Hedlinoos

Mood Music

2010-01-05T18:33:00.000-08:00

The music on the satellite radio was good stuff. Mellow, well composed, well played; so as I left the room,(not to return for some time,) I left the radio on.

Wasted electricity.....perhaps; wasted music.......perhaps not. Call me flaky, but I think the room deserves a little fun, too. My conversation with myself as to these values was, however, interrupted when I reached the next room. The TV was on, and an ad for a performance of Les Miserables was being aired at that moment. Miserables, indeed! They were all angry, and heading straight for me. It occurred to me that, in recent decades, producers haven't hesitated to stage Broadway productions that have featured anger, or downright wierdness; witness The Phantom of the Opera. (A main character with his face covered; really!

I sought relief by changing the channel. Not cautious enough, however, I ended up on one of the CFTM (channels for the immature,) and was blessed with a rapper going at it mad as hell. More anger. On my way back to the radio room, I mumbled about what the reason for all this angry music was. Bless my soul, I walked into the room I had left, to find the good-good-good music going strong, just as I had left it, and gave thanks for the impulse I had followed in the first place. I was gifted with instant improvement of ambience as soon as I opened the door.

Could it be that "angry music" is an oxymoron in the first place; thus, "angry music' is no music at all. Now, we are getting somewhere. Shakespeare has said that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast." I remember: the music is supposed to calm you down, not mad you up. I have enjoyed music of the last century that spanned a range of emotions from sadness, to outright elation; from 'Black Coffee,' to the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah; from 'Over There' to 'We Shall Overcome;' from 'Mairzydoats to 'Black and Tan Fantasy.' At no time through most of my life have I personally played or sung an 'anger' song. Given the times I have lived through, and the times I have known through my parents, I have no recollection of someone "coming at me" with a song. It just doesn't work. And mind you, we have experienced anger aplenty through those years. Even 'I'll Be Glad When Your're Dead, You Rascal, You" is sung with an air of comedy. The Blues, a great American music, is never truly angry.

So, what's it all about, Alfie? Pehaps the present generation has so little respect for the art of music, they don't care if they splatter it all over a city wall, like equally angry graffiti. Maybe the problem is, the education they receive has given them so little in the way of self-limitation that they carry out their culture like the proverbial devil-may-care bull in the china shop. Perhaps, as many young'uns are wont to say, "Whatever." I don't know.

With that admission, I will put a period on this rumination.

Keep the faith, whatever yours is, Fight the good fight, and remember, Darfur is right next door.

strange connections

2010-01-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Let's try this solution: having happened on two experiences today which, lacking any reason to, I immediately thought of as connected, I now have to discover, as I write, what I saw in them, or felt in them, that imposed this connection on them, and on me.

One was a song, and the other was a parade.

Perhaps twenty years ago, my daughter brought to my attention a recording by one Syd Straw of a re-discovered Stephen Foster song titled, Hard Times." I was instantly smitten with both the sound, and the feeling within it. It became and unthought emotional experience for me, and so it has remained ever since. The line central to the whole thing was, "Many years have you lingered around my cabin door; Oh Hard Times, come again no more." Given that it was Stephen Foster, and that it was being delivered in something of a country or bluegrass framework, I immediately attached it in my mind to the poor people of the Appalachians, with a particular picture image of a wretchedly poor woman sitting on her back porch in the hills somewhere, deprived of hope, but carrying on anyway. The fact that she is telling "Hard Times" to "come again no more," surely indicates some innate spunk that has her fighting inspite of her situation.

Well, many years have passed, and today I played a CD of Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, Yo Yo Ma, James Taylor and Allison Krauss performing some new, some old, music of the mountains, and lo and behold, I hear James singing "Hard Times." Since that moment, I have been busy with that image of the forlorn old woman sitting on the porch of her rickety cabin somewhere in Appalachia. Having some ongoing, however distant, awareness of the conditions that prevail in Appalachia by way of a contributory connection to the Christian Appalachian Project, I often receive materials describing those conditions. Of course, those conditions are not limited to old women on back porches, and those of all ages are troubled by them.

Given that Stephen Foster wrote the song about a century and a half ago, the simple idea came across to me that for some people, things haven't changed much, have they. One could as well apply the song to Foster himself, since his last years were a disaster.

Later today, as I watched the Tournament of Roses Annual Parade in Pasadena, CA, I was impressed with the content of some of the earlier floats and groups, as to the heroic content they illustrated. One such was a blind marching band from Ohio. They were led by an arm-in-arm cadre of mature blind people walking along with just one sighted person at the side to set the pace. As to the band, each playing member had a marching assistant to guide them along as they played. And yes, they negotiated that big turn into Colorado Avenue that all the marchers have to make.
The second group that caught my attention was a float bearing the images of many who had been in the organ donor program, and whose generosity kept just as many others alive. Sitting along both sides of the float were people of all ages, recipients of the organs that now allowed them to take part in the greatest parade in the whole world.

Shortly after, a combined Marine Corps marching band came along. No nonsense, good old John Philip Sousa music, standard Marine dress uniforms, nobody looking like a caballero, nobody playing a drumset hanging off the shoulders with five different drums, all just straight down the line traditional. They were damned good, and I loved it, as much as I loved skipping along at hometown parades, trying to keep pace with my Dad playing bass drum with the Fife, Drum, and Bugle Corps of the Waverly Engine Company in Eastchester, NY.

And so, there they were, the little old lady on the Appalachian back porch, and the Tournament of Roses Parade, pushing in on my sensitivities in the course of this New Year's Day, 2010. And so, what's to be made of it?

It doesn't matter if there is any rhyme or reason to it, I have to figure out my own connection. The only thought I had awareness of in all this, was the continuity of things. Human misery doesn't quit, and neither does the human urge and capacity to fight it through. There was also an element of trust in these pictures. the blind marchers trusted in each other and their assistants to march five miles without tripping or falling. The organ recipients trusted that someone else's body part would work for them. The marines trusted in John Philip Sousa that he would keep them all in line and on the tune. Most of all, I believe that back-porched lady in Appalachia was trusting in God that she would find some way, some how, to carry on, because by God, she wasn't put on this earth to Quit.

Okay, I figured it out. Trust, and our connection to, and reliance on, others, and in the end, on God, was today's message for me. That's enough.

Keep the faith, Fight the Good Fight, and remember, Darfur is right next door.

Joe

The volume thing

2009-12-30T18:46:00.000-08:00

Ruminating on an epiphany:

I play softer; they sing louder. Or that's what I thought was happening. Was it really more like "I play softer, I get to hear them better?

Here's what happened. For four years now, every Wednesday I head for a nursing home where I play oldies for the "oldies." Actually, these are real, real oldies,(the tunes,) I'm playing for some real, real "oldies," the people. The folks are, I guess, all over 80, an age I will reach myself in two years. So, music to people, we're a real good match. I have tried to understand and appreciate for WHOM I am actually playing. Though some are barely awake in their wheelchairs, most are enjoying the music actively, but their range of thought is limited. It has been said the folks with Alsheimers respond really well to hearing the songs that have been familiar to them throughout their lives. The memory seems to work more actively in the presence of a familiar tune. Recently, then, I began to experiment with some "fill-in" type activities, where I would stop singing at a point where familiar words were repeated, and listen for them to fill in the missing lyrics. It has worked very well.

In the course of this effort, I tried playing more simply, single notes sometimes with one hand, and found that they really sounded great, and I would try comments like, "Well, we can skip the extra rehearsal this week," or something else terribly clever. (A side discovery: jokes and glib remarks don't process very well with these people; their thinking is too slow and limited. The people laughing were the attendants and visiting younger relatives.

