jazzoLOG

Time To Go, Part 2

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:04:41 GMT

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

---Albert Einstein

Tell the Truth but tell it slant...
The Truth must dazzle gradually
or every man be blind.

---Emily Dickinson

Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.

---Yehuda Amichai

Photo of Liskula Cohen

Canadian model gets Google to unmask a nasty blogger
Simon Avery
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Last updated on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 02:55AM EDT

A Canadian model has won a landmark case against Google Inc. that could strip away some of the anonymity provided by the Web, making people who post offensive blogs, videos or tweets more responsible for their defamatory statements.

Liskula Cohen, who once graced the covers of such high-fashion magazines as Vogue and Flare, won a court order in New York that has forced Google to unmask the identity of a blogger who posted photos and derogatory comments about her.

At issue were five posts made a year ago, using Google's blogging service, on a now-defunct site named Skanks of NYC. Ms. Cohen, 37, claimed the blogger posted photographs and defamatory statements concerning her appearance, hygiene and sexual conduct that are malicious and untrue.

Her lawyer argued that she could not bring a defamation suit against the blogger unless the search-engine giant released the person's identity.

The case spotlights a new area of law where legal standards are still being worked out, said Steven Wagner, the New York-based lawyer who represented Ms. Cohen.

People who behave poorly and defame people on the Internet will face possible repercussions, he said in a phone interview. This is one of a series of cases that is establishing a standard. The standard is not set yet.

Mr. Wagner said one of the most important things in the case is that Madam Justice Joan Madden of the Supreme Court of the State of New York used established law and did not distinguish between the online and offline worlds for judging both defamation and free speech.

Google spokeswoman Tamara Micner would not comment on how Google saw the case affecting its blogging service. But in a prepared statement, she said, We sympathize with anyone who may be the victim of cyberbullying. We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order. If content is found by a court to be defamatory, we will of course remove it immediately.

Google handed over details about the blogger as ordered this week and Ms. Cohen learned that the person was an acquaintance of hers from the New York social scene.

In an interview with U.S. national television Wednesday, Ms. Cohen said she forgave the blogger and dismissed her as an irrelevant person in my life.

Mr. Wagner, however, said his client would definitely proceed with a defamation suit against the blogger.

In court filings, Ms. Cohen said she suffered damages including personal humiliation, mental anguish and damage to her reputation and standing in the community and in her industry as a result of the offensive postings.

Ms. Cohen began her professional modelling career at 17 after leaving Toronto and moving to Paris. She has worked for some of the top names in the fashion industry, including Armani and Versace.

She has been the victim of bullying before. In 2007, a man at a Manhattan nightclub cut her face with broken glass, requiring her to get 46 stitches and, later, plastic surgery. Her attacker was sentenced to a year in prison and three years probation.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/canadian-model-gets-google-to-unmask-nasty-blogger/article1257768/ more >

Time To Go

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:39:49 GMT

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.

---Ludwig Wittgenstein

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

---Naguib Mahfouz

Storm passes, watch the pines change color.
Out along the mountain, through the source,
flowers in the stream reveal Zen's meaning:
nothing in between, all words gone.

---Liu Ch'ang-Ch'ing

The art is by Erica Magnus, the mother of my daughter-in-law Karen. Please take a few moments to visit her website http://www.ericaart.com/ .

This is my final post at jazzoLOG. I began the thing on February 4, 2002, at the suggestion of a friend here who thought my writing would help people get to know me. I just had accepted the invitation of another friend to join New Civilization Network, and already had run into conflict with someone. It was my inexperience with NCN Groups that was part of the problem, but at the time I really didn't understand much of anything about the site. All 3 of those people have quit this place by now.

I've continued on for 2 reasons: I found it was fun to write a Log, and I felt great potential for NCN where very interesting people from all over the world were congregating. Shortly some of us thought we had some sort of international community forming online. At the time it was a thrilling innovation, and perhaps marked new possibilities for the Internet. Maybe there was more we could do than just exchange basic information. Perhaps here was a new form of relationship.

Some had ideas about changing the technical aspects of the site to accomodate this evolution. I had no knowledge of such matters but I liked the idea of bringing this interpretation of "new civilization" to fruition. Flemming Funch, the webmaster and creator, replied that maybe yes, that could be true...but he needed to think about it. And he didn't want anybody rushing ahead; so the reins of technical control remained in his hands alone. They still do.

