink had boyfriends who were even older, and certainly would not have wasted their time with me. So I had more or less resigned myself to my fate and set about planning how I would make next year better.

It was a little after 1:00 a.m. and I was falling asleep, wishing that my parents would tire of the party and decide to go home. I was suddenly jolted awake by the piercing sound of the siren from the fire department down the street. It's purpose was to alert volunteer firemen to respond to some emergency. I waited for the horn. Four blasts in a row meant a house fire. I heard one...then two....silence. Only an aided case. Probably some old guy had a heart attack. Or a car crash. Within moments, two police cars raced by, followed by an ambulance. Everyone piled out into the street. The crash was just down the road. "Can anyone see anything"? "A car hit a pole near Boundary Avenue!' "Who is it?", "what kind of car?" "It's a '59 Impala convertible, with a white top" I felt like I had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. I knew that car. After all, I had seen it almost every day last year, waiting at the school gate.

We are flesh, and we are spirit. We have bones, and we have grace. We are mind, and we are soul. We have a name, and we have a face. We have eyes, and we can see, we can touch, and we can feel. We are happy and we are sad, we are good and we are bad. But why must we die? It's been 38 years since that awful night, and I still remember it like it was today. I sometimes drive by the spot and just stop and think about the indifference of life to our deepest feelings. I think to myself, how cruel it is to give us life and then snatch it away mercilessly, without regard to those who care about us. But we are the exception. The world does not care. Only we care. It is a special quality that raises us to the pinnacles of joy and then plunges us into the depths of despair. And we cannot help but wondering why.

We used to get our Christmas tree at the lot across from K-Mart. Ever since I was a kid, we would go there and hassle old George about the price. After a while it became kind of a joke. But old George was gone now, and a shopping center stood on his spot. The only other place to get a good tree now was at Frank's Nursery, down by Wantagh Avenue. I set out as I had so many times before but there would be no more haggling. Each tree was bar-coded and the cashiers just zapped it with the computer and that was it. I found a nice tree, not the best ever, but not the worst and dragged it up to the wrapper. A young kid, about 15 or 16 cut off the tag and told me to take it inside to the cashier.

Inside, it was crowded and I waited patiently on line, not paying much attention. It soon became my turn and I pulled out my tag and handed it to the young girl. I hadn't noticed her face, but as she slowly turned towards me, the sunlight splashed across her face. I could see that, without a doubt, she was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. "Mary?" I blurted out. She looked at me kind of funny, and then looked down at her smock. There were two small holes where her name tag usually was, but it was missing. "Yes." she replied, "but how do you know my name?" "I don't know. You reminded me of someone, I think." But I knew. "It's kind of unusual to have an old-fashioned name like Mary" I said. "Most everyone today is Allison, or Jessica." "Well, I was named after my grandmother. She was killed in a car accident a long time ago."
I stood there mute. I wanted to pour out the whole story, to touch her, to know her. But what to say? Would she understand, would she care? I looked directly into her eyes. It was enough for me that she existed. There was nothing here for me anymore. Nor was there ever. It was just a child's infatuation. I took my receipt and walked quickly out of the store.

When people are transported back in time, they must be very careful not to disturb anything. Any change, no matter how inconsequential, could alter the future. Time is like the flow of water onto a beach from the great mother, the sea. Every once in a while, some cosmic disturbance will cause a backflow, and a finger of the sea will find it's way into the backstream. But at the next wave, it is washed away, and the great mother sea rolls on, as it has since the beginning.

Arthur Miller

"All My Sons" is my favorite:

"We used to shoot a man who acted like a dog, but honour was real there ...But here? This is the land of the great big dogs, you don't love a man here, you eat him. That's the principle; the only one we live by - it just happened to kill a few people this time, that's all. The world's that way..."

This is the kind of stuff that should be in every English curriculum in every high school in the United States because it teaches us about duty, honor, compassion, responsibility and ethics, values that seem to be sorely missing from todays world.

"Once and for all you must know that there's a universe of people outside, and you're responsible to it."

It rings as true today as it did in 1947.

Kaua'i and Moloka'i

Gail and I recently visited Kaua'i and Moloka'i.
Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands and therefore the most eroded. It's often called the "garden island" because of its lush vegetation. It's my second favorite, after Maui of course!
The most prominent landform on Kaua'i is the Waimea Canyon, called "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific". It's not the Grand Canyon but it sure is impressive. Also, on the northwest side of the island is the NaPali Coast, with its 4000 foot high cliffs and magnificent waterfalls. This is not accessible by car, so you must hike in, take a boat or fly.
Moloka'i also has sea cliffs that are over 3000 feet high and is the island where Father Damien administered to sufferers of Hansen's Disease (leprosy) in the 19th century. The Kalaupapa region, where his colony was located is also inaccesible by car and you can either fly in or take the mule trek.