Today, however, a new discovery. The nursing home piano is stiff in its action, and never really well tuned. This causes me to attack the keys more firmly, all of which is hard work. So today, I was doing a good deal of soft, simple playing, and found I could really hear the folks a lot better. But wait! They were singing well all along, and I just could't hear them, for all the banging I was doing on the piano. As Jack Benny used to say, "Well!"

So not only was I not hearing this great sound,(and let me tell you, the sound of elders singing in their own gentle way is something special to the ears,) but I found I didn't have to work as hard as I had been working all these four years. Note: it took me four years to figure this out. Given enough time, who knows what else I may learn, if I open myself up to it.

Very personally, I have to be very thankful not only for the opportunity to play for the folks, but for the lesson I learned today. This old dog did, in fact, learn a new trick.

End of ruminations:

Keep the faith, whatever yours is, and fight the good fight.

Darfur is right next door.

Joe

re-write

2009-12-28T22:32:00.000-08:00

Volume 2, #1

As I was saying..........

I seems so much more difficult to write about one single thing these days. We are bombarded with so much going on, I can only remember Wordsworth's assessment of "the world" in his time, and how it seems perfectly to touch the truth of our times:
"The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." Perfectly descriptive of the beehive we live in.

Decades, centuries, and nothing changes about the human condition. But then, there's them that copes with it, and them that don't.

Keep the faith, and don't forget those real people in Darfur.

That's it for today,

Joe

The Unkindest Cut Of All

2008-04-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

There exists in 2008 America a quiet quandary, a presence far beyond the "elephant-in-the-room" phenomenon. A recent story told of a missing Iraq War veteran, who, suffering from post-combat trauma, was found decomposing in a drainage pipe. A Hollywood horror film could not have created a more gruesome image. The sadness is explosive; the quandary is far less visible, far more critical.

The reaction to his having gone missing was typically contemporary American: the volunteers, the search parties, the understanding former servicemen who grasped the situation with ready empathy, and, most of all, the distraught family. The story told of a grouping of people of wide political convictions but united in one thought: this young man and his family need our help. The eventual discovery, perhaps inevitable, brought the story to a close.

But the quandary continues: it is difficult to describe, and will never fit every case identically, but it is there, and it is troublesome. Consider: whoever are the category, or demographic, of those who join the service or the National Guard these days, just place one of them before your vision. For the most part, they have very little idea of what they are in for. They have not experienced combat. They think there are rules governing their combat exposure. They believe something good will come from their time in the service. From this point on, things happen that are not voluntary, but are forced on them and their families.

The enlistee bocomes part of a thinking pattern, at least partly necessary, that is forced on him by the military-political complex. To wit: "you are engaged in the defense of your

country." How is that? Well, "your President" has said so. Because "your President" has said so, the DOD has not only said so, but written it into all the orientation materials that that he will experience throughout his training and all the morale material he will hear throughout your time "in country." His officers and NCOs will all speak the same language on this subject: you are engaged in the defense of your country. The enlistee has no choice at this point as to believing the "party line," because his survival depends on it. He has to be a team player to survive. So, if there was any inclination to examine carefully the "party line," it will tend to disappear. So he has now become our defender.

Now, what of his family? Some of them might have had no strong opinion on the war, though that is no longer likely; you are either with it, or against it. Some families have actually gladly sent the enlistee off to war, because they didn't need any convincing that the Iraq War was being fought in defense of our country. Note the U.S Army TV recruitment ads that feature a father proudly standing with his son in uniform. No question that, to them, this is clearly a patriotic matter. But now comes the tough part, and the quandary emerges.

Suppose this war never was for the defense of the United States; suppose this war was mistakenly gotten into by ideologues who wanted it, and Congressmen who failed miserably to represent the Constitutional system of "checks and balances." How then shall we view the disappearing, eventually decomposing veteran of this war? Further, how shall we approach his family? Shall we arrive at the funeral home, to compassionately tell his survivors that we are truly sorry their loved one got caught up as a victim in a political tug-of-war by a passel of politicians who never knew what it was like to face death, dismemberment, and trauma to the psyche in a war zone? That would be the most unkind cut. We have seen some of that from people who use military funerals as a venue for protest: it doesn't matter what the protest, it's just totally unthinking.

It is too late for the lost one and his family. But it is not too late for others outside the immediate situation. What not to have ever happen again?

This war was a "half-war." We have in our Constitution, both explicit and implicit, the principle that major decisions should not be arrived at by a majority of one: that's why efforts to amend the Constitution require a two-thirds or a three-fourths vote. It has, further,always been the conventional wisdom that we should never, never, never, commit our service people to being in harm's way without a strong vote of support from the representatives of the people. Note that: a STRONG vote. Never mind the fraction: a clearly, unequivocally STRONG vote. There has never been strong support for this war, and now there is practically no support. This war is a "half-war" if ever there was one.

Consider the implication for that enlistee. he suffered his pain without ever knowing his country was behind him. In his final loneliness in that drainpipe, think of what this "half-war" and its driving forces have done to him. It will do him or us no good to think that the "warhawks" of 2003 will burn in hell. The monument we can erect in his memory is a committed populace that can leave its comfort long enough to vote for candidates who will truly "keep the peace."

Unique Characteristics

2007-08-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Long Time:
Phil Rizzuto gone!
Well, the great ones of the fifties are disappearing for certain. Passing away of elder icons is not what is new; the loss of an attitude is truly a sorrowful loss. Phil actually did not believe he belonged in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He thought it was for the "sluggers" and the 20-game winners.
But his type of contribution was what made teams successful: determination, dedication, and respect for the game he played, the life he lived. Too bad this is too readily identified as "old-fashioned."
Holy Cow!, Phil. Movin' on. There is, indeed, a great ballgame in the sky: all hits, all runs, no errors.
Fight the good fight!
Hedlinoos

Ash Wednesday; Bah, humbug!

2007-02-21T20:54:00.000-08:00

Or is that Christmas?

"Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." As a kid, I cringed at those words. What kind of a thing is that to say to a child? It's a damned mean religion that sets out to scare its children. Scared everybody, as a matter of fact. They should have called it the House of Fright and Shame instead of a religion.

But it's Lent. Call it anything you like, repentance and atonement are good for everybody, administered in proper doses. It has a way of reducing ego, and any number of other afflictions. Better still, it leads one to the joyousness of Easter, or Spring, or elevated temperatures, whatever.

"Ashes to ashes........" Well, being reminded of our mortality can help us to better appreciate the life we have. Like the man said as to "....it's not the fall that hurts you, it's the sudden stop,"......... well, we might as well consider ourselves immortal: it will be true until it is no longer true, and then who will know?

Here at this colder parallel, the croci shot up in the December/January quasi-Spring, and they paid the price. Now the big mystery is, will they live again?

Stay tuned!

That's the rumination for today; stay the course, fight the good fight!
12:11AM, 22 February, 2007. Happy Birthday, George! Sorry you got caught in all those car sales on the ill-titled Presidents Weekend.

Someone is gone

2006-12-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

occasional rumination # ?

It began with a casual scanning of the obits by my wife about a week ago. Kenny Davern had died at 71. That's too early for anyone, let alone a man with so much to contribute.

Kenny was a clarinetist in the traditional jazz style, and he was as good as they come. During the 1950's to the present, there was a cadre of musicians who held the fort for trad jazz, very strongly in the New Jersey area, including the Pianist Dick Wellstood, the best of his kind in his time. Dick also came to an early demise while on tour in the West. These guys were alive and well, and stomping with the best in Jazz history. They truly held the essence of traditional jazz together for all of us lucky enough to have attached to it.

