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."

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.