At the same time, an element of abrasion persisted at NCN. There were and are members who enjoy NCN for the recreation it provides...and at least some of that fun for them is the use of flames with which to engulf people who have different opinions. Disagreement can be accomplished in a number of ways, and disrespectful bullying has a great, if egomaniacal, history on the Internet...and elsewhere in America, even High Places. However, it creates a quality of anxiety at a site that makes people jumpy. It's frightening and not conducive to what many new members are seeking when they come in here.

When approached on this issue, Flemming has resisted response. He doesn't want to interfere and if people tear each other apart and some leave, so be it. Anyway, he reminds us repeatedly and constantly that this "public area" was an afterthought, and ultimately he regrets ever creating it. The emphasis of NCN is on the "network" part, not the civilization. NCN is a place for movers and shakers, entrepreneurs who have things and services for sale. As my suggesting friend said when he quit the site, NCN is a message board. It's the OLD Internet civilization of exchanging contact information and maybe arranging meetings in Malibu to schmooze.

Nearly everyone else with whom I had connection in that "community phase" has moved on too. Flemming says that's OK, because the function of NCN is to make the contact and then get on out and change the world. They go because they have better things to do than hang around chat rooms and blogs. Maybe so, but almost every one of those people has expressed resentment and disappointment upon leaving. It's rare that we see someone say, "Thanks so much NCN for providing the opportunity to meet the valuable folks who are helping me on my way! Farewell!"

Over the past year at least, jazzoLOG has suffered results of this exodus. There are new, delightful people passing through here all the time, but they rarely visit or comment at my Log. One reason I think is the abrasive contention I mentioned before. Nearly every article I write lately has drawn the kind of flames that makes my creation an unpleasant experience. I've grown ashamed of jazzoLOG here, and no longer recommend it to people. Who would want to read the insane rage of one or two members? Who cares?

Now one of those people is going through my Log deleting his comments. My work looks like a bombed site in Gaza, a shell of what it used to be. People's cries of distress at what was being said to them still hang in the air. A bulldozer has arrived and shoved down their opinions with families still inside. Perhaps old soldiers are proud of the empty shells they've created with their rockets and mortars. Maybe they can stand before such a place and say, "There used to be a school here, but what the fuck can you learn in a school anyway? Just a bunch of old cunts who can't do anything else with their lives. I'm happy I blew it up!"

So while I will not be adding anything to jazzoLOG, I'll leave it here. It's an empty, bombed-out shell but maybe it's also a monument to at least one period of the New Civilization Network. Oh and before I forget, one other thing I used to do around here is review the other Logs for publication on the splash page. Before Flemming let me do it, he had a robot thing pick the articles. Someone might tell him to put that feature back so time doesn't stop out there.

Now I have a little space left before going to work. I guess I'll use it up by celebrating both Martin Luther King Jr. and our Inauguration Day in the United States. Hey, it's the end of The Era of Ronald Reagan! more >

From Duke 'N Satch To Obama: A Personal Triumph

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:16:01 GMT

I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never, satisfied a single interlocuter. Why? Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which, as Zen tells us, is really known already. Every man is enlightened, but wishes he wasn't. Every man knows he must love his enemies, and sell all he has and give to the poor, but he doesn't wish to know it---so he asks questions.

---R.H. Blyth

When a man is instantly awakened, he comes back to his original mind.

---The Vimalakirti Sutra

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

---Henry David Thoreau

During the 2008 presidential election campaign, I did not think of Barack Obama as a black man. He mentioned his racial origins himself from time to time, referring to his mother and grandmother when he did so. As president-elect he said, before all the other ferocious issues fell upon him, the most important decision was what kind of dog to get that he had promised his daughters. He'd like to find a mongrel, a mutt, like he is, he said, himself. I really liked that! I like thinking of him as the Melting Pot personified...and I said so one evening at Obama Headquarters here in Athens, Ohio. I realized race is a sensitive issue, even in there, but I was pleased no one seemed shocked or obviously uncomfortable.

With our first lady-elect, it's different. When Michelle Obama started to talk about her origins, the whole Civil Rights Movement came pouring out. I was in a huge audience here one of the times she stood on a stage and did that, my daughter on my left and a black single mom, in graduate school at OU, on my right. All around us were obvious members of every race and mix in the land, and it was thrilling. I was one of the people telling everybody who would listen that I hadn't felt this happy exhilaration in 45 years. That was when there were interracial agencies and programs for educational and neighborhood encouragement. Black and white, we got to know each other intimately sometimes, dance together, party in each other's houses, and---yes---argue. Races in Michelle's audience looked at each other joyfully that way, and I too felt really proud to be an American again---after a long time.