My wife and I went to any place within reach to here Kenny play, and always came away uplifted. I hear a lot of music, and I believe that in his genre, Kenny had no equal in his era. Just wonderful; so good, you could take it for granted after a while.

That accounts for the obvious. Less obvious, I began to cry when I heard the news. Being approriately manly, I hid it from my wife. (I think.) .I was not a personal aquaintance of his, and though I had met him several times, (the trad jazz crowd in NJ tends to show up at all the same places,) my reaction was that of a person suffering personal loss.I began to wonder why, and the answer became clear. Though a teacher, my second job for decades was playing trad piano in restaurants, taverns, lounges, etc. On one occasion, Kenny was having dinner at a place I was playing at, and came up on his way out to offer a tip and a complement. He noted how I was playing "the good tunes." He did not mention how brilliant my playing was, and that was a kindness of one musician to another, though I could never have held a candle to his playing. He made a point of saying something complimentary, and that was great. Even including a one-time eccentric who tipped me $100, I held Kenny's tip as the most important I ever got.

Beyond that, I realized that Kenny's music, and that of his cohorts, had filled a major slot in my life. It provided tremendous enjoyment , plus a connection to the great music that was early jazz, the music of Armstrong, Teagarden, McPartland, Eddie Condon the host, raconteur, and occasional guitarist. As a kid, I had seen the best of them gathered at Carnegie Hall, and at Jimmy Ryan's and Eddied Condon's in Manhattan.Dick Wellstood, Kenny, and others kept that strain alive.

To me, Kenny was music, he was history, and he was the gracious musician who found something nice to say to a weekend musician.

No wonder I cried.

End of today's ruminations. Keep the faith, and fight the good fight.

Joe Grogan

Writers' Block

2006-08-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

They say the best solution for writers' block is to write; so I write.

Allow me to share a really great experience: I spent the weekend with three generations of family surrounding me. The variety of experiences and emotions is just wonderful.

Elders gathered around a 110-year old piano to recall songs from just that long ago, taught to us by our folks and passed on down through generations; children from 3-weeks-old to 14 renewing and, in some cases, initiating connections too long dormant; brothers and sisters of the present parent generation, on the one hand continuing relationships long developed at home, and on the other hand caring for each others' children as if they were there own, establishing a whole new family tree: all this coming and going over 72 hours, coming in and going back out like the tide, until it all returns to the way it was, like an empty beach at twilight.

This is the fabric of family. Sometimes it's hard to see or to keep track of, but it's there. The lesson of this weekend is that, like anything else that grows, it must be nurtured. When you do, it flourishes; if you don't, it withers.

So simple.

End of ruminations for today, Sunday, 8/20/06 Stay the course; fight the good fight.

Something Lost

2006-07-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

There is a mantra that fans of St. Anthony use:
"St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around,
Something's been lost and must be found."

I was listening to a CD of some great sounds by Pete Seeger, and some of those old labor union songs came on, like "Which Side Are You On?" out of the coalminers struggles, and "You can't fool me, I'm sticking with the union," one of many union songs that used earlier folk tune melodies, in this case replacing the words from "Red Wing," "There once was an indian maid," with "There once was a union maid." Simple, but very effective. I felt a great sense of nostalgia, and perused my memory to explain why.

I had been a union member, once in a factory before I joined te ranks of professionals, and once as a teacher. The feelings were the same in both instances. Being on strike at the risk of loosing your job is a bit scary. It's scary when you're single, and much more scary when you are married and are responsible for others besides yourself. Both occasions came to a successful conclusion. I learned a lot more about unions, however, at first when I studied them, and later, as a teacher, when I taught that aspect of American History. Union history is full of guys and gals who took the big step, willing to be the first ones out front to be harassed, or beaten, or sometimes, to be killed. Those people are American heroes, but most often are not given that acclaim in our history texts. They understood one idea: when someone seeks to use you, there is no choice but to prevent it.

What brings on my nostalgia most is the memory of what strength of character it took for those early leaders of unions to put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. We have lost sight of that kind of struggle. The "interests," as Dos Passos used to call them, are not as clearly visible. They're bigger, but less visible. How so? Well, in many cases, the interests of working people have become entwined in the interests of the "interests." The middle classes have seen themselves too much as potential capitalists, and less as members of the work force. In addition, the "interests" have become much more adept at pulling the wool over everyones eyes so as to have us all thoroughly bamboozled.

"Something's been lost and must be found." I think something truly must be found that has been lost: a sense of fighting the battle in behalf of the ordinary working people of this world. We need to be aware that the pols, the "interests," the sellers of everything from pills to perfection, must be reduced in their power, and the "people" regain a sense of their people-ness.

End of ruminations for today, 7/25/06. Stay the course.

Mustn't Talk With Food In Your Mouth

2006-07-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

Did the whole world miss it?

I guess because of the media's puritan-potty-training angst, when the President said "shit," like the whole word took a bounce. That alone is ridiculous ; the big issue, however, was totally spaced.

Consider: here sits this guy, by the greatest political accident of all, conversing with the at-least-duly-elected Prime Minister of the Brits, looking like he's at a ballgame leaning over the back of his seat to discuss strikes and ballgirls with a mouthful of peanuts all of which have not been properly shelled, TALKING WITH HIS MOUTH FULL!

I don't doubt he is not the first to do so, but none of the others got photographed while doing so, the while saying SHIT! Try this at home. You can't possibly complete the exercise without spitting nuts and shells all over the room.

Land o' goshen, and howdydoo! What lies in wait for us next?

Happily Wrong

2006-07-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Having opinions, as well as the habit of expressing them, puts one at risk some times, but what's life without a little risk. In this instance, the risk proves well worth it.

Try this: I am happy to have been proven wrong. Why? Well, there's a sense of discovery, also a sense of getting my information more correct than previously, and, best of all perhaps, it's good for the humility.

Here's the thing. I often am willing to rely on my instincts to make judgments, (necessary for voting, by the way,) about political figures who are often in the news. It has usually proven correct, from "Tricky Dick" all the way to "Devious George." In both cases, and in many others, I have hit the nail right on the head. Of late, I have seen much of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on the screen, either in a Senate hearing room as a member of a committee, or in press conferences outside those rooms. Instinctively, I didn't like the guy. Now, I don't know what he has for breakfast, whether or not he beats his wife, what his civil rights background is, or whether or not he has ever been arrested for DUI, but I do know this: in the discussion on the legal system for treating the Gitmo detainees, this guy stands tall. In opposition to the President, a fellow Republican, he is speaking up in behalf of a truly American system for their legal processing. "I'm a big fan of the Geneva Conventions," he said yesterday. Holy Smoke! A Republican who's a big fan of the Geneva Conventions. His point in this is purely democratic: the systems we set up for this issue will say more about what WE believe than what others have done. This is the sort of position the world has expected from us, not the harsh, near-fascist approach of the Rovites in this world.

The recent Supreme Court decision on this matter began a trail of "chickens coming home to roost" for the Bush/Rove/Cheney cabal. Hope like crazy, however, that the neocons do not get one more Scalia-clone on the Court.

On to November. And has anyone remembered about Darfur? They're still dying.

End of ruminations for today, July 18, '06. Stay the course.

To whom much is given, much is expected

2006-07-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

I left somewhere, drove somewhere else, it was a nice day, no one shot at me, and I got where I was going. It was that simple.
It was so simple, I was jarred into consciousness as to how fortunate I was. I needed to remind myself that most people in the world do not have that ease of transport, or freedom to enjoy, without a care in the world. The cares I do have are all workable; I need not worry how I shall survive for the day.

