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 25 Mar 2005 @ 12:07
Would that life were like the shadow cast by a wall or a tree, but it is like the shadow of a bird in flight.
---The Talmud
In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
---Harold Pinter
A hundred thousand words are flowers in the sky
a single mind and body is moonlight on the water
once the cunning ends and information stops
at that moment there is no place for thought.
---Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing
In the photo from the Tucson Citizen, Jill Gwinn, 52, and her 13-year-old niece, are detained in connection with an egg-throwing incident outside Tucson Convention Center. The two were cited by police.
Hey Guys!
I don't know what it is about George, but everywhere I go the dude shows up. Buddy, my trip to Tucson this week was supposed to be strictly pleasure---and mostly it was!---but the whole place got knocked out of joint, which is typical for your "events", by your decision to have one of your "conversations" with us. We all remember how much you love Ohio and all the times you breezed through last fall. The one time I actually tried to catch a glimpse in Parkersburg, West Virginia, you left orders to greet me with a helmeted, black-uniformed, fully-armed SWAT team ( [link] ). Well, I got the hint---so this time I checked my appointment book first---and, sure enough, I was not among the 1500 specially invited "guests" with whom you insisted on being surrounded at the Tucson Convention Center Monday ( [link] ). Let's see, is that taxpayer money that pays for Presidential appearances? More >
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 22 Dec 2004 @ 13:43
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
---Oscar Wilde
Restless man's mind is,
So strongly shaken
In the grip of the senses:
Gross and grown hard
With stubborn desire
For what is worldly.
How shall I tame it?
Truly, I think
The wind is no wilder.
---Bhagavad Gita
What is the most miraculous of all miracles?
That I sit quietly by myself.
---Zen mondo
The photo's by Lauren Heaton: Recount 'em up---Ballot gazing in Cincinnati on December 15
The trouble with the American Left is the nature of our material. Our spirit of independence is easily corrupted by frustration, rage, and stubbornness. We are less reliable by far to carry a load and get the work done than any Democratic mule. When we're dropped we splinter. We love to make speeches full of demands and hurl charges empty of evidence. We're the stuff of impotence.
No wonder the media doesn't report us. No wonder it takes 2 hours to tour the Internet to find out what's going on. Everybody has his own little blog or group blaring out similar invectives. Where's a coalition, an alliance to get the job done? Who is doing painstaking research and organization? No wonder the rightwing message boards find us so hilarious. No wonder their insults hurt. No wonder all we do is squeal louder. More >
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 7 Nov 2004 @ 11:45
The painting by Andrea Del Sarto is of Christ realizing He is Risen.
I heard the unblown flute
In the deep autumn shadows
Of the Temple of Suma.
---Basho
Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore,
ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but,
more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
---John Keats
W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality. Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.
---Maureen Dowd, November 7, 2004
Garrison Keillor went even further on his Prairie Home Companion show last night. He proposes, of course in irony, a Constitutional amendment that bans born-again Christians from voting. He bases his proposal on the fact Evangelicals obviously are not citizens of the United States, but rather of Heaven. They no longer believe in our basic American values. Their health care plan is an opportunity for a closer walk with God. More >
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 3 Jul 2004 @ 10:28
you ask why I perch on a jade green mountain?
I laugh but say nothing
my heart free like a peach blossom
in the flowing stream
going by in the depths in another world not among men
---Li-Po
The final mystery is oneself....Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
---Oscar Wilde
What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer.
---Henry David Thoreau
Singer Karrin Allyson digs in at the Great Bend Jazz Festival
This is an actual review of 4 new CDs, something I guess I should do more of given my lifelong interest in music. The title refers to an older generation's jazztalk to describe a female singer, specifically a girl who travels with a band---and in those days, that meant an orchestra of 15 men. In other words, a chirp is a jazz chick who sings...and clearly at first glance, as with much jazz slang, it looks neither complimentary or politically correct. Life on the road, particularly with a busload of men---even if every one were in superb emotional condition---is grueling work, and developing some kind of life with dignity in it is not always achieved. Perhaps because of this, and some of the casualties of such a life, to my generation lady jazz singers generally are treated with the highest respect we jazzfans can muster. More >
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 3 Jun 2004 @ 03:31
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.
---St. Francis De Sales
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
but I could not both live and utter it.
---Henry David Thoreau
Tear open the tree!
And can you see
The cherry flowers that yearly
Bloom on Yoshino?
---Ikkyu
Am I preaching to the choir? Oh well, I love a good rant!
Picture of Dave Eggers at a recent booksigning at Boston College.
Reading, Writing, and Landscaping
Mowing lawns, scrubbing bathrooms, selling stereos: How teachers make ends meet
Dave Eggers
May/June 2004 Issue of Mother Jones
As a nation, we're confused about how we see teachers. Most polls show that respect for the profession has risen in recent years, yet we have certain quietly entrenched ideas—that teaching is easy, that teachers get out at 3 p.m. every day—and these notions, all ludicrous, allow us to accept the injustice in teachers' dismally low salaries. We love teachers, we think they're saints, but most of us consider unavoidable the fact that they are underpaid and often have to work two or three extra jobs to maintain a middle-class existence.
The latest statistics put the average teacher's salary at about $46,000; some teachers earn a little more, some a little less (the average teacher's salary—not the starting salary—is $38,000 in Kansas, $36,000 in New Mexico, and $32,000 in South Dakota). Overall, that's about the same that we pay pile-driver operators ($45,980) and about $8,000 less than the average elevator repairman pulls down. Meanwhile, a San Francisco dockworker makes about $115,000, while the clerk who logs shipping records into the longshoreman's computer makes $136,000.
The first step to creating an education system full of the best teachers we can find is to pay them in line with their importance to their communities. We pay orthodontists an average of $350,000, and no one would say that their impact on the lives of kids is greater than a teacher's. But it seems difficult for everyone, from parents to politicians, to shake free of a tradition in which teaching was seen as something of a volunteer project for women whose husbands brought home the real money. Today's teachers need to, but very often can't, support a family on their salaries. They find it difficult or impossible to buy homes, to save money, to live comfortably, and, in wealthier areas, to live in or near the towns where they teach. More >
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