Well, she capitulated to the image makers a bit and I was disappointed if it meant she was being silenced. And like many progressives, I have questions and doubts about how Barack Obama is starting out. I worry about some of those cabinet appointments and so much inclusion of all sides as to risk diluting important decisions. I worry about hesitancy on Gaza and possible support to any and all Israeli policies. I don't want trillions handed over to banks, which have no history as effective social helping agencies. And then there's investigation and possible prosecution of Bush and his people. See Krugman this morning on that! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=1&th&emc=th I understand not wanting it to be partisan, but if President Obama is going to be another one of these politicians who only talks about "moving forward" all the time I'm going to be sick.

But this is a time of inaugural celebration and let's get back to it. I am of a very fortunate generation in this country who has started out in segregation, nationality as well as race, and moved myself and been moved into the wonders of a multicultural world. My mother raised me to "play with our own kind" and she reacted physically to memories of bathing black men off the streets of the Lower East Side during her nursing training at Bellevue Hospital. This was a farm girl from Appalachia...but I didn't excuse her and went my own way. For one thing, we were being taught differently in school. After World War II the curriculum, at least in New York State, changed. We began to get a smattering of black history. We read Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver in grade school and junior high. Folk music entered our music training, and we got black melody and rhythm...stilted but there. Jackie Robinson was our hero on the Brooklyn Dodgers...though I didn't abandon Stan Musial or the Cards. more >

Pray For George Bush

Sun, 4 Jan 2009 11:04:16 GMT

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

---Andre Gide

The philosopher asks himself, "What is your aim in philosophy?" and he answers, "To show the fly the way out of the bottle." And where is he when he has made his escape? He is, it appears, exactly where he started; for philosophy "leaves everything as it is."

---Ludwig Wittgenstein

With no bird singing, the mountain is yet more still.

---Zen saying

I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.

---Statement made George Bush during campaign visit to Amish community, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jul. 9, 2004

Some people don't pray of course. When called upon to do so one may screw up one's face into a frown of feigned concentration and just sit there until it's over. One may "pray" the wait's not too long.

Others have ritual words to say to fill the silence. When in doubt there's always the "Lord's Prayer" or a mantra, some chant or holy script. You can try meditation, which many distinguish from "talking to God" as listening to God. One can sit on one's chair, one's pillow, a mat...and train yourself to wait patiently through the silence. Maybe God will say something.

The silence is tough. Everyone says the brain chatters away anyway, whether it's prayer or meditation. Mostly it's Let's stop doing this and get on to something fun. If the mind can be quieted, then there's the leg problem or the ache in the knees. Maybe a mosquito whines in your ear and disrupts the Enlightenment.

So even if you can forgive George Bush or the American people, in the event you somehow believe we elected him---twice---the invitation to pray for him may not fit into your schedule. He has a "legacy project" going on now, possibly to spin a few pictures into the minds of columnists and historians who are attempting to collect ALL of the events of the past 8 years into some coherent narrative.

I thought it would be impossible. It's like coming home to an apartment that's been burglarized. Did that ever happen to you? The worst part of it is the sense of invasion and helplessness...because what cop really is going to doing anything about it? To really scare you into paralysis may be part of the strategy. Otherwise the mess everywhere could be from the furtive hurry a thief always must be in. The place is so ransacked it may take hours even to find out what's missing. Did you write down all those appliance serial numbers? Or maybe your house is just empty: they took everything.

I thought no one could sum up what's happened to my country. The review's too complex. They've put us through too much. Their carelessness has been thorough. I remember everything but I don't want to retrieve it, don't want to think about it. But slowly our major writers, right and left, are coming up with our summaries. The righties are saying it hasn't been that bad and maybe Obama will do OK. (Oh jeez, pray for Obama!) Lefties are pouring it on. Vengeance is sweet and they feel the proof of the Bush pudding is everywhere.

Yet no one is going to jail. Indictments are not on the table. Bush hasn't confessed yet...or even tried to put into words what he thinks the plunge in popularity might be about. The one thing the man is skilled at is denial. If he's going to pardon himself, doesn't he first have to admit to something? Cheney did...and he awaits that presidential pardon before leaving for Dubai. The rest of the neocon men and women are lined up for their pardons too. I hate this presidential pardon business. Why do we allow it?