There is no option in my life not to have serious, ongoing concern for people less blessed. I then turn to "the world" and what's going on today,and wonder where my country went wrong. The answer is forthcoming quickly: our leaders do not think we owe anybody anything for the blessings we enjoy. If they did, would they rush to war? Would they fail to meet the needs of thousands in the worst natural catastrophe our nation has ever known? Would they forget the poem of Emma Lazarus at the Statue of Liberty?

The tight-fisted mood of those who would turn out the poor who seek to find sustenance in our country as they cross a border at risk of life, is not what is best in America. It does not represent a majority of Americans in any sense.
But it goes on, because the nasty, tight-fisted ones have control of the government.

November looms: the tight-fisted are vicious, and will stop at nothing to maintain control. Are you angry enough to be as committed as they are? Are you leading the fight to get our government back? If not, expect more of the same.

End of ruminations for today.

Tax dollars

2006-06-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

Dja think somebody over at OMB has figured out just how much W's poll-pushing quickie to Baghdad has cost us all?

Who IS to blame?

2006-05-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

late life pete says "so who is to blame," for the deception, the power-grabbing, the failure to serve the people's needs in our democracy?

I have never taken on the task of answering that question before. Most of the answers thinking people come up with are symptomatic, and don't get to the root of the problem. Is our Constitution a failure, since clever, driven, politicians can neutralize the Separation of Powers, the Checks and Balances, and actually carry on something of a dictatorship? If they can, then we are subject to the playout of every weakness of every leader we chose.

For the better part of four decades, I taught American History to upper elementary level kids. I taught it proudly, and made every effort to instill in them the attitude that they owed their predecessors big time for the nation that had been handed down to them. I would be at a loss for what to say in the classroom today, how to explain what is going on presently, and what we have discovered only too late about what has taken place in the past.

Consider a few examples:
1. the acquisition of Panama: when we say it was a steal, we mean
precisely that. Under pretense of a faux revolution, we grabbed
the Isthmus of Panama from Colombia.
2. the Wilson presidency: in his waning days, decisions were being made
by his wife, and the nation none the wiser.
3. the Tonkin Gulf Resolution: a war-powers measure based on a total
fiction. Think of this as you meditate at the Vietnam War Memorial.
4. the War Powers Act: designed to require oversight and appro-
val of Congress for any war-making by the President, is, in fact,
ignored.
5. so-called "signing statements:" Presidents have, (and the present Pre-
sident has made a practice of it,) added "sidebars" to legislation after
signing, to indicate to Executive Departments which lines to not be
overly concerned about enforcing or executing, thus usurping the very
power specifically assigned by the Constitution to the people's rep-
resentatives.

So, WHAT TO DO?

Whereas, our Constitution has been frequently abused by the very people we elect to enforce it and protect it, and,
Whereas, these abuses have endangered the very continuance of our democracy, and,
Whereas, we have a responsibility to our children to pass on to them the democracy promised to them in the Constitution, and,
Whereas, the influence of our democracy has been so critical to the establishment of democracies all over the world, thus giving us a grave responsibility as caretakers of this great gift which was given to us,

Be it resolved that, through the next six years, we shall endeavor to elect Congressmen rigorously committed to reform of the Executive and the Congress, and,
Be it resolved further, that, once a viable democratically chosen Congress shall be in place, Amendments to the Constitution shall be offered for the people's consideration that will, in effect, return our government to the function and service it was originally intended to provide.

(It is possible.)

A private note: as I concluded this piece I have been listening to a recording, on BANJO, of My Country 'Tis of Thee. (In musical truth, a rendition written by Bach of variations on God Save The Queen, played by Bela Fleck. What a piece of work by Ludwig, and Bela. As a child, My Country Tis Of Thee was the patriotic song we knew best, and I have great memories of it. How strange!

End of Ruminations for today, 5.30.06

Peace, Man

2006-05-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

On this Memorial Day, I have seen a documentary about the past that is so rife with lessons for the present, it's uncanny. "Two Days in October" pairs two events in October of '67: an ambush of an American unit in the "iron triangle" in Vietnam, and a series of events involved in a student protest at the U. of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

The ambush was a slaughter. Officers and men who survived testify to that fact, with tears in their eyes. The men who died weren't just killed, they were torn to pieces by withering fire, as they followed their orders and walked into a thickly grown area with no ability to see what was ahead. It would have been worse, but that the North Vietnamese had a schedule to keep and had to move elsewhere.That would have been bad enough. What followed was doubly sad. Gen. Westmoreland, as he handed out Purple Hearts, asked what had happened. As the men told him of the ambush, he said, "No, no, it wasn't an ambush." Press releases led people to believe this was just part of a larger operation that was successful, an out and out lie. Bert Quint of CBS was interviewing survivors later, and those men were told by their senior officers NOT to use the word ambush. Right. The truth was never known at home.

The protest at U. of Wisconsin began as a peaceful sit-in, and ended up with the Chancellor of the University calling in the police, who interpreted this as a call to bang heads, which they did. Later statements by public officials referred to "outside agitators."

An interesting side aspect of the documentary is the opportunity to compare the efforts of the G.I.s and the students. The students' attitude and actions seem so small next to the suffering of the G.I.s. However, a UW prof who was on the scene put it well, when he said he had no quarrel with the G.I.s; they were performaing their duty as citizens, as they saw it, and so were the students.

The outstanding issue for us today, is that the lying continues: the Pat Tillman case, the recent Marine scandal in Iraq, and so on.

Two thoughts emerge: 1) the citizenry needs to assure that we have a government that is held accountable, and, 2) it is government's deepest responsibility TO MAKE PEACE HAPPEN! That is how to "protect the American people." A look at how the Civil War came about in this country shows a pathetic example of politicians quibbling for their own regional interests, and allowing the country to fall into a great, shameful bloodletting.
The terminal stupidity of Neville Chamberlain and his ridiculous comment that, having spoken with Mr.Hitler, we have secured "peace in our time." Oh yeah. There never really has been a Pax Americana, but if there is ever to be one, we need to secure better leadership than what we have now.

End of Ruminations for today, 5.31.06, Memorial Day.

"...and you're no Jack Kennedy"

2006-05-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Lloyd Bentsen died today. I guess all the rest of his career as a Representative and Senator was washed aside by the impact of his retort to Dan Quayle, arguably the most "don't get it" candidate the Republicans ever put forward. After Quayle was comparing his record to Jack Kennedy's, Bentsen took umbrage that this silly goose should even mention himself in the same sentence with JFK, and responded, if I may quote loosely, " I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine, and frankly, you're no Jack Kennedy." This was perhaps the most impacting riposte I have ever heard, perhaps on a par with Robert Welch's comment to the infamous Joe McCarthy, "...have you no decency, sir.?"

Though the impact of these comments was intense, the underlying reality was the cosmic lack of human sensitivity evidenced by Quayle and McCarthy that brought these remarks forth. I think we are awash with much of the same today. Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Welch, where are you when we need you.? Will someone please step up to the plate.

End of Ruminations for today, 5.23.06

Big Picture:Simple Picture:Big Question:Simple Answer

2006-05-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

The discussion goes on about building walls at our border.Blah, blah, blah,blah.
The discussion is about symptoms, not about the problem.

The problem is: the poor of the world are reaching for the means to survive in ways that all might agree are humane.Some come from Mexico; some come from Africa to the Canary Islands, and become Spain's problem. Some head for Eastern Europe fom Africa and Mediterranean and Middle Eastern areas. Some head for England from old empire nations, protectorates, etc.

The question is, do we wish to help them out?

