Walking down Lick Log Branch yesterday, I saw every pool rippling with "minners" as the man walking with me called them jokingly. This time of year usually finds the pools small if not vanished, and I am glad to see the fish darting around looking for someplace to hide from us. In seconds they are invisible, but I can see that there are more here than just young of the year. Grownups have found refuge well upstream of their normal summer habitat. In the largest pool I can see the tell tale Tennessee volunteer orange slash of a Warpaint Shiner. The rest of the little beasts will remain known as minners though I know there are probably Creek Chub and other species that would still be a mystery to me even if I had my fishing binoculars handy. The mating color of the peacockish males is fading now as fall comes on, but you can still see it on some of the darters.
There has been a Lick Log Branch everywhere I've lived. Not as many of them as Piney creeks, of which there are several fairly close to my house: Big Piney, Little Piney, and, cutest of all, the Tiny Piney. To me, the best creek name is the one from my childhood in Laurens County Georgia, Hunger and Hardship Creek. I wonder how it got the name? Some of you are high school friends of mine. Let me know if you ever find out. When I was about eleven, my great Uncle brought me two baby alligators he picked up while fishing the creek. I named the two gators Hunger and Hardship, of course, and built a fenced in pool in the back yard to keep them in. They were killed by the neighborhood children.
Snots!
As I looked into the clear pools of Lick Log, I wondered why the most environmental President we have had during my lifetime could be Richard Nixon, an otherwise evil and distasteful man. Nixon signed The Clean Water Act which is probably the only reason these fish survive in the waters of what is no longer "The Greenest State in the Land of the Free"...Any body else remember the Ballad of Davey Crockett? Nixon originally ran on a ticket to win the Viet Nam War, and then he ran again on a ticket to end the war. Then he announced a policy called something like "Withdrawal With Dignity", which sounds more like a Catholic birth control plan than a war policy. I remember watching on TV as people were screaming and throwing their children at the open door of US Army Helicopters as they abandoned the roof of the American Embassy. Very dignified!
It may be time to resurrect old Tricky Dicky. I can't remember how many American Soldiers he got killed (30,000?) after he started ending the war, but I believe more died after he took office than before, when we were just fighting for who the hell knows what reason... pretty much the same boat we find ourselves in now. Or should I say helicopter, which begs the question: Why is it, that after thirty years, the most technological society on earth can't make a helicopter that can't be shot down with a squirrel rifle?
Of course it would be simpler if we just stopped sending them into places where there are people who actually have squirrel rifles, or a reasonable facsimile, and want to shoot down American helicopters...We're hunting terrorists where the light is better I guess, and getting the crap shot out of our kids! Is it too much to ask that somebody stand up and say, "Whoops! Bad Idea! Sorry!" and let's leave? We could bring all our kids home and work on an energy conservation plan that would stop those creeps over there from having enough money to buy their danged rifles in the first place. See! No rifles, no helicopters, and presto, they are back to trying to raise goats in the desert again. Maybe one day someone will even tell them that it's the stupid goats that are the reason they have all that desert in the first place, and that brings us full circle back to "Hunger and Hardship"! One day I plan to write about how safe sex could stop most wars, but for now, you can just sit there and try to figure out how in the heck Steve decided goats forced humans into an oil economy, and that resulted in the Iraq war. At any rate lots of people are deciding that this war is down right stupid and we should never have started it.
Did I mention how much I love barbecued goat?
Miss Molly Ivans names names, opening the closet door on the list of conservatives who think we shouldn't have strated the Iraq war. Molly calls for all conservatives to repent their lust for war in Iraq, and points out that quite a few of them already have. Big time conservative names like Wlliam F. Buckley have turned on the war. Molly says it best so I'll let her:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17542
Rich Baker voted for George W. Bush in 2000. He is going to vote for John Kerry this November. He was known as Navy Lieutenant Baker during the Viet Nam War...He commanded a Swift Boat.
"Every Swift boat officer gave his all in Vietnam, but Kerry stood above the rest of us," said Baker, 61, of Scott, a former Navy lieutenant and Swift boat commander. "He was number one as far as courageousness and aggressiveness. He set the tone."
"George Bush has two silver dental fillings in his teeth to show what he did during the Vietnam War," Baker said. "John Kerry has a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts."
"John Kerry should not be alive today," Baker said. "He was aggressive -- more aggressive than the rest of us. That was his nature, and everybody who was there knows it."
But, Baker said, these men never criticized Kerry until he became the Democratic presidential nominee. Baker specifically recalled a 1995 reunion of Swift boat crews in Washington at which praise for Kerry's service in Vietnam was unanimous. Kerry then was the pride of the group as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04237/366585.stm
Here is my choice for quote of the day:
Ordinary Americans have been manipulated into imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and protector is their government. If it isn't the Communists, it's al-Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba. it's Nicaragua. As a result, this, the most powerful nation in the world - with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars, and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs - is peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear."
...The mandarins of the corporate world, the CEOs, the bankers, the politicians, the judges and generals look down on us from on high and shake their heads sternly. "There's no Alternative," they say. And let slip the dogs of war ... Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators, as well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war. They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence ... Human society is journeying to a terrible place ... Of course, there is an alternative to terrorism. It's called justice."
It is from Arundhati Roy. Here's where I found out about her:
http://allspinzone.blogspot.com/
Peace,
Steve
Friday, August 27, 2004
I love barbecue! I get sauce all over my face and smile big. It's a red neck thing...sorry. I like to think of myself as an environmentalist, too. Some body has to save the world from boneheads like the ones in charge right now. There's a conflict...always is! Try this from Grist:
"In fact, a 2003 study found that Texans, who like to say that they "live and breathe barbecue," may be doing exactly that. In Houston -- with some of the worst air quality in the country -- meat smoke wafting up from restaurants and grills makes up a somewhat significant part of the pollution mix."
So that means that Bush is not one hundred percent responsible for the lousy air quality in Houston and the rest of Texas. If you are a Republican that lets him completely off the hook to you, since he is never actually responsible for anything bad that happens in your mind. It's Clinton! Well actually in this case, it's dead pigs!
Yum!
Well, we here in Tennessee get a fair bit of bad air contribution from Texas. While it would be bad enough if all we got was Tom Delay, the poster boy for pesticide misuse, the Texas air is not enough by itself so we have TVA and 1000 foot smoke stacks to help make it hard to be a living thing all the way up to the peaks of the Smoky Mountains.
I wonder about the things I do and how they affect the rest of the world. I would never be able to be a good conservative. Now I find out that my gas grill is a boon to the environment:
Though barbecue purists would probably fight to the death to keep their charcoal grills sizzling, the truth is that natural gas and propane are hands-down the most eco-friendly. Both charcoal and wood burn dirty, producing tiny soot particles that pollute the air and can worsen chronic heart and lung problems.
Further bad news...Beer is not an antidote! Dang!
http://www.gristmagazine.com/possessions/possessions082404.asp?source=weekly
******
I may have to come to grips with the fact that people I have respected in the past are willing to be lying weasels to help their side win, regardless of the long term cost to America. I voted against Bob Dole but I respected him.
I'm over that. Bob Dole is now officially a Republican weasel. He told a lie and then refused to take it back when confronted.
Alessandra Stanley writes in the Times:
"Mr. Dole suggested (on CNN) that John Kerry was in a rush to obtain his Purple Hearts to meet a regulation that allowed soldiers to leave the war zone after winning three. "I mean the first one, whether he ought to have a purple heart - He got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months..."
Bob Dole lied!
Right on National TV and should have been branded as such right then and there. Wolf Blitzer knew exactly what the dates of Kerry's war wounds! Kerry recieved the Purple Heart for being wounded in action on Dec. 2, 1968, Feb. 20, 1969, and March 13, 1969. Hardly the same day, and hardly the way one wounded war hero should treat another. Blitzer did not confront him right away but waited until later on a phone conversation:
"I wasn't trying to be mean spirited. I was trying to say all these guys on the Republican side just can't be Republican liars."
Well, yes they can, and as it turns out, yes they are, and Bob Dole knows it! Welcome to the ranks of Republican liars, Bob! You, and what's left of your honor, aren't going to fit in very well.
Now George Bush has come forward and called the anti-Kerry ad "False and Libelous"
This is the same guy who said, "We've found the Weapons of Mass Destruction." Of course that turned out to be a weather balloon trailer but hey, Republican Weasels, remember?
Peace,
Steve
"In fact, a 2003 study found that Texans, who like to say that they "live and breathe barbecue," may be doing exactly that. In Houston -- with some of the worst air quality in the country -- meat smoke wafting up from restaurants and grills makes up a somewhat significant part of the pollution mix."
So that means that Bush is not one hundred percent responsible for the lousy air quality in Houston and the rest of Texas. If you are a Republican that lets him completely off the hook to you, since he is never actually responsible for anything bad that happens in your mind. It's Clinton! Well actually in this case, it's dead pigs!
Yum!
Well, we here in Tennessee get a fair bit of bad air contribution from Texas. While it would be bad enough if all we got was Tom Delay, the poster boy for pesticide misuse, the Texas air is not enough by itself so we have TVA and 1000 foot smoke stacks to help make it hard to be a living thing all the way up to the peaks of the Smoky Mountains.
I wonder about the things I do and how they affect the rest of the world. I would never be able to be a good conservative. Now I find out that my gas grill is a boon to the environment:
Though barbecue purists would probably fight to the death to keep their charcoal grills sizzling, the truth is that natural gas and propane are hands-down the most eco-friendly. Both charcoal and wood burn dirty, producing tiny soot particles that pollute the air and can worsen chronic heart and lung problems.
Further bad news...Beer is not an antidote! Dang!
http://www.gristmagazine.com/possessions/possessions082404.asp?source=weekly
******
I may have to come to grips with the fact that people I have respected in the past are willing to be lying weasels to help their side win, regardless of the long term cost to America. I voted against Bob Dole but I respected him.
I'm over that. Bob Dole is now officially a Republican weasel. He told a lie and then refused to take it back when confronted.
Alessandra Stanley writes in the Times:
"Mr. Dole suggested (on CNN) that John Kerry was in a rush to obtain his Purple Hearts to meet a regulation that allowed soldiers to leave the war zone after winning three. "I mean the first one, whether he ought to have a purple heart - He got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months..."
Bob Dole lied!
Right on National TV and should have been branded as such right then and there. Wolf Blitzer knew exactly what the dates of Kerry's war wounds! Kerry recieved the Purple Heart for being wounded in action on Dec. 2, 1968, Feb. 20, 1969, and March 13, 1969. Hardly the same day, and hardly the way one wounded war hero should treat another. Blitzer did not confront him right away but waited until later on a phone conversation:
"I wasn't trying to be mean spirited. I was trying to say all these guys on the Republican side just can't be Republican liars."
Well, yes they can, and as it turns out, yes they are, and Bob Dole knows it! Welcome to the ranks of Republican liars, Bob! You, and what's left of your honor, aren't going to fit in very well.
Now George Bush has come forward and called the anti-Kerry ad "False and Libelous"
This is the same guy who said, "We've found the Weapons of Mass Destruction." Of course that turned out to be a weather balloon trailer but hey, Republican Weasels, remember?
Peace,
Steve
I listened to NPR this morning and began wondering what strange beings we humans are. Every where I turn there is evidence of a grave mental illness that has infected a large number of us...the inability to think in any direction except toward a preconceived conclusion that may be completely false.
There was a guy who said that he disagreed with most of what Bush is doing but he just couldn't get "That Picture of Kerry and Jane Fonda together" out of his mind. Do you remember "that picture"?
It is a fake!
It shows Kerry and Jane Fonda sitting very close together at a war protest. It was generated by the P.R. firm used by Karl Rove. Kerry was at one event that Fonda also attended but never met her. Actually I think Jane is not all that far from being a good and principled person who still takes a lot of scorn for being on the right side during the Viet Nam war years. OK, she screwed up big going to North Viet Nam letting herself be used as a propaganda tool, and she's a quite bit out there, but She was right about the war! Our government was wrong! Who disagrees with that? Ok, the far right wing and no one else. Why does this guy still associate her with something bad? He has the disease. Why does he still think Jane and John Kerry were in cahoots to undermine American soldiers when what both of them were trying to do is get them home alive? He has the disease.
Why can't this man accept that the offending picture is a lie and that he is being manipulated and that anyone who would do such a thing is evil?
He has the disease!
We must help these folks. Be kind to them for they are our friends, and brothers, and fathers, and husbands and wives. We love them and want them healed.
If there is one failure I can point to in the American educational system it is this disease. It is the inability to engage in Critical Thinking. It is the Scientific method. The ability to determine fact from fiction and choose fact over wishful thinking. Political parties, Religions, and the Chamber of Commerce all count on American's inability to identify lies and the worst of all, half truths. It is how political parties function and steal our money and our communal possessions and stay out of prison. Cool Hand Luke kept winding up as a victim of a "Failure to communicate". We are victims of a "Failure to think."
The guy on NPR should simply say, "Wait a minute! The picture is a fake. Bush is lying to us!"...and start supporting the good guys in this country...but he has the disease!
John Kerry was trying to save the lives of his fellow warriors anyway. Somewhere around 50,000 of them died while he was trying to get them out of Nam. The ones that came home were nearly all wounded in one way or another. Ask a Viet Nam vet how he feels about the war. Most of them won't even talk about it. They are all victims of the disease.
We all are. We all have this tragic disease! It cannot be cured... but it can be controlled. That is one reason why I write this stuff as often as I can. I have the disease too and I have to make myself think to control it.
I guess that makes you guys victims of my cure!
Try this simple test to see if a Bush supporter has the disease in virulent form. Ask them why they are for George Bush? Listen to the answer. When I have done this I get two forms of replies. "He's decisive." is the least common. The main thing I hear is some kind of slam on Kerry.
"I support Bush because I can't get that picture out of my mind." (diseased!)
"Have you seen the pictures of Kerry's mansions?" (diseased!)
"Kerry didn't deserve one of his purple hearts!" ( really freakin' diseased!) This one is way sick! Just because they don't give medals for desertion and Bush doesn't have any is no reason to trash a genuine hero)
"Bush shares my values!" (terminal stages of disease!)..and what values would that be, exactly? Hates queers? Likes to torture folks? Lies easily? Believes his own lies? help me here, I 'm really curious about this one.
The enemy of a political lie is critical thinking. They don't teach it in church. They don't teach it in "home school" programs. They don't teach it in Marketing class. They don't teach it on TV. They don't teach it at Bryan College and Jerry Falwell condemns "...those who would poison our young people's minds with unclean thought known as Critical thinking."
You might learn it in science class. Where ever you can learn it, you owe it to your children to get with the program. Start thinking right now today! You can do it, I know you can. There are support groups to help you. There are public buildings in nearly every community that have reservoirs of science books in them. They are called Libraries. But I know you are lazy so I am going to give you a list of self help sites you can go to on the internet. I am working on a "Twelve Step Program" but it is not quite ready so you'll have to do this yourself for now.
Step one is "If you can't turn off the TV at least turn off Fox News!"
Step two is surf these web pages.
The first one is Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. The second is the Ralph Waldo Emerson home page. It gives me peace when my head hurts from all that thinking so that's why I put it in here. Then you get into the hard stuff. have fun and don't believe all you see.
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
http://www.rwe.org/
http://www.criticalthinking.org/default.html
http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com/index.shtml
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/survey_flaws.html
http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/
Think about it!
Steve
There was a guy who said that he disagreed with most of what Bush is doing but he just couldn't get "That Picture of Kerry and Jane Fonda together" out of his mind. Do you remember "that picture"?
It is a fake!
It shows Kerry and Jane Fonda sitting very close together at a war protest. It was generated by the P.R. firm used by Karl Rove. Kerry was at one event that Fonda also attended but never met her. Actually I think Jane is not all that far from being a good and principled person who still takes a lot of scorn for being on the right side during the Viet Nam war years. OK, she screwed up big going to North Viet Nam letting herself be used as a propaganda tool, and she's a quite bit out there, but She was right about the war! Our government was wrong! Who disagrees with that? Ok, the far right wing and no one else. Why does this guy still associate her with something bad? He has the disease. Why does he still think Jane and John Kerry were in cahoots to undermine American soldiers when what both of them were trying to do is get them home alive? He has the disease.