OK, back to my prayers. We must forgive and all work together, and start to pick up the mess. Some stuff is broken and we'll have to get new. The inventories must be done, as surely as the new president and his family will begin unpacking some things today. The girls start in a new school tomorrow. We'll be spiritual today. Have a cup of coffee, read the Sunday paper, and then say a prayer. Or meditate. What's this? A new review is in, and it's Frank Rich. more >

Important Notice Of Change In Terms

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 11:01:47 GMT

In mountain light, all sounds
return to silence.
All that remains, the temple
bell.

---Ch'ang Chien

Unexpectedly you find it, welling upwards in the empty tree.

---Rainer Maria Rilke

The meadows were a-drinking at their leisure; the frogs sat meditating, all Sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eyeing the wondrous universe in which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as maidens go to church,

---Henry David Thoreau

The Eye of the Artist, c. 1898
Victor Dubreuil, born in New York to French emigre parents
The administration of President Grant, who's on the 5 dollar bill along with the mysterious pyramid we stuck on our money, is remembered for its financial corruption.

There is only one rule of economics for me, and that is I pay my bills on time. I prefer to pay for anything at the moment I buy it, but that isn't always possible so I get bills. My wife and I argue about some things, but we seem to agree about politics and money. We don't borrow. There's a car payment and we have a second mortgage for environmental improvements to the house---which already are saving us money on energy costs. Ilona probably is going to college shortly, so we may need someone to make us a loan then. Otherwise we have lived within our means for 27 years---despite rocky times.

I've been broke and down and out in my day. I've had everything I own in my car, with nowhere to go. I've sat on a curb in New York City, without a job, and wept. I've been grateful for government programs. I support them gladly through taxes, now that I have some money. I celebrate economic simplicity in my life, which principles I probably learned through some hardship and a sound upbringing. I learned only the basics of how a capitalist market is supposed to work in theory, in the single required course on the matter in college. Quite frankly, I haven't been able to see that the market---take gasoline for instance---actually works that way. But then maybe, for the last 10 years, the market hasn't really been working at all. more >

"Change Is Coming"

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:04:48 GMT

The head is through, but the body is still sticking out.

---Zen saying

A flower falls, even though we love it;
and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

---Dogen

Kassan had a monk who left and went all around to the various Zen temples, seeking. But no matter where he went, the name of Kassan was mentioned to him as the name of a great master.
Finally the monk returned, interviewed Kassan, and asked: "You are reputed to have the greatest understanding of Zen. Why did you not reveal this to me when I was here earlier?"
Kassan said: "When you boiled rice, did I not light the fare? When you passed around food, did I not offer my bowl to you? When did I betray your expectations?"
With that the monk was enlightened.

---Zen mondo

Photo: Stan Honda / AFP/Getty Images

The title of this reluctant article is on the subject line of the latest message from David Plouffe, campaign manager of Obama For America. It came Tuesday, and suggests the grassroots hold house parties the middle of next month to energize supporters in continuing the message of hope. In the weeks before the election, David or someone from www.BarackObama.com used to email us every day, as did other Democrats and independent progressives. The others either have quit campaigning, fallen in a holiday heap of exhaustion, or gone back to work. Some of the progressive groups seem to be casting about for something to do or new issues to keep contributions coming in. But the Obama organization is trying to keep things together and the momentum going. At no point in Mr. Plouffe's message does he mention growing doubt as a matter for concern. The man isn't even President yet, but the Internet is groaning with disappointment.

My personal reaction to the election, as far as the Internet is involved in my life, was to sigh relief and vow not to bother readers with any more political writing. People who have known me for a while, and who encouraged me to write and post stuff, remember I used to compose reminiscences and pastoral observations of nature. I got very nice responses to that...and still do. But in the Roman tradition of the gentle farmer who must leave the plow and go to battle when the republic is under attack, I started to write political things several years ago. I lost a lot of readers doing that. They didn't want to know about it, or if they did know didn't want to read it on this piece of furniture many use only for recreation. I thought they'd be happy if they found out I was back!

