Speak Without Interruption

The Curse of the Luddite God

Robert Flynn — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:16:28 +0000

A certain man chipped at a fallen limb to make it easier for his wife to carry to the fire. His stone ax hit another stone and sparks flew. Some sparks landed on his arm. Others struck his bare chest. He laughed. His skin was too tough for sparks. He struck the rock again. He would amuse her when she returned. Perhaps make her jump in fear when a spark touched her.
Some sparks fell in a rabbit’s nest and smoke came forth. The man stepped back. His woman stepped behind him. He pushed her away. If he had to run he didn’t want her in his way. He watched the smoke. His woman cried quietly fearing the rabbit spirit. He bent closer to look. He blew at the smoke and jumped back. A tiny flame broke forth.
The man froze not knowing whether to run to the village for safety, throw dirt at the fire to kill it or throw sticks at the fire to feed it. He looked at his woman. He looked to see if evil watched to see what he did. He threw a twig on the fire and it ignited. His woman gasped. He picked up the twig and poked it at her and she fled. He considered fleeing after her, less brave when he had no need to show it.
He threw a stick on the fire and the fire grew. He backed up and searched the trees and grass behind him. Perhaps this was an evil place. He picked up a limb, threw it on the fire. Sparks flew and flames leapt. This was an evil place but God had given him fire. He selected a branch, held it to the fire until it ignited and carried it to the village.
His woman had told them what had happened and everyone was huddled at the entrance to the cave. Women cried and children whimpered. Men watched ready to flee. A priest emerged from the darkness of the cave. There had been no terrifying claps, no flashes of light signifying that God had given them fire if they could find it. “Where did you get fire?” the priest asked.
“I made it,” the man said, not daring to meet his eyes, half-doubting himself.
“You lie,” said the priest who guarded the fire in the cave. “Only God can create fire. It is his gift to us.”
The man looked at his woman who huddled with the others, holding her children close. “I made it. God gave it to me,” the man said fearfully. “She will say so.” But his woman, speechless with fear, shook her head no.
The priest stamped out the fire. “If you made it you can make it again. If God gave it to you ask him to give it to you again,” he said.
The man fell on his face before the cave. He pulled his hair, he beat his head, he cried aloud but there was no fire. “I must go into the woods.” the man said. “I must find the stones that speak to God.” But he knew that God would not give him fire again because he had permitted the priest to destroy his creation.
In despair and unbelief he stumbled through the woods until he came upon the cold remains of the rabbit’s nest. He blew on it but there was no smoke. He picked up another rock and hit the first one but there were no sparks. Crying aloud to God he picked up rock after rock until he found a sacred rock like the one on his ax. He hit the rock with it and there were sparks. He ran in search of a sacred rabbit’s nest but could find none. He found a bird’s nest and because it was all he could find he carried it to the rocks and chipped sparks into it, blew until smoke burst into flame.
He carried to the village the rocks that made sparks and a small nest that transformed sparks into fire. While the priest watched heresy and the villagers looked to the cave for retribution, the man showed them how to worship. He struck sparks into the nest until a wisp of smoke appeared. Kneeling, he blew life on the smoke and a tiny flame arose.
“Bring twigs,” the man said and boys ran at his bidding. “Bring branches.”
The fire grew as the man fed it and the villagers watched in awe. They had never before had a fire outside the cave. The fire inside the cave came from God and only the priest could tend it. Every morning the villagers bowed before the cave and made offerings and the priest gave them access to God’s fire.
The man’s wife knew that he was awkward and lazy because he was always the first to return from a hunt even if he was empty-handed or brought nothing but rocks. Now she too was struck with wonder. Who was this man who could make fire? Proudly she stood beside him, her arm linked through his.
Boys grabbed flaming sticks and ran into the night lighted by the fire. Only the priest saw evil. “You have made yourself God,” the priest said. “Only God can make fire.”
“No,” the man said. “God gave me the power to make fire.”
“You have destroyed the faith of your people. Who will believe in God if man can create fire? You must leave the village.”
The man stared at the priest. His wife clung to his arm in fear. The man turned to the villagers. “Our lives are better if I can make fire when we need it,” he said. “Surely God wants that.”
The priest waved a rod threatening the man. “You see good but only fire from God is good. This fire will bring destruction.” After the priest went into his cave the villagers sat by the fire dreaming of the future when their children could make fire where ever they wanted, perhaps some day have fire in their huts.
After everyone had gone to bed the wind rose, blowing embers on dead grass at the edge of the village. The grass ignited and driven by the wind, the fire swept through the village. Three children were burned. Only the cave offered refuge.
At first light the villagers assembled before the ruined village. The priest was wroth and waxed indignant. “This fire was not from God,” he said, pointing his rod at all of them. “This fire was evil. Only God can give sacred fire and only the priest can tend it.” He struck the ground with the rod. “Man must not attempt to be God. You,” he said, pointing the rod at the man. “You have put on the mask of god and now you will destroy the world if we do not destroy you.”
The man looked at the faces of the villagers and they were hard. They seized him and dragged him from the village. The priest picked up the rocks the man had brought to the village and threw them at him. The others also picked up rocks and threw at him. His wife threw one rock then turned to lead the children away.
The priest brought sacred fire from the cave and gave fire to the others who picked up pieces of wood. Together they threw the fire on the man’s quivering body until it stopped moving.
“Henceforth there will be no fire but the fire that comes from God,” the priest said. “Rocks that make sparks are evil and whosoever touches them will be condemned.”
But a certain man troubled himself. If rubbing rocks together could create fire, what would happen if he rubbed sticks together? Did worship require a nest if dry grass could turn into fire?

ME TARZANA, YOU JANESVILLE

mistermuse — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:05:09 +0000

In case you’re wandering, the above title is by way of introduction to this post’s topic….as well as the answer to the question: What did the California town say to the Wisconsin town? With introductions out of the way, let us now get down to the Caseville at hand (which, by the way, is in Michigan).

Cartographic humor aside, I have had more than a passing interest in road atlases/maps for a long time….to the extent that in planning vacation trips, if there was an interesting or unusual place within a reasonable side trip on the way, I usually went for it. For example, how could I find myself traveling in the vicinity of Hell, Michigan, and pass up being able to say, just for the hell of it, that I’d been to Hell and back?

Road maps are, to me, like menus to the weight-challenged (aka fat people) — full of goodies I can’t resist. Here is a state-by-state list of towns with names I might go out of my way to drive thru. With states like Kentucky and Mississipi having town names like Oddville, Shoulderblade, Hard Cash and Dont for appetizers, was it hard to limit myself to one selection per state? You Bet (California).

Alabama – SMUT EYE
Alaska – POORMAN
Arizona – WHY
Arkansas – TOADSUCK
California – YOU BET
Colorado – TINCUP
Connecticut – WOODTICK
Delaware – OGLETOWN
Florida – SPUDS
Georgia – TRICKUM

Hawaii – PUKALAUI
Idaho – USTICK
Illinois – AROMA PARK
Indiana – GAS CITY
Iowa – WHAT CHEER
Kansas – MAY DAY
Kentucky – ODDVILLE
Louisiana – WATERPROOF
Maine – SUCKERVILLE
Maryland – CRAPO

Massachusetts – GAY HEAD
Michigan – HELL
Minnesota – MANTRAP
Mississippi – HARD CASH
Missouri- CONCEPTION JUNCTION
Montana – PRAY
Nebraska – WAHOO
Nevada – SHANTY TOWN
New Hampshire – CENTER SANDWICH
New Jersey – DOUBLE TROUBLE

New Mexico – TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
New York – SODOM
North Carolina – WHYNOT
North Dakota – ZAP
Ohio – COOLVILLE
Oklahoma – MUSE
Oregon – ZIGZAG
Pennsylvania – INTERCOURSE
Rhode Island – NOOSENECK
South Carolina – FINGERVILLE

South Dakota – WINNER
Tennessee – SKULLBONE
Texas – DING DONG
Utah – DUTCH JOHN
Vermont – GOSPEL HOLLOW
Virginia – CUCKOO
Washington – OPPORTUNITY
West Virginia – HOOKERSVILLE
Wisconsin – HUSTLER
Wyoming – BAR NUNN

As they say in BARDSTOWN (Kentucky), OILVILLE (Virginia) that ENDWELL (New York).
ENOUGH (Missouri), ALREAD(Y) (Arkansas)!

GREAT NATION

hujsaked — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:33:54 +0000

I’m sorry folks, but my next erudite article on why this is a great nation just got blown out of the water by a Republican Congressman.

“Y’all wanna know why Merica is a great nashin? We got tha pick-a-tha litter! Hit took curge to git heah!”

Ah well

INTO the Family

Michael Crumling — Wed, 23 May 2012 01:50:07 +0000

INTO the Family

Once a year our family gets together for a few days to camp out as a group and have a reunion. In starting the family vacation, one is treated to the enjoyment of the experiences and the reconnection with the herd. This year, everyone is here, including all of the generations of children, all in one place for a once in a lifetime reunion of spirits and personalities. We are a hardy and hard-working crop of people, and are camped as a group in an organized campground with plenty of activity for all of the age groups. We spend so little time together, it is worth the money, sacrifice and rare vacation time required to attend.

While this is not as secluded as I might enjoy, the family time is priceless. This is an annual event, but this year we have a bigger and more complete crowd, with new toddlers attending for the first time. As the matriarch, my mother has been working for weeks to pull it off with aplomb. And no one was telling her how to do it, and no one was trying to push her aside to work so damned hard. She had a tough hip replacement months ago and it hurt her bad, yet she soldiered on even when told to “pass the torch” on a strenuous activity. But she enjoyed seeing the whole clan, and we all managed to help…especially my sister.

The setup period is always second worse, behind the clean-up. It is amazing how “cross” family can be while undertaking the demanding work to achieve the completion of camp and the feeding stations. But if you like to eat, you need to work. That is the rule in our clan and a good rule for life as far as I’m concerned. So everyone has to pitch in. Even the toddlers helped in some small way. It is even amusing that they are more willing than their adult counterparts at times.

In the end, we have a string of tents, campsites and eating areas, each just down the path from the other. It worked very well. It was its own community with areas for groups to cluster and chatter about funny things which happened and chew the fat about the drama of the reunion while others slept. We love each other, but as in any family, there is a little gossip or chatter depending on who is sitting nearby. It is diverges from time to time and yields interesting topics of discussion. Everything comes out in these days, one way or another. It is funny to participate. In the departure we will all be reconnected and updated as to what is happening in the entire family structure.

The visit to the swimming hole was great and everyone got in. Watching the kids learning to swim was as interesting as the swim itself was comforting. The weather was spectacular with high 80’s during the day and breezy 60’s at night. After dark you can hear all kinds of frogs creating a symphony of sound. The tent was comfortable with an air mattress. It seems they make battery operated devices for the inflation of same. You can walk mere steps from the campfire to the air mattress in the woods, not too bad, what a far cry from my more Spartan adventures.

As we spend our last full night together, we enjoyed dinner, and it was my turn to cook. My nephew and I built a nice fire of wood from nearby, but admit that I added charcoal and some cedar and mesquite which happened to be packed for the occasion. We had chicken breast and steak with some seasoning and great smoke flavor from the wood. We also roasted some sweet corn on the cob and baked potatoes by foiling them and encasing them in the fire with a layer of moist corn husks between the hot coals and the packets of goodness. Mom brought an iron skillet of cheddar biscuits which I carefully placed into the coals. As I uncovered them, they were a delightful golden color until I got to the charcoal on the other side. The smoke added into the golden biscuits was not amazing at all. So while the biscuits were destroyed, the rest went well.

We ate and talked and reminisced. One by one sleep called everyone but me, and I hear a whisper at the moment. So it is with joy that I complete the evening and wonder at the reason for it all. We have the skies of blue and the clouds of white in the wonderful world which goes with them. Watching a toddler experience corn on the cob for the first time was the highlight of the trip for me. He absolutely loved it and nobody was going to get it from him. This child ate three ears with all four teeth and a big messy grin. Families exist for the children. It is the answer to the question of whom one is and from where did they come. It is the solution to the problem and the caring comfort of unconditional love which yields upstanding individuals in future generations. The family traditions as well as the genes are passed onto the latest crop of humanity.

Tomorrow when we all pack up to leave, there will be grumbling, but it will get done, and everyone will depart happy to have spent the time. The kids? They had a blast and lots of attention.

Family is your best anchor to reality…

To See More:

Chapter 1 – http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2012/04/into-the-rabbit-hole/

Chapter 2 – http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2012/04/in-the-river-2/

Subway Story: The Wedgie

Minnette Coleman — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:43:18 +0000

Is it courteous to tell a man or a woman that their fly is opened? Sure it is, if you can do it on the sly or without embarrassing them. And there are those instances where the button has popped open on a fairly tight blouse revealing a pretty colorful bra along with more than a little cleavage. Perhaps some men stare long and hard and don’t think about warning the poor unknowing woman that she has become fodder for the dreams of every male of lustful age on the subway. Then a woman will gracefully go over to her while the real weaker sex actually is left to drool and inform her of the wardrobe malfunction.

But how do you tell someone on the train that they a wedgie? I mean a serious wedgie that can put all others to shame.Had the train been crowded I would have never noticed. But there I was, in a nice quiet air conditioned car after leaving work early for a change. And there she was in her black work dress, her flat sandals standing with her back to me. I swear she had a wedgie from her waist to her knees.

You think don’t people feel that fabric up their bum? I have to admit at home in my lounge pajama pants my family calls me the queen of wedgies. And I don’t feel them. So when I stand up in a dress or skirt anywhere I follow a custom I saw my mother and grandmother do when going to sitting or to standing. I tug on one side of the skirt then take my hand and smooth the fabric on my backside into place. Works like a charm. Most women don’t know this.