The need: say yes or no.Simple.

The program: establish an international consortium to improve economies in poor countries; the quid pro quo.......those countries are responsible for channeling their emigrants through legal processes, established internationally.

The only complicated aspect of the problem is all the blah, blah, blah, that keeps running out of the mouths of those with an axe to grind.

End of Ruminations for today, 5.22.06

Double "WHAT?"

2006-05-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

The TV ad says: "If shaving your legs
is not a threat to
your masculinity, then
you're a Mitchum man!

What?

What?

I have occasionally explored a theory that the most obvious cause for the breakdown in what used to be a viable American culture is the drive for profit by entrepreneurs, large and small, but mostly large. Is nothing sacred?

When the earring thing started happening in the sixties, it was a valid statement of sexual, stylistic, and cultural individuality, no profit involved.Since then, however, the effort to make Man into Woman II has never let up. The most ridiculous of all was the guys heading to the salon for that poodle-type "Do," the most obvious offender being the former Dodger pitcher Don Sutton. Tell me it's not about money. If a guy goes to the "salon" for a "do" he's dropping anywhere from $35 to hundreds of bucks for the privilege. At Tony's Barber Shop, (you know, with the pepperment rotating outside,) he would have spent $15 to $20. Mitchum? Well, with every new concept comes a new scent, right? Uh-oh, l said the word: SCENT. Language usage can be indicative of subtle change in society and attaching SCENT to maleness,assuming it does not denote the animal following a scent for the kill, is such an example.

Don't sit by and watch your culture emasculated! Rise up! Get out there and get a damned HAIRCUT! Now there's a simple, uncluttered word for you, HAIRCUT.And don't forget those calendars on the walls at Tony's.

End of Ruminations for today, 5.21.06

Dja know? The word ruminations derives from rumen, which has to do with the process of chewing and rechewing of food in some animals. Gosh!

After all, they're not all that bad.....................

2006-05-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, John Corzine was taken to task by people speaking in behalf of the persecuted Falun Gong, for visiting China on a "Sell NJ' junket. His response was interesting, and perhaps revealing of the man's sensitivity level. To paraphrase, he said that after all, China wasn't in a persecutors league with South African Apartheid or the present day persecution in Sudan.

What?

Who the hell cares? Is the lack of freedom and democratic procedure not "serious enough" to merit his attention? Wow!

The truth is, a convincing argument can, in fact, be made for trading with the likes of China, inspite of their human rights abuses. When I hear that "The New China" is being inundated with McDonalds and Starbucks installations, I feel that the future is safe. With materialism rampant in China, they will, in no time at all, be as soft as we are. After that point, tyrannical governments will fall, just as they did in the once powerful USSR. Though the cause in Russia was more the WANT of material goods, the cause in China will be the abundance of material goods.

Governor Corzine, however, that's a horse of another color.

End of ruminations for today, 5.18.06

Dja

2006-05-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Dja ever notice how the same guys who will magnify the punishing shot by a hockey player or a football player will refuse to show a streaker running across the field? What's the matter with that picture?

Football at Home Plate

2006-05-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, sports fans. Do we really have to leave our brains outside the stadium, arena, raceway, etc..

I used to hear people rail at the uncivilized macho Spanish/Mexicans who could sit and watch a bullfight, Ole Papa H notwithstanding. It seemed as though Western civility had passed judgement on bloodsport, and that was that. Today, however, in the same western culture, we have yet worse examples of bloodsport that the sports fan seems to be applauding loudly.We have the "beanball", sometimes ever so cleverly referred to as "chin music." We have the intentional foul in basketball, sometimes referred to as "necessary?", and sometimes dangerous, as was the case of the Temple/St. Joes event not too long ago. Now we also have the Tony Stewart syndrome in NASCAR, sometimes referred to as "bumping", and sometimes akin to attempted murder.

Historically, we are looking at practices that once were the exception, and are now commonplace.Actions that should call for removal of the perp bring only a reprimand or a brief punishment, or worse, no response at all.

When did it get this way? Who made it/allowed it to happen? I have watched and watched, and keep looking for where the responsibility lies. I see several sources. 1. coaches who teach their players to be totally air-headed, as
if that were the only way to play the game.
2. parents, who are co-conspirators in this training, full of
phrases like "no pain, no gain", and the like.
3. modern-day officials, who don't have the guts they were
born with, and won't call the game as it should be called.
They enjoy phrases like, "Let's just let the players settle
this on the field." The very reason for the officials' presence
is NOT to let the players settle it on the field.
4. The biggest perpetrator of all in this culture is the sports
media. They have glorified the bloodsport aspect of all
sports, I guess because it sells. In the process, they have
caused us to lose sight of what great contests sports can be.
The very same producers/directors who love to bring the
guys those long under-the-skirt shots of the college football
cheerleaders, are equally as adept at using their multi-
camera resources to replay the pass play over the middle
where some lanky tight end near lost his head after a "pop"
by the free safety.

As is true of much of American life today, the dangers of this culture are not as visible as the overt acts. The moral right worries about kids being exposed to unsound influences in film. Let them start a Crusade against the kind of violence their kids are being effectively taught by way of pro football, basketball, and baseball.Let those athletes who all too often reference "the Good Lord" ask the Good Lord how they should treat their fellow athletes. "Should I "pop" 'em, Lord," or "Lord, what would you think of my putting a little "chin music" on this home run hitter."

It's not funny. When my wife and I raised our kids, we had to keep explaining to them that they would have to see themselves as being a minority, in order to help them understand they were never to give in to this idiocy. Individuals CAN change this, however long the odds. It just needs someone to start.

End of Ruminations for Wednesday, 5.17.06

Today's musical oddity: a tune that was heard a great deal in the Depression Era thirties, was "Ain't We Got Fun," the premise of which was "we've got each other, so all is well." A line in that song said "......the rich get rich and the poor get poorer." Now isn't that something;. Things haven't changed much, have they?

There's Wartime, and Then There's Wartime

2006-05-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here's one that Georgie Boy and the Texas Turdlets have slipped past us while we were dealing with the rest of the dog and pony show they call an administration: WAR POWERS.

I grew up through WWII. The impact was total. Everyone was involved; everyone was in favor. That was a time for WAR POWERS. Georgie Boy and the Texas Turdlets have casually dropped this term on us as an excuse for: shameful un-American treatment of prisoners, spying on our own people, using the National Guard as a permanent fighting force, RENDITION, (no one else was ever so creative with double-speak, ) and who knows how many other clandestine activities we haven't found out about yet.

In this slippery "authorization," Georgie Boy dishonors the whole effort that was WWII.

Can we even begin to assess the intensity of the disdain with which these guys view the Constitution of the United States of America?

End of Ruminations for today..... 5.15.06

The real average student

2006-05-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago, Newsweek published it's annual listing of the one hundred best highschools in the country. Being a teacher for 38 years, I approached this list with some anticipation, since I expected the list would be accompanied by interesting information as to how these schools had solved the biggest educational problem there is: EFFECTIVENESS!

Only a moment had passed before I was disillusioned; most of the schools at the top of the list were special schools. The article had boasted of what these schools were doing for the AVERAGE kid;to my surprise, the top schools were magnet schools, special subject schools, and the like. The only way they were dealing with average kids was to yank the most promising of them out of their neighborhoods, put them in a highly specialized setting with the best teachers available, and voila!, great results. I'm glad for those kids. But this is not what it claims to be: it is a treat for the elite.