And Thanksgiving yesterday at my home seemed to reflect the wisdom of this perception. We have a pretty animated political group of people who come here---and that includes some who have given up completely various dreams for the future. Everybody is vocal, and in past gatherings we've discussed current affairs in loud speeches. With the Hillary/Obama schism, there came debate and argument. But yesterday---I shall be corrected if wrong---I don't think a political notion was uttered. We talked about babies and traveling and food and shopping---actual normal American conversation. Our worries will be addressed and taken care of, and we can return to our gardens.

But then...but then, I venture into the news sites and blogs this morning, and I find no such peacefulness prevailed in cyberspace yesterday...or in the columns of newspapers. I'm sure there are plenty of articles about things to be thankful for, the usual ones, and we did a lot of gratitude in our house. But in reading today I have to say I soon was overwhelmed with crisis and gloom. So much so, that I hate to tell you I need to share it...not so much to spread it around, as to offer up a reality check. Is a sense of relief really called for? more >

American Justice: Any Hope?

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:57:00 GMT

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men...trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings---many of them not so much.

---John Muir

Sit just to sit. And why not sit? You have to sit sometime, and so you may as well REALLY sit, and be altogether here. Otherwise the mind wanders away from the matter at hand, and away from the present. Even to think through the implications of the present is to avoid the present moment completely.

---Alan Watts

The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are one.

---Chuang-Tzu

The illustration is a movie poster for a film that is making its impact felt increasingly through word-of-mouth. Since it may be a bit hard to find here's a synopsis: In a world of six billion people, it only takes one to change your life. Sixty-two-year-old Walter Vale is sleepwalking through his life. Having lost his passion for teaching and writing, he fills the void by unsuccessfully trying to learn to play classical piano. When his college sends him to Manhattan to attend a conference, Walter is surprised to find a young couple has taken up residence in his apartment. Victims of a real estate scam, Tarek, a Syrian man, and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend, have nowhere else to go. In the first of a series of tests of the heart, Walter reluctantly allows the couple to stay with him. Touched by his kindness, Tarek, a talented musician, insists on teaching the aging academic to play the African drum. The instruments exuberant rhythms revitalize Walters faltering spirit and open his eyes to a vibrant world of local jazz clubs and Central Park drum circles. As the friendship between the two men deepens, the differences in culture, age and temperament fall away. After being stopped by police in the subway, Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation. As his situation turns desperate, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friend with a passion he thought he had long ago lost. When Tareks beautiful mother Mouna arrives unexpectedly in search of her son, the professors personal commitment develops into an unlikely romance. And its through these new found connections with these virtual strangers that Walter is awakened to a new world and a new life.
http://www.yourmoviestuff.com/movie-news/movies-in-theaters-april-11-2008/

As so often happens, particularly on Mondays when I review the weekend papers, most of the computer work I'd planned to do this morning got scrapped by a single item. Then one sidetrack led to another, and soon I was wandering in the woods again. The piece that did it was in The Times of London yesterday, and some editor there I guess had seen it in its complete version in the current edition of Spears Wealth Management Survey magazine. It was written by the former "proprietor" of the London Daily Telegraph, who currently resides in a federal prison here in the United States. He's been there for 8 months. I know nothing of the case nor how long his sentence is. Whatever it is, he's appealing it and apparently has had some success.

What he has to say that interests me is about the present legal system here. Of course laws can be changed. Even the Constitution can be changed. But through all that shines a spirit of America that all of us used to be raised to believe in. It has to do with equality before the law. If there are mistakes, OK, we understand that. But if there are injustices, Americans feel their freedom threatened. We respond. Or should. If we don't, or lose track of how we can respond, we begin to sink into the kind of daily despair that has plagued humanity around the world and through time, since our conception.

Let me not preach about the last 8 years---or 16, or 32. Let us simply look at where we are, and the work to do. I know attorneys, and my family boasted some prominent ones. I set about at university to become one---until Dylan Thomas crossed my path. My daughter has such plans in the environmental field. I'm supporting her in this---despite all indications of the futility of working for the EPA. Futility. Ah, there's the rub. When a people allow themselves to believe it is futile to go up against the system---either because that system is invariably right in what it pursues, or because it is hopelessly decadent, we surrender to a prison state. If I am barred from dissent by a privately contracted army, as I have been in an attempt merely to glimpse President Bush in person, I am in a prison state.

Ah, but now I'm preaching. [There are ministers on the other side of the family. :-)] Let me step aside for this gentleman in his jail cell. Then follows an editorial from yesterday's New York Times about Guantanamo.
more >

The Day John Kennedy Was Shot

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:51:00 GMT

Ever the same,
unchanged by hue,
cherry blossoms
of my native place.
Spring now has gone.