And the lady with the three foot wedgie didn’t have a clue. So how do you approach someone’s front and tell them that their back is whack?

I couldn’t figure it out and evidently no one else could.

With a zipper down you can catch the eye of the person and make a signal to pull it up. The same with a button opened, if you can get their attention. But when someone’s ass is in your face divided by a tucked in wad of Lycra and cotton you have no signal you can give them.

So the young woman stood with her back to me happily swinging her long hair, checking on her earrings, her purse, her hair again. Everything but her ass. People got on and off and looked at the wedgie thanking God it wasn’t them. And it was one of those days when I didn’t have a book so I had no choice but to close my eyes and pretend I was trying to nap as so many commuters do. But when I woke up it was still there. This fairly large target cut in half by black fabric.

She took a seat and I thought that was the end of it. I thought she would do the ladylike custom I mentioned before. Instead she plopped down probably driving the wedgie deeper. I could feel it in the seat all the way across the aisle. I turned to look at the other passengers and found two teen boys laughing. Maybe talking about her. Later I caught them looking in her direction as they chuckled. Yea, they had seen the wedgie. They had seen it all and it was funny to them.

But I thought about all the women who think they are well dressed, pulled up and pulled together, who strut their stuff in heels as high as a wall and have no clue what things look like from behind. I had on pants and I was starting to wonder what my butt looked like.

Two stops before mind she rose to get off. She did not smooth down her dress. She did not tug on the side. Se just stood there- five feet two at the most, black dress, wide ass and a wedgie. When the door of the subway car opened she stepped off and for some reason the dress fell back into place leaving her behind wedgie free.

After that I vowed to always have something read on the train. Looking at someone’s wedgie for 8 stops is no fun. But it made me aware that I have to practice at all times those things my mom taught me about being a lady.

Or else look like a complete ass.

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Whats Mine is Mine Whats Yours is Negotiable

Robert R. Owens — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:06:55 +0000

The economy is scheduled to plunge off a cliff in January.

Back in the first two years after the Progressive’s November Revolution of 2008, the big government party enacted tax increases not scheduled to take place until after the 2012 elections. They also passed Obamacare which carries within it multiple tax increases, which are also scheduled to take affect after the 2012 election. Combine these with previous tax rollbacks scheduled to expire in January 2013 and we are looking at the major economic crisis the progressives have worked so hard to create so they can then work so hard to solve.
In 2010 the voters got a chance to let the central planners know what they thought of what had been done with the power entrusted to them in 2008. However, with only one house of Congress in Republican hands they were unable to reverse any of the changes made in the first two years of the Obama administration, so come January we hit the wall.

This manufactured economic crisis will be used by the triumphant Progressives as proof that capitalism doesn’t work. Then following their play book, since too much government wrecked the economy we need more government to fix the economy. They will tighten the already strangulating regulatory straight jacket. If Obamacare is upheld and implemented, within a few years it will kill the private insurance industry as company after company figures out it is cheaper to pay the fines imposed than purchase the insurance required. The flight of paying customers from the private insurance companies will force them into bankruptcy. Remember even if they used deceptive language at the moment of passing the bill President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid were on the record many times saying what they were aiming at was a single payer European type healthcare system. And we can all see how well that is working out for the Europeans.
They will also use the failure of the insurance industry as more proof that capitalism doesn’t work.

As President Obama travels around the country inciting class warfare with his constant attacks on the millionaires and billionaires which he tells us aren’t paying their fair share he continues to accept vast amounts of money from those same millionaires and billionaires. While his administration imposes regulation after regulation that every day makes it harder to start new businesses, maintain or expand small businesses he turns a blind eye to the continued casino like atmosphere at the largest banks: the ones that are too big to fail and which should be too big to bail.

The largest bank in the country, J. P. Morgan Chase just lost another couple of billions in risky credit derivatives that their own chairman says were ill-conceived, poorly executed, and not managed very well. This is the same bank that President Obama says is one the best run banks in America and the same chairman who has visited the Whitehouse at least 18 times since 2009.. The Chairman of the Board Jamie Diamom, the one in charge when all the poor execution was going on was just voted 23 million dollars in compensation while the stockholders take it in the wallet.

Crony capitalism, where the public takes the risk and bears the loss while the cronies who contribute money to the politicians reap the benefits is alive and well. Favored corporation such as GE whose chairman, Jeffrey R. Immelt serves on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness makes billions in profit and often pays nothing in taxes. Personally I believe there should be no corporate taxes since they are in reality double taxation but taxing some while exempting others is the worst kind of Corporatism and the President merely uses this system to reward donors and then turns around and attacks this pay-to-play system as an example of the rich not paying their fair share.

There is a con game going on. Straw men are being set up only to be knocked down. Our fellow Americans who get their news from Jay Leno and the Daily Show have no idea what is being done. They swallow the party line as belched out by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and troop to the polls to vote for the same party their fathers and grandfathers voted for. But the major parties today aren’t ideologically, organizationally, or in practice the same parties America has known.

Neither party stands for smaller government, individual freedom, and economic opportunity. At one time they both stood for these fundamentally American concepts. Operating like the twin heads of one bird of prey, both major parties expand the government and add to the regulatory burden which is changing America from the Land of the Free into a totalitarian morass that is stagnating its way from the first world to the second world.

From the beginning of the primary process it was obvious that Romney was the anointed choice of the establishment Republicans and the media. Now that he has been all but chosen it is time for the Democrats to scare up a third party somewhere somehow. President Obama’s record of socialist accomplishments is so stunning it has even aroused enough of the politically comatose to push him back to the 40+% of the electorate who would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for anyone except a Democrat. He has lost the independents and the undecided. His only chance for victory is a third party, so there will be a third party even if the Democrats have to invent it and pay for it themselves.

As the big day, the day when we as voters will get a chance to reverse the November Revolution of 2008, watch as a third party emerges, well-funded and well prepared. This third party will say all the right things. They will come across as conservative ideologically and economically. They will probably even try to portray themselves as the organized expression of the thousands of independent Tea Parties across the country.

No third party has won a presidential election in America since 1860. The rules have been rigged, and so many people vote instinctively for the party their fathers voted for the odds of a third party winning are close to the odds of winning the power ball.

If the progressives win one more election they will cement in their transformation of America from a land based on equal opportunity to a land of based on equal outcome. Everyone gets the same thing except of course for those who divvy up the swag. Those who divide what they take from the producers to give to the non-producers always seem to end up with everything while everyone else gets just enough to get by long enough to produce something else that can be expropriated by an all-powerful central government.
The Progressives who have taken control of America act as if all the money we earn is theirs and the only debate is about how much they will let us keep. And they constantly remind us that the government can’t afford to leave us with too much money. If they did we wouldn’t be dependent on them.

Maybe we should change the motto from E Pluribus Unum to What’s Mine is Mine What’s Yours is Negotiable.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

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THOSE WERE THE DAYS

mistermuse — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:20:25 +0000

In the early 1950s, walking in Harlem, I was suddenly enveloped in musical explosions of exultation.
From jazz musicians I found out that as children most of them had been bathed in gospel music, usually in Holiness churches.
–Nat Hentoff, jazz author

IMPROVISATION ON JOY

Hymn #one more time.
Give me that old time religion.
Hit it like heaven can’t wait.
Feel the spirit.
Let out a resurrection of sounds.
Come in with a response in rhythm.
Sing you sinners!
And the beat goes on.
Does God cry/laugh/dance/dig
jazz, like It’s Only A Paper Moon
but it wouldn’t be make believe
if you believed in Me?

COUNTERFEIT NOTES

The things that pass
for jazz these days.

Best Known Christian of the 20th Century

Robert Flynn — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:38:51 +0000

The best known Christian of the twentieth century was not Albert Sweitzer, Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham or Martin Luther King, Jr. The best known Christian of the Twentieth Century was Adolf Hitler. In December 1941, he said, “If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith.”

No present politician has more blatantly declared his Christianity than Adolf Hitler and since Hitler the faith of no politician has been so widely accepted. Millions of Christians around the world admired him. In Austria priests were authorized to display the swastika. Some bishops wrote “Heil Hitler” on official letters. A parish newspaper declared “One people–one Reich–one Fuehrer–one God.” Bishop Alois Hudal helped Franz Stangl, commander of Treblinka death camp, and other war criminals, to escape.

While writing an article on the meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in Berlin in 1936, Lloyd Allen, professor of church history and spiritual formation at the McAfee School of Theology, discovered that “an immense Nazi flag, hung where the congress met, was a vivid reminder of the bloody purge executed only a few weeks before by anti-Semitic fascists. “Most of the BWA delegates spoke out for soul liberty, the kinship of all humanity and the separation of church and state, but too many Baptist leaders did not. Indeed, a number of U.S. Baptists wrote sympathetically of Hitler’s Germany.”

The Watchman-Examiner printed a letter by Boston pastor John Bradbury who wrote, “It was a great relief to be in a country (Germany) where salacious sex literature cannot be sold; where putrid motion pictures and gangster films cannot be shown.” John Sampey, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, expressed gratitude to Hitler for prohibiting German women from smoking cigarettes and wearing red lipstick in public. Southern Baptist Convention President M.E. Dodd defended Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, who he declared were guilty of ‘self-aggrandizement to the injury of the German people.’ Besides, Dodd continued, most of the 200,000 Jewish refugees who went to Germany from Eastern Europe ‘were communist agitators against the government.’”

Some German-American Bunds taught German propaganda, as did Defenders of the Christian Faith, Knights of the White Camellia, Sentinels of the Republic and the Christian Front. The America First Committee accepted funding from Germany. On February 23, 1933, the Associated Press reported, “Hitler Aims Blow at ‘Godless Movement.” The article described Hitler reaching out to Catholics for support in his attack against the “spread of atheism,” citing a papal encyclical admonishing priests to “serve the religious interests of the nation.”

The reasons for this admiration are many, but some are:
•His morality. He did not smoke or drink and he abhorred pornography and homosexuality.
•He called his nation to repentance. “Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell. . .And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our almighty God that He may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God.” March, 1936

•His family values: “And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve one higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and of the race. This alone is its meaning and its task.” (1) “…man limits procreation, but is hysterically concerned that once a being is born it should be preserved at any price.” (2)

•His faith-based charity: “With a tenth of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty.” (3)

•God had given him a mission to cleanse Germany of evil as personified by the Jews, liberals, homosexuals, labor leaders, homeless people, immigrants from inferior cultures, and the weak and sick. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” (4) “We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. . .We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press–in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess. . .” (5)

•His patriotism and the belief that his nation’s weakness was because “…the watchword of German foreign policy ceased to be: preservation of the German nation by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means.” (6)

•Because he condemned others who sought to use religion for personal gain. “Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them. These insolent liars, it is true, proclaim their creed in a stentorian voice to the whole world for other sinners to hear; but their intention is not, if necessary, to die for it, but to live better.” (7)

•Because he had no doubts: “The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. If an idea in itself is sound and, thus armed, takes up a struggle on this earth, it is unconquerable and every persecution will only add to its inner strength.” (8)
•Promised an end to terrorism: “. . .we must not dodge this struggle, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire armament which alone offers protection against violence. Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror.” (9)

•He said the Ten Commandments were the foundation of Nazi Germany: “The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul.” (10)

•God seemed to favor him. “I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” “I follow the path assigned to me by Providence. . .there is a God. . .And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years.” February, 1940

More tolerant Christians died resisting this evil and millions died, including many Christians, to defeat Hitler’s armies. Nevertheless, the once vibrant churches of Europe are now largely deserted at least in part because of Hitler’s excesses in the name of Jesus. Those of us who declare Jesus as Lord must never again allow anyone to use our Savior’s name for political power or personal profit.

NOTE: the information about Baptists is from an article written by Lloyd Allen, professor of church history and spiritual formation at the McAfee School of Theology, and published in EthicsDaily.com, a publication of the Baptist Center for Ethics. The information about Austria is from “Gruess Gott und Heil Hitler,” (Hail God and Heil Hitler) by Stefan Moritz. References to Mein Kampf are to the translation by Ralph Manheim, published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1971.

Footnotes
(1) Mein Kampf, p. 132
(2) Mein Kampf, p. 252
(3) Hitler’s speech to Reichstag, Jan. 30, 1939
(4) Mein Kampf, p. 65
(5) Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations, (1932-1945 ) Quoted by The Institute for the Study of Religion in Politics (www.isrp.org)
(6) Mein Kampf, p. 142
(7) Mein Kampf, p. 268
(8) Mein Kampf, p. 351
(9) Mein Kampf, p. 358
Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 85, translated by Cameron, Stevens & Trevor-Roper, Enigma Books

A slightly different version can be found on SoMa Review: A Journal of Religion and Culture. (www.somareview.com)

Hard Work

Minnette Coleman — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:14:38 +0000

My husband often has enlightening conversations with the Korean owner of our neighborhood fish market. Recently they spoke about tough times and people being out of jobs. They both agreed that some people are just lazy and don’t want to work. The want things handed to him. then he told my husband about a young Nigerian immigrant who came into his shop one and he asked how come so many Koreans had their own businesses and were their own boss. He told the young man: “First you get a job and save your money. Then you get a second job and save your money. If you have lots of jobs you won’t have time to spend your money and before you know it you will have enough to accomplish your goals.”

A few years later the young Nigerian returned with a smile on his face. “You were right”, he said. “I worked and worked and never had time to spend. Now i have my own business.”