The average kids who need effective education are those who DO NOT show promise, or signs of genius. Let the results be what they may, but give them the best you can. The best teachers gravitate to the best kids. In all my years of teaching, I saw that truism contradicted only once. An old lady who had been creating effective materials all her life was putting them to use in most effective ways with truly average kids, and getting great results. That phenomenon is all too rare. Average kids usually get an average or below average education in school systems that almost never set improvement goals for their average kids.

Consider this possibility: every school district be required to improve its results with average kids by a factor of one every year. One elevated student this year, two next year, three the year after that, and so on. The possibilities are staggering. Consider a goal of elevating one added kid each year from the BELOW AVERAGE group up to the average group each year. Want to solve our crime problem? This is how to do it.

But, in the first instance, its not about solving our crime problem; let that be the beneficial after effect. It's about being true to our kids, in ways that they, and our country, will never forget.

End of ruminations for today, 5.9.2006.

Today's burning question: whence the origin of the "fore" that is yelled by golfers about to hit some poor guy in the head?

Ta ta.

"The Times, They Are A-Changin' "

2006-04-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Holy Vietnam, Batman!

Grannies Against The War,

George Clooney for Darfur,

Neil Young wallops the Dubyah!

I'm just going to have to get out my old tie-dyed shirts and everything. Things are REALLY beginning to heat up.

Truly, and most seriously, I think Neil Young has given us something. May it be played and quoted as the anthem for an awakening America. May it give the neocons a case of the shingles. May it be the background score for the November elections.

And on, and on, and on, so that the "Garden" we have known as America will once again show its beauty, and not its weeds. We are a better people than what the Right has shown to the world

Ruminations for Saturday, 4.29.06 Turnaround Day in the U.S. of A.

The Ungrateful American

2006-04-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

It seems our political history is strewn with the blood and scars of a conflict regularly waged between two types of Americans: those who would keep, and those who would share. In every instance, we have groups who, more than anything, ought to be thankful for what this land has given them, and instead have turned around and denied the same blessings to the next wave coming in.

At Thanksgiving, we show our children pictures of thankful pilgrims, sharing the blessings of the land with their native friends. Those same Puritans turned around and denied true liberty to anyone who would practice their own religious belief.

Colonist-entrepreneurs gouged a profit from the land most of them got for a pittance, and turned around and purchased kidnapped Africans to bring in that profit for them; worse, they then claimed ownership of the children of those same Africans.

Out-"mastering" the plantation owners, Andrew Carnegie and his ilk had his working-people working for slave wages in unsafe conditions, thus creating a massive "plantation" of his own. How nice of him it was to endow libraries all over the country with profit made on the backs of his "slaves."

The ordeals faced by so many in the "great migration" of the late nineteenth/early 20th century period, is one more case of the "we-got;you-can't-have syndrome.

Now we have this battle being played out all over again. It's interesting to note the types of people drawn to the effort against the incoming. They are undisguised hate-mongers, racists, and neo-fascists.

I believe there is acually a way to bring this disgrace to an end. All people sensitive enough to recognize the problem need to see it, not as a passing event, but as an ongoing struggle. The haters never stop, never leave, never let it go. They need to know that people who really are proud of the best in America, have the endurance to fight them until they are exhausted.

The "Know-Nothings" are alive and well in our land; we "Know-Somethings" need to send them back into their holes where they came from.

End of ruminations for today: 4.24.06

Fonda-me, Fonda-you

2006-04-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

I couldn't care less: if her book sells,
if plastic surgery plays a role,
if the fundas are not fonda Fonda.

I do care: that Jane Fonda runs in a tie with Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon for the First Annual "I-Don't-Care-How-Much-Damage-I-Do-WIth-My Reckless-Behavior Hedlinoos Award. But we must make a decision.

Fonda's smiling trip to Hanoi was, from her side, nothing more or less
than a stupid political dilletante's junket; it's impact, let's say on
the POW's for starters, went far beyond her reckless impulses,
however. Nevertheless, I give her only the third-place mauve rib-
bon.

Nixon, now there's a damage guy. He disgraced his country, brought
down his party, and worst of all, created an embarrassment/revenge
funk among his supporters that grew into the Right Wing we all
know and love today. Yet, this only gets him the second-place fuchsia
ribbon. But why not first? It seems so unfair!

I'll tell you why. No one, not Fonda, not Nixon, not even Nero,
can compete with the damage done by Smilin' Bill, the Ex-
Prez we all love to hear talk. I would like to believe that his
ongoing efforts to improve the lot of the poor and ill in the
Third World arise out of a cosmic sense of guilt for his sins:
not the infidelity to his wife....that's so American; not the
reduction of the Oval Office to his personal heaven.....that's
been done before; no, it's what he did to his party and his
people that earns him our First Annual I-Don't-Care-How-
Much-Damage-I-Do-With-My-Reckless-Behavior Hedlinoos
Award. Bill opened up the D.C. scene to an impeachment
vendetta, crippled his party,and gave the fundas enough ammo
to take over our democracy in spades. How's that? I think
that clearly wins him the piss-colored ribbon for first place. I,
for one, will be pissed off at him for decades for doing that.

Anyone wishing to send this along to Smilin' Bill, go to it.

End of Ruminations for today.

Things Ain't What They Used To Be

2006-04-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Things Ain't What They Used To Be,"among other things, was the title of a great Duke Ellington recording of the 1940's. Take my word for it, it was great, as was so much of what the Duke did. I never could figure out, however, what those words had to do with the tune. No matter; we know song titles, like rock band names are, as often as not,snatched out of the air like a Marcel Marceau butterfly.

The words, however, present a conundrum. They are often spoken by older folk in moments of longing for the "Good Old Days." So often, the "Good Old Days" never were so good; it's just that they are remembered by the ageing population as the days when they were young, and full of promise, which may or may not have been fulfilled.

But the conundrum remains: what if, as it happens, those old days were, in fact, better days. There are so many areas that provoke that question: literacy and the effectiveness of our educational system; standards of social discourse as governors of reasonable communication and reasonable argument; and finally, the T.Q, or Tolerance Quotient present in American society.

Grounds for probing examination,at the very least. We owe it to ourselves to be able to "keep score" on the society of which we are a contributing part. Required procedure: observe, and analyze.

"Things" may, or may not be, "what they used to be." They might even be better that what they used to be. But, damned be the human bein' who couldn't care less. You have to know, or at least think you know within the limits of your own lights, what "the score" is.

I'm reminded of a great movie that featured the song "We've Only Just Begun." A leading character kept saying, in a very New York-y/New Jersey-y manner: "So what's the story, Richie?" (I think it was Richie; insert any name you like.) We should be able to answer that question at any time.

So, "what's the story,............"

End of Ruminations for 4.15.06

neo-Sisyphus

2006-04-13T17:44:00.001-07:00

Old Sisyphus had it better, I think.

Today's ordinary guy, (previously known as the 'working stiff',) doesn't stand a chance. He's caught up in a maelstrom of verbiage, a morass of lies, and a veritable hurricane of things that don't last.

As I ask the question, how will things get better, I find myself at a total loss. I have been newly introduced to the blogosphere, and while I am encouraged by some of the great thinking I have seen,(in the midst of so much mush,) I do not see anything happening.(I fear the b-sphere has the look, at first glance,of one big massive group stroking.) Sinclair Lewis once wrote a book, "It Can't Happen Here," in which this docile country was, against all possibility, taken over by a dictatorship. I never thought it could happen. I think it has. Perhaps we just don't recognize it. Did we notice that, while we are blogging and slogging through the mess that greed for power/and,or/ wealth has created, we are under the thumb of people who are doing whatever they please. Doing whatever they please,mind you, without worrying about anyone stopping them. Not only is the government in the hands of a cabal, but they daily are "mole"ing into the departments of government in such a way as to guarantee future subversion of democratic hopes, and a fair shake for the "working stiff."