To see an album of pictures, click HERE

Just A Theory?

I haven't said much about evolution here, but my position is simple: You have to believe in magic and suspend all reality to believe that life emerged as the direct result of random, accidental, fortuitous mutations, filtered by natural selection, without the help of any kind of intelligent input.

Read the whole comic HERE

Read my paper on this subject HERE

The Unwelcome Guest

To the rich man's bright lodges I ride in this wind
On my good horse, I call you my shiny black Bess

To the playhouse of fortune to take the bright silver
And gold you have taken from somebody else

And as we go riding in the damp foggy midnight
You snort, my good pony and you give me your best

For you know and I know good horse 'mongst the rich ones
How oftimes we go there an unwelcome guest

I never took food from the widows and orphans
And never a hardworking man I oppressed

So take your pace easy for home soon like lightning
We soon will be riding my shiny black Bess

No fat rich man's pony can ever overtake you
And there's not a rider from the east to the west

Could hold you a light in this dark mist and midnight
When the potbellied thieves chase the unwelcome guest

I don't know, good horse as we trot in this dark here
That robbing the rich is for worse or for best

They take it by stealing and lying and gambling
And I take it my way my shiny Black Bess

I treat horses good and I'm friendly to strangers
I ride and your running makes my guns talk the best

And the rangers and deputies are hired by the rich man
To catch me and hang me my shining black Bess

Yes, they'll catch me napping one day and they'll kill me
And then I'll be gone but that won't be my end

For my guns and my saddle will always be filled
By unwelcome travelers and other brave men

And they'll take the money and spread it out equal
Just like the Bible and the prophets suggest

But men that go riding to help these poor workers
The rich will cut down like an unwelcome guest

by Woody Guthrie

The Bear

There's a different quality to the silence in the wilderness. I don't know if you've ever noticed it. It's a purer, more penetrating silence than we experience in the populated areas. It gets inside your head and it clears out a lot of the cobwebs, leaving more room for introspection. It has a real calming effect on the spirit. No, it's not total silence. That can be very unnerving. It's more of an honest silence, the gentle rustling of the trees in the soft breeze, the trickling of water coming from a small spring on the side of a hill, the birds chirping pleasantly and the insects buzzing around your head. And off in the distance, the unmistakable sound of someone, or something approaching.
I crouch down quietly in the brush and check the direction of the wind. Damn! It's blowing directly towards the sound. Not good. He'll have my scent in just a moment. I reach behind into my backpack and take out the field glasses. And wonder. Moose? Elk? Bison? I catch a glimpse of the brown fur and I notice the silvery tips of the brown hairs. Double damn! Ursus horribilis...the grizzly bear.



He stops and looks up straight in my direction. He's got the scent. He probably doesn't want me, but these bears know that where there are humans, there's usually human food. I do what I've been taught to do by those who say they know. Nothing. Maybe he'll lose interest and continue on. But he continues towards me, and I reach down and pull the revolver from its holster and wait. All the while, I'm wondering why I loaded it with .38 specials. They're not going to help me all that much against this bear. He's probably about 10 meters away now, so I stand up straight in order to back slowly away. Now his dark eyes are focused directly on me. He stops about 3 meters away and I raise the revolver so it's pointing directly at his head. Right between the eyes. It's the only chance I have.
We are now frozen in time, him and me, just standing there, waiting for something to happen. I'm fascinated by his elegant beauty and power. The hump behind his head is pure muscle and the long claws are used for digging. His rump slopes downward and is much lower than his head. I look directly into his large eyes. Damn, I really don't want to hurt this guy. But if you walk in the woods, and a bear bites your butt, is it the bear's fault? He's only doing what he's supposed to do. I'm the intruder here.
Now I begin to see something happening. He's still looking directly at me, but his mouth seems different. The corners have turned upwards and I can see his teeth clearly. Is he getting ready to attack? But then I realize what is happening. His mouth has curled upward into a ...smile.
He turns his head slowly to the right and then again, slowly to the left. I can almost hear him thinking to himself: "well buddy, I could mess you up pretty bad if I wanted to, but today is your day. Enjoy!"
And he just turned and walked away..

I made Johnny Carson wait!