My husband smiled as he told this story. But of course he did. He is one of those people who understands that hard work is the way to make it in life.When I think back on people I know that have worked hard I think about my mother, an accountant with four children. She worked in an office five days a week and at home at night. She also made sure that all of us had jobs from an early age. My first job was taking inventory in a paint store at age 8. It felt good to have my own money- money I earned.

And while she made it clear that we had to work we also had to keep a neat house, do well in school and be part of the family dinner every night. These days one hardly sees families eating together but we also hear a lot of belly aching about having to work too hard. What is too hard if you achieve your goals?

The television show “In Living Color” parodied the work ethics of Jamaicans who often have more than one job at a time. Just like the Koreans. It became a saying in my circle when you had more than one job. “Oh, so you a Jamaican now.” We laughed but there was nothing wrong with it. Every mother and often fathers who work outside the home have two jobs. The goal is to do both parenting and other work equally well. Many are not equipped to understand that this is life. Hard work.

I was told by a Korean woman many years ago that they do not go in their community and ask for jobs. They work for food. Working is a ‘belly issue’. One cannot not sustain a family without food and therefore they put that desire first. I thought about the many people who don’t work at all. For them their ‘belly issues’ come in the form of subsidies and handouts. Many raise their children to live this lifestyle never once trying to achieve any kind of goals. Generation after generation is on public assistance until someone decides they want to break free of a lifestyle that achieves nothing.

This is sitting on my brain as I think of all the students graduating from college now. There are not enough jobs for them. But there is also an attitude among them that they are better than hard work. After all they tell you, they worked hard to make it through college. Nobody impressed on them that the work was just beginning? Or maybe parents gave them so muc they think jobs will be handed to them. Easy jobs for big money.

The reality is they will have to work like Koreans and Jamaicans and anyone else with a good work ethic to get a job. That will be their first job. And when they can no longer get family funding (i.e. money from mom and dad) they will have to resort to jobs they swore they would never have with a college education. Before my first theatre job I worked as a maid, a secretary and a telephone interviewer. I saved my money, bought a car and took a few trips with my friends while living at home with my parents. Something else I swore not to do when I graduated.

But I had to. And they will have to do lots of things they swore they wouldn’t do. In the end it will make them stronger people and harder workers. In the end they will understand that money is more of a belly issue than a new wardrobe issue. In the end they may have to do more hard work than they ever imagined.

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What are we, Elephants?

Kaye — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:40:28 +0000

Do we really want to go there? It seems a bit quirky and absurd to me. What is is about Americans and primarily Caucasian American Women that makes them feel they need to impose their beliefs and lifestyles on others.

Was it last week when Time Magazine revealed its breast feeding mom cover? Talk about extreme. I think this is all about some wealthy chick who has very little going on in her life. The poor kid now has to deal with kids making jokes about him and his mom for years to come.

In my opinion these extreme attachment parents are self centered and to be blunt, NUTS. They can make all the excuses for this bazaar behavior they want. There is, in my opinion, no medical reason or health benefits to nursing a human child past the age of one or two, even two is going a bit far as I see it, but 4 and 5?

Get out there you attached moms and find a job or volunteer at a school, hospital or homeless shelter; hell, volunteer at a nursing home. Get busy and you’ll find you have less time for self indigence than you seem to now.

The more people see it the more acceptable it will become said one advocate for this attachment parenting. I don’t want to see or find it normal. That’s not my normal. So now we need to act like elephants and not humans and should we cover ourselves in mud to keep cool and meet a the watering hole for baths too?

John Sununu: My Way or the Highway

Jack B Rochester — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:20:34 +0000

I am a New Hampshire resident. John Sununu is a former governor of New Hampshire and U.S. Senator. The New Hampshire state motto is, “Live Free or Die,” a paraphrase from a speech Patrick Henry made in 1775 at the outset of the Revolutionary War.

Apparently, John Sununu has forgotten our state motto and, indeed, what liberty and freedom mean to a United States citizen. Boston’s NPR news station, WBUR, reported the following yesterday:

“Sununu was speaking on a conference call organized by the Republican National Committee on behalf of Romney. He said the value that is provided through the investment in capital formation by companies such as Bain is essential to our economy.

“’And if you don’t want to live in a market economy, well, that’s terrific, there are a few countries left — Cuba, North Korea and a few others — that discourage private capital formation. And if someone doesn’t like the idea, they can always go there,’” Sununu said.

To me, Sununu’s comment flies in the face of everything this country stands for. Since when did representative government adopt the motto, “You don’t like the way we do things here, get out!” Our way has always been, If you don’t like things, get in there and change the system. But increasingly we do not have a representative government, and increasingly hear these “my way or the highway” remarks. Whatever happened to self-governance and elected officials who are supposed to implement our wishes?

I’m appalled and incensed by Sununu’s remark. Everything I do in and with my life is a contribution to this country. In this respect I’m identical to every other American. To be told I cannot voice dissent with a system or idea or policy – in this case the efficacy of our so-called market economy – and that if I don’t like it I can go live somewhere else – is a profound insult.

To me, the most curious aspect of Sununu’s remark is that it sounds an awful lot like something a bureaucrat or leader of a Communist state would say.

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Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:47:41 +0000

April 27, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

London

Sir:

Whereas Lucy Kellaway has taken a page from George Orwell’s famous essay on “Politics and the English Language,” in her attempt to rid BizSpeak of empty jargon, it might also be well to ventilate a few of the most vexing usages of the world of journalism. Specifically, for starters, eliminate “should,” and “must,” which characterize the arrogation of wisdom to themselves by pundits and leader writers, a species of would-be rulers and unelected legislators of the democratic culture we presently live in.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor of English & Modern Literature, UCLA

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A Dead Horse

Minnette Coleman — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:46:18 +0000

In my early twenties I worked for a year with the Academy Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia as an actor/teacher in the children’s division. While it was a wonderful interesting job it was not the fastest or easiest place for me to get to. The major expressways were always jammed up for hours surrounding rush hour and being young and impatient I had no intention of sitting in traffic when I could be sleeping or, after work, hanging out with friends. Thanks to my father’s knowledge of the city and my mother’s love for out of the way places to shop I learned a back way to get from Collier Heights where I lived with my parents to Sandy Springs in less than the lifetime it might have taken by expressway. It was the route I took every morning and it was there I ran across the dead horse.My brown hard top 1973 Ford Mustang was a fast car and I loved taking it out on the expressway and driving like the speed of light. Traffic was not my thing at all But the back roads of Atlanta offered twists and turns that made driving fun for a young person. And some mornings I had to find an alternative to the alternative. If you have ever seen traffic tie ups on the Atlanta expressways you know you really don’t want to get stuck sitting there.

From North Atlanta I traveled through Mableton, a place with a few strip malls that my mom loved. I had to drive down a portion of Bankhead Highway which wasn’t a highway at all but a two sometimes four lane street. From there I could see where the expressway that circles the city, I-285, was always in stand still motion. Better to drive through the suburban area, past a few old homes with fields and the strop malls mama enjoyed. Once I hit Mableton I crossed a stretch of country highway then headed down side streets with majestic homes that sat back from the road hidden by lovely bushes and trees and sometimes rows of fragrant flowers. It was a pleasant ride in the morning for once I crossed Mableton I was halfway to work.

On this particular warm spring morning traffic was backed up for a mile before I got to the Mableton interchange. According to the news report on the car radio I was blasting as loud as I could there was an accident. Time for plan B I decided but I had never been down any of the side streets here. The goal was to cross the backed up expressway another way. Other drivers had the same idea and a few made a right turn on an unfamiliar street. What harm could it do? I could always turn around I thought as I did the same.

If there had been GPS back then I would have been able to find a side street on my own. But I had to depend on my memory. So after making a right I knew that I would need to find a street where I could make a left and get to a section of Mableton’s highway with a light. Otherwise I might just as well sit in traffic. The other cars made left turns before I did and I didn’t want to follow them. Those streets were not in my mental GPS, i.e. I had never seen them on Saturdays when I drove my mother down the highway to do her shopping. When I saw a familiar street I smiled and made a left. In the rear view mirror I saw that a car was following me. He was actually driving to fast for the quiet suburban street we were on. I let him pass and he waved at me. Guess he was really late for work.

The street had a lot of curves and I was trying not to drive too fast. Around one was a driveway that just seem to come out of nowhere. And another boosted the entrance to a park. I was getting used to all these twists and turns when I went around a third one and barely missed running into a huge horse lying in the middle of the street.

I slowed down to a crawl. The horse was on his back, feet in the air. The damnedest thing this city girl had ever seen. A dead horse at the bottom of someone’s driveway, the car still parked there. These houses were smaller and close together so there was no place for a horse or a barn. Where did this creature come from? And since it was just shy of eight am, imagine getting your morning coffee and going out to get your paper and finding you will not be able to get out of your driveway because there is a dead horse at the end of it.

Shaking my head I sped up and checked my rear view mirror only to see some of the cars that had existed on the wrong streets following me and screeching to a halt as they neared the dead animal. By the time I got to the light no one had hit it.

No cell phones in those days so I had to wait another 20 minutes to call the Atlanta Police like a good citizen and tell them about the dead horse. Not their problem they informed me. It was in Mableton. Let them deal with it. I was hoping that someone in Mableton had called to get the animal removed. It was sure to start stinking up the place soon.

On the way home I veered off my usual routed and went down the street instead of heading directly home. The horse was there but now there were people out in the street complaining about it. I can’t imagine how long the thing had been there beforee I saw it and I had been at the theatre for nine hours.

It didn’t make any of the local papers, wasn’t a human or animal interest story. Wasn’t even a joke on the radio. It was just a dead horse, like a dead squirrel or rabbit in the street. You are supposed to pass road kill and keep going hoping the smell doesn’t seep in through your engine. But this horse wasn’t road kill. It had chosen to die in the middle of the street, no bridle no saddle.

Or maybe, just maybe someone was carting it off to the glue factory and it fell off a truck. You never know.

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Our Deck

Bob Grant - Editor — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:09:05 +0000

Our Spring was good for trees and grass,

the pollen’s high but that will pass.

Winter’s gone and none too soon,

enjoy the warmth til’ Harvest Moon.

A piece we own of our great earth,

means more to us than it is worth.

Quite small but thank our lucky stars,

because no debt and it’s all ours.

A peaceful place to sit and read,

there’s not much more that we both need.

No Ball & Chain around our neck,

we sit in peace upon Our Deck.

PRODUCTIVITY? WHAT’S THAT?

hujsaked — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:02:40 +0000

My old boss told me once, “When someone calls you with an opportunity, be assured that it is his opportunity. Words have a way of allowing a skewing of their definitions, depending on the situation and intent with which they are used.

The word that bothers me today is productivity, which in the socio-economic context correlates with increasing the amount of product you can get out of a person or a work force. It is measured by the change in the ratio of the value of things produced to the cost of the labor needed to produce them. Improved productivity in theory adds to personal and national well-being that results from growth in income. Theorists argue that the benefits are more real income, enjoyment of leisure, lower cost of goods and services, and improved housing and education. The truth of this is subject to question in the practical world. With the prices of automobiles at ten times what they were in 1970, gasoline at over four dollars a gallon, food prices buttressed by subsidies because producers can’t compete with foreign sources, a few raised eyebrows at this contention might be justified.

Attention to productivity improvement goes far back in history. James Watt got things really rolling in England in the late eighteenth century with his improvements on, and production of the steam engine kick-starting the Industrial Revolution. In current context it involves organization of work, attention to cost structure, adoption of accepted business processes, knowledge management and information technology, and improved and automated equipment. In many cases software with broad application is adopted for process upgrades.

The claim of increased income for workers at a time of rising productivity is open to question, as wages have shown no growth for more than a decade, and even some reduction. While productivity assessment works for most fields of effort, including wholesale trade, retail trade, medical, food supply, etc, it is handiest to look at the manufacturing segment, as that is where data is most readily available and where productivity seems to get the most attention. It is where the claim of increased income for workers begs the question: Is this for real? A startling piece of information generated by the labor department for the year 2009 compares the dollar per hour cost of labor for 18 nations, including 12 European countries, Australia, Canada and Japan. Norway ranked the highest, at $53.89 per hour. Spain was last at $27.24 per hour. The United States ranked fourteenth at $33.53 per hour. This tells us that the benefits of increased productivity are more likely in profits that are distributed to owners and shareholders and not to workers.

Since not much has changed in the socio-economic picture in the last three years, a review of more recent years would likely show similar results. In the first quarter of 2012 in the manufacturing sector productivity rose by 5.9% and unit labor cost fell by 4.2%. From an efficiency standpoint that looks great, but a lowered labor cost indicates that workers are not benefiting. The reality is that managers improve productivity by cancelling pensions, medical plans, retiring older workers who earn more and making fewer people work harder. It is no surprise that workers complain that they have to work harder to keep their jobs.

When a widget manufacturer raises his work force efficiency to produce more widgets for the same labor hours, or accomplishes the same by installing automated machinery, he can boast about improved productivity. If the market can absorb more widgets, workers are assured of keeping their jobs. But if the market cannot absorb more widgets the work force gets reduced. Either way, the widget manufacturer wins, but the latter case is bad for employment.

What should one read into it when the President announces that productivity is up but the unemployment picture is still unsatisfactory? How does improved productivity correlate with employment numbers? Did improved productivity result in wage increases? Is it helpful or harmful?

In a benevolent commercial and industrial society, the profit that improved efficiency generates is heavily distributed to workers in the form of higher wages, medical insurance and provisions for a reasonably comfortable retirement. If wages are held stagnant, the economy isn’t going to improve. If improved productivity benefits the worker, then good things happen. There is no better way to stimulate the economy. But management that operates in this manner is at a disadvantage with respect to competition, which explains its rarity.