Why can't this man accept that the offending picture is a lie and that he is being manipulated and that anyone who would do such a thing is evil?
He has the disease!
We must help these folks. Be kind to them for they are our friends, and brothers, and fathers, and husbands and wives. We love them and want them healed.
If there is one failure I can point to in the American educational system it is this disease. It is the inability to engage in Critical Thinking. It is the Scientific method. The ability to determine fact from fiction and choose fact over wishful thinking. Political parties, Religions, and the Chamber of Commerce all count on American's inability to identify lies and the worst of all, half truths. It is how political parties function and steal our money and our communal possessions and stay out of prison. Cool Hand Luke kept winding up as a victim of a "Failure to communicate". We are victims of a "Failure to think."
The guy on NPR should simply say, "Wait a minute! The picture is a fake. Bush is lying to us!"...and start supporting the good guys in this country...but he has the disease!
John Kerry was trying to save the lives of his fellow warriors anyway. Somewhere around 50,000 of them died while he was trying to get them out of Nam. The ones that came home were nearly all wounded in one way or another. Ask a Viet Nam vet how he feels about the war. Most of them won't even talk about it. They are all victims of the disease.
We all are. We all have this tragic disease! It cannot be cured... but it can be controlled. That is one reason why I write this stuff as often as I can. I have the disease too and I have to make myself think to control it.
I guess that makes you guys victims of my cure!
Try this simple test to see if a Bush supporter has the disease in virulent form. Ask them why they are for George Bush? Listen to the answer. When I have done this I get two forms of replies. "He's decisive." is the least common. The main thing I hear is some kind of slam on Kerry.
"I support Bush because I can't get that picture out of my mind." (diseased!)
"Have you seen the pictures of Kerry's mansions?" (diseased!)
"Kerry didn't deserve one of his purple hearts!" ( really freakin' diseased!) This one is way sick! Just because they don't give medals for desertion and Bush doesn't have any is no reason to trash a genuine hero)
"Bush shares my values!" (terminal stages of disease!)..and what values would that be, exactly? Hates queers? Likes to torture folks? Lies easily? Believes his own lies? help me here, I 'm really curious about this one.
The enemy of a political lie is critical thinking. They don't teach it in church. They don't teach it in "home school" programs. They don't teach it in Marketing class. They don't teach it on TV. They don't teach it at Bryan College and Jerry Falwell condemns "...those who would poison our young people's minds with unclean thought known as Critical thinking."
You might learn it in science class. Where ever you can learn it, you owe it to your children to get with the program. Start thinking right now today! You can do it, I know you can. There are support groups to help you. There are public buildings in nearly every community that have reservoirs of science books in them. They are called Libraries. But I know you are lazy so I am going to give you a list of self help sites you can go to on the internet. I am working on a "Twelve Step Program" but it is not quite ready so you'll have to do this yourself for now.
Step one is "If you can't turn off the TV at least turn off Fox News!"
Step two is surf these web pages.
The first one is Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. The second is the Ralph Waldo Emerson home page. It gives me peace when my head hurts from all that thinking so that's why I put it in here. Then you get into the hard stuff. have fun and don't believe all you see.
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
http://www.rwe.org/
http://www.criticalthinking.org/default.html
http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com/index.shtml
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/survey_flaws.html
http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/
Think about it!
Steve
Monday, August 16, 2004
Oh boy, I'm home!
What have you folks done to good old muggy Tennessee while I've been in Utah? I get back and find the best August weather in years: sunny, coolish, and humidity well below the normal 90%. I can take this!
I was at the Outdoor Retailer show lusting over things I disdain in my conscience...consumer goods. I am not a good shopper. I walk into a store, get what I came for, and leave. Women, my long suffering wife chief amongst them, think I am the worst of males for not looking at 59 different shirts in four different stores before going back and buying the second one I picked up. The only time I really understand what shopping is about is in a bookstore. Then I understand what it means to make choices. Do I keep the book on cabin architecture and put back the collection of Edgar Allen Poe novellas, or break the budget and take them both home? Ah, the rush!
The outdoor show takes up most of Salt Lake City. The merchants and purveyors of life's necessities feed upon us like leeches, sucking our blood from every tiny capillary near enough to the surface of our skin for their mouth parts to eviscerate. The combination of fundamental Mormonism and capitalist blood lust is a frightening concurrence, so evil in nature that I decided to take my 17 year old son with me. Hey, a boy's gotta have some fun in life, eh?
The LDS church fathers want our money so badly that they roil in hypocrisy, soiling the waters in the streets surrounding their holiest of temples with booze, strip joints, and the most polite of drunken panhandlers in every nook and cranny of downtown Salt Lake.
The city fathers have resorted to all sorts of ploys to reduce the numbers of homeless at our convention. Over in the next state, Las Vegas officials cried "Foul" when it was discovered that the LDS members who dominate local and state government had overwhelmingly supported a secret plan that gave the homeless some cash in their pocket and a bus ticket to Las Vegas. Hey, sin city. here they come!
Of all the places in America that you are most likely to get wet while walking around the city, SLC is foremost. Not because of the rain, it's a near desert after all. No, it is because of the water sprinklers that they keep firing off to keep the homeless from being able to sleep in the shrubbery and on the grass next to the sidewalks. It took me years to learn to ignore the sprinklers because you dry off in seconds with the desert humidity. It's funny to read the daily paper about the water crisis while walking by millions of gallons a day running down the side of the city streets and into the sewer lines. Really smart folks, those city fathers.
They do put on some good music for us, though. I could not get to all the shows I wanted to because there was so much happening. After the first full day my feet were killing me from walking and standing around. It is apparently illegal to have a chair in your display booth. Must be! We are required to stand up and smile and look other tired folks right in the eye until we drop. So there I was, at the free outdoor concert in the town square, listening to Richard Thompson sing about a truly evil bastard who rides a rather old Vincent motorcycle hitting on a poor but luscious Irish girl named Molly. Thompson's voice sounds like he is singing about the Edmund Fitzgerald with a British accent, but he rips you apart inside and everytime the "thoroughly dangerous man" gets his insides blown out by the shotgun of a man he is about to rob, I cry for him. The only good news is that Molly gets his bike. Since it is a free concert, I am standing next to a six foot five guy smoking like an incinerator, and wearing a "cat in the hat" hat which made him half a foot taller than Keith Van Horn the Utah Jazz basketball player who I had just walked by inside the Marriot. He was wearing a tuxedo and going to a fundraiser for cancer, where they will raise money by auctioning off giutars signed by great humanitarians such as Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, and Willie Nelson. Less than 1000 feet away I was standing next to a goofy guy wearing a Dr. Seus hat and scaring children by merely leaning over and boming a "Hello, young man!" at them with a big goofy tobacco stained grin. If this guy wasn't homeless, he missed a good chance. He kept taking a huge drag on his cigarette and leaning almost down to the ground to get in my face and tell me how he knows all the great musicians I've never heard of, exhaling in the process. The saving grace was that he, at least, had had some sort of bath recently, though my airways had closed up to the point that I couldn't have told by that time.
Richard Thompson was playing the hell out of a guitar with his hands and ripping our hearts out with his voice while all this was going on. Jerry Douglas, maybe the best Dobro player period, was next. He had three of the best musicians you could want to hear playing with him but without Allison Kraus singing, It just couldn't find anything left in my soul to grab but I watched and listened and promised my feet I would do nice things for them, maybe next week, but for now, they would just have to suffer because I'm listening to all the music I can and that's that!
Two blocks from the Mormon Temple is what used to be the Dead Goat Saloon. It was a funky music bar where Canoe Magazine has traditionally thrown a party for their advertisers, with free beer, live music such as the immortal "Billy Bacon and the Forbidden Pigs". Canoe had the venue booked again this year but three months before our show, the owner decided he could make more money running a strip bar and changed the name to the Wild Goat Saloon and brought in the girls who were serving the beer and telling us to come back tomorrow night when they would not be wearing all these skin tight barely covering anything at all clothes. It was an interesting night, starting with the fact that they would not let my seventeen year old son past the front desk. While I was checking with my buddy who was the Editor of Canoe to see if he could work anything out, Joseph was chatting up the girl out front, or vice versa in his version.
"Where's your fake ID?" she asked him. "This is Salt Lake City! You have to have a fake ID to have any fun in this town! Don't you know how to use the Internet?"
Joseph asked her, "What happens if I come back in an hour with an ID? You already know me."
"You'll get in." She beamed a 500 watt smile at him and he beamed a 1000 watt smile right back at her.
"Forget it!" said the dad. The son and the girl both smiled at each other as I dragged him away to seek food. "Think about it!" I told him, "At seventeen, you have now been thrown out of more bars than your father in his entire life." We got thrown out of two more bars that we thought were restaurants before the supper was secured. We finally got served in the sleaziest place we went to. How it managed to be a restaurant and not a bar was beyond us. The City Fathers know best, however. Who are we to question? The barbeque was decent.
The next night I was back in the Goat, but upstairs in the "restaurant" part for the American Whitewater gathering. AW is a non profit that saves rivers and does a damn fine job of it. They have good and dedicated people trying their best to do good for the world with not enough money. They had managed to rent a room and get us some food. After that it gets weird. Downstairs is the Crazy Goat "Gentleman's club" which is bullshit for strip bar. Upstairs, we were in a nice old wooden floored room with a wet bar and a "restored factory" decor, except for the incongruous glass chandelier hanging overhead indicting it's new incarnation. I can hear the deep voice of the announcer:
"Imagine if you will, the dedicated and serious people, gathered together in a small room for purposes of saving the world. As speeches are being made and the participants think of higher things, Girls walk out of the side room that now serves them as a place to change into their dance outfits...which is to say no outfits whatsoever. As they step out of the dressing room, "dressing" is conversely the wrong name for this room, They walk hurriedly across the floor, exactly between those speaking and those listening, through the only open space there is in the room. One of them has a Teddy bear and has trouble closing her robe and hanging on to the little bear at the same time, as she reveals what is to be revealed on her way to the stairway that leads to the underworld below where there will be a small platform in the middle of another slightly larger room. The dedicated and serious people up above are trying not to notice the girls who are headed down below. They are trying not to think about the teddy bear. There is no restroom up here. It is down below and you have to walk across the room which has the small platform to get there. Some of the men in the upstairs room containing high minded and dedicated people have now realized that they have to pee really bad.
"Welcome to the Twilight Zone!"
I left to go hear Richard Thompson before I myself needed to go downstairs. I am still wondering about the bear, but I shall never know, unless those who know who they are but shall remain nameless in this essay, tell me.
Peace,
Steve
What have you folks done to good old muggy Tennessee while I've been in Utah? I get back and find the best August weather in years: sunny, coolish, and humidity well below the normal 90%. I can take this!
I was at the Outdoor Retailer show lusting over things I disdain in my conscience...consumer goods. I am not a good shopper. I walk into a store, get what I came for, and leave. Women, my long suffering wife chief amongst them, think I am the worst of males for not looking at 59 different shirts in four different stores before going back and buying the second one I picked up. The only time I really understand what shopping is about is in a bookstore. Then I understand what it means to make choices. Do I keep the book on cabin architecture and put back the collection of Edgar Allen Poe novellas, or break the budget and take them both home? Ah, the rush!
The outdoor show takes up most of Salt Lake City. The merchants and purveyors of life's necessities feed upon us like leeches, sucking our blood from every tiny capillary near enough to the surface of our skin for their mouth parts to eviscerate. The combination of fundamental Mormonism and capitalist blood lust is a frightening concurrence, so evil in nature that I decided to take my 17 year old son with me. Hey, a boy's gotta have some fun in life, eh?
The LDS church fathers want our money so badly that they roil in hypocrisy, soiling the waters in the streets surrounding their holiest of temples with booze, strip joints, and the most polite of drunken panhandlers in every nook and cranny of downtown Salt Lake.
The city fathers have resorted to all sorts of ploys to reduce the numbers of homeless at our convention. Over in the next state, Las Vegas officials cried "Foul" when it was discovered that the LDS members who dominate local and state government had overwhelmingly supported a secret plan that gave the homeless some cash in their pocket and a bus ticket to Las Vegas. Hey, sin city. here they come!
Of all the places in America that you are most likely to get wet while walking around the city, SLC is foremost. Not because of the rain, it's a near desert after all. No, it is because of the water sprinklers that they keep firing off to keep the homeless from being able to sleep in the shrubbery and on the grass next to the sidewalks. It took me years to learn to ignore the sprinklers because you dry off in seconds with the desert humidity. It's funny to read the daily paper about the water crisis while walking by millions of gallons a day running down the side of the city streets and into the sewer lines. Really smart folks, those city fathers.
They do put on some good music for us, though. I could not get to all the shows I wanted to because there was so much happening. After the first full day my feet were killing me from walking and standing around. It is apparently illegal to have a chair in your display booth. Must be! We are required to stand up and smile and look other tired folks right in the eye until we drop. So there I was, at the free outdoor concert in the town square, listening to Richard Thompson sing about a truly evil bastard who rides a rather old Vincent motorcycle hitting on a poor but luscious Irish girl named Molly. Thompson's voice sounds like he is singing about the Edmund Fitzgerald with a British accent, but he rips you apart inside and everytime the "thoroughly dangerous man" gets his insides blown out by the shotgun of a man he is about to rob, I cry for him. The only good news is that Molly gets his bike. Since it is a free concert, I am standing next to a six foot five guy smoking like an incinerator, and wearing a "cat in the hat" hat which made him half a foot taller than Keith Van Horn the Utah Jazz basketball player who I had just walked by inside the Marriot. He was wearing a tuxedo and going to a fundraiser for cancer, where they will raise money by auctioning off giutars signed by great humanitarians such as Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, and Willie Nelson. Less than 1000 feet away I was standing next to a goofy guy wearing a Dr. Seus hat and scaring children by merely leaning over and boming a "Hello, young man!" at them with a big goofy tobacco stained grin. If this guy wasn't homeless, he missed a good chance. He kept taking a huge drag on his cigarette and leaning almost down to the ground to get in my face and tell me how he knows all the great musicians I've never heard of, exhaling in the process. The saving grace was that he, at least, had had some sort of bath recently, though my airways had closed up to the point that I couldn't have told by that time.
Richard Thompson was playing the hell out of a guitar with his hands and ripping our hearts out with his voice while all this was going on. Jerry Douglas, maybe the best Dobro player period, was next. He had three of the best musicians you could want to hear playing with him but without Allison Kraus singing, It just couldn't find anything left in my soul to grab but I watched and listened and promised my feet I would do nice things for them, maybe next week, but for now, they would just have to suffer because I'm listening to all the music I can and that's that!
Two blocks from the Mormon Temple is what used to be the Dead Goat Saloon. It was a funky music bar where Canoe Magazine has traditionally thrown a party for their advertisers, with free beer, live music such as the immortal "Billy Bacon and the Forbidden Pigs". Canoe had the venue booked again this year but three months before our show, the owner decided he could make more money running a strip bar and changed the name to the Wild Goat Saloon and brought in the girls who were serving the beer and telling us to come back tomorrow night when they would not be wearing all these skin tight barely covering anything at all clothes. It was an interesting night, starting with the fact that they would not let my seventeen year old son past the front desk. While I was checking with my buddy who was the Editor of Canoe to see if he could work anything out, Joseph was chatting up the girl out front, or vice versa in his version.
"Where's your fake ID?" she asked him. "This is Salt Lake City! You have to have a fake ID to have any fun in this town! Don't you know how to use the Internet?"
Joseph asked her, "What happens if I come back in an hour with an ID? You already know me."
"You'll get in." She beamed a 500 watt smile at him and he beamed a 1000 watt smile right back at her.
"Forget it!" said the dad. The son and the girl both smiled at each other as I dragged him away to seek food. "Think about it!" I told him, "At seventeen, you have now been thrown out of more bars than your father in his entire life." We got thrown out of two more bars that we thought were restaurants before the supper was secured. We finally got served in the sleaziest place we went to. How it managed to be a restaurant and not a bar was beyond us. The City Fathers know best, however. Who are we to question? The barbeque was decent.