From 1986 until 1992 I spent every summer working at Kennedy Airport in New York City as a United States Customs officer. One of the best things about the job was getting to meet a lot of famous people.
The Concorde usually came in around 9:00 a.m. every morning and we always wondered who might be on it. This particular morning, we heard that it was full of people coming back from the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament. As the doors opened and the passengers began to enter the hall, many of the tennis players stood by to sign autographs or answer questions. Naturally, I was stationed way down at the other end of the hall and I was straining to see who might be there. It looked like Ivan Lendl! Behind me, two ordinary looking guys were waiting to be processed. I was busy watching the tennis players. After a few minutes, one of the guys banged on the counter and asked if I would take care of them. He seemed a little annoyed. I turned my head and answered him over my shoulder: "wait just a minute, please, I'm looking for Ivan Lendl. Again, an annoyed plea: "can you take care of us please? Finally, I decided that I shouldn't make them wait any longer and I turned around and angrily began to rebuke them for rushing me.
I didn't need their passports to know who they were:
Johnny Carson and Chuck Scarborough*. Oops!
(Chuck is the New York anchor for the evening news on WNBC)

Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman congressman, died yesterday.





"Our representative democracy is not working, because the congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men."

"I'd like them to say that Shirley Chishom had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."

Well Shirley, unlike many of the members of the present Congress, you certainly had guts.
I'm sorry you had to live to see the sad state of affairs that our country has come to. And just when we naively thought it might be getting better.

Read the entire obituary in the New York Times

The Mailbox

Eddie rolled over and pulled the blanket up around his neck preparing for another two hours of sleep before he had to get up. It was not to be. Before he had closed his eyes again, the shrill piercing sound of the alarm rang in his ears. "Damn, I hate when that happens", thought Eddie as he squinted at the red numbers on the clock: 4:45 a.m.

It was cold in his room, and he could hear the wind howling through the trees. It was light enough to see where he was, but he knew that in December, the sun didn't rise until after seven. He walked over to the window and looked out. To his surprise, there was a blanket of fresh snow on the ground and the sky was clear. A full moon was setting in the west and it made it appear almost like daytime. Really beautiful, he thought. What he wanted to do more than anything else, was to crawl into bed and go back to sleep the restful, peaceful sleep of the gods. "But", he thought to himself, "the mail must go through".

Continue reading story HERE

Vindication

I didn't go to Vietnam, although I was drafted in June 1965.
I avoided it by getting married and having a child. But I would not have gone under any circumstances. War is about the stupidest thing human beings can do. Sometimes you're forced into it as a last resort. But the most painful war is the war in which tens of thousands are killed and countless others are maimed or psychologically damaged for life for no good reason. Such a war was Vietnam.

Such a war is Iraq. It's Vietnam all over again in spades. A war for nothing, in which thousands die and tens of thousands are wounded, physically and psychologically.

Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?





From today's New York Times:

"The nation's hard-pressed health care system for veterans is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war, veterans' advocates and military doctors say.

An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans. Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000."

This on top of the thousands who have lost their lives and the tens of thousands who have lost limbs or gone insane. And the families at home. In Vietnam there were wives and girl friends back home. Now there are children who will lose their fathers and even their mothers.

They tell these soldiers that they're fighting to protect America and to destroy the "terrorists" before they can attack us here. They tell them they are "protecting America from the evil-doers". I'm actually glad that a lot of them believe that nonsense. It might help reduce the greater pain of knowing, as many Vietnam veterans do, that this was a horrible and pathetic waste of decent people's lives.

No, I didn't go to Vietnam. And I'm glad of it. I just wish those poor bastards who went to Iraq had made the same decision.

Christmas Tree

When I was a young boy growing up in Levittown, my family did not have a lot of money. Usually we waited until Christmas eve to buy our tree, assuming that since they would be worthless in a few hours, it would be possible to negotiate a good price. Old George had the christmas tree lot on Hempstead Turnpike, across from Times Square Stores. He always had the best looking trees in town, although they were a bit expensive.
My brother and I went there at about 6 o'clock this one Christmas eve with about twenty dollars between us, bound and determined to procure the best tree ever. There wasn't much left, but we found a fine douglas fir, just the right size and shaped as nearly perfect as one could expect. Old George was sitting in his usual spot in the office, right next to an old wood-burning stove. I prepared for combat. "How much for this scraggly old twig", I asked? "We'll take it away for no charge!" George looked up at us two insolent pups and replied "That's one nice looking tree boys, it'll cost you thirty-five dollars". "Thirty-five dollars?" I pleaded, "Why I can buy a better tree down the block for half that price." I should have seen what was coming. "Then go right down the block and buy that tree, because you're not getting this one for a penny less than thirty-five dollars." "But George", I went on, "You're only gonna burn this tree tomorrow morning, because you ain't gonna sell all these trees tonight."
Old George leaned back in his chair and glared at us for a moment. "Well boys, you can just come back here tomorrow morning and watch me burn that tree, cause you ain't gonna get it for one cent less than thirty-five dollars!"