Rising productivity is deemed to be good. Why must this be accepted? No one can say what will be enough. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Here) foresee human brains as adjuncts to far more powerful external computer brains, automated factories that can supply all human needs, that can replicate their machinery and even replicate themselves. But they give short shrift to the spiritual side of humans that propels them to be individually creative and productive.

In these few words, I have only touched on this complex word….. productivity. I could have written instead about productivity in baking bread. Should I use the bread maker, which is speedy and doesn’t measurably improve my life and produces something that tastes like bread but doesn’t look like bread? It will free me to do something else, say, water the plants….. or should I do it the old fashioned way, and spend the time kneading dough in serene contemplation, anticipating golden brown loaves that really look like bread when lifted from the oven?

DREAM ON

mistermuse — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:46:48 +0000

GOD’S “MY BAD”

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray there’s been A HELLUVA MISTAKE.

Picking the Right Computer for Your College Classes

itsDVguy — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:50:55 +0000

Going to college, or even just taking an online college course, is exciting for a whole slew of reasons however, there is one that many do not want to admit. School is cool and friends are nice, but most kids get really excited about getting their own computer. However, as technology advances and options expand, which do you choose?

Tablets offer all the connectivity for only a fraction of the weight and bulk of a laptop. But are they powerful enough processors to meet all of the needs of a college student? And are they worth the cost for typical starving students?

Public opinion has predicted that tablets will completely replace laptops in the future. But Don Reisinger reports on CNET that it’s mostly older users, 45 to 64 years old, who are on board with ditching their notebooks. This is likely due to the ease of use in a tablet for surfing, texting, emailing, and watching video. But using a tablet to do word processing can be very tiring, and more demanding programs are simply impossible to use on a typical tablet.

While some English Majors will get away with using limited tablet technology for web research, e-reading and word processing, other majors need far more powerful programs than a tablet can process. Building Excel sheets on a tablet would be nearly impossible for science or math students. Photo editing would be laughable for art majors.

The choice between laptop or tablet, really depends on end use. What are you studying? Which format allows you to work best? If you like routine while studying and plan to work from a desk, a laptop is ideal. But if you need the flexibility to move from quad to café to classroom, a tablet may be better.

Many tablets have cases with a built in keyboard, so there is no additional stuff to carry around with you. On the cheaper end are usb or wireless keyboards, which can run anywhere from $60 to almost $200. Another challenge to the tablet user is the fact that navigating with the touch screen is done on a vertical axis, with the tablet propped up in the position of a laptop’s screen, while tapping away on a keyboard happens at a horizontal axis. You can get a mouse for your tablet, but once you attach all the gadgets, it defeats the purpose and convenience of the magazine-thin tablet.

Robert Schoenberger, reporter for the Cleveland Plaindealer, has switched from laptop to tablet with minimal hassle. The benefits of a tablet for SMS, photo, and navigating the web make it much easier to use on the go. A college freshman could find it especially handy to be able to catch up on homework while eating in the dining hall, or working on a paper whenever inspiration hits, collegiates should never discount writer’s block or the near-constant distractions of a new campus.

First-year students should be able to receive and turn-in assignments almost entirely in the cloud, especially at large, tech-heavy universities. But compatibility of common programs like Microsoft Word could create a real hassle for tablet users. Campus data clients like Moodle may have Java, pop-ups, or drop-down menus that make tablet usage slow or unwieldy.

At this stage in the game, laptops are still cheaper than tablets, especially when you factor in peripherals like mouse and keyboard. And for those at less-connected campuses, they would have to pay for a data plan with the tablet as well, which isn’t necessary with most laptops. While tablets outperform laptops for ease of e-reading and web research, it’s a brave student, and maybe one with a good part-time job, who will opt for a tablet instead of a notebook.

In My Perfect World

Bob Grant - Editor — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:12:53 +0000

In my perfect world – all food would be sweet,

and sugar would be in all that I eat.

Cookies for breakfast – pie just for lunch,

Ice cream for dinner and Skittles to munch.

Sweets would be packed with all the good stuff,

required ingredients to make you look buff.

Spinach would really put on the pounds,

broccoli would be there way out of bounds.

Brussel & sprouts would be bad for the heart,

Twinkies; however, would make you be smart.

The more sugar you ate the better for you,

the healthiest dish would be M&M stew.

In my perfect world – I’d have a leg up,

good fortune would runneth over my cup.

so strike up the band and beat on the drum,

and bring on the sweets for more years to come.

MANCHILD

mistermuse — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:53:41 +0000

The more one knows, the less one believes. –Italian proverb

When you’re about six,
you come to realize
there is no Santa Claus to believe.

When you’re about twenty six,
you come to realize
there is no boy Cupid to blame.

When you’re about sixty,
you come to realize
there is no forever to live.

When you’re older than every dream,
you come to realize
there is no failed god to forgive.

I’m sorry, Virginia, but you were
misled….forget about the fat guy
in red with white beard
and sack full of goodies.

But at least there is a you, Virginia,
to remind an old man that
once-upon-a-time was as good
– and as pure — as it gets?

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:55:30 +0000

May 7, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Los Angeles

Dear Letters Editor:

Re Aaron David Miller’s OpEd [May 7], “Hail to the ‘not now’ president”: were Miller in the agora of ancient Athens offering his public policy statement for debate with Socrates, he would be laughed out of the market-place.

One example of Miller’s serial vacuities: “At best, an Israeli strike would buy year or two until Iran’s nuclear program would be back on track.” Is that so? How does he know what sort of strike and what sort of destruction would occur? He must not have been born when Hiroshima vanished, as most of Nagasaki too. And those were small bombs in comparison with what is handy these days.

In short, Miller lauds actions not taken. Calling done something not done is pure sophistry. As Shakespeare’s King Lear warned, “Nothing will come of nothing.” Tragedy overcomes everyone in King Lear: let’s hope America is not similarly overwhelmed when all Obama’s “not now’s” pour down upon our defenseless heads. One can almost hear the distant roaring of his favorite preacher’s “Goddamn America!”

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

Santa Monica, CA 310.393.4648

www.jfkessler.com

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I think I’m Having A Heart Attack!

Kaye — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:30:37 +0000

April 29th was a memorabled ay. It was the 92th anniversary of my mom’s birth. It was a very warm and would prove to be not only a bright and sunny day here in South Carolina it would also be a eventful day that changed my life and within a blink of an eye.

It was a Sunday and I was just beginning my day. I had purchased a few vegetable starter plants and was eager to get them in the ground. The day before my husband Vince and I joined his siblings in our monthly family day luncheon and then later that evening we joined a few friends for dinner to celebrate the 89th birthday of a close family friend.

Eager to get the day started I headed out to my vegetable garden, plants in hand and began to plant them. Vince and I have been preparing a portion of the yard to expand our patio and I wanted to transplant several perennials in that area of the yard so after getting my veggies tucked in I began transplanting a flowerbed.

My plan was to get my gardening in early and then just enjoy the beauty of a quite Sunday at home. Alas, the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley (English translation -the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry).

So there I was digging and bending and pulling and even thought the sun was under cover I was beginning to feel a bit warm. OK, I’ve hit 60 but I’m in good shape so why is this wearing me out? I do this all the time. I began to perspire a bit more that I normally do and then the preparation started to increased and heaviness appeared in the middle of my chest. It was as if someone or something was pressing hard trying to break my breast bone. “Am I having a heart attack? Damn it, I think I’m having a heart attack!” My first reaction was to get inside and take an aspirin and then to find Vince who was out in the front yard. He tells me I had become ashen, void of color and I was dripping with sweat. Vince called 911.

Two hours later I awoke in a hospital room to a nurse telling me not to move. Prior to that, the last thing I remembered was a paramedics telling me that he was giving me a nitroglycerin tablet that was going to, “give you a rocking headache” and four baby aspirin and that I shouldn’t worry, everything was going to be fine. Later my cardiologist would tell me that because Vince and I acted quickly and that I had the presence of mind to take the aspirin they were able to stop the heart attack and that there was no damage done to my heart muscle.

The attack happened without warning. I felt great up to the very second it began and I was angry. I was angry because as far as I knew I was in relatively good health. Yes, I had a little blood pressure problem but I was keeping it under control. I don’t eat a lot of red meat mostly fish and chicken. I eat fresh vegetables every day mostly organic and in the spring and summer I grow my own. I eat whole grains. I don’t eat a lot of fried foods and I exercise regularly. I’m not over weight. So why did I have a heart attack?

One of my coronary arteries was totally blocked and two others are partially blocked and I have a family history on both my mom and my dad’s sides of the family.

What I have is angina and I experienced most of the common symptoms; chest discomfort rather than actual pain, more like a pressure and discomfort in my upper central abdomen area, and pain in my left arm. Angina is typically triggered by exertion or emotional stress; I was working in the garden. It is aggravated by having a full stomach and by cold temperatures. Pain can be accompanied with breathlessness, sweating, nausea and diarrhea. I had then all in a matter of minutes.

Because I recognized the symptoms and acted quickly the paramedic and the cardiologist were able to stop the attack on my heart and prevent any damage. I now have a stint and I promise I am not taking anything for granted. I’m not out of the woods but I got what you might call a do over. I think I’ll be grateful and act accordingly.

Victims of Our Own Beliefs

Minnette Coleman — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:00 +0000

While discussing a blog I posted here about a severely handicapped girl who let out guttural noises that sounded like something from a horror movie I was confronted with “Do you think she was possessed?” My immediate reaction was to say “You need to stop reading the Bible.” Instead I thought about it and replied: “To some it might appear that way but it is all what you believe.”

The person I was speaking to defended her stance by adding that it is a fact that people see ghosts all the time so why couldn’t a person be possessed by demons. I listened and responded kindly but I really wanted to tell her that we are all victims of our own beliefs.Let me explain my ‘bible’ reaction before you ask. Lots of people are so hooked on what they read in the bible as a way of life that they don’t just practice it, live be it, they let it rule their existence. The people I am referring to are addicted to it if they have a hard life. It does relieve the pain of existence in this life to know that you can strive for another one that is filled with beauty. Whether it is heaven or the Elysian Fields it is a promise of a better life after this life. That afterlife justifies the misery in this one.

But there is no proof that the afterlife exists. It is a belief and one that a lot of Christians hold onto in times of good and bad. Another one of those beliefs seems to be ways to explain to unexplainable such as a child who makes noises from deep in her body. Why couldn’t she be possessed? Why couldn’t she need the help of an exorcist?

The discussion we had was not about religion versus science. It was about fact and fiction. it is about what can be proved. The suggestion that this child or any other person making such noises might benefit from an exorcism was met with the other ways we deal with things of this nature. My belief was simply put: we do not like it when we cannot figure out what is causing the looks, words or sounds that people make. So we do things to comfort not them but us. Exorcisms to calm whatever beasts we think possesses them or drugs to make them shut up entirely. What does it mean if they stop their awful ways after an exorcism? Does it mean that the beast or Satan was removed? Or does it mean that something in the ceremony calmed what was going on inside of them be it mental or physical to the point where they didn’t need to make those outbursts anymore.

So I guess you could say I am a victim of my beliefs as well. It is not that I don’t believe in God, or the devil or the possession of people. It is that I go for the explanations that give me comfort first. Those explanations or more scientific than religious. Sometimes those explanations can back up what happens with fact. With religion we back everything up with belief.

What of miracles you say? What of the things that go bump in the night? It is how we deal with them that speaks to what we believe. When the foundation I work for was in an old building many years again unusual things would happen that I still can’t explain. One morning I got in early to work in what I assumed was going to be relative quiet and it was nice. Then the lights went off directly over my desk. I knew this light was also controlled by another switch on an upper floor but because I was there alone (turning off the alarm resetting codes, etc, to prove I was there by myself) there was no one upstairs to turn the light off.

I got up and turned on the light and went back to work. A few minutes later the light went off again and I was in the middle of figures and calculations. I wasn’t afraid, I was angry. In fifteen minutes the rest of the staff would drift in and I wanted to complete my current task. So I shouted to whatever I believed was turning the lights off: “Knock it off, I’m working.”

The lights came back on and I never had another problem like that again. Although the same couldn’t be said for the building handyman who ran at the first sign of anything weird.

It could have been a ghost, could have been a short in the wires. It was nothing I could ever prove and yet it happened. And I believe that I handled it the best way possible.

Perhaps we are what we believe. We get so wrapped up in it that we try to pull others into our little webs. We all preach what we believe, have our own soapboxes that we get on, have moments where we must be right and what we believe in must be the way. But is it truly the way if what you believe is followed by the majority? Not always. The thing about believing is there will be something new to believe in tomorrow. And it may make you feel happier than today. The human heart is fickle in that regard.

But having taken voice lessons where I was taught how deep you can go in yourself to make sounds I find it hard to believe this sweet innocent was possessed. How could see make those sounds without training? She is looked in her body and she projects from deep within. She is also unaware of society’s fear or such noises. What does it mean to her tomake that sound? Perhaps it is just her relating to her body.

We will never know. Or will we? Maybe we just have to believe.

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Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:37:36 +0000

WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

International resolutions against Genocide notwithstanding, the resolve to exterminate Israel, and Jews everywhere is embedded in the Koran, so holy is that printed book that tearing out a page by an “Infidel” warrants condign punishment, aka, death. [2 May, “Inciting Genocide is a Crime”] Mssrs. Bernstein, et al., unfortunately seem unacquainted with the tales and histories in the Old Testament, from Esau on down, not to mention the etymology and source of Arabic itself, rooted in the name Amalek, for instance.