During the Reagan (curse the name,) years, I noted that the right wing must have smarted so much at the tactics of the Communists and their ability to thumb their noses at us, that they took up the study of those tactics in earnest. The '04 election was a textbook model of propagandistic double-speak, and effective character assassination. Did you notice? They got away with it. At every point, when they needed a new voice for their groundless accusations, one came out of the woodwork. These people are organized, in spades. The milquetoast opposition is not. So what can be expected? They WILL NOT allow the Congress to fall into Democratic hands; they have too much at stake, and they are fanatic about it.

Do you know any believer in the democratic process who is fanatic enough to take them on? Should such a person arise out of the political morphosphere, he/she had better be a fighter-not-a-smiler wearing better armor than was provided to our troops in Iraq, because, count on it, they will be out to assassinate, personally and physically.

I am reminded of the events in Eastern Europe following WWII. By whatever means was necessary, the Russians took over every government in Eastern Europe, and held them imprisoned for 50 years, before their system died of congestive heart failure. (In truth, contrary to rightist thinking, Ron Reagan had very little to do with it, unless standing in front of massive Stars and Stripes was his secret weapon.) It will not likely take that severe an effort for the right wing to control the USA for the next fifty years; it's too easy for them.

What's to blame? Try rampant materialism. This country is so soft, no one wants to get up off their bottoms to take the government back from these crazies.

Someone, save me! Save us all!

End of ruminations for 4.13.06

Dja notice: millions of legals/illegals took to the streets this week to fight for a better life; when was the last time WE had millions in the streets? (Whoever WE is.)

Tomorrow, whatever.

Ruminations in any order

2006-04-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

First Rumination:In response to Larry over at Funky Sixteen Corners, whose question was: if oranges are called oranges, then why aren't eggplants called "purples?", I offer the following choices:

Are eggplants not called "Purples" because:

1)lemons are not called "yellows", or
2) the name "purples" has been pre-empted by those States
which can neither be placed in the "red" or "blue" column
and are therefore referred to as "purples",or,
3)the first man to discover the previously unnamed eggplant
in the wild found it, not out in the open, but nestled cozily
under the now famous giant eight-foot tall Rhode Island Red
chicken on a small pig farm in Secaucus, N.J. It was so
delicate, it had to be carried off in a net; thus the name of the
New Jersey Nets.

Second Rumination:I am a baseball fan. Yesterday I witnessed a mega-millions outfielder having to be almost forced out of the dugout to take a "curtain call," because he was in a snit because the fans had booed him previously for a remarkable lack of production. His explanation for this largesse bestowed on the fans, "I am a Christian person, and I felt I should do what God wanted me to do." Well, damn it, why wasn't he listening to God before now? I'm sure God gave him the hit signal from His perch atop the home dugout.

Third Rumination:Today was Charles and Camilla's first anniversary; and I forgot to send a card.What's happening to me?

End of ruminations for today, 4.9.06

4.07.06 Addendum

2006-04-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed there is no such thing as a SQUARE in nature? Then how come the human bein's have created so many of them? Perhaps this might explain our worldwide neurosis: we have become habituated to fitting loose, floating, amorphous beings into angular social structures. Ya think?

Spring.......Humbug!

2006-04-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

Rejoicing at the arrival of Spring is so common: poets, songwriters, meteorologists, baseball fans, on and on ad nauseam. This uproar clearly shows a failure to grasp the features of winter we will not see in these parts for nine months. Oh, the loss. (In Pennsylvania, at least.Apologies to all those outside my meteorological system.)

Consider the trees. After all the chagrin at the FALLing of the leaves, take notice of the form of the trees. Winter is the only time one can appreciate the variety of design in trees, as that design is totally exposed with the damn leaves out of the way. You just can't see that in mid-summer. There are but a few expositions of the nature of all creation: plant growth is one; orbital structure, (from the atom all the way out to the galaxies, and if we could see it all, probably all of the Universe,) is the other. Again, the first of these is truly appreciated when we get the damn leaves out of the way.

Add to all that reality the biting cold wind stinging your face in a winter storm, and appreciate the true beauties of Winter.

No more of this mush about the arrival of wonderful Spring. Stop that singing!

Punny: have you ever noticed.....................................

End of ruminations for 4.7.06

Revenge and Moussaoui

2006-04-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

I see Rudy Giuliani has shown up at the Moussaoui sentencing trial. It must really be important.(just a bit of tongue-in-cheek, if I may.)
But what's going on here? One way to assess what's happening in public affairs is to ask the question: "Where would we be if they didn't do this at all?"
l suppose he would have been sentenced to life in prison, put away, forgot about, and that would be that. But there seem to be other things at stake here. Perhaps revenge? We all felt so helpless at the occurrence of 9/11, that we have been searching around for what to do about it. The glaring fact that a government with our massive resources and amazing technical resources has failed to nail terrorist #1, has put us into an emotional morass, causing an unconscious search for effective reactions that will settle our minds and souls on the subject. And so we have this seemingly endless sentencing hearing, instead of a definitive moment that was so readily available to us.

Think what you will: the only rationally justifiable response to crime is to protect the public from the perpetrator. Revenge may be satisfying to some, but it is counter-productive in a society that claims to be humanitarian. The quote escapes me, but someone once effectively indicated that revenge really only inflicts itself on the person seeking it. Yet, time and again, as to 9/11, or to other crimes, we see a parade of victims' family members showing up and sometimes venting themselves with the court's encouragement that they want to see the inflicter of their pain burn in hell, or at least know the pain they are feeling themselves. It makes emotional TV footage, and sometimes after-the-fact TV movies, but it confuses our system of justice.

There is clearly room for slimming down and clarifying our justice system, but making it more hateful is not the way to go.

Any thoughts ? Let's hear 'em.

Gray day today; nothing punny about it. If it bothers you, however, picture yourself living in some spot where it was this way all the time.

End of ruminations for 4.6.06

Save the Next Child

2006-04-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

In Darfur, a slaughter is taking place that would make Adolf Hitler and the Japanese Warlords green with envy. Cruelty is running amok.
At this point , relief workers are being told to leave the country. This means much more than a cutoff of food and medicine to displaced refugees; it means there will be no witnesses to what happens next.

Please give thought to making Darfur your first priority: every communication you send, post the demand....."DARFUR FIRST." Can there possibly be anything more important to consider? Get informed on what has been happening there. Information must be followed by a sense of shock and horror.

Think about the potential of the internet in this crisis: an explosion of DARFUR FIRST should get someone's attention in the halls of government. We just might be able to save the next child from a horrible death. These killers aren't just killing innocents, they are enjoying it.

no ruminations today,
nothing punny today

4.4.06

Distance

2006-04-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

I called my credit card number today for a clarification.(Am I broke, or not?) But not really.
I got a person in Arizona. I asked my question, got an excellent answer in a polite tone of voice, wished the guy a good day,(cautious about whether or not it was "day" there,) and hung up. But then, I realized, I had not attended to all my questions, so called right back. Now I know how these things work, so I didn't expect "Chuck" to answer. Denise answered, and she was in Utah. Well. I understand they're all on the same computer, so it doesn't matter, and Denise took care of my questions promptly and politely, and "have a nice day."