The next night I was back in the Goat, but upstairs in the "restaurant" part for the American Whitewater gathering. AW is a non profit that saves rivers and does a damn fine job of it. They have good and dedicated people trying their best to do good for the world with not enough money. They had managed to rent a room and get us some food. After that it gets weird. Downstairs is the Crazy Goat "Gentleman's club" which is bullshit for strip bar. Upstairs, we were in a nice old wooden floored room with a wet bar and a "restored factory" decor, except for the incongruous glass chandelier hanging overhead indicting it's new incarnation. I can hear the deep voice of the announcer:
"Imagine if you will, the dedicated and serious people, gathered together in a small room for purposes of saving the world. As speeches are being made and the participants think of higher things, Girls walk out of the side room that now serves them as a place to change into their dance outfits...which is to say no outfits whatsoever. As they step out of the dressing room, "dressing" is conversely the wrong name for this room, They walk hurriedly across the floor, exactly between those speaking and those listening, through the only open space there is in the room. One of them has a Teddy bear and has trouble closing her robe and hanging on to the little bear at the same time, as she reveals what is to be revealed on her way to the stairway that leads to the underworld below where there will be a small platform in the middle of another slightly larger room. The dedicated and serious people up above are trying not to notice the girls who are headed down below. They are trying not to think about the teddy bear. There is no restroom up here. It is down below and you have to walk across the room which has the small platform to get there. Some of the men in the upstairs room containing high minded and dedicated people have now realized that they have to pee really bad.
"Welcome to the Twilight Zone!"
I left to go hear Richard Thompson before I myself needed to go downstairs. I am still wondering about the bear, but I shall never know, unless those who know who they are but shall remain nameless in this essay, tell me.
Peace,
Steve
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
A Prize at Water's edge
Just talked to the Sheriff.
Very interesting.
Some of you folks will know that we have several mysteries hanging in the air waiting for some kind of resolution. Did they harvest the "garden" that my son found while turkey hunting last May? What ever happened to the girl whose purse we found? There was no workable scenario that we could come up with that explained all the details of that one. If you don't remember all the juice, you can go to www.whitescreek.blogspot.com archives and check for a refresher on the details. Here's the short version.
The girl is fine.
She was hanging out with friends, I read that to mean camping out and partying for the weekend, when they got a lot of rain and the creek rose, washing away her purse and its contents. Must have been partying really really hard for that to happen. I can only imagine....
We found it on the creek bank, looking like it had spent some time in the water and mud. but the contents had been emptied out on the bank. There were sunscreen, sunglasses, money, a cell phone, and a small pipe and a film canister of a suspicious oregano like vegetable substance, and her driver's license. A beach towel was lying beside the purse and we found her car keys sticking out of the sand under water in the edge of the creek. What is unsolved is how the contents got scattered out on the bank but the money and pot was not taken, which would most suredly be the case is a person had found it. One other thing we found up in the woods away from the purse when Officer David and I searched the woods originally...candy wrappers and an empty chip bag. We didn't pick up on what that meant at the time. I had all sorts of scenarios where the purse was stolen and the perp was interrupted before they could make off with the money, being scared by someone else going down to the creek to swim or whatever.
Just so you'll know, raccoons are genetically endowed with the knowledge of how coolers open, as well as zippers, and that candy bars and other goodies live inside purses.
A prize at water's edge for the lucky beast.
Officer David says that, other than a talking to, nothing will come of the pot. They have to catch the perpetrator with it in possession...could have been placed there by a felonious raccoon, after all, in a clever attempt to frame this innocent young girl.
Then we have the real reason the Sheriff called...They have made a new home for one of my neighbors from up on the Mountain. Bill, as we'll call him, looks to be the next horticulturalist at one of our fine institutions of correction here in Tennessee. He is very very good at growing things, according to the Sheriff. If you remember the "garden" my youngest son found, it was quite orderly and looked to be the work of a very concientious gardener. Turns out, Bill had several gardens. Not only that but he had them well documented in his books that he kept at home. They found Bill's home by following the well worn path from our original garden back through the woods, connecting several other gardens to Bill's nice little cabin.
At last count the authorities had harvested well over 2500 of Bill's well cared for high quality Marijuana plants. As with any good horticulturalist, Bill kept good records, with every garden having a name, of the variety of its plants, their watering and feeding schedule, growth measurements and history. I am impressed!
Doesn't it make you wonder that, if Bill could be that diligent and hard working, why couldn't he just work a regular job? With his work ethic he surely would have risen to the top. As it is, I predict he'll be promoted to trustee in no time at all.
You go, Bill!
Peace,
Steve
ps: There's actually more to this story but you'll have to wait. I can't tell you all I know just yet. We'll see.
Just talked to the Sheriff.
Very interesting.
Some of you folks will know that we have several mysteries hanging in the air waiting for some kind of resolution. Did they harvest the "garden" that my son found while turkey hunting last May? What ever happened to the girl whose purse we found? There was no workable scenario that we could come up with that explained all the details of that one. If you don't remember all the juice, you can go to www.whitescreek.blogspot.com archives and check for a refresher on the details. Here's the short version.
The girl is fine.
She was hanging out with friends, I read that to mean camping out and partying for the weekend, when they got a lot of rain and the creek rose, washing away her purse and its contents. Must have been partying really really hard for that to happen. I can only imagine....
We found it on the creek bank, looking like it had spent some time in the water and mud. but the contents had been emptied out on the bank. There were sunscreen, sunglasses, money, a cell phone, and a small pipe and a film canister of a suspicious oregano like vegetable substance, and her driver's license. A beach towel was lying beside the purse and we found her car keys sticking out of the sand under water in the edge of the creek. What is unsolved is how the contents got scattered out on the bank but the money and pot was not taken, which would most suredly be the case is a person had found it. One other thing we found up in the woods away from the purse when Officer David and I searched the woods originally...candy wrappers and an empty chip bag. We didn't pick up on what that meant at the time. I had all sorts of scenarios where the purse was stolen and the perp was interrupted before they could make off with the money, being scared by someone else going down to the creek to swim or whatever.
Just so you'll know, raccoons are genetically endowed with the knowledge of how coolers open, as well as zippers, and that candy bars and other goodies live inside purses.
A prize at water's edge for the lucky beast.
Officer David says that, other than a talking to, nothing will come of the pot. They have to catch the perpetrator with it in possession...could have been placed there by a felonious raccoon, after all, in a clever attempt to frame this innocent young girl.
Then we have the real reason the Sheriff called...They have made a new home for one of my neighbors from up on the Mountain. Bill, as we'll call him, looks to be the next horticulturalist at one of our fine institutions of correction here in Tennessee. He is very very good at growing things, according to the Sheriff. If you remember the "garden" my youngest son found, it was quite orderly and looked to be the work of a very concientious gardener. Turns out, Bill had several gardens. Not only that but he had them well documented in his books that he kept at home. They found Bill's home by following the well worn path from our original garden back through the woods, connecting several other gardens to Bill's nice little cabin.
At last count the authorities had harvested well over 2500 of Bill's well cared for high quality Marijuana plants. As with any good horticulturalist, Bill kept good records, with every garden having a name, of the variety of its plants, their watering and feeding schedule, growth measurements and history. I am impressed!
Doesn't it make you wonder that, if Bill could be that diligent and hard working, why couldn't he just work a regular job? With his work ethic he surely would have risen to the top. As it is, I predict he'll be promoted to trustee in no time at all.
You go, Bill!
Peace,
Steve
ps: There's actually more to this story but you'll have to wait. I can't tell you all I know just yet. We'll see.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Oh my gosh, I'm home! Muggy, rainy, beloved, home. Actually it isn't bad here. We had the windows and balcony doors open all night in the bedroom and no air conditioner on. It's a lovely 68 degrees out and I had to drink my first cup of my prime addiction outside. The frogs are still going off after the storm last night. It's the end of July already. Even the Katydids are wearing out. What's up with the frogs trying to carry on like that? You would think they were involved in some kind of midlife crisis for amphibians. I wonder what a trophy toad looks like. Lumps and bumps in all the right places?
I have to make myself get busy sometimes, otherwise I'll just stare out over the gorge and be happy. That's wrong, isn't it? I should be worrying about something or repenting for some nefarious deed that I only thought about doing.
This summer, in spite of the high gas prices (which are actually stupidly low to any world traveler), I have burned a fair amount of fossil fuel visiting family, friends, and the like, and I'm not done yet. I have a couple of visitations yet to perform and a college or two to tour for my eldest who graduates in 10 months. Dang!
The money I put away for college has followed the stock market and the cost of college has followed the cost of prescription drugs for old people of which I am fast becoming one. Having a child or two headed for college hastens the process, it appears. It has been a test for me, but I find my manly man self turning into my mother, in the "What are you going to pursue as a career for the rest of your life?" mode. This, we ask of teenagers, while refusing to consciously admit that we ourselves still have no clue as to what we want to do when we grow up. Too often the things that make us money are no fun...or against the law. Still some decision of some sort or another has to be made, and some concession to preparing for life after Dad has to be made.
When I think about what I learned in college that prepared me for my career, I get more confused. The facts and skills base that I picked up at the various institutions of learning I attended was obsolete within a few minutes of my entering the business world. I think you go to college to learn how stupid you are, which you don't actually learn until you leave college and try to talk someone out of a paycheck.
I have this strong personal idea that my children should, at some point in their school life, encounter a rigorous and demanding academic program just like I did. The problem with my experience with this four year period of unreachable goals was that it occurred during my third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. I learned to think critically and question everything. Got me in a lot of trouble throughout my life but, by golly, I can see the trees for the forest, though sometimes only in the retrospection of a mistake made.
I think we have a reasonable school system here in my home county, with all the problems of the world in microcosm but with enough teachers who actually give a flip to make it worthwhile. My own were Miss Walton, Ms Rattery, Mr. Wilkes, I thank you. What a snot I was (still am! ;>) Thanks for letting me to live, though I know the alternative must have crossed your mind at times. Now I hope that my kids can encounter the two or three teachers in higher education that will make a difference for them. Oscar Stembridge, you were the best of all time. Who would have thought an English teacher would be the best for a tech weenie like me? I still don't understand sentence construction but I read a lot.
And David Summers! Head of the Electrical Engineering department at Southern Tech...Still my friend after thirty years. I owe you.
These are the people I want my kids to meet. These are the people who will place seemingly impossible demands on young students who will learn more in failure than success. These are the people that will praise the good effort and show these kids that they are capable of excellence, but that it does not come cheaply. These are the people who suffer the ridiculous system they have work within and still they teach our children.
All I have to do now is find them and ship off my boys to sit at their feet. The search is on for the right ones for my kids, but you know what? These people are everywhere! There aren't enough of them, but every learning institution has them, even the community college down the street. A good education is everywhere you look if you want it. The problem with the world is that so is ignorance!
Peace,
Steve
(Are these actually jokes? )
“President Bush said he also played a lot of sports as a child, but somehow the records were either lost or destroyed.” Jay Leno
"The Bush administration announced they want to lift the ban on logging as part of their No Tree Left Behind program." Jay Leno
I have to make myself get busy sometimes, otherwise I'll just stare out over the gorge and be happy. That's wrong, isn't it? I should be worrying about something or repenting for some nefarious deed that I only thought about doing.
This summer, in spite of the high gas prices (which are actually stupidly low to any world traveler), I have burned a fair amount of fossil fuel visiting family, friends, and the like, and I'm not done yet. I have a couple of visitations yet to perform and a college or two to tour for my eldest who graduates in 10 months. Dang!
The money I put away for college has followed the stock market and the cost of college has followed the cost of prescription drugs for old people of which I am fast becoming one. Having a child or two headed for college hastens the process, it appears. It has been a test for me, but I find my manly man self turning into my mother, in the "What are you going to pursue as a career for the rest of your life?" mode. This, we ask of teenagers, while refusing to consciously admit that we ourselves still have no clue as to what we want to do when we grow up. Too often the things that make us money are no fun...or against the law. Still some decision of some sort or another has to be made, and some concession to preparing for life after Dad has to be made.
When I think about what I learned in college that prepared me for my career, I get more confused. The facts and skills base that I picked up at the various institutions of learning I attended was obsolete within a few minutes of my entering the business world. I think you go to college to learn how stupid you are, which you don't actually learn until you leave college and try to talk someone out of a paycheck.
I have this strong personal idea that my children should, at some point in their school life, encounter a rigorous and demanding academic program just like I did. The problem with my experience with this four year period of unreachable goals was that it occurred during my third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. I learned to think critically and question everything. Got me in a lot of trouble throughout my life but, by golly, I can see the trees for the forest, though sometimes only in the retrospection of a mistake made.
I think we have a reasonable school system here in my home county, with all the problems of the world in microcosm but with enough teachers who actually give a flip to make it worthwhile. My own were Miss Walton, Ms Rattery, Mr. Wilkes, I thank you. What a snot I was (still am! ;>) Thanks for letting me to live, though I know the alternative must have crossed your mind at times. Now I hope that my kids can encounter the two or three teachers in higher education that will make a difference for them. Oscar Stembridge, you were the best of all time. Who would have thought an English teacher would be the best for a tech weenie like me? I still don't understand sentence construction but I read a lot.
And David Summers! Head of the Electrical Engineering department at Southern Tech...Still my friend after thirty years. I owe you.
These are the people I want my kids to meet. These are the people who will place seemingly impossible demands on young students who will learn more in failure than success. These are the people that will praise the good effort and show these kids that they are capable of excellence, but that it does not come cheaply. These are the people who suffer the ridiculous system they have work within and still they teach our children.
All I have to do now is find them and ship off my boys to sit at their feet. The search is on for the right ones for my kids, but you know what? These people are everywhere! There aren't enough of them, but every learning institution has them, even the community college down the street. A good education is everywhere you look if you want it. The problem with the world is that so is ignorance!
Peace,
Steve
(Are these actually jokes? )
“President Bush said he also played a lot of sports as a child, but somehow the records were either lost or destroyed.” Jay Leno
"The Bush administration announced they want to lift the ban on logging as part of their No Tree Left Behind program." Jay Leno
Oh good! I just checked the weather channel and the fog is really outside and not in my head as I feared. I tried to take a pic of the mist on the hillside but it doesn't do it justice. You'll have to imagine fog monsters crawling around in tendrils over the trees. The redtail hawks have decided to wait until later to go into the office, and are just sitting on convenient limbs being soggy. My head seems foggy and soggy and it is only the first night of the Democratic National Convention.
It will be over in 100 days, good or devastating.
I guess I'm probably the only person here that watched much of the DNC convention last night. Just so all of you will know, it was actually a lot better than the news coverage would have you believe. The woman on CNN was Don Rumsfeld's spokesperson before she became fair and balanced. You'll note the slur and innuendo in her commentary. Ann Coulter is covering for USA Today and had to be censored. Why any news organization would give her a forum is beyond me. They did have the decency to censor her remark that this was a convention of the "Spawn of Satan". I think they should have left it in so folks could see for themselves what she really is. Nothing makes me sadder about the state of my country than to see what passes for our news media now. Even so, it was fun to watch most of the commentators get caught up and say nice things about Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore.
James Earl Carter... looked right into America and told the plain truth about where we have been taken for the last three years. I wish I could make George W. Bush face him in his Sunday school class. You shouldn't lie to America! You shouldn't misslead us into a war to settle your own personal greivances and enrich your friends. You shouldn't play politics with the safety of our country. And folks, it is just plain evil to poison the world for profit. Go Jimmy! They loved him. Even the commentators, everyone I saw, were nice.
Al Gore... Everytime I see Al Gore I wish he had bigger balls. It was ultimately Gore's failure to realize the depth of the emptiness of the Neo-conservative conscience that let him step aside for the Bushistas. He gave a great speech. The crowd initially reacted by waving their Kerry-Edwards posters but before he was done they had put those down and were standing and cheering Al Gore, the man who was elected President but did not serve.