Rabbinical commentators like Maimonides and Rashi found ways to moderate and reinterpret the ancient literature in terms of a post-barbaric civilization. The Prophet, however, coming along before them, and perhaps acquainted with the descendants of Amalek in Mecca, installed the ancient enmities of tribal warfare — genocidal, to say the least — in his purported sayings, sacrosanct for Islam today. No wonder those millions of Nazi pamphlets found welcome in the Middle East!

In short, contemporary UN condemnations are more or less up against millennial, not to mention evolutionary, DNA that favors genocide, to say the least.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

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Review of VII: The Life, Times and Tragedy of Sir Edward William Locke the Third: Gentleman, by Kyle Muntz

Tantra — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:58:33 +0000

I should qualify this review by saying Kyle Muntz is already one of my very favorite writers, and Enigmatic Ink one of my most beloved publishers. I even like the cover art better than any I’ve seen by Michael Seidlinger. I easily opened my soul to the book, labeled “Surreal Fantasy,” as I opened the cover, and it didn’t disappoint at any point in the narrative. The world the main character inhabits is harder for me personally to access than that Muntz’s earlier books, because of the depravity, and the distancing of history. The hero of the novel, an unscrupulous European playwright, tells us cleverly unconvincing tales of his life. The poetic beauty of the language has to work extra hard to cover for some of the reprehensible ugliness of the behavior of the playwright, to keep me enraptured. Happily, I can say the dark meta-fiction, sentence by sentence, is equal to the task.

Felicitous combinations of words trigger a delight in the brain, endorphins lighting up the dark curves within. He uses eccentric action words to keep the reading experience muscular and tight. Night bends. Rust scours dust. Heads spit. Corpuscular gloom heralds the anti-self.

His use of language allows the thrill of reading moment by moment. “She had much in her of clouds: spread into flaps, aloft in many droplets, the straining birthplace of snow.” I can depend on giving myself over word by word to the awe of brilliance. The surprising use of sentence structures, surreal juxtapositions, delicate nuances continually widens my pupils vivaciously, breathes for me translucently.

We immerse ourselves in the surreal world he creates, as in a swamp, fertile, wet, the mud sticking to us. As we walk out of it, we don’t look back and remember any compartments and linear organization and clear understanding. We are just covered with the residue, scooping it off our legs, and flinging it, but still, wet.

I personally am turned off by the vampire craze, and yet the playwright Edward’s occasionally, casually, noted vampiric qualities still work for me, because they aren’t necessarily literal so much as symbolic of a man who doesn’t self reflect. I’d imagine it’s similar to not seeing oneself in a mirror. The book symbolizes projection of the shadow, leaving holes in the self that in his case, never get filled in by reality, but instead, by impossibilities. The ambiance of European dark mythology varnishes the faces in the mirrors with subtle, transluscent layers of paranormal beings and qualities that float past unable to stick to his nothingness.

“Hearing reports, I often wonder if I am only a beast pretending to be a man, driven by my lusts, my misjudgements, my failings. I see them often in others, but his universality is characteristic of nearly all my observations. I cannot trust them, for perhaps they are only my own attributes projected.” That is core to the book, which reminds us dangerous people in all of our lives, no doubt, who project their darkness onto others, making this character frightening in a personal way.

Three versions of Edward populate the novel, whether he knows it or not, and the splitting of a self blind to itselves becomes dizzying. In spite of Edward’s lack of true vision, the books is visually organized into beautiful tableaux of impossibilities. Post-modernist ironies design the self-aware stage.

Edward is fiery: “It seems sometimes I become a creature of fire, fulminating in long thin plumes. In glass, I see no signs of it, but my reflection gives no signs of anything.” Sometimes creatures run across the landscape of himself, such as a Minotaur. Events move from reasonable and believable to surreal, dreamlike, sometimes even Escheresque, when the prose really shines. The horizon, the body, motion, spatiality itself can at any moment go spinning backwards, and we viscerally flail along with it as we read, making this a ride in the best amusement park of duels, robberies, and prostitution, their ugliness palpable, but the passages evoking them thrilling at the same time.

His relationship with his wife, to whom he doesn’t even bother speaking, is eerie, as he doesn’t even realize if he’s left him, and expects she’ll probably be back in a year if she has. We wonder whether this man could have a recognizable personality disorder, as he remains immobile for days, and also neglects person hygiene. “I am something less, something more than than a person, adrift in reciprocal perception. My life has never acknowledged my basic nature. I’ve long forgotten why it is so, or resolved not to say, most especially to myself.” The fact that at least he sees this means he’s more self aware, projecting less than many people who have a serious problem with this. He is self aware about not being self aware, a most unusual trait.

And Muntz uses that as a way to create a beautiful literary world. “I pose within a corridor of mirrors, each step another multiplied semblance, decrying abrogated time. Obscured features, thickly transparent. That passageway is contained within myself, but no thing of cognoscente immersion.”

As always, I’d recommend anyone interested in the best of current innovative literary fiction to read all of this author’s rewarding works, which are of the best quality craftsmanship.

http://enigmaticink.weebly.com/vii-by-kyle-muntz.html

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY KAYE, MICHAELINE & MINNETTE

mistermuse — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:25:52 +0000

Just want to wish a happy Mother’s Day to the above gals whose postings I have enjoyed and with whom I have enjoyed exchanging lively comments in recent months….and who have put up with my witticisms, an occasional one of which may be a bit more off the wall than on the mark. Hey, if we don’t always ”dig” everything the other guy writes, vive la difference!

To you and all the moms out there, enjoy your day!

P.S. I’d include Mohadoha in the title line, but am not sure if she qualifies mom-wise. In any case, I liked her most recent post/exchange of comments.

Gay Marriage

Don Frankel — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:52:36 +0000

It’s about time. I mean people have rights or should have them. Like visiting in the hospital when someone is sick or sharing communal property and of course a few others.

1. You have the right to have to duck the clock radio or whatever else your spouse feels the need to throw at you.

2. You have the right to be told about how the toilet seat has to stay down. The sound your wife makes the first time she’s half asleep, sits down on the toilet in the middle of the night and the seat was up, is not one most people should ever miss. Oh wait this is one where same sex marriages won’t have a problem.

3. You have a right to find out what is wrong with you. As most married men know they were walking around for years, had all these things wrong with them and no one ever told them. Until of course they got married.

4. You have the right to have in-laws. You thought your own mother was a needy pain in the ass. Now you’ll have two. You will also have the right to have your no good lazy brother in law sleep on your couch. Finding him a job will become number 1 on your to do list.

5. You have the right to forget anniversaries and birthdays or forget to get things at the supermarket. That’s when you’ll realize that first right to duck the clock radio or other assorted items, is very important.

6. You have the right to find out that the other person is not in the mood. This never happens when dating. Don’t feel rejected. This is just life.

7. I’m listening to Mark Simone on the radio and this is the topic of the first hour and an elderly lady just called in and asked. “What about the children?” Well I guess you’ll have to tell them you’re gay at some point. Then again maybe they’ll figure it out. Kids are pretty intuitive and smarter than most adults realize.

Final thought; Gay marriage is legal in New York so same sex couples can get married here. Yeah New York is an expensive place. You may spend all your money. It’s hectic. There’s never enough space. You better keep moving or you’ll get yelled and cursed at. But then you’ll see and do things you never thought possible. New York is a wondrous place. Come to think of it it’s a lot like being married. Good luck.

Raw Cacao Desert Balls

Tantra — Sat, 12 May 2012 03:22:29 +0000

Taking these to a party created just the effect I’d hoped for. People came up to me, saying those are really special, aren’t they? The word special came up often, with a kind of trembling appreciation that this wasn’t just tasty food. When I told them the ingredients were all raw, organic super-foods, they said it was obvious. Their eyes widened and they either whispered or raised their voices when mentioning the candy. Yes, raw cacao is somewhat psychotropic, considering anandamides, but not in the first taste. They were responding to the aliveness of the desert, and the unusual spicing.

I always make these batches differently, for variety, and I never measure anything. Virtually every ingredient I use is organic. Raw cacao scores at the top of ORAC antioxidant foods, and maca is one of the best yang energy tonics available, with a caramel flavor. Raw almond butter provides fabulous oils, and little extras make it unique.

I used raw, cacao powder (Navitas,) http://www.navitasnaturals.com/ from Peru, as the main ingredient. http://www.navitasnaturals.com/ For parties late in the evening, however, I keep that part of the mix somewhat low in proportion, as it does have a stimulant effect not best for night-time, though it doesn’t have caffeine per se, is healthier than that. It also does have those psychotropic effects. Dark chocolate, especially raw, has three compounds that resemble anandamides and it also blocks the breakdown of anandamide in the body. Anandamides benefit the body in many ways, including creating blissful feelings, and focused excitement. It also has PEA, the amino acid we produce most heavily when we’re in love. This type of desert is usually labeled “bliss balls.”

Most bliss balls stick with more cacao, but many people find those too strong in taste, and jittery effects. Though it doesn’t have caffeine, cacao’s theobromine does have a stimulant effect so I like to nourish the adrenals to make up for that by adding a healthy amount of maca powder, also from Peru. (Earth Circle.) Keeping with the Peruvian superfood theme, I added lucuma powder (Ojio).

I also added vanilla (Simply Organic), http://www.simplyorganic.com and almond (Spicely) flavors, cinnamon (M B), and a touch of black pepper (Spicely). http://www.spicely.com/ Other spices work well, too, though, such as nutmeg, and ginger.

To sweeten this time, I used some raw honey, along with xylitol, and stevia. The liquid spices keep you from needing as much honey, and even water can be added to moisturize, to reduce the need for honey. For vegans, I use agave instead. I use larger proportions of stevia when going to a party where people are especially interested in health, as they have often have more of a taste for it, though not always. It counterbalances the sweetness and keep the blood sugar low, and people on an even keel. If I add in some xylitol or agave, the distinctive stevia taste is masked easily by them. Be careful not to eat too much if you include xylitol, as it can cause intestinal upset. I prefer to concentrate on the stevia when making it just for myself – no spiking of the blood sugar, or gurgling stomach, but also not as decadent and rich tasting.

Whenever anyone new tells me she doesn’t like it, I inevitably ask her if she has used NuNaturals, as the brands of stevia are very different. I’ve found that some people can’t tolerate stevia no matter what, just don’t have the taste buds that match them. And maybe they’ve already formed associations from using bitter brands. But often, people who didn’t like stevia before were fine with it if it came from NuNaturals, especially when other natural sweeteners were added to enrich the combination of flavors. https://nunaturals.com/productcategory/20

Raw cream, or cacao butter make fabulous substitutes for the honey or agave, and makes it taste like truffles. Rose water also adds an exotic flavor, though it becomes too strong if you use too much. Raw Cream (Organic Pastures) http://organicpastures.com/ in the mix means you can leave out the almond butter, honey, and even the maca and still have a good balance, just with the cacao, and stevia, maybe a spice or too, like nutmeg.

I used raw almond butter, but any kind of raw organic nut or seed butter works just fine. It doesn’t really matter the order you put these in, as long as you’re intuitive and sensitive as you mold the ingredients with your hands in a bowl until they are an appealing consistency. Form them into balls, and they can be quite small, and still be satisfying treats for party guests. You don’t want to plan to take too much of the desert, or the cost is simply too prohibitive, but the small size makes them go a long way. You can get creative and make them into little sculptures like marzipan. They’re ready to eat, and last for days, though not too many, if you use cream. They’re handy to have around if you need to be more alert and motivated, or cheered up.

Have fun!

There But For The Grace of God. . . A Bus Story

Minnette Coleman — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:33:20 +0000

When the bus arrived at my stop it was on time but crowded. Several of the passengers exited revealing a woman standing near her severely handicapped daughter in a wheelchair. Like any good writer I observed what I could of the child without appearing to be gawking. The girl had nail polish on, her hands flying in the air now and then, and cute bows on her hair. Her eyes rolled around a bit but she never tried to get out of the restraints that held her in the seat. Passengers paid no attention to her until the noises started. And then I wondered if these people knew how they looked pretending not to abhor the sounds coming from a child that, for the grace of God, could be theirs.She laughed and giggled and gurgled happily as if at peace until the woman got on in a wheelchair. Her is a person restricted to a chair herself and causing havoc as she got on the bus. She got on the wrong way and had to go out and come on again. When she was finally getting settled she turned to the girl and her mother. And then as if she smelled something foul she turned and looked out her window for the rest of the journey.

After mentally whispering “Wow!” I returned to my Nook and my novel. The girl was making noises and then she got quiet. Suddenly a low very guttural sound startled all the passengers. At first I thought it was a baritone with a really bad snoring problem. But the sound got louder and worse. Heads rose to see where it was coming from. It couldn’t be coming from that poor girl in the wheelchair. Why she was making baby noises. We were were privy to now was something out of an exorcism.

And it was coming from the child.

She would coo and then seconds later something deep in her let out a noise that freaked several people out. No one said “What the hell is that?” for it did sound like something from a Bosch painting. It was the way they looked at the mother, rubbing the child’s back and sometimes whispering to her. Giggle, gurgle, roar, coo. It was a bewildering crop of noises. A cacophony best for Friday. Thank God it wasn’t Monday for some of these people would have had to turn around and go home and start over.

I stopped reading to observe my fellow passengers. One man raised his head with a jerk every time the girl made the horrifying noise. For five stops he did not turn the page in his book. And old man trying to sleep just shook his head. I am sure the kid with the headphones on just turned them up louder.

But the lady sitting behind the mother and daughter reading her bible did nothing I could. Something told me she was praying. Something told me she was praying to give that mother strength in taking care of the child whose legs would shoot across the aisle every now and then.