By fate's decree, I now found myself back in the old neighborhood on Christmas eve. I was on my way to my mother's house and thought it might be nice to bring a fresh tree. She lived alone and didn't decorate a tree anymore but I knew the old ornaments were still in her closet. I stopped at the christmas tree lot across from K-Mart, which used to be Times Square Stores. I found a beautiful tree, not too big and nicely shaped. "How much for this tree?' I inquired. The kid who was working in the lot told me to ask the boss, in the office. I walked in, and to my surprise, there was old George. And even older still than I had remembered him. "George" I said "I can't believe that you're still here, after all these years. Do you remember me? I used to live right around here when I was a kid." He did not remember. But I remembered. And we sat for the better part of the next hour discussing old times. He told me about his wife, who had passed on some 5 years ago and about how he was laid off when he was just 52 when Grumman cut back the work force and how the only income he had now was his pension and the yearly proceeds from the christmas trees.
But this would be the last year for him. The land he had leased for over 30 years was being sold to a developer and he could not find another spot. He had no idea what would happen to him. We sat silently for a few minutes, contemplating our collective angst and pondering over the mysteries of living. Finally, I spoke again to him. "Well George, I'm sure everything will work out for you. How much for the tree?" He looked up at me with a look of defeat and resignation. "Well, that's normally a thirty-five dollar tree, but I'm only gonna burn it tomorrow morning, so twenty dollars will be just fine."
I guess that sometimes it's necessary to go a long way out of our way, to come back a few steps correctly.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Whoooo!

Rolling Stone Magazine recently listed the top 500 songs of all time. Now these kinds of lists are usually bogus and there are plenty of songs that don't belong and plenty more that were left out. In fact, it's really kind of ridiculous to try to make such a list at all.
Here are Rolling Stone's Top Ten and my comments:

1. Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan

Don't get me wrong, Bob is one of the greatest sogwriters ever. And I hold him in highest regard. But LARS is simply not a "rock and roll" song.

2. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones

Good choice for number 2. "Brown Sugar" is a better song, however

3. Imagine by John Lennon

Not a "rock and roll" song, but I'll let it slide.

4. What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye

Good song, but it doesn't belong in the top ten.

5. Respect by Aretha Franklin

What about Otis Redding? He wrote it, he sang it. What colossal nerve!

6. Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys

"Help Me Rhonda" would have been a better choice.

7. Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry

Goode choice!

8. Hey Jude by The Beatles

They should have called it the top ten songs. This would be appropriately placed.

9. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

Yuck!

10. What’d I Say by Ray Charles

One of the all time greats.

Here's the list I've been running on my website:


1. Brown Sugar- The Rolling Stones
2. Born To Run- Bruce Springsteen
3. Go Your Own Way- Fleetwood Mac
4. Imagine- John Lennon
5. River Deep, Mountain High- Ike and Tina Turner
6. Like a Rolling Stone- Bob Dylan
7. Horses- Patti Smith Group
8. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction- The Rolling Stones
9. Be My Baby- The Ronettes
10. Bad- U2

But there are so many great songs, how could anyone pick?
What about Pink Floyd?
The Beatles?
Every DooWop record ever made?
And let's not forget The Ramones!!

New Artist: Katie Melua

Born in Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, Katie moved to Northern Ireland when she was 9 years old. Her first album is "Call Off The Search" and has a very pleasant bluesy, jazzy kind of sound. Not only does she write her own music, she's cuter than a speckle-bellied puppy on a red wagon.

Find out more about Katie HERE

In Every Stranger's Eyes

Those of you who know me and have followed my postings around the web are well aware that I never argue with creationists. I never dispute their belief in the truthfulness of the Bible or their interpretation of their religion. I’m not inclined to regard a person as a fool because I don’t understand them or because I don’t accept their version of truth.
I do argue with evolutionists because they presume to represent science. They adopt the mantle of science, which I care greatly about, to give themselves legitimacy in their own eyes and (they hope), in the eyes of others.
I hold to the view that we can understand ourselves better by identifying those traits and characteristics in others that most antagonize us. We meet ourselves every day in department stores, at school, in restaurants and in the pages of books (especially history books), magazines and on television. Each stranger that we meet is a reflection of ourselves, a portal to better self-understanding.
Both evolutionists and creationists would be better served by not torturing those with whom they disagree, for certainly it is the tortured who soon enough turn into torturers. How quickly the worm can turn.