I am reminded of a scene from the movie "The Actress," wherein Spencer Tracy, an old retired salt, has had a phone installed. It is very much against his thinking, but if his daughter was going to be off making her way in the theater, he was going to keep in touch.She called. He ran to the phone, looked at it as if something very strange was going to happen if he dared touch it, and finally, hesitatingly, picked it up, putting the earpiece to his ear.(It was a wall phone, with the separate ear piece.) Now comes the hilarious part: he literally yells into the phone, "HELLO, I CAN HEAR YOU;CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

Of course, it was most natural for him to shout; after all, his beloved daughter was hundreds of miles away. It took him some time to get with the idea that modern communication had somehow brought them closer.

Which brings me back to Arizona and Utah. (I'm in PA, by the way.) The space between us has artificially disappeared. Have we lost anything in this process? I must add that I have developed the habit of asking where people are when I call these service reps. India is no surprise any more.My problem is, I haven't the slightest notion what to say to a person in India. I spoke with a fellow in Texas once, who ended up having come from close to where I sprung from, and we had an excellent conversation. I suppose his supervisor frowned on that, but I believe he and I were richer for having taken it a bit beyond the may-I-have-your-16-digit number, sir.

But have we lost something in the process? As travel has improved, people have so much greater access to distant places and people, but how has that affected their lives as "locals." I met a guy one afternoon picking up kids from after-school activities. He had just flown in from Los Angeles. He had spent his day in or over four time zones. Does it make a difference?
The benefits of a shrinking world are clear. I recently hooked up with an old friend who lives in Hawaii. Fantastic. Long talk every couple of weeks.

Consider, however, the down side of all this cosmic closeness. A century ago, the news you heard was from a local paper, or local people. It was surely easier to handle, and considerably less in volume. People were, I believe, closer. Truly closer. Now, I have to experience some national news channel giving me the option to watch four different police chases that took place on the same day.The event is in my head, but the people sure aren't.But we are daily beset with the miseries of the whole wide world. I'm trying to be compassionate, but sometimes the burden is just overwhelming.

I believe there is a tribe of people hanging on in South America, to whom the words "I know,........." really have the meaning of "I have experienced............"I suspect we need to concentrate a bit on remembering that there is a difference between "I heard," and "I was actually there and saw.........."

End of ruminations for April 2, 2006

Punny thing:Have you ever wondered how many little signals are passing by you, through you, etc.?There's a number I would like to know.

Oh, It Doesn't Matter Anyway

2006-03-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

I caught a politician taking blame today. It seemed like a special moment. Condy Rice admitted to many tactical errors by the Administration with respect to Iraq.

My moment was getting more and more special with every word.Then down came the hammer: it didn't matter too much, because "we" had achieved our goals. (Never mind that those goals were hidden away under the big WMD threat.) I asked myself if this was an acceptable "admission" of error; then it dawned on me: people had died because of those "errors."
What's that? I said "people had died because of those errors." People died because "smart" bombs are only as smart as the people who direct them; people had died because we sent them into battle without adequate body armor, or vehicle armor; people had died, and continue to, because we didn't pacify the whole of Iraq before we declared "mission accomplished",(which we probably could never have accomplished anyway;) yes, people had died, and continue to. So what happens to Condy and her boss and his motley crew? Nothing. What's that?
Nothing, I said.

So, as I said in the beginning, it doesn't matter anyway.
Like hell it doesn't.

Punny for the day:
ruminating is: 1) spraying your room with Raid
2) traveling in Rumania, or
3)doing the rhumba with your roomie
End of ruminations for 3.31.06

National Identity(s)

2006-03-30T16:50:00.000-08:00

Who are we?

We once were the good guys, no question.(Our history had been full of exceptions to that identification, but our redemption was in our always making the effort, as a whole people, to improve, to overcome the worst in us. And we did.)

But now, who are we.I remember WW2, when images of the enemy were aired about, and though they were somewhat overdone, in essence, they were right.For what they had done to the world, I had no problem seeing Nazis depicted as huns, or Japanese as monkeys. Truth is, they had carried on like bloodthirsty savages and animals. We, on the other hand , were depicted as the saviours of humanity. And, outside of some general staff decisions, our guys, the grunts in the field, were out doing precisely that, saving humanity.

But now, who are we? And when did it happen? Secret government (keeping secrets from the Congress, no less,) rationalizing torture as a national policy, forging ahead with a war based on the fervor of post-9/11 speechifying, creating a political climate full of hate and deception, institutionalizing propaganda as government P.R.

Blame those who created it, and blame those who stood mum while it all happened, because their political habit was never to do anything too risky. I am as mad at the latter as at the former.

Lady Liberty must surely have tears in her eyes. Seriously.

Today's punny:
What is an American?
1) a torturer? ,or
2) a hoagie?, or
3) a sit-back-on-his-ass-have-a-great-time-kindaguy,
who wouldn't know a voting booth from a urinal?
Not so punny; sorry, too pissed-off.

Ruminations for 3.30.06 all done.

Pete Rose

2006-03-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

So Pete Rose wants players punished for using steroids.

Let me just pause a moment to let that sink in. Is this "the pot calling the kettle black," or what?

Truly, I feel sorry for Pete Rose. Actually, I felt sorry for Pete Rose when everybody else thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.I felt sorry for him because his only thought was of baseball; that is, until his second thought was of gambling. He ate, drank, and slept baseball, and became "Charlie Hustle" to generations of kids. But he was a most incomplete person. Why, because he ate, drank, and slept baseball. He knew nothing else, enjoyed nothing else, and hoped for nothing else.That kind of life is the narrowest, to put it mildly.

There are many Pete Rose types around today. Their parents push them out on to ballfields, soccer fields, hockey rinks, gyms, and even ski slopes. Their cultural I.Q.'s are below the humanity line, and their understanding of the world around them is equally lacking.There is a price to pay for this: the athlete, sometimes wishfully referred to as a student athlete, heads out into life an incomplete person, and after his dreams are done, has nowhere to turn for fulfillment; the price society has to pay is that these people often have an influence on others, establishing empty-headedness as a model to be admired and imitated. When these student-athletes find their way into colleges to enhance "the program", they are coddled through their eligibility for four or five years, until they are no longer useful; no follow-up , no after-care, no pension for their services, nothing. And the A.D.s run the University, as the tail wags the dog.

Need I mention, these athletic types become voters, or worse, non-voters. Of course, there are exceptions: athlete-graduates from the few selective schools, and high-quality success stories from kids who just had great families to direct them.lf, however, you want to know if this assessment is close to the truth, just tune in to the end of any ballgame, and listen to interviews: can you understand what most of the players are saying? I can't.

Punny thing for today:

LaCrosse.......is it a)a city in Wisconsin
b) a betrayal of trust, among thieves, or
c) a way to beat somebody's brains in without being arrested?

toodle-oo 3.29.06

Christians, Oh You Christians

2006-03-28T17:19:00.000-08:00

So, let me get this straight: fundamentalist Christian Americans got this "W" elected. Their "W" invades Afghanistan to undo some fundamentalist terrorists who are not of the Christian persuasion.Having undone those fundamentalists, the "W" installs a government that will guarantee freedom of religion.So far, not bad.
Underneath it all, some very fundamentalist Afghanis are running the local courts, wherein some very fundamentalist Islamics are enforcing Islamic law, whereby a poor Christian soul who has dared to be Christian in Afghanistan is about to lose his head. Now, not so good.
Into the picture comes "Condy" waving all of our money back and forth, and gets one Mohammed guy to put the fundamentalist kibosh on it all.

Fundamental, "W." But very difficult to follow, yes? Perhaps even Alice-In-Wonderland-ish, yes?

Today's Punny Thing:

"taking umbrage" Is it:
a) hiding your real feelings in a snit,or
b) creating shade with an umbrella, or
c) renting a villa in Umbria for the season

That's it for Tuesday, 3.28.06, day one of this paltry effort.