The other wheelchair bound passenger never turned from her window.

The mother did not seem to care about what noises her child was making. She knew the girl could not help it. Unlike parents who let their children act ignorant in public, she had no way to stop her daughter’s outbursts. True they may have seemed heinous to some, and they may have seemed controllable to others. But the mother was doing all she could do to soothe a child that was lost inside her body and mind.

And maybe to a few the girl needed an exorcism. It sounded like something form a horror movie. All I could wonder was did the girl do this all day and maybe at night? The poor family, I thought. How lucky the girl is to have such a strong mother.

A friend of my oldest daughter has a son with similar problems though not as severe. Her husband left her for giving him a damaged child. She has suffered through the insults of family and friends who feel the same way and for a while wanted to put her son in an institution. Once he reached grade school age he seemed to adjust to having others around him and she adjusted to being a mother of the child God gave her. Such is life.

As I exited the bus I listened the the girl make her noises sweet and sour. She wasn’t really bothering anyone except those who don’t like to be reminded of the trials we often have to go through. On the sidewalk I peered into the bus and saw her mother kiss her forehead and smooth her hair. How lucky they seemed to have each other.

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DEAR SPEAKER BOEHNER

hujsaked — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:02:43 +0000

Honorable Congressman John Boehner
Speaker, House of Representatives
1011 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, Dc 20515 -3508

Dear Speaker Boehner,

In the light of your recent approval of an important meeting of Sectarians in the Capitol building…… Our House, an enduring symbol of a Constitution that requires separation of Church and State, I would guess that future historians will mark you as a man of poor judgment who somehow managed to rise to a position where good judgment is fundamental to leadership

You knew that the participants, to a man (and woman) are of a mind to break down that wall and proclaim that at last, this is a Christian nation. Others need not apply. It was a near victory lap for them,….something close to the flag raising by soldiers at Iwo Jima.

I cannot imagine how you can ever live down this colossal blunder.

Sincerely,

Edward Hujsak.

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:40:01 +0000

May 2, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

International resolutions against Genocide notwithstanding, the resolve to exterminate Israel, and Jews everywhere is embedded in the Koran, so holy that printed book that tearing out a page by an “Infidel” warrants condign punishment, aka, death. [2 May, “Inciting Genocide is a Crime”] Mssrs. Bernstein, et al., unfortunately seem unacquainted with the tales and histories in the Old Testament, from Esau on down, not to mention the etymology and source of Arabic itself, rooted in the name Amalek, for instance.

In short, contemporary UN condemnations are more or less up against millennial DNA favoring genocide, to say the least.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

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A MONTH LATE AND A PET SHORT

mistermuse — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:01:08 +0000

It seems that April 11 was National Pet Day, and here I am on May 11, a month late posting, and a long time since I owned a pet. But if I did suddenly want a pet – and, if fond boyhood memories carried the day – my choice would be a….

DIDDLE, DIDDLE, DUCKLING

Lord love a duck,
And so do I….
If I were me,
That’s what I’d buy.

But since I’m not
Myself today,
I think I’ll buy
One anyway.

From wee duckling,
Downy yellow,
He’ll fast become
White big fellow.

Unless, of course,
He lays an egg….
In which case, I’ll
Her pardon beg.

Oh, by the way,
Folks, if you please.
Do Pekin ducks
Speak Pekinese?

The yolk’s on me,
As folks then say:
That’s enough wise
Quacks for one day!

Cats and dogs reign,
I realize….
But, for my dough,
Ducks take the prize.

They live outdoors
In weather fowl,
And don’t want in,
Or bark, or howl.

Their needs are few,
As pet needs go:
Some duck food and
Some H2O.

And, most of all,
A place to swim –
No better treat
For her or him.

Oh — one more thing
I’d like to say:
“Like, have you hugged
A duck today?”

Faith in e-books

Carmen Anthony Fiore — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:20:30 +0000

Even though I’m not a gadget person, I can see the “handwriting on the wall” that e-books are not only doing well and are accepted by the millions of Kindle owners and other e-book readers, they are now a permanent part of publishing. That’s why I have now published 24 titles on the Kindle, fiction and self-help nonfiction. The day of the agent gatekeeper is over. My e-books are being sold in America and in Europe in English and the language of the country. Can’t get any better than that for a writer today.

America Lost in a Bubble

Robert R. Owens — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:45:38 +0000

All bubbles burst. This is a law of nature. No matter from what material the bubble arises. No matter what forces propel its expansion. All bubbles burst.

Actually the science of bursting bubbles has recently popped into the forefront of scientific discovery. Conventional wisdom has taught since the beginning of time that when a bubble bursts it simply vanishes. However, recent observations using high speed cameras has revealed that when a bubble bursts it leaves a circle of miniature daughter bubbles that pop so fast the eye cannot catch it. There is even the thought that each daughter bubble leaves a ring and each daughter bubble leaves a ring ad infinitum. All happening so fast it cannot be seen. And yet, each succeeding bubble bursts.

The physics of bubbles tells us that the pressure on the inside works against the tension on the surface and a ratio between the two determines when the bubble will burst. No matter how it bursts, no matter why or when it bursts one thing is certain: all bubbles burst.

In economics a bubble is the term commonly used for a cycle characterized by rapid expansion followed by rapid often dramatic contraction. What causes economic bubbles is often a matter of dispute among economists. Some believe they are a natural part of the economic cycle: everything goes up, and everything eventually comes back down.
Others believe they are caused by inflation. In this scenario everything has a natural price which is the intersection of cost and demand. The Bubble is the artificial rise of price over the natural price. Eventually the economy must correct itself and the inflated product will return to its natural price.
No matter which theory you subscribe to, one thing is certain: all bubbles burst.

Remember the Clinton years? Today the official History as dispensed constantly by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media is that the wise and benevolent rule of the man from Hope was a time of plenty. There was solid growth and balanced budgets. As the Progressive narrative goes, President Clinton alone was responsible for the growth of the nineties which Bush the Younger proceeded to destroy leaving a mess for President Obama who has fought valiantly to restart the economy and save the day. At least that’s the story as dispensed by the headlines and the talking heads.
The reality is approximately 180 degrees opposite of the spin.

President Clinton won a three way election with less than 50% of the vote (twice) and called it a mandate both times. The policies he opposed for his entire career had recently won the Cold War, and President Clinton reaped the rewards. He gutted the military and called it a Peace Dividend which he proceeded to spend on social engineering projects pumping up the economy with government spending. Then the Dot-com Boom turned into the Dot-com Bubble and the economy was roaring. Another plus for Clinton was the defeat of Hillarycare which would have torpedoed the economy just as Obamacare is now. He also profited by the election of a Republican House in 1994 which kept the promises in the Contract With America and led the way in cutting spending and building a budget that at least appeared to be balanced.
Everything was coming up roses. The economy was growing and so was the Dot-com Bubble, which everyone just knew would go on forever even though anyone older than the milk in the fridge should have known that all bubbles burst.

In 2000 George II won a contested election, and before he had time to change the drapes in the Oval Office the Dot-com Bubble burst. This led to a short sharp recession; this was the one that Bush didn’t blame on Clinton. He instead passed the now infamous Bush tax cuts and mailed out what he called rebates in the form of free money to spur the economy. All the while behind the scenes the housing bubble was beginning to inflate to epic proportions. Federal spending grew, the government grew, and the bubble grew.

During the go-go years people with no job, no money, and sometimes no ID were able to buy McMansions for no money down and walk out with cash in their hands. How could this ever go wrong? I remember hearing of people bidding on houses, offering 10% over the asking price and losing out to someone who offered more. Prices went up and up and up and somehow even sane people apparently thought it would never end.

Things looked good. Things looked very good. Following the recession which began seven weeks after President Bush took office, America had six years of uninterrupted economic growth. There were fifty two straight months of job creation producing more than eight million new jobs, the unemployment averaged 5.3 %, after-tax income per capita increased by11%, from 2000 to 2007, and GDP grew by more than 17 % adding almost $2.1 trillion. Exotic ways to paper over the fact that people with no money were buying houses fueling the boom kept everyone smiling and the bubble expanding.
The only problem was that eventually all bubbles burst. And when it did John McCain suspended his presidential race to fly back to Washington and add his hearty, “Me Too” to the bailout and seal his fate.

President Obama took office as the economy crashed into the deepest recession since World War Two. He immediately began blaming President Bush and hasn’t stopped yet. He passed the largest stimulus bill in American History, began a record expansion of the Federal government, and the largest spending binge since the beginning of time. All in the name of cleaning up the mess from the bursting of the housing bubble.

And what are all these trillions of dollars in reckless spending doing? Are they inflating another bubble? Change the words and you change the perception: spending becomes investment and responsibility becomes austerity. Those who are manning the pumps aren’t blowing up a financial bubble they are showing compassion for their fellow man and investing for the future. Anyone who warns of a coming crash or tries to slow the rate of spending is pushing grandma off the cliff for the benefit of millionaires and billionaires.

No matter how this mad dash to nowhere is spun one thing is certain: all bubbles burst

On the brighter side President Obama has perfected the cure for illegal immigration. The economy has taken such a massive hit that the illegal immigrants are leaving looking for greener pastures. And he has also brought the solution to a 10%+ unemployment rate. So many people have become discouraged that they have dropped out of the labor market, and according to our current administration this is good news. Perhaps we should take a cue from Mr. Obama’s favorite pastime and just consider his first term a mulligan.

Maybe the slogan for President Obama’s second term shouldn’t be “Forward.” Perhaps it should be “I deserve a re-do.”
Just remember: all bubbles burst.

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Experimental Fiction Writing Class Online: May 30th 2012 10 weeks

Tantra — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:00:05 +0000

Are you intrigued by literary fiction that doesn’t go by ordinary rules? Do you want to sneak under the holes in the fence and explore the narrative wilderness beyond? If you have read innovative literary fiction and want to try your hand at it, or if you’ve been writing it for awhile already, and want suggestions and inspirations to help move your work forward, consider studying online for a semester-length class in which your stories aren’t critiqued by whether they follow the traditional pot arc, or makes the reader forget he’s reading fiction.

Come expand the idea of what a character can be, collaborate with an intimate group of other writers.Organized lectures, and assignments structure the course, and the more fluid exercises and interaction allows the experience to be molded by the personalities of the students. No meetings, so any time zone or schedule works. The course is 400 dollars, significantly less expensive than classes through a University. Courses in Experimental Fiction Writing are taught very rarely in the world, and online ones almost never at all, so take the opportunity now to talk with me about it: flameflower@runbox.com (Tantra Bensko) The course is Here at Sclipo.

I teach Fiction Writing and Experimental Fiction through UCLA Ext., Writers College, and elsewhere. I promote innovation of others through Exclusive Magazine, FlameFlower Contest, LucidPlay Publishing, and Experimental Writing. To read more about classes, see the resource site, Experimental Writing which gives a lot of articles, and links to presses, and also includes a magazine in which the authors describe what makes their work Experimental.

I have 180 literature journal publication, such as JEF, and chapbooks and fiction books from various publishers including ISMs Press with others coming up, such as a collection from Make-Do Publishing. I’ve won several awards, including the Journeys Award from Cezanne’s Carrot. I got an MFA from Iowa in the 80′s, after which I became feral; I now live in Berkeley. To see my writing, see: http://lucidmembrane.weebly.com/

If you know of anyone who might be interested, or any good places to advertise this, I would be indebted to you for passing it along to support the cause of liberated writing.

Transformation

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:07:07 +0000

I suppose if he could he would write of the adventure

we shared together … of River Boats and Banana Boats

of Pizza Shops and of a Great Love shared … of

moments spent … of unspoken oaths … of long days

and sleepless nights .. of Ferry Boats and Plane Rides to

Exotic destinations. Limited as he is .. these treasures will

be witten only in his heart .. as a guide of sorts to protect

His soul in new and uncharted terratories.

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:25:00 +0000

April 16, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

Much as I admire Kay Hymowitz’s articles, I am rather puzzled, if not annoyed, rather, dismayed! by her stats. [26 April, "Why Women Make Less Than Men] I am not competent to parse the complexities of survey numbers and survey research; yet it seems to me Hymowitz palters, avoiding the fundamental cause of complaint about women’s wages. The issue is not that the Labor Department and Pew Research do not offer realistic numbers about the differences in “take home” pay showing most women, world-wide, work shorter days, weeks, months than males. The issue is: Are most women paid at the same level for the same jobs as men! I leave aside hiring bias and gender discrimination at all levels for which the XX creatures qualify as equals in merit against the XY chromosomal persons.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

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A MATTER OF UNDERSTANDING

hujsaked — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:22:35 +0000

I don’t know. I like to think that I was the instigator of this idea, but I could be wrong. Ideas have a way of spawning simultaneously in minds around the globe, as if transmitted on an undefined wave through an as yet undetermined medium.

It happened, one day some years ago, standing in line at the cashier’s in Ralph’s grocery store, that I found myself behind a cart holding a young child with big round eyes, obviously a bit under the weather. I watched a little hand pass under a runny nose then slide smoothly along the handle of the cart. Something told me that this needed a little attention.

Upon returning home I wrote letters to Ralph’s headquarters and to the Chlorox company stating my concern that grocery store cart handles could be among the worst transmitters of disease in the community. I heard nothing from either party, but imagine the warmth in my heart upon discovering, a few months later, a Chlorox hand wipe dispenser at the entrance to Ralphs, mounted on a crude stand, with the message: “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience.”

It seems that the idea took hold, as in the ensuing years the dispensers at store entrances appeared at more and more places, even at Home Depot. They appeared in various designs, which indicated more than one entrepreneur was involved. I imagine it has gone national, maybe international (Aha! I am a job creator, and not even a one percenter! Maybe the sycophants who proclaim the rich are job creators are in error!).