---Dogen

LIVE the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

---Rainer Maria Rilke

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

---Simone De Beauvoir

The author and first wife, The Bronx, autumn 1963

In June of 1963, I was just out of university, didn't have any money left to speak of, hadn't ever held a "real" job in the world, had no set prospects for one, and was getting married. Five years later, that wife and her mother concluded I wasn't really ready to be a married person. A judge in Bridgeport agreed, so they took our 2 kids and went away. But that summer in '63, I felt ready and eager nevertheless. I remember red roses everywhere in full bloom and beautiful.

A job came through, in The Bronx. The principal of the school hired me to teach English to the upper grades at secondary level. In July he called to ask if I could teach some social studies. He knew I had taken courses in a number of fields in college. Frankly I had chosen English finally, because that thesis was the easiest to do. So I said OK. In August, a couple weeks before we were to have moved in our first apartment, the man called again and said the English teacher had decided to stay. Could I teach all social studies? Just married, my first job, I was nervous. I said I'd do it, but I needed the department chairman to get me materials immediately so I could prepare. He said, "You are the department chairman."

Thus did I stride into the wonderful world of love, marriage, and work---at least work in the weedy field of education. But there was much more to learn. In 1963, the New York World's Fair was getting started over at Flushing Meadows in The Queens. Elvis made a movie about it. Part of the place would end up the ball park for a new major league team in New York. Our school decided to take a field trip over to see it. We took the subway, a rather long ride. The principal had decided to come along. When we changed trains in Manhattan, he spotted a beggar at the stop and nonchalantly remarked, "There's one of my former students." I think I said something about government programs to enable the poor to enter the work force. The boss replied, "Oh, so you're a Kennedy pinko."

I remember just where we were when he said that to me, as one does when one's illusions are shattered. I had grown up during the McCarthy era and knew how serious a charge along those lines could be. This guy was kidding just a little bit, but I never had been called anything like that by someone in authority. I didn't tell him this, but the fact was I didn't even support John Kennedy particularly. I had seen him once, in 1960 during his campaign for the presidency, but the voting age wouldn't be lowered for another 10 years...so I couldn't vote and didn't feel particularly committed one way or the other. A professor drove me to wherever it was in Maine that he appeared, and I know we waited forever for him so show up. But there was no doubt about it: the man absolutely radiated charisma.

I had participated in picketing his White House in March of '62. We were protesting his policy of continuing above-ground nuclear bomb testing---or at least I think that's what it was. We were up to our ankles in slush in Washington, and most of us wore beatnik tennis shoes with holes in them back then. Pete Seeger led the march from the Washington Monument to the White House. There we walked up and down, back and forth, had to keep moving. We were freezing as the sleet continued to fall. My fiancee had come along, and this was her first real dip into the world of radical politics. We knew Kennedy was inside, and ultimately a van came down the driveway and a guy in a suit got out. He said the President sent his greetings and wished us well. And here were cups of hot chocolate for everyone. That's how JFK dealt with protest. more >

Now, About Bill Ayers...

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 11:47:12 GMT

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control---these three alone lead to sovereign power.

---Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Growing older, I love only quietness:
who needs be concerned with the things of this world?
Looking back, what better plan than this:
returning to the grove.

---Li Po

...on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

---John Keats

Photo of Bill Ayers by Chris Walker of The Chicago Tribune.

Some of us have been on a particularly pink Cloud Nine since Barack Hussein Obama was elected the next President of the United States. But this is 5 days later and here are the Sunday papers. If we haven't been jolted out of our reverie yet by the reactions of people not sharing it, it should happen today.

I was not a total convert to Senator Obama, even after being in the midst of one of his ecstatic rallies, but I ended up on the team knocking door-to-door on Election Day. While wearing an Obama button, I nevertheless saw myself as enabling both friend and foe to get to the polls if they wanted to. While cautious and frankly very worried about the shotgun fringe around here, who loudly refused to vote for any of those liars anywhere, I wasn't prepared for the aftermath among Republicans, Libertarians, Evangelicals and those even farther to the right.

