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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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 10 Jul 2006 @ 08:53
I fell in love with the wings of birds
The light of spring on them!
---Chora
In the light of flowers
I travel
Just for the sake of traveling.
---Soen Nakagawa
The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it.
---Sri Nisargadatta
The author in Providence last weekend among friends and a couple of generations too.
Some replies received to the post I put out yesterday, which was sort of about global warming but involved a sense of futility as well, have motivated me to get my act together. I didn't start out writing on the Internet about political things, but somehow or other during these Bush years, when concerns about the "mainstream media" in this country come from all sides, I started sending stuff to friends and contacts that I hoped would be helpful in keeping discussion going. I think that media problem may motivate much of the blogging revolution for people. Where do you find out what's really going on in the world? Ordinarily I sprinkle links and footnotes all over such pieces, which is how I learned to do research for social studies papers and debating. I'm not going to do that this time because I need to speak from my own history and experience. I see no other way to address those replies.
I know a couple guys online I've never met face-to-face who like to keep things jumping with really basic questions. I hesitate to summarize what they stand for...and they are very different people...but they share a sort of warrior mentality. They live in the US---I think---and seem ready to survive, if necessary, with a knife and some matches...or with nothing if those luxuries are not available. So whenever I post about a political solution to something, one or the other or both generally jump in with both feet.
One of the guys grew up in the inner city but now lives in the Arizona desert, very close to the recent fires. His nickname is Bushman, for a couple of reasons probably...but I think he is available to do landscape work and tend your bushes. He wrote back the following: "It's all right here. Cleansed by fire, again." And he included a link to some Hopi prophecies. He means he's ready to ride it out with things as they are, rather than muck about with government agencies trying to regulate everything.
The other fellow changes his nickname about once a month and currently is going by Darklander. Here's what he has to say: "Fear is a good tactic that all hierarchs love to use to keep the sheeple in line. Stop voting for these dingbats (sure doesn't do you any good!), disband the military, stop sending your sons and daughters to Moloch, quit the 501 3C 'Corporate' churches, find out who you really are... be free from the lot of the rot. Nah, easier to blame it on, ah, global warming..."
Now I like both these guys a great deal. For one thing, they have great wit and keep me laughing. Nothing is better in the midst of argument and struggle. I have a friend here in Athens something like Bushman and Darklander, who just retired from 3 decades of teaching industrial tech and intends to move into a cave and become a cannibal. What do I say to people like this...and why does it matter? More >
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 3 May 2006 @ 19:49
The flowers in the breeze are swaying, swaying,
The whole world is out a-Maying.
---Genevieve Mary Irons
Somehow---I [Jakuso Kwong] didn't drop it---the teacup, a temple treasure, dropped itself. You know how those things go? You're positive you didn't drop it, but somehow the teacup left the table. And I missed it and it fell on the floor and broke! And I felt SO bad. And then Katagiri Roshi went, "Oh ooooooh." And the Suzuki Roshi went "ooooooh, ooooooh, ooooh, ooh, oh." Then my mind started working. I could glue it back together! But Suzuki Roshi came over and we picked up the pieces. And he took the pieces and he stuffed them into the garbage so deep that even my mind couldn't get to them.
---"Dropped" Zen
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
---James Thurber
Messenger photos by John Halley
Slicing and wrapping bread at Crumb’s Bakery in Athens are, from left, Jeroch Carlson, Jen Strecker and Lisa Trocchia- Balkits. The bakery is marking its 20th year as a worker- owned business.
Our Webmaster, Flemming Funch, tries to make clear that each Log is "owned" by the member who sets it up and writes here. I thought maybe this was some kind of legal device to divert libel lawsuits or something---which probably wouldn't hold up in court---but I think people here really are interested in ownership and money exchange and what that all means. The meaning and value of work, which is the root of it all, doesn't get discussed so much. I send Ming money at least once a year, which I consider a kind of rent...but actually is a contribution for the upkeep of the site. I pay other sites too for maintaining what I create there. Seems like a fair exchange---and there's no (visible) government intervention or regulation. But should NCN take the next step? More >
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 1 Mar 2006 @ 09:52
A country is not only what it does---
it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates.
---Kurt Tucholsky
Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.
---Arundhati Roy
We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.
---Lewis H. Lapham
Ever since I was stopped by a fully armed, battle dressed SWAT team (which stands for Special Weapons And Tactics) [link] or [link] I realized no one catches a glimpse of this President of the United States without an invitation. The man was campaigning in a republic of supposed free election in 2004. What had become of my country? Where was my pride in being an American, the liberators in World War II, the Good Guys?
It wasn't just the War On Terra (as Molly Ivins now is calling it). Here is a leader whose anger at criticism must never be revealed to the people. He must be insulated by handlers, carefully scripted and rehearsed. Some American families have fathers like that. Mom's job is to make sure his blood pressure never flies so high that he blows a gasket. The kids grow up never learning how to negotiate problems or compromise with friends. The United States citizenry has become like that now. All we know how to do is consume. With citizenship practically dead, at least as it used to be taught to us all at home and in school, I've come to despair that anything can be done to stop the insanity of this administration.
Furthermore, the very process of impeachment, which is an effort to correct rather than indict, has become so predictable and cheapened in recent years I've hesitated to join any cries for something to begin. The Clintons were hunted with such tenacity as soon as he took federal office that it's little wonder he finally began the behaviors of a monkey in the zoo. Any mention of Republican problems and we hear about Ted Kennedy again. The Congress refuses to hold hearings about eavesdropping on the American people. So why am I writing about this and what chance is there? More >
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 27 Nov 2005 @ 10:48
I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. LIVE the questions now.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
Truth is something you stumble into when you think you are going someplace else.
---Jerry Garcia
Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.
---Izumi Shikibu
William Blake (1757-1827)
The Omnipotent
Oil on canvas, 1794
I'm not much of a joiner and never have been. I haven't sought out many groups in my life. Such pursuit never entered the picture much. My parents came from individually quite different backgrounds, weren't joiners either, and didn't bring with them any cultural baggage that got me involved in groups. They both were something like 3rd generation Swedes in America, but they didn't celebrate any traditions from the "old country" except smorgasbord at Christmas...and then it was at a paternal relative's house and not ours. Those people still could speak some Swedish, but I never heard but a few words in my house. Maybe the farming Swedes on my mother's side had been on these shores longer because I never saw a flake in them of any traditions except universally countrified ones. Their generation came out of the Depression and went to World War II, both of which catastrophes encouraged a style of surviving that was tightly knit to the institutions of the United States. My family was middle class America in the 1940s and 1950s, and if any "group" came out of that it probably was The Organization Man. More >
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