But it has become clear that my work is not yet done. “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience” merely begs the question: Why do I need clean hands to shop? (What a dumb idea).

Humans respond poorly to indirect or implicit instructions. “Hand Wipes for Your Convenience” is like saying “Powder Room” for “Ladies Restroom.” That took considerable training as “Powder Room” was historically where they kept kegs of gunpowder. Signs that are explicit work best, like “Cross” and “Don’t Cross.” Exit”, with an arrow. No Parking. You get the idea. Good signs get results. Of course it brings to mind the oft repeated tale about P.T. Barnum’s method of emptying the arena for the next wave of customers with the sign: “This Way to the Egress.”

So it’s time for another letter to Ralphs and Chlorox.

Gentlemen: You must change your sign to read “Hand Wipes for Germ Free Cart Handles.”

That ought to do it.

Aya’s Dream Is Not Different From Mine (Or Yours)

Mohadoha — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:32:23 +0000

I’m part of the group that makes up PalFest, or the Palestine Festival of Literature. Since many people in Palestine have mobility issues – they’re not handicapped – getting into and out of their regions, PalFest brings writers and bloggers to their doorsteps, once a year, for a week.

We have had a very full week, borderline hectic, from workshops at schools and universities, to a music concert in a community center. Often the evenings find us still at dinner at 12am, talking to young Palestinians living in Gaza about what it’s like to live in one of the world’s most restricted cities. There are two levels on which they are confined. First, and the most obvious, the literal borders between Gaza and Egypt to the south and Israel to the north.

The Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing

Then there are the internal borders: between male and female in a hyper conscious, gender segregated social situation Between the haves and the have-nots: those who have their homes, and those who have spent four generations in refugee camps.

Out of all of this, it’s difficult to point to a person or a moment which crystallizes one of the most contentious parts of one of the world’s oldest conflicts. As a South Asian American I’m here as a writer and blogger who has lived in the Middle East for seven years. There’s a sense in which I’m different from the others on the trip as most of them are Arabs, and the majority of these, Egyptians. Many emotions roll through them at the various events: happiness at seeing a place long talked about alternates with guilt at their government’s policies which make life difficult for their Arab brothers.

Young men sit on the side of the street as we walk by, the women in our group some of the only uncovered heads on the street; unemployment here is reportedly at sixty percent. They chain smoke, passing back and forth tattered packets of cigarettes with dire photos of blistered tongues, feet, other appendages, ignoring the cancer warnings, as plastic bags, empty soda cans, and other debris skips along in sand carried by the wind.

Out of this milieu, familiar now by the third day, Aya, one of the earnest Palestinian volunteers stands out. She is not dressed in the black, robe like abaya, or the housecoat length coverings the other girls wear. She has on a black dress, a dress maybe off the rack at Marks and Spencers, over trousers. Her veil covers the necessary bits but shows off her black eyeliner which gives life to her eyes.

She has been back for seven months. Seven months spent trying to find a job with her Masters degree from the London School of Economics (LSE). Her dream is to teach English Literature but since she doesn’t yet have a PhD, and her degree was in Global Politics (the program fully funded at LSE) she can only apply and wait to her if she’s good enough for elementary school students.

“I want to teach English Literature,” she said. “And be a role model for the girls who have only male teachers.”

Her passion burns bright in her sparkling eyes. I feel guilt, not that I get to leave tomorrow, or that I was born somewhere else in the world, or that in my everyday life I can purchase any item I want without worrying about it’s cost, or who risked his life to bring it to me through the illegal tunnels through the Egyptian border.

The sharp pain I feel is for all the times I said “I’m not even going to use my degree,” while I was finishing my PhD and the glee at which I took up teaching earlier this year when I tired of my corporate life. I had options: I exercised them.

My mind reels with how to create the same for this young woman who deserves all I had, and perhaps even more, because for her it means so much.

Introducing Grant Intermediary Associates

Bob Grant - Editor — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:52:09 +0000

Grant Intermediary Associates (G.I.A.) http://grantintermediaryassociates.com/ provides Capital Sourcing services to U.S. companies by introducing them to U.S. Private Equity firms. Currently the P.E. firms, with whom we have a relationship, have a combined $15 billion in managed assets that encompass a large number of markets. Our Capital Sourcing program involves pairing quality companies with Private Equity firms to assist businesses in a number of ways. This could be for the sale of the company, a management team needing capital to buy the business, a buyout of a relative or other shareholder, or future growth/expansion of the existing business. The general guidelines for our interest is a company with 3 consecutive years of profitable history and annual sales of $5-10 million or more. The advantage we have is that we can match the best PE firm with the best opportunity – we prefer to deal with Private Equity companies (no Angel Funds or Venture Capital firms).

The Capital Sourcing service we are offering will not have any up front costs to you. If a deal is ultimately completed then we are paid a fee by the Private Equity firm – if no deal is reached then we receive nothing.

If you have a need for Private Equity funds for any reason – or might know someone who does – I hope you will contact me.

Bob Grant, President
Grant Intermediary Associates
8136 NW Twin Oaks Drive
Kansas City, Missouri 64151
http://grantintermediaryassociates.com
GrantIntermediaryAssociates@gmail.com
Ph: 816-510-4600

I am a Washaholic

Bob Grant - Editor — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:38:33 +0000

I am a Washaholic - I freely do admit.

Developed it while I was young - I don’t intend to quit.

It started with a Chevy – a traveled ’53,

I polished out the rusty spots – a sense of pride for me.

A 3-speed on the column – a gutless flat head 6,

propensity for using oil – a fact I could not fix.

I washed it almost every day – I liked to see it shine,

I relished when it looked its best – because it was all mine.

No matter what the model was – I washed them all the same,

If there is something wrong with me – I have no one to blame.

Sprinklers are my enemy along with food and such,

they used to drive me crazy but now they don’t so much.

This washing’s an obsession – I don’t know what to say?

Right here you see my current ride – I washed it just today.

Honoring the Dishonored

Robert Flynn — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:10:28 +0000

Whereas the Constitution of the United States declares that it and treaties ratified by Congress and signed by the president are the law of the land; and
Whereas Congress ratified and the president signed the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and
Whereas some soldiers were prosecuted, defamed, dishonored and imprisoned for torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and
Whereas their Commander in Chief, George W. Bush, deserted those soldiers who were accused of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, calling them a “few bad apples,” seeing them prosecuted, defamed and imprisoned while lying that “We do not torture”; and
Whereas their Commander in Chief, George W. Bush, confessed to authorizing torture, and
Whereas, Vice President Cheney and other members of the administration participated or permitted torture; and
Whereas those who have sworn to defend or to uphold the Constitution are derelict in duty in not prosecuting those who authorized, participated or permitted torture;

Therefore: we the following petition for the reinstatement of those low-ranking soldiers who were prosecuted and punished for deeds that their military and civilian authorities authorized, participated in or permitted without prosecution; that they be returned to duty if they so desire or be given honorable discharges and back pay for time they spent in prison for serving their country in the manner authorized and permitted by superior military and civilian authorities who were not prosecuted and punished;
and that they be honored by all those who do honor, defend and uphold the Constitution.

http://signon.org/sign/honoring-the-dishonored?source=c.em.cp&r_by=427912

Age and Forgetting-Body and Mind

Minnette Coleman — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:43:08 +0000

As my mother approaches her 87th year we rally to make sure she has everything she needs and stays away from things that are not good for her. We know we are lucky that she is in decent health and we marvel at her mind: daily crafts construction and playing Scrabble alone and with a club. But some of her long time acquaintances are not that lucky. They forget things and she tries to help them. When that doesn’t work she tells us “I choose to believe she got it mixed up.” It is the only way she seems to be able to handle the memory loss of her friends.The one thing my mother has worked towards in the past 20 years is not leaving here with a feeble mind. She forgets things but not like many seniors I know. Having worked hard as an accountant and then investing her mental energy in things like Sudoku and Crossword puzzles she has achieved her goal thus far. She doesn’t not forget medicine or appointments, birthdays or names. Sometimes I wish we could make her work as hard physically as she does mentally but she considers her crafts her labor.

At the Donnell Senior Center she goes for Scrabble every week and sometimes gets her hair done. It is a gorgeous facility- I got to present to the book club there while they were having an exercise class in their very large auditorium. There were at least fifty people in that class working on making their quality of life better. My mother knows that many seniors spend most of the day at the center involved in everything from fitness to lunch. They even have a pool. But it turns out that her friends who are no longer mentally clear have never wanted to participate in a place where they feel old.

Now they can’t remember what they did 15 minutes ago.

Being active both mentally and physically is the key to a healthy life. At the moment I am struggling with knee and leg issues that make me want to retire to my bed almost every hour. But I get up each morning and stretch and work up until the pains that gathered through the night slowly slip away. It also means that during the day I move. I walk, I stretch, I touch my toes and I exercise my mind. Just writing isn’t enough. Puzzles and doing math homework with my granddaughter help. Why? I am no expert but I know that if you don’t use it you loose it.

At the ripe old age of -wait for it- 61 I have acquaintances who have long ago given up exercising. Notice I didn’t call them friends. My friends do everything they can to keep moving and keep body and mind together. But you’ve seen the people everyday making use of those roll-about wheelchairs. Something hurts and they seek a cure. But cures aren’t always available for the little pains that grow. So these people give up. They let the pain, the change the progression of degeneration of mind or body continue without wondering what can be done to stop it naturally or why it is happening. The main excuse? “I am getting old.”

So? It is not always the old that give up.

There is a 38 year old man who lives near us now confined to bed. He was active until he started having leg pains. He didn’t go to the doctor at first deciding that staying in bed and letting his wife wait on him hand and foot would make him better. One day he couldn’t move at all and, with his wife at work, he had to get an ambulance to come and get him him out of bed. In the hospital they discovered so many things wrong with him he couldn’t believe it. As soon as they could they tried to get him on his feet. He cried like a baby and refused because of the pain. His whole body atrophied making it impossible for him to function at all without aid. Having three small children at home his wife had no time for such nonsense and told him to get it together. This time it was even more painful. One day he had been playing basketball and a week later he could not walk without pain. He had given up at 38.

My mother does have a few friends who can function as well as she does- and one of them just lost a foot to diabetes. She didn’t let that stop her. All kinds of therapy is in front and behind her now and she keeps moving. She reads books and magazines and although she doesn’t like scrabble, she plays words games and puzzles. She is 84.

Are there lessons in all of this for us junior seniors? Or for our children and grandchildren? These people don’t spend hours on end in front of computers. They don’t always depend on calculators to add for them. They may need help to cross the street but they like to do it on their own two feet. At the present our children and grandchildren are so sedentary they may be confined to roll abouts before they are 30. Will video games keep their minds sharp? Not unless they have to do more than shoot things. Perhaps if they went outside they would live longer and healthier lives.

I am not sure what will happen to any of us as the years progress. At a point the body does give up, the mind does stop working. But that doesn’t have to be before one’s time. I know people with Lupus who walk to raise money. They may have to rest for several days but they don’t give up. They will move again- sooner than later. They will try.

Why can’t the rest of us do that? Just try to improve our lives?

Or maybe you just don’t want to live long and prosper.

Follow Me:

eFestival of Words Nominees Talk About Their “Dream Teams”

Julie Ann Dawson — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:48:22 +0000

Nothing helps us tap into the minds of writers like asking them ridiculous questions and forcing them to try to be witty, don’t you think?

As part of the festivities for the 2012 eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards, we’ve spent some time with a few of the nominees (the poor souls unable to escape me). We posed the following scenario to them:

In 1816, Lord Byron invited Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori to his summer retreat the Villa Diodati. From their competition to see who could write the best horror story, both Frankenstein and The Vampyre were born. And the literary world changed forever. Almost two hundred years later, you have been invited to the famed Villa Diodati to participate in a weeklong writer’s retreat. You may invite three other authors to join you. Who do you invite?

Debora Geary

I write books about witches who cuddle and eat ice cream. I’d be terrified. I’d take David Dalglish, SM Reine, and Krista Ball–three authors I personally know who have swords and are willing to use them.

MeiLin Miranda

Living or dead? I’ll assume living for three and throw in a dead guy just in case.

It’s cliche but: Neil Gaiman. Once I got over my awkwardness, I would love to talk with him at length. And it would take being trapped in a villa so I’d have to get over my awkwardness instead of just running away.

Lois McMaster Bujold. She’s just fecking amazing. I could use a good gabble on maintaining a long-running series.

Ian McDonald. I read his “The Dervish House” not long ago and it knocked me out.

And the dead guy:

Patrick O’Brian. He wouldn’t talk to me probably. He was a very private man, and I am an American goofball with Vampire Red hair. I bet Gaiman could draw him out, Gaiman’s good with dead guys and they’re both Brits. I would love to talk to O’Brian about writing. I often dissect his prose as tenderly as Stephen Maturin would a specimen, if not as skillfully; O’Brian is quite possibly my favorite author.

Christine DeMaio-Rice

Is someone getting killed in the parlor with a candlestick? Because it better not be me.

David Foster Wallace. Because I love him and he’s so smart and if you watch his interview with Charlie Rose you youtube, you, well *I* want to just listen to him talk all day.

Okay and since I can’t choose him for all three, I’ll say Oscar Wilde because he’s such a cutup, and James Patterson, because he can teach me about marketing and I’d hate to be the only person of simple intelligence in the room.

Elizabeth McCoy

Barbara Hambly, Lois McMaster Bujold, M.C.A. Hogarth… And John M. Ford. Posthumously, yes, but I hung out on a BBS where he hung out, and I still miss his witty sigs.

