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 25 Apr 2007 @ 09:53
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny.
---James Madison
I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”
---Christopher Hitchens
Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.
"I think it was Osama bin Laden's", Rove replied.
---The Akron Beacon Journal, 4/19/07 [link]
You won't get an argument from me about the man's brilliance. I do confess wonder at how someone can enjoy the intense level of hatred expressed toward him. I've never had the control on my own anger levels enough to laugh at a person who responds extremely to my taunting. I'm uncomfortable in such a situation, but I understand there are those who love to create that tension. There must be people who adore him, such as those who come to his speeches. Does he have a family or anything like that?
Maybe we'll find out as announcement comes from the White House of the unleashing of an internal investigation by Special Counsel Scott Bloch of Mr. Rove's political shenanigans. My heart leapt with the news...at first. Then I began to wonder. More >
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 23 Mar 2007 @ 11:39
When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
---Alan Watts
Once Fa-yen was asked, "What is the first principle?"
He answered: "If I should tell you, it would become the second principle."
---Zen mondo
When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.
---John James Audubon
The legendary Phil Mattson
If you've Googled in looking for a message board, this ain't it...but please read on. A few months ago I innocently chronicled a tribute to a vocal teacher whose existence gradually had become known to me over a period of about 20 years. I had found an LP in a bin of remaindered items and I was attracted to the songs the group was doing, so I risked a few bucks to hear what was going on. The disc by The PM Singers became a favorite immediately. At the time I thought "PM" referred to evening or nighttime or something like that, but recently I learned they stood for Phil Mattson who played keyboard on the date and did the arrangements. I started researching and found this man's influence all over the place among vocal groups and choirs, so I wrote the piece and posted it a few places.
[link]
[link]
and especially at a Hi-Lo's forum where I thought it might attract some interest...but it didn't.
[link]
But some former students found it at NewCiv, maybe because of good relations between the webmaster and Google. Because of the traffic at the article and the interest they have in finding each other and connecting, I'm suggesting somebody please set up a message board for Phil and all his students on the Internet. The last week or 2 I set about to answer requests to find a couple of these folks, and sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not...but always interesting, as perhaps you'll see. More >
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 4 Mar 2007 @ 12:17
If you never want to see the face of hell, when you come home from work every night, dance with your kitchen towel, and if you're worried about waking up your family, take off your shoes.
---Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
After a public reading Bernie Glassman gave, a woman in the audience stood up and asked: "What does it take to live in the Now?"
The master answered: "Would anyone who is NOT living in the Now please stand up?"
---Zen mondo
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!
---May Sarton
Hurrican Andrew hitting the US in 1992. The United Nations predicts the intensity of hurricanes and other storms will increase as a result of global warming.
Not so long ago every schoolchild in America got taught a major failing in a democratic republic is how long it takes to get anything done. (I'm not sure what they get taught today.) This was part of a section in your Social Studies called How A Bill Becomes A Law. Committees, both houses of Congress, President's desk, maybe the Supreme Court, on and on. To get a stop sign put quickly onto your street corner, 3 kids have to get run over first.
Many bills depend upon scientific research to prove damage is being done in the status quo. Competing sides pay different scientists to do this experiment but not that one. And all that takes time. For scientists to complete all their experiments to prove grasshoppers have ears in their hind legs may take generations. Then the results must be published, read and applied to our lives by you and me.
Lately friends and relatives have been sharing concerns with me about whether global warming might be farther along the road to disaster than even science is telling us yet. Science takes so long to be sure of stuff. Friday Spiegel Online obtained the draft of the second part of the UN Report that, along with Al Gore's documentary, is finally getting everybody's attention over here. The first part came out last month [link] and now this second part, I guess, is going to scare us even more.
