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 8 Jun 2004 @ 01:25
The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.
---Northrup Frye
Deep in their roots,
All flowers keep the light.
---Theodore Roethke
all the high flying birds are gone
the last cloud leaves as well
but we two aren't bored
me and Ching-t'ing Peak
---Li-Po
Cartoon by Kirk Anderson [link]
Get into some others at his site, if you don't know him.
Thanks to Quinty for turning me on!
The Death of Reagan
Bedtime for Bonzo
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
06/06/04
Well, we all knew when Reagan died, we would get hit by an amazing tidal wave of bullshit from the right, and sure enough, we are. Mind you, the right had been trying to erect a cult of personality around the "Great Communicator" from the day he left office. Even before the meat stopped twitching, the right was promoting a scheme where every state would have a town renamed after Reagan ("Reagangrad", anyone?) and they wanted Reagan to replace FDR on the dime. They had renamed an airport after him (obsolete and often shrouded in fog, which was apt) and there is an aircraft carrier named for him. No space shuttles or Marine barracks, though. 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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 1 Jun 2004 @ 03:35
The use of uselessness: to keep my Way.
In this secluded life I move toward truly feeling.
Mulberry and hemp, deep in rain and dew,
A mountain finch, I've built here half a life, at least.
The village drums may urge from time to time,
The fishing boats, each one floating, light.
With bramble staff I take my white head walking.
Heart makes tracks here; here's purity,
In thought, in action.
---Tu Fu
One of the elders said:
Either fly as far as you can from men, or else, laughing at the world and the men who are in it, make yourself a fool in many things.
---Thomas Merton
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
---Thomas Huxley
Protestors outside Halliburton headquarters
BRETT COOMER/GETTY IMAGES
Got time to catch up on some holiday weekend news?
TIME From the Magazine
Sunday, May. 30, 2004
The Paper Trail
Did Cheney Okay a Deal?
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."
More >
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 30 May 2004 @ 04:16
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
---Henry Miller
Investigate what's right under your own feet. Contemplate it, get to the bottom of it. What is the truth of it?
---Sixin Wuxin
There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never let the world within assert itself.
---Hermann Hesse
Courageous Garry Trudeau today. In case your Sunday paper refuses to carry it, see the original here~~~ [link] More >
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 27 May 2004 @ 02:08
The quest for certainty blocks the quest for meaning.
---Erich Fromm
Without raising a foot we are there already;
The tongue has not moved, but the teaching is finished.
Though each move is ahead of the next,
Know there is still another way up.
---Wu-Men
As for me, I delight in the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach my world;
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.
---Han-Shan
The gentleman who graces this final update on the major surgery I underwent early this month is Dr. William Batten, who has been my specialist through the whole ordeal. I want to express my appreciation to him for his skills, his personal approach, and his continuing openness to me for many basic needs. I must say as well I was astonished at the reasonableness of his charges---especially compared to the costs of hospital services.
Let me fill you in on where we are, tell you a bit more about Dr. Batten, and get specific about treatments and what comes next. Some of this we'll rate at PG-13, and you're welcome to skim through and drop out at any point. The last couple weeks have been a lot of work for me at home. I think we made it more difficult, in a way, by trying to get me off the potentially addictive pain-killers and onto ibuprofen before I was ready physically. This was a personal decision, because Dr. Batten wrote prescriptions for levels of medication from which we could choose. Yesterday the catheter was removed, concluding the mopping-up that began at the previous appointment, when stitches and 2 1/2 feet of drainage tubing were taken out. Dana got to watch that, while I just lay there---eyes shut. This means I retrain myself now to various inner workings, and in a couple more weeks enter the ongoing phase of monitoring for any appearance of cancer activity. That's why I think this can be the end of the journey, so to speak, with hopefully no more health news to report for a while. More >
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