Bill Clinton owns any room he walks into. Hillary gave the speech that introduced him. She does a good job, but it was a token appearance in prelude to the man everyone really wants to hear. Everyone kept waiting for Hillary to kiss Bill but she never did. A good hug, yes, but she never gave in to our voyeurism.
I plan to find a transcript of Clinton's speech. he had to rush it a bit to get it all in and he only went one minute over his alloted time...a miracle for him. I remember sitting there thinking that this should be required reading for all voters. There was no political exaggeration but a clean dissection of the differences between John Kerry and what he will do as president and George Bush and what he has already done. It was clear, methodical, lively, and sincere...All reasons why Bill Clinton speaks at the beginning of the convention, as far from Kerry's time slot as possible. Now here's the thing: every person I have heard who has an ounce of objectivity has said that John Kerry is a decent, honest, and genuine person, completely contrary to the ad hominem attacks generated by Republican operatives. But!...No one claims Kerry is a great speaker. Having to follow John Edwards is bad enough but to have to follow Bill Clinton? No way.
Kerry is working his way around the country and will make his grand entrance toward the end of the convention. Let us hope that he is practicing his speech until he can just talk to us and laugh while he does it. If he reads his jokes, he will have a hard time. If he let's us somehow know that he's a friend of ours, he will dance into the Whitehouse.
*****
Here is a good view of the DNC from a formerly neutral observer:
God knows it's not perfect - not even close. I'm sure there was no shortage of vile hacks and corporate fat cats in the audience. And when it comes to actual policies, it's pretty clear the Democratic Party has about as much progressive backbone as a bowl of corn meal mush.
But compared to the sea of sour-looking honkies and fundamentalist zealots that have filled the seats (if not the stage) of every GOP convention I've ever watched, there's no question in my mind which side I'm on in this fight. It may not be my party, but those are my people, my America. I wish I could be there with them.
http://billmon.org/archives/001607.html
So here's the question: Can independant and swing voters remain in denial for the next 100 days or will they examine what the two candidates say and think about it? If there is any real examination Kerry wins!
Peace and Courage!
Steve
It will be over in 100 days, good or devastating.
I guess I'm probably the only person here that watched much of the DNC convention last night. Just so all of you will know, it was actually a lot better than the news coverage would have you believe. The woman on CNN was Don Rumsfeld's spokesperson before she became fair and balanced. You'll note the slur and innuendo in her commentary. Ann Coulter is covering for USA Today and had to be censored. Why any news organization would give her a forum is beyond me. They did have the decency to censor her remark that this was a convention of the "Spawn of Satan". I think they should have left it in so folks could see for themselves what she really is. Nothing makes me sadder about the state of my country than to see what passes for our news media now. Even so, it was fun to watch most of the commentators get caught up and say nice things about Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore.
James Earl Carter... looked right into America and told the plain truth about where we have been taken for the last three years. I wish I could make George W. Bush face him in his Sunday school class. You shouldn't lie to America! You shouldn't misslead us into a war to settle your own personal greivances and enrich your friends. You shouldn't play politics with the safety of our country. And folks, it is just plain evil to poison the world for profit. Go Jimmy! They loved him. Even the commentators, everyone I saw, were nice.
Al Gore... Everytime I see Al Gore I wish he had bigger balls. It was ultimately Gore's failure to realize the depth of the emptiness of the Neo-conservative conscience that let him step aside for the Bushistas. He gave a great speech. The crowd initially reacted by waving their Kerry-Edwards posters but before he was done they had put those down and were standing and cheering Al Gore, the man who was elected President but did not serve.
Bill Clinton owns any room he walks into. Hillary gave the speech that introduced him. She does a good job, but it was a token appearance in prelude to the man everyone really wants to hear. Everyone kept waiting for Hillary to kiss Bill but she never did. A good hug, yes, but she never gave in to our voyeurism.
I plan to find a transcript of Clinton's speech. he had to rush it a bit to get it all in and he only went one minute over his alloted time...a miracle for him. I remember sitting there thinking that this should be required reading for all voters. There was no political exaggeration but a clean dissection of the differences between John Kerry and what he will do as president and George Bush and what he has already done. It was clear, methodical, lively, and sincere...All reasons why Bill Clinton speaks at the beginning of the convention, as far from Kerry's time slot as possible. Now here's the thing: every person I have heard who has an ounce of objectivity has said that John Kerry is a decent, honest, and genuine person, completely contrary to the ad hominem attacks generated by Republican operatives. But!...No one claims Kerry is a great speaker. Having to follow John Edwards is bad enough but to have to follow Bill Clinton? No way.
Kerry is working his way around the country and will make his grand entrance toward the end of the convention. Let us hope that he is practicing his speech until he can just talk to us and laugh while he does it. If he reads his jokes, he will have a hard time. If he let's us somehow know that he's a friend of ours, he will dance into the Whitehouse.
*****
Here is a good view of the DNC from a formerly neutral observer:
God knows it's not perfect - not even close. I'm sure there was no shortage of vile hacks and corporate fat cats in the audience. And when it comes to actual policies, it's pretty clear the Democratic Party has about as much progressive backbone as a bowl of corn meal mush.
But compared to the sea of sour-looking honkies and fundamentalist zealots that have filled the seats (if not the stage) of every GOP convention I've ever watched, there's no question in my mind which side I'm on in this fight. It may not be my party, but those are my people, my America. I wish I could be there with them.
http://billmon.org/archives/001607.html
So here's the question: Can independant and swing voters remain in denial for the next 100 days or will they examine what the two candidates say and think about it? If there is any real examination Kerry wins!
Peace and Courage!
Steve
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Chuck will in the morning.
At least he will this morning, anyway. Before dawn this loud mouthed bird went off. It flew around the house and set up outside each open window and shouted in through the screens. Over and over and over. We called them whippoorwills growing up but that's a different bird. Whippoorwills go north for the summer and pass through here only during the nicest weather in the early spring. Chuck wills hang out all summer trying to get us to stay awake all night and sleep all day by harrassing us with the loudest most incessant "song" of the night in the animal kingdom. Even the owls and coyotes have the decency to shut up after a bit. I once lived in a very old farm house in South Carolina that was perched on a hill in the middle of several pastures. It had somehow become a sort of singles bar for chuck wills. I did love to hear them at first, but after a while it got to where I really really needed some sleep. I stared out the windows of that old house several times as a male went through his strut and grind mating song to impress a girl. I have not seen the mating noise mentioned in the bird books but I have it ground in to my memory. It sounds like a combination of the noises on a futuristic video pin ball game except for having no bells. The "boings" and "buzzes" are all there. Weird to hear for the first time, particularly in the middle of the night. I would give another night's sleep to experience it again but not every night's sleep like I had to do the last time. I was getting a bit nutty from deprevation before the mating was accomplished and the birds had to shut up and raise their kids which is about now in the scheme of things.
Why this morning's chuck will's widow got noisy, I don't know, but he pulled me from a serious dream sequence, none the less. I actually wanted to hear the bird better when it first started and had to overcome the shut mechanism in my eyes to force myself more awake. I remember my dreams much more clearly at such times but this one has the quality of a phone conversation that is breaking up with some clear moments and some static. My head was working on something and the dream was only metaphor. Women were talking. I don't know what they were saying but they weren't exactly happy. I've lived a lot of my life around unhappy women so it was nothing new. A long time ago I decided that the only time my Grandmother was happy was when she was miserable. My mom was a bit like that too. I think it is a Scotch-Irish thing.
I've noticed this again in the Irish somewhat recently. They are having a rather happy time giving the President of the United States hell right now. Even though both the president and the Irish were mad, only the Irish were happy. He is over there staying in Castles and trying to convince the Europeans that he is not a moron. It's not working.
The Bush team agreed to a television interview and demanded that all the questions that were going to be asked be provided at least three days in advance. They were, and the President's team had three days to get him primed up with the answers. It now turns out that the biggest balls in journalism are hanging on a woman named Carol Coleman. She had the temerity to demand that George Bush actually answer a question he had had three days to work on. He got mad and testy and never did answer the questions. Then the Bush team cancelled a planned interview with Laura Bush. Too bad the interview didn't come out until after Michael Moore's film opened.
That's it!!! That's what my dream was about! Unhappy women asking questions and not getting answers. In an early sequence in Moore's documentary we are on the House of Representatives floor when Al Gore has the ironic duty to certify his own stolen election. There are several Florida Congresswomen who are contesting the Florida vote. They have evidence, since verified by every single investigator that looked into it, that the voters in their districts were cheated out of their votes. They were making an absolutely constitutionally legal challenge to the election results that installed George W. Bush in the Presidency, except for one thing...In order to have legal validity, the challenge had to have the signature of a Senator of the United States. Just one! Not one single Senator would come forward and sign his name. There is one Senator I question more than any other at this point and that is Bob Graham, D-Fla. Former candidate for President. By all accounts, Bob Graham is an honorable man, particularly for a Senator. What the hell were you thinking, Bob?
I like the animals better than I like people some times. When a bird wakes me up in the night, it is nothing personal. A bird gotta do what a bird gotta do. People have no excuses. When a bird clips on to the stem of a plant sticking out of the ground and tells the whole world that he's a chuck will's widow, over and over and over again, it is just because a feeling came over him that said he had to. Sorry, gotta sing! Too bad it's 4:30 am. I forgive the bird. When a Senator, ok, 100 Senators, fail to do the right thing called for by the Constitution, I get mad and I remember it. John Kerry, you messed up too! Now you have to make it right.
Another thought hits me...If you or I had won something and found out that it was wrong, what would we do? There is no question that Al Gore won the most votes in Florida. Even with Kathryn Harris violating the Constitutional rights to vote of roughly 40,000 Floridians who should have had their vote counted, Gore won the recount when they counted the whole state. Bush lost, fair and square. Do you think that the man who "Promised to restore Integrity and Morality to the Whitehouse" should resign? Would that be the moral thing to do? Where is Integrity in staying on?
I sticking with the Bird on this one! Never did get back to sleep.
Here are some sites where you can click on a link and listen to the call of the chuck-will and the whip-poor-will to hear the difference in their songs.
Chuck will's Widow:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4160id.html
Whippoorwill:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4170id.html
Peace,
Steve
The guy just keeps on changing positions on things:
Flip flops and waffles:
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."
George W. Bush
Sept. 13, 2001
"I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
George W. Bush
March 13, 2003
At least he will this morning, anyway. Before dawn this loud mouthed bird went off. It flew around the house and set up outside each open window and shouted in through the screens. Over and over and over. We called them whippoorwills growing up but that's a different bird. Whippoorwills go north for the summer and pass through here only during the nicest weather in the early spring. Chuck wills hang out all summer trying to get us to stay awake all night and sleep all day by harrassing us with the loudest most incessant "song" of the night in the animal kingdom. Even the owls and coyotes have the decency to shut up after a bit. I once lived in a very old farm house in South Carolina that was perched on a hill in the middle of several pastures. It had somehow become a sort of singles bar for chuck wills. I did love to hear them at first, but after a while it got to where I really really needed some sleep. I stared out the windows of that old house several times as a male went through his strut and grind mating song to impress a girl. I have not seen the mating noise mentioned in the bird books but I have it ground in to my memory. It sounds like a combination of the noises on a futuristic video pin ball game except for having no bells. The "boings" and "buzzes" are all there. Weird to hear for the first time, particularly in the middle of the night. I would give another night's sleep to experience it again but not every night's sleep like I had to do the last time. I was getting a bit nutty from deprevation before the mating was accomplished and the birds had to shut up and raise their kids which is about now in the scheme of things.
Why this morning's chuck will's widow got noisy, I don't know, but he pulled me from a serious dream sequence, none the less. I actually wanted to hear the bird better when it first started and had to overcome the shut mechanism in my eyes to force myself more awake. I remember my dreams much more clearly at such times but this one has the quality of a phone conversation that is breaking up with some clear moments and some static. My head was working on something and the dream was only metaphor. Women were talking. I don't know what they were saying but they weren't exactly happy. I've lived a lot of my life around unhappy women so it was nothing new. A long time ago I decided that the only time my Grandmother was happy was when she was miserable. My mom was a bit like that too. I think it is a Scotch-Irish thing.
I've noticed this again in the Irish somewhat recently. They are having a rather happy time giving the President of the United States hell right now. Even though both the president and the Irish were mad, only the Irish were happy. He is over there staying in Castles and trying to convince the Europeans that he is not a moron. It's not working.
The Bush team agreed to a television interview and demanded that all the questions that were going to be asked be provided at least three days in advance. They were, and the President's team had three days to get him primed up with the answers. It now turns out that the biggest balls in journalism are hanging on a woman named Carol Coleman. She had the temerity to demand that George Bush actually answer a question he had had three days to work on. He got mad and testy and never did answer the questions. Then the Bush team cancelled a planned interview with Laura Bush. Too bad the interview didn't come out until after Michael Moore's film opened.
That's it!!! That's what my dream was about! Unhappy women asking questions and not getting answers. In an early sequence in Moore's documentary we are on the House of Representatives floor when Al Gore has the ironic duty to certify his own stolen election. There are several Florida Congresswomen who are contesting the Florida vote. They have evidence, since verified by every single investigator that looked into it, that the voters in their districts were cheated out of their votes. They were making an absolutely constitutionally legal challenge to the election results that installed George W. Bush in the Presidency, except for one thing...In order to have legal validity, the challenge had to have the signature of a Senator of the United States. Just one! Not one single Senator would come forward and sign his name. There is one Senator I question more than any other at this point and that is Bob Graham, D-Fla. Former candidate for President. By all accounts, Bob Graham is an honorable man, particularly for a Senator. What the hell were you thinking, Bob?
I like the animals better than I like people some times. When a bird wakes me up in the night, it is nothing personal. A bird gotta do what a bird gotta do. People have no excuses. When a bird clips on to the stem of a plant sticking out of the ground and tells the whole world that he's a chuck will's widow, over and over and over again, it is just because a feeling came over him that said he had to. Sorry, gotta sing! Too bad it's 4:30 am. I forgive the bird. When a Senator, ok, 100 Senators, fail to do the right thing called for by the Constitution, I get mad and I remember it. John Kerry, you messed up too! Now you have to make it right.
Another thought hits me...If you or I had won something and found out that it was wrong, what would we do? There is no question that Al Gore won the most votes in Florida. Even with Kathryn Harris violating the Constitutional rights to vote of roughly 40,000 Floridians who should have had their vote counted, Gore won the recount when they counted the whole state. Bush lost, fair and square. Do you think that the man who "Promised to restore Integrity and Morality to the Whitehouse" should resign? Would that be the moral thing to do? Where is Integrity in staying on?
I sticking with the Bird on this one! Never did get back to sleep.
Here are some sites where you can click on a link and listen to the call of the chuck-will and the whip-poor-will to hear the difference in their songs.
Chuck will's Widow:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4160id.html
Whippoorwill:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4170id.html
Peace,
Steve
The guy just keeps on changing positions on things:
Flip flops and waffles:
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."
George W. Bush
Sept. 13, 2001
"I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
George W. Bush
March 13, 2003
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Friday, June 25, 2004
Rained all day, stormed and messed up our plans to get outside so we decide to hit the movie. You know..."The" movie.
Wow! I took the family to see Farhenheit 9-11 last night. Waiting to get in, I looked at the faces of the people coming out, trying, as I usually do, to figure out what effect the movie had on them. I'm not sure what I expected but probably something like a "rah rah go team" mood. That's not what showed on the faces of the most diverse group of folks I have ever seen at one place in Tennessee. Some were talking and laughing loudly and some were drying tears. Some were just crying.
We had ordered our tickets on line and had one extra for the 5:10 pm show, thinking that one might be the easiest to get in on opening day. Standing in line we realized we were lucky. Everyone was talking with everyone else. The guy in front of us was in line to get tickets for the next day's show since they were sold out for all shows on Friday. When my wife told him she had gotten tickets over the Internet, he put this Duh look on his face and stepped out of line. A young woman was in front of us holding cash in her hand and I asked if she had her ticket. She said no but she really, really wanted to see this movie but was afraid she wouldn't get to. I sold her our extra ticket but she had to go through with us like a family member since we had a block of tickets printed out that wouldn't separate. We looked just like a nice family as the guy took our tickets except that Thomas's older sister was black.