Personally, I always defend science, because it informs us about the physical world better than any other method and it increases our store of knowledge more accurately than the use of pure reason alone.
But a view that assumes that scientific understanding is the *only* kind of understanding that there is obscures and dilutes our insight and our harmony with the world. Science is a tool of the western mind, not all of mankind.
Now I certainly can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, nor can I prove that he does. But I am sure of the fact that the *impression* of God (the archetype?) exists in *every* person. Whether God actually exists is mostly irrelevant. What is important is that large numbers of people believe it.
I also believe that there is a huge advantage available to those who can locate this power, whatever its source, in their own individual self and use it for their benefit. Why should I deprive those who may have found this transforming energy in religion? What purpose does it serve me or them, to ridicule and condemn their beliefs as silly and unscientific as I might think they are?
This doesn’t mean, of course, that I will allow others to impose their beliefs on me. The teaching of religion, while acceptable in church schools, is wholly unacceptable in public schools. Likewise, ideologies of any kind, especially those ostensibly validated by the mantle of science, are likewise unacceptable in public education.
However, since religion is obviously an important part of my fellow citizens’ lives, I have no fear of sharing with them the joy and pleasure that they get from their mythologies, even though I’m a non-believer. I have no problem with a Christmas tree or a menorah in the town square or Christmas carols in the school concert or a moment of silence in a school day. These things do not threaten me, as they apparently threaten others. There’s little enough to feel good about in this uncaring and often cruel world; it seems a bit silly to deny people what comfort they may find, wherever they may find it.

Horned Fishbird

Amazing what you can do with Photoshop!

See 50 more critters HERE

Christmas Dinner

Sometimes you just have to wonder when the individual paths of mortals come together in such a way as to make one believe that it had all been laid out in some kind of elaborate scheme that was designed to make things right in an often senseless world.
It was December 23, 1998, graduation day at the Marine Corps recruit depot at Parris Island, South Carolina. Like most every Friday, the members of Platoon 1104, 1st Battalion, "D" company were to cease being sub-human life forms and were about to become Marines. The ceremonies would be over by 1800 hours and six of them from the New York area would pile into a car and begin the long trip home. With any luck, they'd be home by Christmas eve, to be with their families. But these were not just any sons any more, they were Marines. They had endured the 13 weeks of relentless pain and suffering that had molded them into the fiercest, meanest most aggressive fighting men that ever lived. They were ready, willing and able to kick some serious butt, should the need arise.
Mavis Jackson lived a little ways off I-95, just south of the North Carolina border on a tiny farm that she and Walter had bought with her mother's insurance . During the summer of '93, Walter was killed when his plow overturned on a hill. Little Walter was only one year old at the time. Mavis tried to keep up the farming, but even in the best of circumstances, it only allowed a meager existence for her and the boy. In '96, Mavis opened a little lunch room on the side of her house and cooked food for the local field hands. Some days, no one at all would come, and Mavis would sadly put the food away for another day.
It was Friday, December 23, 1998, and Mavis Jackson was down by the side of the road putting up a little sign that she had painted on white cardboard- "Christmas Dinner, All You Can Eat! $5.99" Shortly before 7:00 p.m. a car drove by. It slowed down a little way down the road and then turned around and came back, parking in front of Mavis' house. Out of the car piled six hungry Marines.
Now Mavis had prepared one turkey and one ham and some sweet potatoes and collard greens and had baked a pecan pie. Hopefully, it would be sufficient for these boys. After only a little while, it became obvious that she had offered more than she could deliver. The turkey and ham were completely demolished and so were the vegetables and potatoes. Yet these boys still demanded more. Mavis went back to her kitchen in search of more food. Her heart began to sink lower and lower as she emptied her pantry to satisfy the hungry Marines.
By 9:00 O'clock, it appeared that the rampage was finally subsiding. They sat around talking for another half hour while Mavis sat quietly in the front room, contemplating the situation. If nothing else, Mavis Jackson was a woman of her word. She had made a terrible blunder, and now she would pay the price. Perhaps God was punishing her for some unknown transgression. But she had promised "all you can eat" and she had no intention of asking for any extra compensation. As the first Marine approached her, she quietly said to him "that'll by $5.99 sir, just like the sign says." He paid with a ten dollar bill and she gave him back his change- four dollars and a penny. It took a little doing to negotiate the exchange of money, since she didn't have much change, but the boys managed to collect it among themselves and pay her the grand total of $35.94.
The boys left and she heard the car pull away down the road. Mavis pulled the shade down and turned off the porch light. The world had dealt her a cruel blow. But she had no one to blame but herself. She thought about little Walter and her beloved husband and she wept. She had planned on going to the midnight service at church, as she had every past Christmas. But tonight she just didn't think she could. But she must go on. Despair is not becoming of a Christian woman, she thought and she stepped over to the table and began to clear away the dishes. She picked up the first dish, and there under the plate was a hundred dollar bill. She didn't know what to make of it. And then she found another...and another...and another...and another...and another. And there in the middle of the table, handwritten on a piece of paper, a note. And it said....
Merry Christmas, U.S.M.C
And Mavis Jackson put on her hat and went to church and the preacher was speaking these words:
"Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." Hebrews 13:2