I don't really need to be scared more to become a believer. Common sense is good enough for me. What I do need, in discussing with doubting colleagues and friends, is a concise picture of the damage that is happening and what comes next. Friday's article does that, and its setup (with pictures) is the main reason I'm referring to it. They even have a link to blogs that are discussing the article. (Wonder if jazzoLOG will show up.) More >
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 17 Dec 2006 @ 12:40
I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of your being.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
---Tao Te Ching
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
---Mother Teresa
And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles.
---Walt Whitman
Here I am, in a condition not that unusual for me: I came to the computer with a pile of catch-up to do...and have ended up sleuthing down a couple of stories I couldn't resist. In this case I've been out of circulation since Wednesday, when a flu-bug that'd been after me for at least a week finally found the way in and laid me out. If there's a pandemic, which some media are hinting at again, I now can rest easy with the certainty either my immunity is strengthened to resist it or shattered so I'll be the first to go.
Dana decided I'd face this one with Vitamin C, a witches brew she makes with vodka and roots, hot pepper tea, and coma. For some reason I decided I had it coming to me, did not call Dr. Conjeevaram for the help 50 years of medical progress has achieved, and prepared instead to suffer. The various 'cillin drugs usually send me to Cloud 9, while the physical battle wages, where at least I can mope around somewhat in human fashion. But they also prolong the sickness (it is said) and strengthen (they say further) the little beasties trying so hard to kill us off. So I went through a bout with the flu I haven't experienced since I was a kid: flat on my back in bed for over 2 days, alternating chills and sweats, merciless headache, pains in lower regions, dozing sleep whenever. One time long ago I faced scarlet fever with only shades drawn, icepacks, and Aspergum. I didn't even get Aspergum with this thing.
This morning I feel sorta normal again and so I came downstairs to the computer room with arms loaded of stuff to get done, most of it for gifts I want to mail out immediately. But Dana had emailed a story last night about continued attempts even to identify the dead from Hurricane Katrina that hooked me hard. Now, another thing Dana does, besides torture me with ancient remedies, is send out stories without identifying links...and in this case not even an author's name. This piece was written with such brilliance I just had hit the search engines. I proved to myself why Microsoft is slipping away and Google reigns supreme. The author's name is Rukmini Callimachi---and I finally gave up on MSN when from 5 pages of links I couldn't find out if the writer is a man or a woman. Google solved that mystery in its first offering and gave the only online picture of her, which looks to be her college yearbook photo. More >
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 15 Sep 2006 @ 09:09
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine.
---St. John of the Cross
The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
in love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
that rustles the trees
rustles him too.
---Ching An
The trouble is that you think you have time.
---Zen master
The picture's of Daytona, in 1957.
Yes, we accuse Rove/Bush of keeping the masses in cowering fear, but who's scared? My redneck neighbors have decals on their pickups pissing on fear. Their kids tool through the woods on their 4-wheelers with nary a care everyday. Those folks Support Our Troops with flags waving, trusting the security of the heartland to the War on Terror. The biggest horror of kids at school is if pizza gets taken off the cafeteria menu.
Yesterday I emailed a link OU Prof Bob Sheak had sent along to an article at TomPaine by Robert L. Borosage. [link] My friend Paul Quintanilla left a couple of comments about it here in the entry just below, but concluded with these questions~~~
14 Sep 2006 @ 22:43 by Quinty @68.226.88.25 : And yet another thing -
Why haven't the Democrats abopted Borosage's strategy?
After all, the idea of a "Manhattan project" for clean and self-sustaining energy resources has been around for a long time. The biggest argument, I guess, against it being cost. But we have no problem throwing billions away monthly on a wasteful war. For that we have unending funding.
(For the simple minded - dare I say? - violence is always an easy solution. By exerting a superior force of arms you can be sure to win. No questions asked. That is the current course we are on now.)
And the other approaches Borosage raised are fairly obvious too. But do many Democrats still feel they are too hot politically to handle? Does Bush's ship have to sink further before they may become palatable? What are the Democrats afraid of? Of the unknown? The future? Of getting it wrong? Of not being loved?
Then they don't deserve to lead. But then who do we got?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More >
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