I looked at a Middle Eastern looking group of women going in. They were smiling and friendly with traditional printed cloth covering their heads. Not one single man had on a suit or a red tie. There were lots of blue shirts in the crowd. That was the secret badge of the Moveon.org members.
The only seats we could get together were down front, dead center, three rows back. The previews were way too loud and I had curious, not entirely comfortable, emotions as I sat with my 15 year old son, through a trailer for a movie about a guy making ends meet by impregnating lesbians. Rated PG 13, the movie was, but the preview was "approved for all audiences". Good grief!
I expected much of the movie. I pay attention to what happens in my world. I knew all about the Saudi Bin Laden connections to the Bush family. I was not prepared for the emotional impact of connecting the dots with nothing more than news footage. I now think back at the Fox news talking heads trying to counter the effectiveness of Michael Moore's film by questioning his "facts". They're going to have a hard time with that because much of what he does is just show news file tape of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and the others contradicting themselves. What do you do when you call your own self a liar? How do you spin that?
There were things I didn't want to see. I cried several times and I hate very few things more than crying in movies. But every tear was ripped apart by laughter. I laughed hard and loud, time after time, except when I was crying. Moore let me off the hook at the end. The last emotional gut wrench was mitigated by the last guffaw. It was a clip of a speech George W. Bush gave in Tennessee. He did it to himself with no help from Michael Moore.
Then it was over. Two hours flew by. I am usually ahead of a film. I am rarely surprised and get impatient for them to be over. When one does surprise me after sending my insides reeling on a roller coaster ride, I am grateful. For Moore to have surprised me with things I already knew is nothing short of amazing. The juxtaposition of facts and events leads us to the inescapable conclusion. Unlike a Presidential campaign ad there is no fiction or wishful thinking presented in 9-11 to make the case. It is a documentary put together with not much more than news clips, network file footage, and interviews. This is the most entertained you will have ever been while being forced to think.
But be warned...It took nearly an hour and two glasses of wine for my insides to settle down enough for supper. I do not recommend that you go see Farhenheit 9-11... I order you to go... and take a Republican! Offer to pay their way.
As we all walked out of the movie, I tried to wipe my eyes casually and then look around. Everyone I looked at was either laughing or crying or trying not to. I saw the women with the covered heads and they were openly weeping. I understand.
America...What have we done?
Can we fix it? We have to!
Peace,
Steve
Rained all day, stormed and messed up our plans to get outside so we decide to hit the movie. You know..."The" movie.
Wow! I took the family to see Farhenheit 9-11 last night. Waiting to get in, I looked at the faces of the people coming out, trying, as I usually do, to figure out what effect the movie had on them. I'm not sure what I expected but probably something like a "rah rah go team" mood. That's not what showed on the faces of the most diverse group of folks I have ever seen at one place in Tennessee. Some were talking and laughing loudly and some were drying tears. Some were just crying.
We had ordered our tickets on line and had one extra for the 5:10 pm show, thinking that one might be the easiest to get in on opening day. Standing in line we realized we were lucky. Everyone was talking with everyone else. The guy in front of us was in line to get tickets for the next day's show since they were sold out for all shows on Friday. When my wife told him she had gotten tickets over the Internet, he put this Duh look on his face and stepped out of line. A young woman was in front of us holding cash in her hand and I asked if she had her ticket. She said no but she really, really wanted to see this movie but was afraid she wouldn't get to. I sold her our extra ticket but she had to go through with us like a family member since we had a block of tickets printed out that wouldn't separate. We looked just like a nice family as the guy took our tickets except that Thomas's older sister was black.
I looked at a Middle Eastern looking group of women going in. They were smiling and friendly with traditional printed cloth covering their heads. Not one single man had on a suit or a red tie. There were lots of blue shirts in the crowd. That was the secret badge of the Moveon.org members.
The only seats we could get together were down front, dead center, three rows back. The previews were way too loud and I had curious, not entirely comfortable, emotions as I sat with my 15 year old son, through a trailer for a movie about a guy making ends meet by impregnating lesbians. Rated PG 13, the movie was, but the preview was "approved for all audiences". Good grief!
I expected much of the movie. I pay attention to what happens in my world. I knew all about the Saudi Bin Laden connections to the Bush family. I was not prepared for the emotional impact of connecting the dots with nothing more than news footage. I now think back at the Fox news talking heads trying to counter the effectiveness of Michael Moore's film by questioning his "facts". They're going to have a hard time with that because much of what he does is just show news file tape of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and the others contradicting themselves. What do you do when you call your own self a liar? How do you spin that?
There were things I didn't want to see. I cried several times and I hate very few things more than crying in movies. But every tear was ripped apart by laughter. I laughed hard and loud, time after time, except when I was crying. Moore let me off the hook at the end. The last emotional gut wrench was mitigated by the last guffaw. It was a clip of a speech George W. Bush gave in Tennessee. He did it to himself with no help from Michael Moore.
Then it was over. Two hours flew by. I am usually ahead of a film. I am rarely surprised and get impatient for them to be over. When one does surprise me after sending my insides reeling on a roller coaster ride, I am grateful. For Moore to have surprised me with things I already knew is nothing short of amazing. The juxtaposition of facts and events leads us to the inescapable conclusion. Unlike a Presidential campaign ad there is no fiction or wishful thinking presented in 9-11 to make the case. It is a documentary put together with not much more than news clips, network file footage, and interviews. This is the most entertained you will have ever been while being forced to think.
But be warned...It took nearly an hour and two glasses of wine for my insides to settle down enough for supper. I do not recommend that you go see Farhenheit 9-11... I order you to go... and take a Republican! Offer to pay their way.
As we all walked out of the movie, I tried to wipe my eyes casually and then look around. Everyone I looked at was either laughing or crying or trying not to. I saw the women with the covered heads and they were openly weeping. I understand.
America...What have we done?
Can we fix it? We have to!
Peace,
Steve
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Frog days hang in the gorge.
Looking out as I sit here sipping the morning's allotment of juice from the evil bean, I can actually see the air. Lumpy and whitish, it moves up the creek, crawls over the far ridge and then changes its mind...confused and addled from the burden of too much water. Funny how the world works...In Colorado they are beginning to think the local drought will make the dust bowl years look like relief, while here at my home it rains most afternoons, enough to murk up the snorkeling but not enough to make whitewater to play in. I consider myself lucky to be here at this spot but I have to think about the West and wonder if I will live long enough to see the Cumberland Plateau become just as parched.
Anyone who has hiked in New Mexico or Arizona and has also spent much time in Eastern Tennessee will note the geographical resemblance of the two places. One has trees and one has cacti, but the mesas and arroyos of the West are nearly identical to the plateaus and gorges of the East when you get down to the dirt and rock. The crinoid fossil I saw emerging from the rock overlooking the Green River gorge in Colorado looks very much like the crinoid fossil I have laid into my hearth behind the wood stove. It came from Great Falls on the Caney Fork River in Tennessee. Both lived in shallow seas which have long since disappeared. The Twin Arches in Big South Fork could easily be in Moab. You just have to walk much closer to see them because of the trees. It is all about climate, which is all about water and heat. It is another form of the energy problem. During frog days on the plateau, we have our own form of the energy problem. The heat and humidity cause a shortage of energy when we need to be doing things. Lots of things get started and lots of things never get finished.
The climate in both the East and the West has changed. As a matter of geological record it pretty much is always changing all over the world. Humans are very short lived compared to the time frame of historical climate change. If we can't see it, well then it must not be happening. It's the "boiled frog" effect. I've seen this with crabs but I've never had any reason to boil a frog to test it. I have boiled a fair number of blue crabs and they will sit right there in the pot, never moving or trying to save themselves from taking that personal journey from crustacean to food, but only if you start with cold water. It's the slow change that gets them. I made the mistake of tossing one into hot water one time, and all hell broke loose around the camp. A pissed off crab is a frightening thing to confront.
Now we humans are getting to see what it's like. The last three months were the warmest on record in North America. Virtually every scientist in the world, who is not funded one way or another by an energy company, is concerned. Frankly, a whole bunch of the scientists that are funded by the energy companies are concerned. For that matter, even the President of Shell Oil Company is concerned and I'm pretty danged sure he is funded by an energy company. Even the American Military is concerned. The Pentagon has issued a position paper saying this is a huge problem and sent it to the President of the United States who is NOT concerned. He is more worried about being reelected than much of any thing else. He's trying to stay out of jail.
I think he is crazy. All his best buddies are going to be in jail so he could hang with all of them and just kick back for a few years. Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Rush Limbaugh...They could have their own basketball team at recess so why is Bush fighting it? After some consideration I think he needs a new motto to help boost his ratings. He's pretty unpopular right now. I think his new motto for reelection ought to be:
"Follow Me to the Apocalypse"
That should work with his most fervent voter base, don't you think?
Insiders at the Whitehouse are starting to say George W. Bush is crazy, too. When a Washington news organization published the startling revelations from Whitehouse aids saying The President was nuts like Nixon, nobody refuted it with any factual corrections. The conservative pundits merely attacked the news provider personal sexual history, as is customary. The allegations still stand that the Prez is losing it.
The Vice Prez seems to be losing it too. When ever he gives a speech he says something like, "Hey, I never said Saddam was involved in 9-11, but you know he was because I say so, even though every other knowledgeable person on the planet says I'm lying." To which the Fox News pundits will say, "See, we told you so!" And to which every body else will say,
"Huh?"
See! They're crazy. That is the only rational explanation. One thing you can notice is that when Conservatives have a problem, they accuse everybody else of the same thing. That's why you see Rush, who just fried his third marriage by virtue of drugs and infidelity, ranting about Bill's sex life. Now they have this mental instability issue they have to deal with so what do they do? They accuse every body else of being crazy! Here is a list of the people that conservatives have recently and publicly accused of being crazy:
Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Ann Richards, Jesse Jackson, Paul Wellstone, George Soros, Gray Davis, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Al Franken, Kevin Phillips, Bill Maher, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Susan McDougal, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Max Cleland, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton
And Al Gore! Al was branded crazy for bringing up the little problem of climate change way back when. I don't think I have heard one single conservative puppet, I mean pundit, say Al was right but he was and is... No boiled Frog, that Al.
So while the air gets heavier and heavier I will just try to keep my cool and watch the show. In the mean time I have a reading assignment for you... here is an excerpt from David Podvin:
"Conservatives are tantalizingly close to eradicating the American way of life as we know it, and they have no intention of allowing their cherished plans to be spoiled by someone who is so crazy that he insists upon telling the truth."
This is a well reasoned article that is a fun read, also. Get to it, frogs!
http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/040617_CrazyLikeAStatesman.htm
Peace,
Steve
Looking out as I sit here sipping the morning's allotment of juice from the evil bean, I can actually see the air. Lumpy and whitish, it moves up the creek, crawls over the far ridge and then changes its mind...confused and addled from the burden of too much water. Funny how the world works...In Colorado they are beginning to think the local drought will make the dust bowl years look like relief, while here at my home it rains most afternoons, enough to murk up the snorkeling but not enough to make whitewater to play in. I consider myself lucky to be here at this spot but I have to think about the West and wonder if I will live long enough to see the Cumberland Plateau become just as parched.
Anyone who has hiked in New Mexico or Arizona and has also spent much time in Eastern Tennessee will note the geographical resemblance of the two places. One has trees and one has cacti, but the mesas and arroyos of the West are nearly identical to the plateaus and gorges of the East when you get down to the dirt and rock. The crinoid fossil I saw emerging from the rock overlooking the Green River gorge in Colorado looks very much like the crinoid fossil I have laid into my hearth behind the wood stove. It came from Great Falls on the Caney Fork River in Tennessee. Both lived in shallow seas which have long since disappeared. The Twin Arches in Big South Fork could easily be in Moab. You just have to walk much closer to see them because of the trees. It is all about climate, which is all about water and heat. It is another form of the energy problem. During frog days on the plateau, we have our own form of the energy problem. The heat and humidity cause a shortage of energy when we need to be doing things. Lots of things get started and lots of things never get finished.
The climate in both the East and the West has changed. As a matter of geological record it pretty much is always changing all over the world. Humans are very short lived compared to the time frame of historical climate change. If we can't see it, well then it must not be happening. It's the "boiled frog" effect. I've seen this with crabs but I've never had any reason to boil a frog to test it. I have boiled a fair number of blue crabs and they will sit right there in the pot, never moving or trying to save themselves from taking that personal journey from crustacean to food, but only if you start with cold water. It's the slow change that gets them. I made the mistake of tossing one into hot water one time, and all hell broke loose around the camp. A pissed off crab is a frightening thing to confront.
Now we humans are getting to see what it's like. The last three months were the warmest on record in North America. Virtually every scientist in the world, who is not funded one way or another by an energy company, is concerned. Frankly, a whole bunch of the scientists that are funded by the energy companies are concerned. For that matter, even the President of Shell Oil Company is concerned and I'm pretty danged sure he is funded by an energy company. Even the American Military is concerned. The Pentagon has issued a position paper saying this is a huge problem and sent it to the President of the United States who is NOT concerned. He is more worried about being reelected than much of any thing else. He's trying to stay out of jail.
I think he is crazy. All his best buddies are going to be in jail so he could hang with all of them and just kick back for a few years. Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Rush Limbaugh...They could have their own basketball team at recess so why is Bush fighting it? After some consideration I think he needs a new motto to help boost his ratings. He's pretty unpopular right now. I think his new motto for reelection ought to be:
"Follow Me to the Apocalypse"
That should work with his most fervent voter base, don't you think?
Insiders at the Whitehouse are starting to say George W. Bush is crazy, too. When a Washington news organization published the startling revelations from Whitehouse aids saying The President was nuts like Nixon, nobody refuted it with any factual corrections. The conservative pundits merely attacked the news provider personal sexual history, as is customary. The allegations still stand that the Prez is losing it.
The Vice Prez seems to be losing it too. When ever he gives a speech he says something like, "Hey, I never said Saddam was involved in 9-11, but you know he was because I say so, even though every other knowledgeable person on the planet says I'm lying." To which the Fox News pundits will say, "See, we told you so!" And to which every body else will say,
"Huh?"
See! They're crazy. That is the only rational explanation. One thing you can notice is that when Conservatives have a problem, they accuse everybody else of the same thing. That's why you see Rush, who just fried his third marriage by virtue of drugs and infidelity, ranting about Bill's sex life. Now they have this mental instability issue they have to deal with so what do they do? They accuse every body else of being crazy! Here is a list of the people that conservatives have recently and publicly accused of being crazy:
Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Ann Richards, Jesse Jackson, Paul Wellstone, George Soros, Gray Davis, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Al Franken, Kevin Phillips, Bill Maher, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Susan McDougal, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Max Cleland, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton
And Al Gore! Al was branded crazy for bringing up the little problem of climate change way back when. I don't think I have heard one single conservative puppet, I mean pundit, say Al was right but he was and is... No boiled Frog, that Al.
So while the air gets heavier and heavier I will just try to keep my cool and watch the show. In the mean time I have a reading assignment for you... here is an excerpt from David Podvin:
"Conservatives are tantalizingly close to eradicating the American way of life as we know it, and they have no intention of allowing their cherished plans to be spoiled by someone who is so crazy that he insists upon telling the truth."
This is a well reasoned article that is a fun read, also. Get to it, frogs!
http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/040617_CrazyLikeAStatesman.htm
Peace,
Steve
Monday, June 21, 2004
I think the last time I slept all the way through the night was in 1956. I usually drop into the "dead zone" for four or five hours and then cat nap until I get up. My wife is a saint for several reasons but this has to be a big one. When I wake up, I usually listen to the world. There's a lot going on at night.