The $500 Dollar Fence

When I was a teenager, I asked my mother if we could get a dog. After the usual begging and pleading, followed by sworn pledges to take care of it, walk it and feed it, my mother finally agreed.
We went down to the Bide-A-Wee Home for Friendless Animals in Wantagh and adopted a dog. There was no charge except for a $5 license fee. When we got the dog home, problems soon developed and the dog kept running away. I'm not clear on all the details, but my mother ended up getting a chain link fence put around the front yard. It cost somewhere around $500.
Now my father was not involved in these goings on and when he found out about it, he was plenty annoyed. I remember him shouting "you paid $5 for the god damned dog and $500 for a god damned fence to keep him from running away?"
I was thinking about that today as I loaded my new aquarium into the back of Tom's pickup truck. You see, I decided to dabble in the aquarium world and I got this little 20 gallon tank and set it up in my room. I read what I thought I had to know and went down to the fish store to obtain some inhabitants. I picked a regal tang, a clownfish, and a perfectly adorable dog faced puffer.



They seemed to be flourishing and so I went out and got another clown fish and a yellow tang. I figured that was enough. Turns out, it was more than enough. The first clown fish promptly killed the newbie clown. Pretty annoying considering it was a $30 fish. Then a few days later, I woke up and found the puffer swimming on top of the yellow tang. I don't know what happened, but the tang was dead. Another $30 fish.
Then came the topper. It turns out dog faced puffers grow to a pretty large size, and require an aquarium of 75-100 gallons. Mine was only 20. So I figured I would have to get rid of doggie and stick with smaller fish.
But he was so darned cute, and Gail liked him, so here I was, at the aquarium store. Yep, you guessed it. Buying a $500 aquarium for my little $20 puffer fish.

Ignorance Played A Role

Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

Wilderness by Carl Sandburg

THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ...
a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood--
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the
wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ...
I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night
and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ...
I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ...
a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for
sleeping satisfied in the sun--I got this too from the wilderness
and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue
water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ...
I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ...
before the water went down ... before Noah ...
before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ...
yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ...
here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond
and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ...
ready to snarl and kill ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting--
I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ...
and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams
and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ...
and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the
dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas
of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes--
And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under
my bony head, under my red-valve heart--
and I got something else: it is a man-child heart,
a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover:
it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where--
For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and
kill and work: I am a pal of the world:
I came from the wilderness.

But I'll try....

A while ago, when they were building the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, there was much controversy and rancor. I asked this guy who lived in nearby Miller Place whether he was for or against the plant. His reply surprised me. He said "if my electric bill goes up, I'm against it. If my electric bill goes down, I'm for it."

Just like Phil Ochs said in "Love Me, I'm a Liberal". Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right when it affects you personally.

Stuart Kauffman once said "A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends without deliberately trying to harm anyone else will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be." I'm not sure whether I fully accept that, but right now, I'm moving in that direction.

Basically, I'm immune from George W. Bush and his henchmen.

I feel bad for the rest of you, but you have to cope on your own. I'm not going to Iraq to die and neither is anyone else that I care about. Let them have their war, if they want it. I'm not writing any books that will be banned or making any speeches that will be censored. They can't make me go to church, or worship their god, and they can't get inside my head and control what I think. I have a nice house, with plenty of equity, a pension that serves me just fine and a family that fills my idle hours.
I still have the mountains, and the rivers, the lakes and the beach, the flowers and the music. I don't need George W. Bush for anything. And there's nothing that I have that he can take away from me. Even in the Soviet Union, where atheism was the government policy, religious people continued to worship and keep their beliefs alive. People survive under a wide range of unpleasant conditions. When it gets too cold, or too hot, or too dry, bacteria form spores that insulate and protect them until the conditions are right again for growth and reproduction.
So that's what I'm doing. Until the time is right to emerge from the darkness. I'd like to help you all to try and make a better world, but I've already been there and done that. And this is the result. Nothing changes. It's the cycle of life, just as the Dark Ages followed the glory of Greece and Rome and just like the Renaissance followed the Dark Ages. We're not making progress, we're not moving foward at all. It's just an illusion. We are, in fact, going round and round in one huge circle. Crest followed by trough, followed by crest.