I don't think I've seen, after any of the elections in my lifetime, the opposition explode in such disarray. I snuck a listen to rightwing AM radio Wednesday night, and heard Sean Hannity blasting the Republican Party as a bunch of phonies, too scared to stand up for any of the real conservative values. Evangelicals at work, particularly those with single-issue concerns about abortion, haven't spoken to me since Tuesday. I wrote a piece honoring folk singer/songwriter Holly Near, posted it on the Internet (I was trying to change the subject) and the comment thread blew up into flames and personal invective about Obama. As I look around at other blogs and comment pages to analysis, I see I wasn't alone in having this happen.

Yesterday the UK Guardian published an article with the subtitle "The Right Tears Itself Apart In Pinning Blame For McCain's Defeat." It begins,

"As the implosion of the defeated Republican campaign continued yesterday, the landscape of American conservatism was dotted with signs that these were very strange times indeed.

"Rush Limbaugh, behemoth of rightwing radio, took to the airwaves to declare war on two enemies: Barack Obama and the Republican party. Bloggers at FreeRepublic.com, an internet hub for conservatives, announced a boycott of Fox News and John McCain's aides fell over one another to leak embarrassing details about the campaign to the press.

"Liberals, indulging in what the writer Andrew Sullivan termed 'Palinfreude', were presented with a smorgasbord, ranging from the tale of how McCain's pro-Palin foreign policy adviser had his Blackberry confiscated in the closing days of the race, to how the party had paid for Todd Palin's silk boxer shorts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/08/sarahpalin-republicans-rushlimbaugh

This morning The New York Times is carrying opinion columns not only from the usual Sunday commentators Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, but from their other writers too, like Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof---and even more, including Al Gore. And there are the blogs in there and other columns too, all about the election...and what's next. Take your choice http://www.nytimes.com/opinion/

What I decided to do was open space for the most extreme rants anybody's still got bottled up. Let's just get it all out and hope that after a few days of venting, we can return to the business of our everyday with normal composure and focus. The Republicans pinned a lot of their attack on a supposed underground relationship and influence with Chicago resident, professor, and activist Bill Ayers. As far as I know, Mr. Ayers said nothing in public about all this during the campaign. Now he does. What do you think? more >

Sing Out The Vote

Sun, 2 Nov 2008 11:55:47 GMT

My epitaph? My epitaph will be, "Curiosity did not kill this cat."

---Studs Terkel (May 16, 1912-October 31, 2008)

A school of trout
passed by:
the color of water!

---Buson

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.

---Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The vote gets sung out in Ohio. Photo by Michael Gruber.

Maybe it was the Depression, and how all the people had to pull together to get us out of it. Maybe it was the New Deal, and all those agencies planting trees, building dams, cleaning up towns, cities, the countryside, encouraging art, literature, music, theater, movies. Maybe it was uprooted people, from the Dust Bowl and lost jobs, traveling around, bumming around, looking all over this great land for a new home. Maybe it was whole families of folk music collectors and performers: the Seegers, the Lomaxes, the Carters. Maybe it was radio, broadcasting jazz and country from small towns, heard by producers passing through, who stopped and brought them to the big cities for us all to hear. Maybe it was Woody Guthrie, riding the rails, writing down and singing out what he saw. Maybe it was World War II, making us all get together again to fight Fascism. After all that there was such relief, we just had to celebrate ourselves.

So it was that we kids, just entering school in the mid and late nineteen forties, got taught folk music in our classes. In my small city in western New York, where Sicilians and Swedes shared each other's very different cultures in order to manufacture furniture, we didn't sing that stuff every day. A few classes had pianos and teachers who could play them, but most of the time we had to depend on just one itinerant music teacher who visited each of our half dozen neighborhood grade schools once a week. But when she came she taught us the great American cowboy and folk songs those families of collectors had found in the mountains and prairies. We developed a pride in being American by learning our heritage that way.

By the early 1950s, folk music had gained such popularity we heard it on the radio. You could hear live performances like the Grand Ol' Opry and big bands and jazz groups from Chicago and New York and New Orleans at night, when AM radio carried a long way. But there were records on the juke box too. Probably most popular of all was a singing and playing quartet called The Weavers. Their records were on Decca, and they had big arrangements, with dozens of violins and choral singers, of tunes we had sung in 3rd grade. Wow! On Top Of Old Smoky...and then one we hadn't heard before, called Good Night Irene. And around that time, I heard them sing another "new" song, which was called This Land Is Your Land...and I loved it so much I was overjoyed to learn some people even wanted it to replace our National Anthem. more >