Here in the gorge we are in that time between the frogs and the katydids. If we have any kind of rain the tree frogs go off. Not in any steady background noise way but erratically loud then nothing. Why is it the "nothing" that wakes us up? This all changes in a few weeks. Katydids will rock the gorge...all night long. They don't have the nothing periods while it's dark. All they have is daytime. If you can't sleep with the katydid throbulator rocking these hills, you had better stay in town. I look at them crawling around the screens and wonder how a big green cricket can make such a racket. It's all about cricket love, though, and somehow they manage to do what has to be done, sometime in the night. It will take them about a month once they get started, and this time of year, when I wake up, I try to hear the first rachet from the first bug that reaches sexual maturity. Does he live long enough to score? Is it the male that sings? Ah, the questions, I mean the really big questions, that hover over life wating for answer.
Here's the big question that hit me last night or this morning while I was listening for bug song:
Will conservatives realize that conservatism doesn't work before the Bushistas destroy America?
Of course Liberalism in pure form doesn't work all that well either but it is far more benign and nobody has to die for it. Liberals don't have to lie consciously to promote their mission like Conservatives do. Think about it...There is no single bit of evidence more profound than the Bush / Cheney insistance that Saddam was connected with 9-11. There is something really sick about that one. On one hand we have a bipartisan commission that unanimously says, "It ain't so!" Then what happens? Cheney goes on TV and says Saddam was promoting the terrorism that brought down the towers. Then they get support from another defining icon of conservatism, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin who backs them up with something that Bush's own security chief says is bogus! If Conservatives stopped lying the whole movement would collapse.
Want to see what happens when a society goes Conservative? Look at Israel. Since the Conservative party gained total control of the country by whipping up the fears of the electorate, the economy has been destroyed. The GNP of Israel is now less than one third of what it was before and absolutely no one feels safer. It is as obvious as the indightment papers for Arial Sharon that Conservatives cannot run an economy because they do not know how to make money...they only know how to steal it!
Take the two at the top right now. Bush stole his by following the advice of Ken Lay. It involved off the books deals to con the stockholders of Harken Energy. He stole nearly a million dollars this way from his alma mater's endowment fund. Cheney will probably be indighted in Europe for bribery while he was CEO of Halliburton. He still insists that he has nothing to do with Halliburton now that he is Vice President. No small lie, that! He holds stock options for several hundred thousand shares of Halliburton stock and holds mutual funds that are primarily invested in Halliburton. Couple that with Halliburton's shameful handling of the Iraq war troup support and mishandling of roughly $600,000,000.00. If Bush loses the election there will be indightments. Gotta stay in power so keep lying, boys.
So what started me thinking about this?
Bill Clinton...He has a memoir.
So what do conservative pundits do? They start panting about Monica. Bill lied about having sex with her. He's a liar. When Bill goes on 60 minutes what does he want to talk about as the failures of his Presidency? Health Care and Social Security reform. What do the Conservatives want to talk about? Sex! Near as I can tell, it was pretty rushed and not really actual sex as I think of it anyway. I'm not defending it but I'm not judging it either. You would think that Conservatives didn't have sex from the way they rant on TV and radio. Oh wait...The number one Conservative spokesman is getting a divorce right now because of sex...and drugs...and he lied about it. And you know what? Not one bit of anything that has to do with sex has anything to do with the future of America!
Lying about sex is nothing!
Lying about an imminent threat from Iraq, and Afghanistan, and no bid contracts, and stealing elections, and driving America deep into debt, and ruining the air we have to breathe, and lying about the arsenic in the water we have to drink, and lying about why Osama hates us, and why we should sacrifice our children in a war we can't win, and lying about committing treason...Lying like that is something! Something despicable.
Conservatism falls apart if we make them tell the truth.
There's one other off the wall contradiction that hit me during the night. Why is it exactly that Dick Cheney wants to cut taxes? Without tax money...He has nothing to steal! Halliburton goes broke and loses his ass.
Well the Katydids had better get going soon so I can calm down. All this thinking about sex has me all flustered anyway. Katy did but I didn't...and I'm not lying!
Peace,
Steve
Here in the gorge we are in that time between the frogs and the katydids. If we have any kind of rain the tree frogs go off. Not in any steady background noise way but erratically loud then nothing. Why is it the "nothing" that wakes us up? This all changes in a few weeks. Katydids will rock the gorge...all night long. They don't have the nothing periods while it's dark. All they have is daytime. If you can't sleep with the katydid throbulator rocking these hills, you had better stay in town. I look at them crawling around the screens and wonder how a big green cricket can make such a racket. It's all about cricket love, though, and somehow they manage to do what has to be done, sometime in the night. It will take them about a month once they get started, and this time of year, when I wake up, I try to hear the first rachet from the first bug that reaches sexual maturity. Does he live long enough to score? Is it the male that sings? Ah, the questions, I mean the really big questions, that hover over life wating for answer.
Here's the big question that hit me last night or this morning while I was listening for bug song:
Will conservatives realize that conservatism doesn't work before the Bushistas destroy America?
Of course Liberalism in pure form doesn't work all that well either but it is far more benign and nobody has to die for it. Liberals don't have to lie consciously to promote their mission like Conservatives do. Think about it...There is no single bit of evidence more profound than the Bush / Cheney insistance that Saddam was connected with 9-11. There is something really sick about that one. On one hand we have a bipartisan commission that unanimously says, "It ain't so!" Then what happens? Cheney goes on TV and says Saddam was promoting the terrorism that brought down the towers. Then they get support from another defining icon of conservatism, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin who backs them up with something that Bush's own security chief says is bogus! If Conservatives stopped lying the whole movement would collapse.
Want to see what happens when a society goes Conservative? Look at Israel. Since the Conservative party gained total control of the country by whipping up the fears of the electorate, the economy has been destroyed. The GNP of Israel is now less than one third of what it was before and absolutely no one feels safer. It is as obvious as the indightment papers for Arial Sharon that Conservatives cannot run an economy because they do not know how to make money...they only know how to steal it!
Take the two at the top right now. Bush stole his by following the advice of Ken Lay. It involved off the books deals to con the stockholders of Harken Energy. He stole nearly a million dollars this way from his alma mater's endowment fund. Cheney will probably be indighted in Europe for bribery while he was CEO of Halliburton. He still insists that he has nothing to do with Halliburton now that he is Vice President. No small lie, that! He holds stock options for several hundred thousand shares of Halliburton stock and holds mutual funds that are primarily invested in Halliburton. Couple that with Halliburton's shameful handling of the Iraq war troup support and mishandling of roughly $600,000,000.00. If Bush loses the election there will be indightments. Gotta stay in power so keep lying, boys.
So what started me thinking about this?
Bill Clinton...He has a memoir.
So what do conservative pundits do? They start panting about Monica. Bill lied about having sex with her. He's a liar. When Bill goes on 60 minutes what does he want to talk about as the failures of his Presidency? Health Care and Social Security reform. What do the Conservatives want to talk about? Sex! Near as I can tell, it was pretty rushed and not really actual sex as I think of it anyway. I'm not defending it but I'm not judging it either. You would think that Conservatives didn't have sex from the way they rant on TV and radio. Oh wait...The number one Conservative spokesman is getting a divorce right now because of sex...and drugs...and he lied about it. And you know what? Not one bit of anything that has to do with sex has anything to do with the future of America!
Lying about sex is nothing!
Lying about an imminent threat from Iraq, and Afghanistan, and no bid contracts, and stealing elections, and driving America deep into debt, and ruining the air we have to breathe, and lying about the arsenic in the water we have to drink, and lying about why Osama hates us, and why we should sacrifice our children in a war we can't win, and lying about committing treason...Lying like that is something! Something despicable.
Conservatism falls apart if we make them tell the truth.
There's one other off the wall contradiction that hit me during the night. Why is it exactly that Dick Cheney wants to cut taxes? Without tax money...He has nothing to steal! Halliburton goes broke and loses his ass.
Well the Katydids had better get going soon so I can calm down. All this thinking about sex has me all flustered anyway. Katy did but I didn't...and I'm not lying!
Peace,
Steve
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Something different today, although I often reference Bill Moyers as a conscience of America. It is evident from his writing that he is a strong believer in the "Fairness Code." This is a little but of a different take on it though, and I cannot completely rationalize the contradictions of the historical actions of even a man so great as Thomas Jefferson. By this I mean: How do you come to grips with having six of your own children kept as slaves? (I wonder if my momma knew about this concept?) There were powerful social forces at work that we can only intellectualize at this time point in Jefferson's future. Great change has come...and unfortunately gone.
Moyers reflects on the return of inequality. Here's an excerpt that may provoke you to read the entire piece:
"Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.
Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.
Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hennings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died -- the one request we think Sally Hennings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness."
What is the ultimate price of inequality? Historically an investor class of the wealthy has always destroyed itself. Why? because everyone else eventually can't stand it anymore:
"Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs -- if this isn't class war, what is?
It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong."
And now he gives us a call to action. Readers of my ravings may recognize a brother in arms:
"What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes -- there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives!"
Read it all...Please!
http://www.alternet.org/story/18954/
Talking with a Republican friend yesterday afternoon. He said the insider Repub jokes about the Clinton portrait unveiling were hilarious. I asked for an example and he said,
"The Clintons had to walk through the metal detectors...on the way out of the Whitehouse."
This, of course, is a continuation of the false myth created by Karl Rove. You remember the stolen W's from keyboards and all sorts of other vandalism that was supposed to have taken place. None of it was true. It was a Rovian lie, planted with the most mean spirited of motives. When I confronted my friend with the "fact" of that "Lie" he owned up to it with a "Yeah, I know." He is that rarest of human beings...an honest Republican, and I admire him for it. His must be a difficult way of life.
(Before you get huffy, let me also say that I think honest Democrat officials are pretty rare, too.)
But anyway, my friend came back at me with "They all lie" so that was supposed to mean the Rovian antics were ok, I guess, even though they were unjustly intended to hurt a man's reputation along with that of his wife. So my response was "No they don't! ...
"Name one lie that Clinton told that was not about his sex life?"
He looked me in the eye and his face went into a painful smile of the child confronted with the fact that the dog did not eat his homework..."I can't come up with anything" he said.
This man was a fairly high up Republican operative and he could not come up with anything. He is exactly the kind of man that is going to help us get rid of Bush. When he goes into the voting booth and closes the curtain, he will have to vote against the man who took over the Republican party and is trying to assist the book of Revelations. My friend will have to be honest with himself and put the best interests of his children first.
While I am thinking about it, "Thy shalt not commit adultery" came up in the Clintonian context. If you want something really strange to study in your bible this weekend, search out the biblical definition of "adultery" and the recommended punishments. I have been observing the Southern Baptist Convention get more biblical and I think that they should carry out all the recommended punishments on themselves as an example to all of the rest of us. In addition to the stonings for adultery I would particularly like to see them "punish" all of their devout membership that have broken this little commandment:
"Thy shalt not bear false witness against thy fellow man."
Throw in a few "punishments" for stealing and coveting and the Southern Baptist problem neatly goes away, don't you think? We may have to look over the list of infractions closely to get them all and some may squeak through on technicalities. I don't think we will see many stonings for the "Seething of calves in their mother's milk" for instance. (Had you forgotten that was a commandment? While it is not there on Judge Roy's rock, it is plainly sitting right there in Exodus. I guess God needs a little editing now and then.)
Think about it...I figure they're all gonna be guilty of one or two commandment transgressions and the bible very clearly calls for stoning. Once they are all wiped out there would be several benefits to the community. Right off the bat I can envision how taking back all that non-taxable land they have tied up in those ostentatious churches and freeing it up for gainful reuse would neatly revitalize all our local communities in short order. I like this idea so much I think I will call it "The Emerson Project."
Hey! Just kidding folks! Honest! Gotta go now...there's a veal recipe I want to try.
Peace,
Steve
Monday, June 07, 2004
Long Creek, S.C. June 6, 2004
"It's gonna rain," said David.
"Clever observation," I thought silently. It is June in the Southeastern United States, the Humidity is at least a couple of hundred, and the sky has been lumpy overcast rain clouds for days. Now some cluck comes from up in the tree top over us and David predicts rain with more conviction that anyone who has ever been on the local evening news.
I'm thinking about David's remarks yesterday morning as I sit here and listen to it rain on the metal roof above me. Oddly enough, David and I were looking at putting a metal roof on an old house that came into my possession years ago when I decided to help a marvelous elderly lady who had helped me once. Everyone called her Miss High. She was 90 when I bought her house, for too much probably, so she could move into an assisted living facility. The church ladies had decided she needed to do this because she was 90. When they came to move her out, the church ladies couldn't lift or tote anything themselves so Miss High did all the heavy lifting and carried her own furniture out to the van herself. She was only ninety, after all. I watched this and wondered exactly who it was that should be getting help. I also wondered how long she would live after she got stuck in a "home"?
Lois was her first name. She taught at the Long Creek Acadamy, which was founded around the end of World War II by a Baptist preacher to help educate children who needed to learn what he thought they needed to learn and not much else. When she and another teacher at the acadamy wanted to live in their own house and move out of the dormatory, they built this house for them. It wouldn't pass any code ever created but it used to keep the rain out. The men who built the house were being taught carpentry at the Academy so they could earn a living now that they were back from the war. Some of them did not have all their legs. By the time all of them were officially educated in their new trade, some of them did not have all their fingers either. I don't think Miss High's house was built by men who had made the honor roll in the house building class at the school. Particularly, I think they had slept through the foundation building part. If you could see the house you would understand. Lois lived to be 93 and passed away living out her days amongst a "bunch of snowball heads" as she used to call them. She didn't like old people...didn't consider herself one of them.
Long Creek was in the path of a total solar eclipse one day, and I walked down to her house and told her about it just as it started. We got her out a lawn chair and I made her a pin hole projector out of a piece of cardboard so she could watch the eclipse. I'd never seen her happier. She liked new ideas. I remember watching her as I walked away, sitting in her chair moving the cardboard, with the pinhole we punched in it, up and down to focus the crescent of the sun. She was sitting there when it got very dark as the shadow of the moon passed over us. One of those crystaline moments in my life is the sight of hundreds of crescent sun projections shing up from the ground under the huge oak trees in the yard right before it got darkest. The patches of light where the sun could get through the leaves of the tree had been focussed on the ground as the tree itself became hundreds of pinhole projectors. There were light crescents every where I stepped. Wow, I thought, I'm walking on the sun. Hundreds of suns, actually.
"A Rain Crow," said David. It had made a sound like a turkey "gulp" only raspier and softer. "When the Rain Crow calls it is gonna' rain soon." It was up in the projector oak tree high over our heads. I got my small binoculars out of the car and tried to find it. I had heard the name Rain Crow before but I didn't make the connection right away. It was a yellow billed cuckoo. I have watched them many times from inside my house. They stay high in the trees and eat mostly catapillars. Tent worms are high on the delicacy list if you are a yellow billed cuckoo. You also have no evolved defenses against flying into large panes of glass, either, if you are a yellow billed cuckoo. I, once, picked up the dead one that had just been claimed by my new house and wondered what to do. It was a beautiful bird...majestic and regal looking only a few minutes before. They sit up proud on tree limbs, holding their head up and chest out. They are big for birds that live in trees, about 12 inches from tip to tail...a pleasant buff brown on the back with a white chest that looks more like the ermine fur of a King's robe than feathers. I felt responsible for killing this creature and wondered what to do, short of boarding up the windows. I wound up cutting down the few small cherrie trees around the house that had tent catapillars in them. Now I rarely see a rain crow but I hear them all the time in the dense woods around the house. I have not held a dead one in my hand since I got rid of the attractive source of food next to the house and that is worth the loss of viewing this magnificent bird.
David was right, it's raining. Or I guess the rain crow was right. I'm glad I showed Miss High the eclipse. Tomorrow morning the planet Venus will pass in front of the sun. This was a tremendously important astronomical event the last few times it happened. It let astronomers determine several measurements that we take for granted today and caused all kinds of problems between astronomers and preachers. The preachers of the day were all stuck on what they called "Truth" and didn't have much use for what scientists call "fact". This is a proud tradition that is carried on today. You want to know what I think? Of course you don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway...I think that humankind will wipe out the Rain Crow and Humankind well before the rain crow evolves defenses against large panes of glass. I think Miss High would have liked to see the sillouette of Venus pass before the sun. I will get up tomorrow morning and try to see it myself but I don't think I will be successful. According to the Rain Crow, it's gonna' be raining.