I'd like to help you all out, but I've done my part. I'm old and tired. I'm sporulating....

I Couldn't Have Said It Better....

From "Fanatical Apathy" -Adam Felbers
http://felbers.net/mt/

Concession Speech

[Former candidate Felber, flanked by his family and supporters, steps up to the podium in the bright autumn sunlight. Cheers and applause are heard.]

My fellow Americans, the people of this nation have spoken, and spoken with a clear voice. So I am here to offer my concession. [Boos, groans, rending of garments]

I concede that I overestimated the intelligence of the American people. Though the people disagree with the President on almost every issue, you saw fit to vote for him. I never saw that coming. That's really special. And I mean "special" in the sense that we use it to describe those kids who ride the short school bus and find ways to injure themselves while eating pudding with rubber spoons. That kind of special.

I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That's pretty powerful stuff, and I didn't see it. So let me take a moment to congratulate the President's strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio... well, that was just genius. Genius. It got people, a certain kind of people, to the polls. The unprecedented number of folks who showed up and cited "moral values" as their biggest issue, those people changed history. The folks who consider same sex marriage a more important issue than war, or terrorism, or the economy... Who'd have thought the election would belong to them? Well, Karl Rove did. Gotta give it up to him for that. [Boos.] Now, now. Credit where it's due.

I concede that I put too much faith in America's youth. With 8 out of 10 of you opposing the President, with your friends and classmates dying daily in a war you disapprove of, with your future being mortgaged to pay for rich old peoples' tax breaks, you somehow managed to sit on your asses and watch the Cartoon Network while aging homophobic hillbillies carried the day. You voted with the exact same anemic percentage that you did in 2000. You suck. Seriously, y'do. [Cheers, applause] Thank you. Thank you very much.

There are some who would say that I sound bitter, that now is the time for healing, to bring the nation together. Let me tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the returns come in with some friends here in Los Angeles. As the night progressed, people began to talk half-seriously about secession, a red state / blue state split. The reasoning was this: We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em. We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"

More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I'm impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it's not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it's not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that.

Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us... we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear. And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior," I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that.

It's not a "ha-ha" funny joke, I realize, but it's a joke all the same.

Being an independent candidate gives me one luxury - as well as conceding the election today, I am also announcing my candidacy for President in 2008. [Wild applause, screams, chants of "Fel-ber! Fel-ber!] Thank you.

And I make this pledge to you today: THIS time, next time, there will be no pandering. This time I will run with all the open and joking contempt for my opponents that our President demonstrated towards the cradle of liberty, the Ivy League intellectuals, the "media elite," and the "white-wine sippers." This time I will not pretend that the simple folk of America know just as much as the people who devote their lives to serving and studying the nation and the world. They don't.

So that's why I'm asking for your vote in 2008, America. I'm talking to you, you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads. Vote for me, because I know better, and I truly believe that I can help your smug, sorry asses. Vote Felber in '08! Thank you, and may God, if he does in fact exist, bless each and every one of you.

[Tumultuous cheers, applause, and foot-stomping. PULL BACK to reveal the rest of the stage, the row of cameras, hundreds of unoccupied chairs, and the empty field beyond.]
Posted by Adam Felber

There simply are no words...

Leonard Cohen

"Because of a few songs
Wherein I spoke of their mystery,
Women have been
Exceptionally kind
to my old age.
They make a secret place
In their busy lives
And they take me there.
They become naked
In their different ways
and they say,
"Look at me, Leonard
Look at me one last time."
Then they bend over the bed
And cover me up
Like a baby that is shivering."

Leonard Cohen turned 70 on September 21, 2004
He has just released a new album "Dear Heather"
The lyrics above are from the song "Because of"
If you don't know anything about Leonard Cohen, CLICK HERE
Some songs you might know:
Suzanne, So Long Marianne, Bird on a Wire, Hallelujah

New Respect For Eminem

Eminem's new video "Mosh" sends a powerful anti-Bush message.
This guy may end up having more influence than Michael Moore because he's not preaching to the choir, he's energizing those who are not convinced that voting is worth the effort.
Watch the Video HERE
or HERE

The American Conservative

Kerry’s the One
By Scott McConnell

The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

Are We Ready? Or What!!!

