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Drinking with a friend            Late at night
Forgetting time           With the sake
An empty feeling inside       Getting bigger
When I die                  There'll be nobody crying
 My spirits flowing       Down this lonely river
It's what I chose      This river

To love and to be loved            The two of us
Helping each other              Asking nothing in return
It was our fate that it ended      And the love is still there
I can't see any stars                  In the night sky
This loneliness       I'm wrapped in
        

The 20%, more or less, of Police who are Thugs

I

It's as simple as this: I of course support the 80% of police who are not thugs but I'm really, really angry that the USA has to have these 20% of police who are just plain thugs. They just LOVE beating people and being bullies. Period. I've seen so many videos of three or more police pounding on a civilian with their fists who is down on the ground.  Why? It's like they're attack dogs who can't control themselves. I was inspired to write this post today when I read that a Florida cop was fired, thank goodness, because he wanted to put targets with the face of Trayvon Martin up at a target shooting range. Who are these monsters in uniform? All of them. It was the same out of control attack dog mentality that caused two LAPD cops to do a Bonnie and Clyde last scene shoot-up on two women delivering newspapers. Thank goodness citizens can now video tape police. But I would not be surprized if video taping the police will soon be outlawed.

Saving a Whale

Homeland Über Alles

Can somebody tell me what is going on in my country, America? The department of homeland security, which never should have been started in the first place, (it's a boondoggle, actually), has bought lock stock and barrel 2,700 armored trucks or vehicles or better yet lets just call them tanks. And these are going to be for use INSIDE the country. This is the road to fascism if ever there was a road to fascism. I heard about a lot of things, FEMA camps etc., and I was always skeptical, but this is waking me up, big time.  It's the corporations, for sure and without a doubt, and the thing that you gotta know about corporations is that they are an entity all on their own. The CEO of any corporation is, as is always the case, replaceable. They are juggernauts and they are out of control now.There are a lot of brave Americans of every ilk fighting back now and the people are beginning to "sing." Obama is NOT progressive. He's a weasel of the first order.

Linda Lewis

Oh Lord, I don't know you very well
Though I think you have touched me once or twice
But I know, I know you got a lot of grace, and love and light
Do you think you could spare some on my life?

Godless God Seekers

 

One of my very few efforts at making a video. I did this in January 2009. There isn't much else to say, it speaks for itself. More or less.

PotHoler54 Needs our Help—The Clock's Ticking.

Do not forsake us oh PotHoler ...

     It seems like Potholer54's out there, our Gary Cooper, on the streets of our HIGH NOON town (well ... the streets of our planet Earth) all by his lonesome—and the baddies, you know the Lee Van Cleef corporate-types and the Robert J. Wilke holy-roller-types, they're making stuff up about Global Warming and as far as I know Potholer54 might be the only one out there spending the time and making the effort to show that everything the cretins say, everything!, is nonsense. And the clock is ticking and ticking toward noon. We've got to go out there and  help potHoler54 (Peter Hadfield) make mincemeat of the charlatans and snake oil salesladies who DON'T GIVE A DAMN about their own grandchildren.If you don't know who potholer54 is, visit his youtube channel and get enlightened on Global Warming and Fake Science.

Context in Everything

by Charles Wysocki

     Trying to understand anything without context will only result in understanding nothing. (This blog post is, therefore, related to the blog post a fortnight ago regarding ideologues.) There are those who have their BOOK. And it is their BOOK by which they judge everything. But ... a BOOK belongs in a library where you will find lots of books about lots of things. And that is context. Here's an "outtake" from the wee book I recently wrote -- "Context and frames of reference in poetry and in paintings, in environmentalism and in enlightenment, in music and myth, in comparative religion and in chaos theory, in reptiles crawling over hot sands and in crustaceans clambering over sandy sea floors, in philosophy and in psychology, in Van Gogh’s spirals and in a seeker’s heart on a lonely desert trail. Connecting everything.  Meanings in birds and in botany, in aliens from space and in archaeology, in creation and in evolution, in the ancient and in a future history, in God in no-god in all the Greek and Norse and Thai Gods, in the transcendental and in the intuitive. It all rings true. It all calls out."

Skelleg Michael

 
     I 'discovered' the rocky island Skellig Michael in Chet Raymo's heartrending book In the Falcon's Claw: A Novel of the Year 1000. The 'hero' of the story is an Irish monk, Aileran, who, after years of conflict within himself and after years of conflict between himself and the church, as well, over matters that pitted the supernatural against the natural, was accused of heresy. Aileran was, fictionally, possibly the first exponent for an Enlightenment in Europe; but, in the years 998, 999, and 1000, Europe and the then all-powerful Church of Rome had no intention at all of an "enlightenment." (An Earthquake or even a common bolt of lightening had to be occurrences created supernaturally by God and could not be attributed to Nature itself.) And so, Aileran found himself 'banished' to the monastery on Skellig Michael—7 miles off the stormy western coast of Ireland. And there, for three years, he endured the cold and the loneliness of his stone cell and sought God in the special way, the natural way, those in monasteries seek God.

The One and Only Problem in this World

     Walt Kelly's Pogo famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." This is, of course, true. But, in my opinion, the REAL enemy is, more precisely, "some of us." And the word for those "some of us"  are the ideologues. (I don't like the word "ideologue" but, since there isn't a single other word given in the thesaurus for ideologue, ideologue is the word we're stuck with.)  Who or what are ideologues? They are, the best I can explain, people who are intentionally blind, intentionally deaf and intentionally stupid. And, what makes them this way? The answer is: An etched in stone "group truth." They are completely caught up in this "group truth" (think religion) and they hold on to it like the dickens. They'll never budge. They are the Taliban in the environmental struggle facing the earth. In America, one of the MOST idiotic "name calling" words they throw at environmentalists is: "you're materialists." This is because they're, like the Taliban, caught up in supernaturalism. This, along with their own inherent GREATNESS (country, species and/or religion) and rote thinking, are what ideologues are all about.

My Paumanok

     This is where I'll start—at this small city pond, called Jizo, near our house in Oke- hazama, Japan. It was at Jizo Pond that, one day, I happened to meet the egret that was forever stuck there with a broken wing. And ... there, not at the pond but in the heart of that brave bird, is my starting point—my Paumanok. I will now, at last, join the all-but-impossible cause.

To thee old cause!
Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,
Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,
Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands. (Walt Whitman)

     I know that there are others out there who, like me, have dilly dallied too long. All I can say is, "I think it's time that more of us get really, really serious about the environment."