Peace,
Steve
Here's a place to find out more about the Rain Crow.
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/03/030720.htm
I liked this picture and the site is interesting. There are several good shots taken around Cumberland Falls.
http://www.darkdarling.com/watersindex.html
"It's gonna rain," said David.
"Clever observation," I thought silently. It is June in the Southeastern United States, the Humidity is at least a couple of hundred, and the sky has been lumpy overcast rain clouds for days. Now some cluck comes from up in the tree top over us and David predicts rain with more conviction that anyone who has ever been on the local evening news.
I'm thinking about David's remarks yesterday morning as I sit here and listen to it rain on the metal roof above me. Oddly enough, David and I were looking at putting a metal roof on an old house that came into my possession years ago when I decided to help a marvelous elderly lady who had helped me once. Everyone called her Miss High. She was 90 when I bought her house, for too much probably, so she could move into an assisted living facility. The church ladies had decided she needed to do this because she was 90. When they came to move her out, the church ladies couldn't lift or tote anything themselves so Miss High did all the heavy lifting and carried her own furniture out to the van herself. She was only ninety, after all. I watched this and wondered exactly who it was that should be getting help. I also wondered how long she would live after she got stuck in a "home"?
Lois was her first name. She taught at the Long Creek Acadamy, which was founded around the end of World War II by a Baptist preacher to help educate children who needed to learn what he thought they needed to learn and not much else. When she and another teacher at the acadamy wanted to live in their own house and move out of the dormatory, they built this house for them. It wouldn't pass any code ever created but it used to keep the rain out. The men who built the house were being taught carpentry at the Academy so they could earn a living now that they were back from the war. Some of them did not have all their legs. By the time all of them were officially educated in their new trade, some of them did not have all their fingers either. I don't think Miss High's house was built by men who had made the honor roll in the house building class at the school. Particularly, I think they had slept through the foundation building part. If you could see the house you would understand. Lois lived to be 93 and passed away living out her days amongst a "bunch of snowball heads" as she used to call them. She didn't like old people...didn't consider herself one of them.
Long Creek was in the path of a total solar eclipse one day, and I walked down to her house and told her about it just as it started. We got her out a lawn chair and I made her a pin hole projector out of a piece of cardboard so she could watch the eclipse. I'd never seen her happier. She liked new ideas. I remember watching her as I walked away, sitting in her chair moving the cardboard, with the pinhole we punched in it, up and down to focus the crescent of the sun. She was sitting there when it got very dark as the shadow of the moon passed over us. One of those crystaline moments in my life is the sight of hundreds of crescent sun projections shing up from the ground under the huge oak trees in the yard right before it got darkest. The patches of light where the sun could get through the leaves of the tree had been focussed on the ground as the tree itself became hundreds of pinhole projectors. There were light crescents every where I stepped. Wow, I thought, I'm walking on the sun. Hundreds of suns, actually.
"A Rain Crow," said David. It had made a sound like a turkey "gulp" only raspier and softer. "When the Rain Crow calls it is gonna' rain soon." It was up in the projector oak tree high over our heads. I got my small binoculars out of the car and tried to find it. I had heard the name Rain Crow before but I didn't make the connection right away. It was a yellow billed cuckoo. I have watched them many times from inside my house. They stay high in the trees and eat mostly catapillars. Tent worms are high on the delicacy list if you are a yellow billed cuckoo. You also have no evolved defenses against flying into large panes of glass, either, if you are a yellow billed cuckoo. I, once, picked up the dead one that had just been claimed by my new house and wondered what to do. It was a beautiful bird...majestic and regal looking only a few minutes before. They sit up proud on tree limbs, holding their head up and chest out. They are big for birds that live in trees, about 12 inches from tip to tail...a pleasant buff brown on the back with a white chest that looks more like the ermine fur of a King's robe than feathers. I felt responsible for killing this creature and wondered what to do, short of boarding up the windows. I wound up cutting down the few small cherrie trees around the house that had tent catapillars in them. Now I rarely see a rain crow but I hear them all the time in the dense woods around the house. I have not held a dead one in my hand since I got rid of the attractive source of food next to the house and that is worth the loss of viewing this magnificent bird.
David was right, it's raining. Or I guess the rain crow was right. I'm glad I showed Miss High the eclipse. Tomorrow morning the planet Venus will pass in front of the sun. This was a tremendously important astronomical event the last few times it happened. It let astronomers determine several measurements that we take for granted today and caused all kinds of problems between astronomers and preachers. The preachers of the day were all stuck on what they called "Truth" and didn't have much use for what scientists call "fact". This is a proud tradition that is carried on today. You want to know what I think? Of course you don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway...I think that humankind will wipe out the Rain Crow and Humankind well before the rain crow evolves defenses against large panes of glass. I think Miss High would have liked to see the sillouette of Venus pass before the sun. I will get up tomorrow morning and try to see it myself but I don't think I will be successful. According to the Rain Crow, it's gonna' be raining.
Peace,
Steve
Here's a place to find out more about the Rain Crow.
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/03/030720.htm
I liked this picture and the site is interesting. There are several good shots taken around Cumberland Falls.
http://www.darkdarling.com/watersindex.html
Sunday, May 16, 2004
The Coyotes woke me up. I don't know why they howl or why the dogs join in, but when they go off, the whole gorge sound like sirens are everywhere. It is not like the wolf howl of old cowboy movies. It's more high pitched, almost a squeak that won't stop...and there are lots of them. They seem to be in groups. Three or four up behind the house, some across the creek, some below us, and some that are really close to the house. I wonder why do the dogs leave them alone if they are that close? There is some kind of truce between them. Or maybe they are afraid of each other. The coyotes and our dometicated yard dogs make a lot of noise at each other but that's it. Even the big rotwiellers over at the neighbors don't mess with the coyotes as far as I know. The coyotes come through the yard and the dogs seem to go where ever they want to in the woods and there don't seem to be any conflicts.
Also, I wonder what the main coyote diet consists of? I hear tall tales of them killing and eating calves but I don't think they actually kill them. I think they take the stillborn ones and that gives rise to the belief. No one has ever seeen them attack a calf around here and there is plenty of opportunity. We've had a good crop this year in the valley. Hamburger is everywhere you look. And as this mornings concert demonstrates, there are lots of coyotes around, so something doesn't work in that accusation. We're down on so some of the birds though. One hard working neighbor has tidied up his 200 acres, cleared the trees, cut the brush, planted hay grass, made everything neat and trimmed, and then says to me, "Something has done got all my quail!" I wonder why it never occurs to folk that there is some connection between wiping out all the places a quail has to hide from a coyote and the sudden reduction of the quail population?
But we are now out of quail here in the valley and no calves have been "killed" now that they have made it through the birthing trauma and I wonder what these things are eating? Deer? I don't think so. We see the momma's and know when the babies are born around here. The deer live amongst us like yard pets. We lose more of them to cars than hunters. The deer die off in spurts with blue tongue disease of something like that but mostly they wander around fine all year. A cold blooded animal might be able to eat voraciously once or twice a year but not a coyote. They're high energy beasts and gotta have fuel all the time. Nope, they're not eating deer, calves, or quail so what is it?
I think the answer is "everything"... Bugs, mice, weeds, and watermelon. Sounds like an old country music hit song, doesn't it? When we screw up the habitat for one animal it provides opportunity for another. If there are no quail out there in the pasture there are certainly plenty of grasshoppers and ground hogs now. I even have a ground hog, or wood chuck if you prefer, living under the cement carport at my office. They are like "Land Beavers" and have taken up residence eveywhere humans mow. I see them in nearly every community DOR (dead on the road) right alongside the possums. They look so fuzzy and cute but that has to be a ruse. They're slow! There ain't no way a nice fat, yard and garden fed, ground hog is going to outrun a coyote. You look at a ground hog's front teeth and you figure he dosn't need those things for chewing off clover blossoms. After a bit of thought over my morning bean juice, I have decided that the old tales about coyotes chewing off their legs to escape steel traps is bull pizzookie just like those tales of them killing calves. You look at the teeth on the business end of a ground hog and you have to figure there is another reason for any coyotes out there running around (running?) on three legs.
(Note to self: Keep a little further away from the Gound hog from now on!)
Well, that was fun. Now I have to moralize or this wouldn't be the Sunday Sermon, would it? Actually there is a pretty big moral in everything I just wrote having to do with unintended consequences and people being pretty much idiots when it comes to recognizing the long term result of their actions. But that isn't the sermon. I am going to have a guest sermonizer today who is much better than me at making the human race out to be morons. Kurt Vonnegut has been making us laugh and cry at ourselves for a long long time. He is an easy read and very entertaining. Let me know what you think.
Here is the teaser:
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."
Please read the rest of what he says. He is a wise man.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey
Peace,
Steve
Also, I wonder what the main coyote diet consists of? I hear tall tales of them killing and eating calves but I don't think they actually kill them. I think they take the stillborn ones and that gives rise to the belief. No one has ever seeen them attack a calf around here and there is plenty of opportunity. We've had a good crop this year in the valley. Hamburger is everywhere you look. And as this mornings concert demonstrates, there are lots of coyotes around, so something doesn't work in that accusation. We're down on so some of the birds though. One hard working neighbor has tidied up his 200 acres, cleared the trees, cut the brush, planted hay grass, made everything neat and trimmed, and then says to me, "Something has done got all my quail!" I wonder why it never occurs to folk that there is some connection between wiping out all the places a quail has to hide from a coyote and the sudden reduction of the quail population?
But we are now out of quail here in the valley and no calves have been "killed" now that they have made it through the birthing trauma and I wonder what these things are eating? Deer? I don't think so. We see the momma's and know when the babies are born around here. The deer live amongst us like yard pets. We lose more of them to cars than hunters. The deer die off in spurts with blue tongue disease of something like that but mostly they wander around fine all year. A cold blooded animal might be able to eat voraciously once or twice a year but not a coyote. They're high energy beasts and gotta have fuel all the time. Nope, they're not eating deer, calves, or quail so what is it?
I think the answer is "everything"... Bugs, mice, weeds, and watermelon. Sounds like an old country music hit song, doesn't it? When we screw up the habitat for one animal it provides opportunity for another. If there are no quail out there in the pasture there are certainly plenty of grasshoppers and ground hogs now. I even have a ground hog, or wood chuck if you prefer, living under the cement carport at my office. They are like "Land Beavers" and have taken up residence eveywhere humans mow. I see them in nearly every community DOR (dead on the road) right alongside the possums. They look so fuzzy and cute but that has to be a ruse. They're slow! There ain't no way a nice fat, yard and garden fed, ground hog is going to outrun a coyote. You look at a ground hog's front teeth and you figure he dosn't need those things for chewing off clover blossoms. After a bit of thought over my morning bean juice, I have decided that the old tales about coyotes chewing off their legs to escape steel traps is bull pizzookie just like those tales of them killing calves. You look at the teeth on the business end of a ground hog and you have to figure there is another reason for any coyotes out there running around (running?) on three legs.
(Note to self: Keep a little further away from the Gound hog from now on!)
Well, that was fun. Now I have to moralize or this wouldn't be the Sunday Sermon, would it? Actually there is a pretty big moral in everything I just wrote having to do with unintended consequences and people being pretty much idiots when it comes to recognizing the long term result of their actions. But that isn't the sermon. I am going to have a guest sermonizer today who is much better than me at making the human race out to be morons. Kurt Vonnegut has been making us laugh and cry at ourselves for a long long time. He is an easy read and very entertaining. Let me know what you think.
Here is the teaser:
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."
Please read the rest of what he says. He is a wise man.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey
Peace,
Steve
Friday, May 14, 2004
The one eyed man is king
Well, I woke up this morning and wondered if we had pulled out of Iraq yet. Then I found out that Rummy has solved the problem caused by all those pictures of American debauchery and torture of Iraqi prisoners...he banned cameras! There, you see how simple that was? No pictures, no problem!
I heard a former interrogator on a conservative show say that he was always taught that you didn't torture people because you just got bad intelligence. They'll say whatever you want them to in order to get you to stop. You know what that means, don't you? Those folks weren't being tortured to find out anything useful. The Guards were just plain mean and perverted!
Would you be interested in the actual number of arrests we have made in Iraq? I was kind of shocked....43,000! Of which, the Red Cross says 90% were mistakes. I guess we tortured them just to make sure they wouldn't confess to anything we didn't know about. Never can be too sure, you know.
Rumsfeld trained under Richard Nixon and knows that Nixon's only mistake was in not burning the tapes that proved he violated the Constitution. Rummy is not going to make the same mistakes...I don't mean he won't violate the Constitution, He'll just be a lot better at getting rid of the evidence.
That's why Rummy will have all the digital cameras confiscated. We'll see.
Now all he has left to do is get the Iraqis to love us and install a nice democracy of lackeys who will sell their oil only to Rummy's associates. I hope this happens soon so we can get back to fighting the war on Terror. I'm worried about something happening. it would be too convenient for Bush and Rummy if we had a major "event" just before the election.
Well, I woke up this morning and wondered if we had pulled out of Iraq yet. Then I found out that Rummy has solved the problem caused by all those pictures of American debauchery and torture of Iraqi prisoners...he banned cameras! There, you see how simple that was? No pictures, no problem!
I heard a former interrogator on a conservative show say that he was always taught that you didn't torture people because you just got bad intelligence. They'll say whatever you want them to in order to get you to stop. You know what that means, don't you? Those folks weren't being tortured to find out anything useful. The Guards were just plain mean and perverted!
Would you be interested in the actual number of arrests we have made in Iraq? I was kind of shocked....43,000! Of which, the Red Cross says 90% were mistakes. I guess we tortured them just to make sure they wouldn't confess to anything we didn't know about. Never can be too sure, you know.
Rumsfeld trained under Richard Nixon and knows that Nixon's only mistake was in not burning the tapes that proved he violated the Constitution. Rummy is not going to make the same mistakes...I don't mean he won't violate the Constitution, He'll just be a lot better at getting rid of the evidence.
That's why Rummy will have all the digital cameras confiscated. We'll see.
Now all he has left to do is get the Iraqis to love us and install a nice democracy of lackeys who will sell their oil only to Rummy's associates. I hope this happens soon so we can get back to fighting the war on Terror. I'm worried about something happening. it would be too convenient for Bush and Rummy if we had a major "event" just before the election.
Monday, May 10, 2004
It is interesting what you find if you hike around these Tennessee hills on a Sunday afternoon. I am sure that over the next few days, one of the things I will find is that a few blood sucking insects have tried to move in to the high rent districts on my body. I've caught several on the prowl already. It is one of the fees we pay to crawl around in the woods this time of year. I have been told that the name "tick" is from the sound fingernails make when disposing of the vile little beasts. Could be but who knows? I've found that other things I was earnestly told turned out to be false. It is good to learn this lesson in life as early as possible.
I met two couples camping together out beside the creek in one of our more remote campsites. They seemed very nice and kept a neat camp. They had two viscious watch dogs with them that I am sure would have ripped my ankles apart if they could have reached that high on my leg...looked like coyote food to me. It happens around here. I wonder why folks take a dog into the woods that will not provide but will require protection. Since these folks appeared to have spent a long time on this planet, I figure they are old enough to make their own mistakes. I was kind of proud to see somebody's grand or great grand parents out in the middle of nowhere having a good time. They were smiling and talking with one another in calm, quiet, reassured voices. There was a natural respect for others and the place where they were that I could sense.