"Six so-called 'SWAT teams' of lawyers and political operatives will be situated around the country with fueled-up jets awaiting Kerry's orders to speed to a battleground state. The teams have been told to be ready to fly on the evening of the election to begin mounting legal and political fights. Every battleground state will have a SWAT team within an hour of its borders.

"The Kerry campaign has recount office space in every battleground state, with plans so detailed they include the number of staplers and coffee machines needed to mount legal challenges.

"'Right now, we have 10,000 lawyers out in the battleground states on Election Day, and that number is growing by the day,' said Michael Whouley, a Kerry confidant who is running election operations at the Democratic National Committee."

Read Article in SALON

Here's One I Never Saw!

Dylan kissing Mary Travers.

I guess I went to just about every single Peter, Paul and Mary and every single Bob Dylan concert within 50 miles of NYC in the early 60's. At the end of their concert, PP&M would come out to the front of the stage and talk to the people. One lucky night, at the Island Garden Arena in West Hempstead, N.Y. I was talking to Mary and I don't remember what I said to her exactly (probably something really stupid) but she gave me a kiss on the cheek. One of those magic moments for a teenager.

(linked from http://pool.dylantree.com/img/gallery/60s/4335_1963_with_Mary_Travers.JPG)

"A Blind Man In A Room Full of Deaf People"

(Pat) Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

New Artist

Stunning new painting by a talented young artist:

Leah Nita Rindos

Mystery

Some time ago, I found myself walking along the beach. As I looked out over the ocean, sunlight sparkled on the gently rolling swells. At one point in my view, the beach, the ocean and the sky seemed to merge into one. There is something compelling about the ocean, and I was a lone water-gazer upon this beach. Mountains have a certain grandeur and likewise canyons and forests. I have seen them all. But the ocean is special, and I always feel the need to venture as close as I can without getting wet. But at some certain point in time, I am always constrained to remove my shoes and socks and place my feet into the swirling waters. It is a holy baptism of life.



On this particular day, as I walked further down the beach, I saw a young boy who looked to be about five or six years old. He had dug a deep hole in the sand just above the water line and was going back and forth with a paper cup, dipping water from the ocean and pouring it into the hole. I watched him for some time and finally asked him what he was doing. He replied that he was going to empty the whole ocean into the hole. Since the water disappeared down the hole each time he poured, he assumed that it would only be a matter of time until his task was accomplished.

When I was a young boy, I looked out into the night sky and marveled at the beauty of the stars. I began to learn about the stars and the planets, and I soon took to the task of counting the number of stars that I could see. I would lie on my back on the beach and divide the heavens into sections, counting each one carefully and adding them up. Twenty, forty, eighty...one hundred! When I was older, my father bought me a small telescope and I soon realized that there were many more stars than I thought. I learned in school that there were almost 2500 stars that could be seen with the naked eye on a clear night. I soon realized that some of the points of light were not stars at all, but huge galaxies, filled with countless numbers of additional stars. Even today, with our most powerful telescopes, the farther we look, and the better we see, the numbers of stars and galaxies keeps ever increasing. Needless to say, I have given up trying to count the stars in the sky and just as surely, that little boy will someday realize that he has a better chance of getting the whole ocean into that little hole than he does of ever understanding the mysteries of the universe.

Sea Angel

The beauty of nature is sometimes overwhelming:



Sea Angels are actually molluscs, which puts them in the same phylum as snails, slugs and nudibranchs. They have no shells, and are adapted to swimming free in the oceans.
They are jelly-like and mostly transparent and the largest examples are no more than two inches long. They feed on closely related species like sea butterflies and plankton.
Their feeding process is somewhat extraordinary. They have tentacles that grasp their prey when the shell opening is in the right position. They extend "hooks" into the shell opening and remove the body completely from the shell, swallowing it whole.
Read more about sea angels HERE
and HERE

Liars, Liars, Liars...

WASHINGTON - Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Sunday of planning a surprise second-term effort to privatize Social Security and forecast a "disaster for America's middle class."

The Bush campaign response from Ed Gillespie:
Republicans denied the charge as scare tactics with little more than two weeks remaining in a tight election. "It is just flat inaccurate," said GOP chairman Ed Gillespie.

From Sunday's New York Times:
George Bush, quoted by Ron Suskind:
''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck.''

"Have you no shame, Sir? At Long last, have you left no sense of shame?

New York Times endorses John Kerry

New York Times Sunday Oct. 17, 2004

"We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.

Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president."

Scary Stuff.....

From The New York Times Magazine Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

A Mission From God

WITHOUT A DOUBT
By RON SUSKIND

Published: October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first Pres