When younger folk come out here, they usually bring guns, illegal substances, and what passes for music these days. It is not the music I dislike, actually, it is the 1100 watt noise system they seem to need to play it. That is how powerful one young man claimed his system was when I asked him to turn it off, recently. The base thumped inside my head even when I was still nearly 200 yards away. I used to play loud music too. I have only moderate hearing loss. What are these kids going to be like in 30 years having been exposed to a car sound system that is twice as powerful as my entire rock band was? At any rate the burning question is why does one leave the incessant roar of a noisy town and go to a pristine natural area in order to destroy the hearing of anyone within a quarter mile radius? If you are quiet and listen, there is music already here. I am sort of a blunt instrument where nature is concerned. I need to see a bird and have it sit there while I look it up in my field guide before I can determine what it is. My friend Pat was here Saturday and, as we walked around, Pat would name off the birds as they called invisibly from the leaf canopy. With the toads and tree frogs adding to the symphony, it was music enough for me.
I came upon another group of campers several miles away from the grandparents. Two men and a women were quietly sitting by the creek. I introduced myself and it turned out that one of the men and I knew of each other. We had actually been wanting to meet and this was the perfect situation. He was born and raised in Whites Creek gorge and his family owns most of the other side of the creek. The water is still up a bit so he was camped on my side which is fine with me. His thirteen year old son came up with a couple of fish he'd caught and we joked about how he was going to have to do better than that if we were going to have fish for supper. The kid grinned and said this was plenty enough for him, but it looked like the rest of us would have to open a can. Everybody laughed and relaxed. I noticed that the woman, who had been sitting in one man's lap when I walked up, now changed laps. All three of the adults took that moment to look at me and smile. I smiled too, told them to have a nice evening and I continued on my hike.
I was hiking while my youngest son was turkey hunting. Time was up so I called him on the radio. I had taken a looping path that would leave my new friends undisturbed and figured I'd better tell him which way I would be coming from. He was ready to go and hiked down the hill to meet me at a gravel road. He was nearly at the road when he said to me, "Dad, someone has a garden in here." "Really?" I said, "Anything growing?" "Lot's of little rows of plants," was the reply. I went to where he was and gave him a lesson in life. "Son, when you come up on something like this in a hidden spot, you tell the woods, "Oops...Sorry...Excuse me!" ...And you leave immediately. I did have to admire the effort that had been put into the "garden" by someone who was obviously not merely into personal consumption. Now I admire a hard worker and am a big proponent of free enterprise. Of the things wrong with the world, I don't think Ganja is a major item, and I actually surmise that more permanent harm will come from that 1100 watt sound system than occasional pot use. The problem here is that, unlike the campers, whoever had planted this garden on my land...was not being a good guest. I wish him no particular harm but he will have official visitors soon.
We chatted with a local officer on our drive home about the garden. He took down exact directions, asked a few other obvious questions and then looked at me with a big questioning look. There was somthing about this that he really wanted to know. In a serious tone of voice he asked, "Is the turkey hunting any good up there?" I suspect that in these last two days of turkey season those woods are going to get inspected fairly well.
I don't know what else to say except, "Oh wow, man, Peace!"
Steve
I met two couples camping together out beside the creek in one of our more remote campsites. They seemed very nice and kept a neat camp. They had two viscious watch dogs with them that I am sure would have ripped my ankles apart if they could have reached that high on my leg...looked like coyote food to me. It happens around here. I wonder why folks take a dog into the woods that will not provide but will require protection. Since these folks appeared to have spent a long time on this planet, I figure they are old enough to make their own mistakes. I was kind of proud to see somebody's grand or great grand parents out in the middle of nowhere having a good time. They were smiling and talking with one another in calm, quiet, reassured voices. There was a natural respect for others and the place where they were that I could sense.
When younger folk come out here, they usually bring guns, illegal substances, and what passes for music these days. It is not the music I dislike, actually, it is the 1100 watt noise system they seem to need to play it. That is how powerful one young man claimed his system was when I asked him to turn it off, recently. The base thumped inside my head even when I was still nearly 200 yards away. I used to play loud music too. I have only moderate hearing loss. What are these kids going to be like in 30 years having been exposed to a car sound system that is twice as powerful as my entire rock band was? At any rate the burning question is why does one leave the incessant roar of a noisy town and go to a pristine natural area in order to destroy the hearing of anyone within a quarter mile radius? If you are quiet and listen, there is music already here. I am sort of a blunt instrument where nature is concerned. I need to see a bird and have it sit there while I look it up in my field guide before I can determine what it is. My friend Pat was here Saturday and, as we walked around, Pat would name off the birds as they called invisibly from the leaf canopy. With the toads and tree frogs adding to the symphony, it was music enough for me.
I came upon another group of campers several miles away from the grandparents. Two men and a women were quietly sitting by the creek. I introduced myself and it turned out that one of the men and I knew of each other. We had actually been wanting to meet and this was the perfect situation. He was born and raised in Whites Creek gorge and his family owns most of the other side of the creek. The water is still up a bit so he was camped on my side which is fine with me. His thirteen year old son came up with a couple of fish he'd caught and we joked about how he was going to have to do better than that if we were going to have fish for supper. The kid grinned and said this was plenty enough for him, but it looked like the rest of us would have to open a can. Everybody laughed and relaxed. I noticed that the woman, who had been sitting in one man's lap when I walked up, now changed laps. All three of the adults took that moment to look at me and smile. I smiled too, told them to have a nice evening and I continued on my hike.
I was hiking while my youngest son was turkey hunting. Time was up so I called him on the radio. I had taken a looping path that would leave my new friends undisturbed and figured I'd better tell him which way I would be coming from. He was ready to go and hiked down the hill to meet me at a gravel road. He was nearly at the road when he said to me, "Dad, someone has a garden in here." "Really?" I said, "Anything growing?" "Lot's of little rows of plants," was the reply. I went to where he was and gave him a lesson in life. "Son, when you come up on something like this in a hidden spot, you tell the woods, "Oops...Sorry...Excuse me!" ...And you leave immediately. I did have to admire the effort that had been put into the "garden" by someone who was obviously not merely into personal consumption. Now I admire a hard worker and am a big proponent of free enterprise. Of the things wrong with the world, I don't think Ganja is a major item, and I actually surmise that more permanent harm will come from that 1100 watt sound system than occasional pot use. The problem here is that, unlike the campers, whoever had planted this garden on my land...was not being a good guest. I wish him no particular harm but he will have official visitors soon.
We chatted with a local officer on our drive home about the garden. He took down exact directions, asked a few other obvious questions and then looked at me with a big questioning look. There was somthing about this that he really wanted to know. In a serious tone of voice he asked, "Is the turkey hunting any good up there?" I suspect that in these last two days of turkey season those woods are going to get inspected fairly well.
I don't know what else to say except, "Oh wow, man, Peace!"
Steve
Monday, April 26, 2004
I became politically aware because I had to. I coulda been killed. In 1968 I registered for the draft. That meant that I could be chosen to give up my life for reasons determined in secret by the folks who had control of the United States Government at the time. I lost friends to that secret cabal. Turns out it was mostly a bad decision by one guy, Robert McNamarra, that got the whole country all torn apart. Some of my friends were blown to bits in Southeast Asia and some of them were merely shot and killed. I have been wanting to go see the Viet Nam war memorial to look for their names. Some of my friends are like my neighbor up on the mountain. His sister in law describes him as one of those poor boys who never came all the way back from Viet Nam. He has all his fingers and toes but something else never was right about him and won't be...ever.
We will see the same thing when all this war that is happening now is over. The world will not be a better place for our war in Iraq. It will not be the fighting that will change the world, it will be when we stop the killing that change will come. Why not do it right now? As it is right now, we will have friends who will never come back completely. We can make the choice right now or we can wait until we hit the thousand mark in dead children of America. Or we can do like Richard Nixon did...He ran for his second term saying he needed to be kept in office so that he could end the war. He got reelected and he did in fact end the war...after another 50,000 American children got killed. The we got "Peace with Honor". Yeah, right!
Country Joe and the Fish wrote the song that replaced the National Anthem during the Viet Nam War. It is the "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag." Its most famous line is, "...and it's one, two, three, What am I fighting for?" Here is a line from another Country Joe song:
"And those who took so long to learn the subtle ways of death / Lie and bleed in paddy mud with questions on their breath / And we send prayers and praises."
Country Joe is still playing music and writing songs. Here is a line from his recent effort. it sounds familiar:
"And pound their feet into the sand of shores they've never seen / Delegates from the western land to join the death machine / And we send cards and letters."
So now here we are, driving our country incredibly deep in debt with the money essentially going to a company with huge financial ties to the Vice President who is one of the four or five men who are the architechs of the war in the first place. The organization they belong to is called the Project for a New American Century. Things have gone very very wrong for them and their war. That means that things have gone very very wrong for us and our children.
Ask yourself this question: "What is the best possible outcome that can be reasonably expected from the Iraq War?" It is not good. I have a proposal to make. Instead of reinstating the draft, instead of creating ahorrible division within our own country, and instead of killing and wounding physically and emotionally thousands more of our children, instead of killing more Iraqis... Let's just leave! Here's how we can do it. Let's load up and come home. We spend a fraction of the money on alternative enrgy sources and energy conservation and we redirect our economy to creating healthy industries and the price of oil drops through the floor! There is then no money to support the Saudis, the Syrians, the cartel in Venezuela, and the house of Bush and Cheney go bancrupt too, but hey, there have to be casualties in any war, right? Why not them instead of our children?
Peace,
Steve
We will see the same thing when all this war that is happening now is over. The world will not be a better place for our war in Iraq. It will not be the fighting that will change the world, it will be when we stop the killing that change will come. Why not do it right now? As it is right now, we will have friends who will never come back completely. We can make the choice right now or we can wait until we hit the thousand mark in dead children of America. Or we can do like Richard Nixon did...He ran for his second term saying he needed to be kept in office so that he could end the war. He got reelected and he did in fact end the war...after another 50,000 American children got killed. The we got "Peace with Honor". Yeah, right!
Country Joe and the Fish wrote the song that replaced the National Anthem during the Viet Nam War. It is the "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag." Its most famous line is, "...and it's one, two, three, What am I fighting for?" Here is a line from another Country Joe song:
"And those who took so long to learn the subtle ways of death / Lie and bleed in paddy mud with questions on their breath / And we send prayers and praises."
Country Joe is still playing music and writing songs. Here is a line from his recent effort. it sounds familiar:
"And pound their feet into the sand of shores they've never seen / Delegates from the western land to join the death machine / And we send cards and letters."
So now here we are, driving our country incredibly deep in debt with the money essentially going to a company with huge financial ties to the Vice President who is one of the four or five men who are the architechs of the war in the first place. The organization they belong to is called the Project for a New American Century. Things have gone very very wrong for them and their war. That means that things have gone very very wrong for us and our children.
Ask yourself this question: "What is the best possible outcome that can be reasonably expected from the Iraq War?" It is not good. I have a proposal to make. Instead of reinstating the draft, instead of creating ahorrible division within our own country, and instead of killing and wounding physically and emotionally thousands more of our children, instead of killing more Iraqis... Let's just leave! Here's how we can do it. Let's load up and come home. We spend a fraction of the money on alternative enrgy sources and energy conservation and we redirect our economy to creating healthy industries and the price of oil drops through the floor! There is then no money to support the Saudis, the Syrians, the cartel in Venezuela, and the house of Bush and Cheney go bancrupt too, but hey, there have to be casualties in any war, right? Why not them instead of our children?
Peace,
Steve
This might just sum up the problem:
"We don't have a choice. God is the only one who can decide,"
That was from a woman on the sidelines at the Women's march in Washington this weekend. An open minded reader will identify the woman as one who is willing to impose her particular version of God on all of the others marching down the street. Why aren't they entitled to their own God instead of hers? Isn't that the ultimate freedom supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution?
My own view of the abortion issue is very simple: It is none of my business! A long time ago I decided that men should stay out of this debate. In fact, I think women of child bearing age are the only ones who should have a say, period. The rest of us can offer our thoughts if asked but otherwise, what do we think we are doing telling someone else they have to bear a child?
Isn't that a form of slavery?
It all comes down to someone wanting power over someone else. Anti-choice people take the ridiculous position that it is murder but that cannot be defended if you think about it. Here is the argument:
Life begins at conception.
or:
Life begins at birth.
or, as the Catholic Church would claim:
Life begins with consumation
(or possibly even the intent to consumate, I am unclear on this one).
What we have is an unanswerable question that simply depends on "belief" for a determination. I don't "believe" we should force our own "belief", which in this case is nothing more than an "opinion", on another person.
I have noticed something, else, and I'm not the only one who has. It seems to me that the people who are so willing to force their will on a pregnant woman under the auspices of saving a "child" are the same ones who were willing to kill an untold number of children on the off chance that Saddam Hussein would be killed at the same time.
Remember back before the war actually started, when George Bush sent a cruise missile to deal death on a house in Bagdad? That was a decision to kill everyone in that house regardless of who they were. How on earth can you justify that decision? Between 20 and 30 of the nearly fifty people killed were women and children. Saddam wasn't there. I call that an act of murder! I call that a war crime. President Bush authorized more than one attack of this sort. More than a few children died.
That is a small number of children when you compare it to the thousands of civilians we have killed during this war. I guess they are free now, huh? That's why we killed them isn't it? To bring them Freedom? Jim Jones had something along the same idea when he freed all his followers with cyanide Kool-ade. Makes just about the same amount of sense to me.
This war was entered with far less thought than the average woman gives to an abortion. That is apparent due the amazing incompetence of it all. The Bush people seem to stagger from blunder to blunder as they make us safer from Terror. (Does anybody still believe this lie?)
At the end of the day, there is only one tenable postition: Every woman must make this very difficult decision for herself. Not the Pope, Not the President, Not the Supreme Court, Not me and not you! And guess what? That is the opinion of the majority of all Americans! I think the Majority should get their way in the next Presidential election.
Yesterday in Washington, DC about a million women asked us to leave them alone. Works for me!
"We don't have a choice. God is the only one who can decide,"
That was from a woman on the sidelines at the Women's march in Washington this weekend. An open minded reader will identify the woman as one who is willing to impose her particular version of God on all of the others marching down the street. Why aren't they entitled to their own God instead of hers? Isn't that the ultimate freedom supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution?
My own view of the abortion issue is very simple: It is none of my business! A long time ago I decided that men should stay out of this debate. In fact, I think women of child bearing age are the only ones who should have a say, period. The rest of us can offer our thoughts if asked but otherwise, what do we think we are doing telling someone else they have to bear a child?
Isn't that a form of slavery?
It all comes down to someone wanting power over someone else. Anti-choice people take the ridiculous position that it is murder but that cannot be defended if you think about it. Here is the argument:
Life begins at conception.
or:
Life begins at birth.
or, as the Catholic Church would claim:
Life begins with consumation
(or possibly even the intent to consumate, I am unclear on this one).
What we have is an unanswerable question that simply depends on "belief" for a determination. I don't "believe" we should force our own "belief", which in this case is nothing more than an "opinion", on another person.
I have noticed something, else, and I'm not the only one who has. It seems to me that the people who are so willing to force their will on a pregnant woman under the auspices of saving a "child" are the same ones who were willing to kill an untold number of children on the off chance that Saddam Hussein would be killed at the same time.
Remember back before the war actually started, when George Bush sent a cruise missile to deal death on a house in Bagdad? That was a decision to kill everyone in that house regardless of who they were. How on earth can you justify that decision? Between 20 and 30 of the nearly fifty people killed were women and children. Saddam wasn't there. I call that an act of murder! I call that a war crime. President Bush authorized more than one attack of this sort. More than a few children died.
That is a small number of children when you compare it to the thousands of civilians we have killed during this war. I guess they are free now, huh? That's why we killed them isn't it? To bring them Freedom? Jim Jones had something along the same idea when he freed all his followers with cyanide Kool-ade. Makes just about the same amount of sense to me.
This war was entered with far less thought than the average woman gives to an abortion. That is apparent due the amazing incompetence of it all. The Bush people seem to stagger from blunder to blunder as they make us safer from Terror. (Does anybody still believe this lie?)
At the end of the day, there is only one tenable postition: Every woman must make this very difficult decision for herself. Not the Pope, Not the President, Not the Supreme Court, Not me and not you! And guess what? That is the opinion of the majority of all Americans! I think the Majority should get their way in the next Presidential election.
Yesterday in Washington, DC about a million women asked us to leave them alone. Works for me!
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