If it must be someone alive, Sarah Rees Brennan, whose books I don’t have yet, but I follow her blog and she’d probably love the Villa and write hysterically entertaining stuff about it later.

M.C.A. Hogarth

Living ones? Dead ones? Oh, hmm. Mark Twain. Tolkien. Then I would have to vacillate between Ayn Rand and James Clavell. Or Victor Hugo. Can I invite some poets too? Wait, can I just have a big party? I need a guest list….

Cat Calen

Suzanne Collins, Stephanie Meyers, Stephen King

Who would really come:
Paula Altenburg, Nikki Duncan, Lilly Cain

S. A. Bolich

Carol Berg, C. J. Cherryh, Connie Willis

Whatever we come up with, I’m sure it will be dark, funny, and set in space.

David McAfee

Only Three? I’d like to invite several dozen. But if I have to pick only three, I would invite Jeremy Robinson (the first writer who believed in me), Daniel Arenson, (One of the most talented writers I know), and David H. Burton (who IS the most talented writer I know.) I would have said Amanda Hocking and David Dalglish, who are both good friends of mine, but odds are good that they would both be invited long before me.

Gareth-Michael Skarka

Assuming we’re limited to living authors only: Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and China Miéville.

Nicola Palmer

Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, C S Lewis

Justin R. Macumber

Stephen King, Joss Whedon, and Kevin Smith.

The eFestival of Words is scheduled for the weekend of August 17th-19th, 2012. Register for free to attend before June 1st, post an intro in the Digital Inn, and be entered to win a free festival t-shirt.

Two Photos = 46 Years

Bob Grant - Editor — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:40:36 +0000

My wife was cleaning out some drawers and came across a photo, of both of us, taken in 1967 when we were both 20 years old. We weren’t even engaged at the time and I was trying, extremely hard, just to get her to like me. Her mother took the photo but I don’t think she had a color camera – so the photo is in black and white. I won her mother over, much easier than my future wife, in fact if not for her mother I doubt we would have become engaged and then married. Now that we will have been married 45 years in June – I am wondering if my wife blames her mother for the life she has lead with me? However, she stuck with me – thankfully – and I hope she does until the end. She does have a burden to bare – last year I wished her a happy 45th anniversary; however, it was only our 44th as she informed me in exasperation.

I have learned not to “assume” anything so I am not going to take the leap and place a current photo of her here. However, my photo is current – and when I look at it – I truly can’t believe 46 years have passed between the two photos! I basically feel the same – or think I do – as I did back then; however, some things don’t seem to work quite as well as I remember them functioning. We now have a daughter who is almost twice the age that we were in that photo – plus, a beautiful granddaughter who will be 3 years old in July. I have no idea what I was thinking – or hoping – my future would be when this black and white photo was taken? I think I was just hoping to graduate from college – it actually took me 5 years to make it through and my wife had to wait for me so we could graduate together. I remember most everything that happened from that time until now – some of what happened was good and some was certainly not so good but I suppose everyone can say the same. I am proud of some of my accomplishments and not so proud of other things I have done – again, I suppose everyone can say the same. What I see – in these two photos – is a life that has passed longer than the life that remains. My Father-in-law is still very much functioning at the age of 97 – will I make it that far, and with all my faculties, is something I hope will happen but not certain that it will. If I last another 20-30 years, and take a third photo at that time, what will the past (now the future) hold for me? Of course, I have no idea – but with everything considered – if the new future, is somewhat akin to my current past, then I really will have no reason to complain.

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:27:22 +0000

April 20, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

Re Mr. Wolfe’s OpEd on the paintings of Thomas Kinkade. [20 April]: Faith that’s formed and bolstered by fantasy — kitsch fantasy at that — is what sort of faith? Is our world actually “sin-scarred” and in need of idealized super-kitsch to be redeemed? What would poor Kinkade have been able to see, for instance in Jerusalem’s Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre? A little stone box of a church 25’ x 25 say over the Tomb. 15 feet away a balcony and stairs leading up, say 12’, to crucifix set in a hole covered by a huge silver plate donated by Czar Nicholas in the late 19^th century. And on a good day files of Orthodox Catholics marching up to that mere hummock, supposed to have been the site of martyrdom. All faithful, genuflecting and rapt with prayer — without the help of a painted, sunset scene of a mountain topped by a huge cross in fat colors. That at least is real, if also the material realization of an ancient tale, for pilgrims, not nostalgia-sodden, empty vessels of our age of science. Never mind rationalizing a best-selling popular painter.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

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Say Good Night Gracie by Ralph Pape, April 10, 1979 review

dizozza — Sat, 05 May 2012 21:47:36 +0000

From The Queens College Phoenix Newspaper, Tuesday, April 10, 1979.

There is a comedy written by Ralph Pape and directed by Austin Pendleton being presented on 236 W. 78th Street. It is called “Say Goodnight Gracie,” and it is supposed to depict the hopes and fears of a generation raised entirely on television. At least it succeeds in being funny.
Jerry has just returned home after another bad audition. He tears his resume picture and disgustedly seats himself on a couch in his sparsely furnished East Village apartment. He is surprised by his friend Steve who appears from behind the couch wearing an ape mask that recalls Ernie Kovak and Nyrobe Trio. Steve has great news.
Jerry starts to exercise violently and says that he will not be going with steve to their high school reunion.
It is not just a disappointing audition. Jerry needs to re-evaluate his entire existence to find out where it is leading him.
Steve will hear none of such talk. He tells Jerry that their troubles are over. Norman Lear will want to produce Steve’s situation comedy pilot and jerry will star in it.
Steve is a salesman at a bookstore. He is also a writer who has never sold a word of his own. Jerry is not comforted by his friend’s great news.

Ginny, the woman Jerry is living with, enters the apartment and cheerfully greets her roommate. Her cheerfulness is quickly dispelled when jerry tells her of his dreadful audition and his plans for the evening. he suggest that Ginny go to the high School reunion with Steve.
Bobby, Steve and Jerry’s old pal, arrives with his girlfriend, Catherine, and his car. he firmly expects to drive everyone ot the reunion where they will all have agreat time. however, jerry’s decision to remain home paralyses everyone in the apartment. They sit around exchanging hopeless dreams and getting stoned.

This gives you an idea of what the play is like. The performers are very enjoyable and they work well together. Willard Morgan, as Jerry, does a good job of becoming increasingly exasperated over the course of the play, though his part does not seem to be much of a challenge. Mark Blum is great as Steve when he is joking around but less convincing when he must beomce sentimiental. this may be the fault of theplaywright. Molly Regan is extremely effective as the excitable secretary Jerry isliving with. As a budndel of supressed self expression she sis the most intriguing and poignant character of the play. Bobby, the eternally stoned pop musiciain who has been trapped touring the New jersey Coast for most of his life, is well played by Danton Stone. Carolyn Groves plays Bobby’s serene and mellow girlfriend, Catherine. As an aging stewardess who chooses her occupation so that she may have sex with men of all races and cultures, Carolyn is faced with the chore of portraying he least convincing character of theplay. Her facial expression s help make the character a little more plausible.

I found Say Goodnight Gracie to be a very funny play but when I laughed it was an hysterical and hopeless laughter at how ludicrous the world was made out to be. I related to these people; I felt like I knew them all and that I was just hanging out with them. We were laughing and getting stoned and depressed together. However, the play does not have the persistence of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” which also studies the piepe dreams and fears of a group of people, so instead of feeling purges at the end of “Say Good Night Gracie” I felt somewhat hollow.

today, May 5th, 2012 I need to confirm the purging effects of “The Iceman Cometh”

Mother

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:41:17 +0000

Thin hands reaching to do tasks for me.

Washing dishes so tirelessly.

Preparing my future as I prepare each day.

Smiling through a maze of housedresses.

Osama Bin Laden Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Don Frankel — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:44:01 +0000

I mean one minute you are on top of the world. Your name is on everyone’s lips. Your picture is in every newspaper, magazine and is flashed across every TV screen by every station throughout the world. Any words that ever fell from your lips are replayed over and over again even if they are inane. The President makes you the subject of a speech before a joint session of Congress. The world awaits your next move, your next utterance and then…..

Well you’re hold up in cheap Motel 6 type place and they can’t even leave the lights on for you. You don’t even have cable. You’re stuck watching old videos, old DVDs and old porn. You can’t even use your cell phone. You eat take out. You can’t even get clean sheets.

What do you do? Well you take pen to paper and so it went.

Memo
To: Wives 1, 2, 3 and 4.
From: UBL
Subject: The Rules

1. From now on wives cannot all complain at the same time or even on the same day.
2. Wives cannot complain during TV time.
3. Wives cannot complain during meals.
4. All mothers-in-law will be confined to the first floor. They are not allowed in the upper floors and may never I repeat never, come into my bedroom again.
There will be no exceptions to these rules.

Dear Al Awaki,
You cannot, repeat, cannot, keep killing Muslims. You are supposed to kill Americans and Jews. What part of the Fatwas did you not understand? Anybody can kill Muslims. This is supposed to be a jihad. We are the jihadis. They are the infidels! We are supposed to kill the infidels not ourselves. Jesus! What is with you people?
UBL.
P.S. the Jesus reference is just a figure of speech.

Memo
To: Staff
From: UBL
Subject: Al-Queeda
It seems after much though on this subject and consternation I regret to inform you that the new franchises in the outer regions are just out of control. They have ruined the brand. They have made Al-Queeda a dirty word. We have to get back to the basics. We need to rebrand. We need a new name. Some suggestions have been The Jihadis, The International Socialist Anti-Zionist Party, The Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, The Sharks or The Jets. Those last two were recommended by my son. I have no favorite as yet and I am open to other suggestions.

Dear Son,
Where did it all go wrong? I tried. I showed the way. I tried to reason with them. But they wouldn’t listen. They fought me at every turn. Now well… baloney sandwiches for lunch, no TV, no phone, no pool, no pets, God we can’t even find a decent laundry in the area. We can’t run the washing machine as it keeps knocking out the electric and frying up the DVRs. I guess maybe you might think of a different career. I would say broadcasting but then they went and fired Keith Oberman. What will become of him? No my son maybe you should try Real Estate. The guy who sold us this place did very well for himself. Then again what about Civil Service? It doesn’t pay much but you have security and health insurance. Ahh my son why? Why? A man like me a place like this… Why?
UBL

To Dad

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:20:21 +0000

Thin grey hair on a wrinkled brow.

His eyes are my eyes.

His skin is my skin.

Wide .. thick hands.

Our heritage is the same.

In his eyes I see my past

In my eyes he sees his future.

When Will Enough Be Enough

Robert R. Owens — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:32:25 +0000

When taxes become destructive they’ve surpassed the consent of the governed bending to the will of tyranny. When regulations strangle competition instead of securing it from evil combinations they’ve become counterproductive and defeat the very purpose for which they were proposed. When foreign entanglements bleed the nation but do not secure the peace or defeat the enemy they’ve become interventionist vehicles for vested interests. When spending becomes a hemorrhaging of assists leading to national bankruptcy those who continue to pile debt upon debt seek not the good of the nation but instead its destruction. When leaders selected to unite instead do all they can to divide they no longer advance the interest of the whole and are instead partisan leaders in a factional fight.

A social contract is one made between a people and their government. It is an agreement whereby the people surrender certain aspects of their independence for the guarantee of corporate security and the enjoyment of a general welfare. In the case of most countries this is an unwritten and unconscious arrangement built upon tradition and precedent as in the case of England. However in the United States we have an actual contract, the Constitution. This was ratified by the original states and the subsequent states were formed under it and admitted as full partners to it.

All contracts may be legitimately changed over time as long as there are mechanisms either within the document or established by the document to do so. Within our Constitution there is an amendment process and it has been amended 27 times so far. Whether we agree with those amendments or not they have been legally ratified and accepted becoming part of the document. However, over the years our government structure has been changed and our manner of life transformed more by the informal changes than by the formal. Nowhere in the Constitution is the central government given the power to wage unending undeclared war. Nowhere is the central government given the right to ignore the requirement to protect the states from invasion. Nowhere is there found any basis for executive orders, signing statements or bureaucratic regulations to have the force of law without legislative action by Congress.

Well-connected rabble rousers now say equality will not be achieved until everything is equal in everybody’s house. Leveling the playing field has finally thrown off its cloak of deceit and exposed itself as, “From each according to their ability to each according to their need.” The professional civil rights entrepreneurs who’ve extorted vast amounts of personal wealth with threats of boycotts and demonstrations have been unmasked as the true purveyors of prejudice seeking to keep race and gender differences alive for their own benefit. Union bosses build political empires using the legally forced dues of members with more money spent on political activity than on member service. The union bosses ride in limousine comfort from board meetings to political rallies while their members lose jobs. The pensions of the bosses are golden parachutes while the pensions of the members are underfunded.

The Land of the Free is held captive, locked in a two party system where both parties are merely two heads on the same bird of prey. Both parties are dedicated to more spending and bigger government. Both parties exploit gerrymandering of districts and overwhelming corporate donations to ensure a hierarchy of the perpetually re-elected using a system of seniority to enhance their power. Legal barriers exist at every turn to stop any new parties from gaining the access that might deflect the central government from its ever increasing growth towards totalitarianism.

When will enough be enough? When will citizens rise in their righteous anger and demand not a New Deal, not a Great Society, a New Frontier or a Fundamentally Transformed America but instead their original deal. The one we wrested from the hands of the tyrant King George. The one we’ve fought to establish and defend from Yorktown to Kandahar and the right of a people to be free to live as they desire, to work for their own benefit and choose their own destiny. Free from the smothering governmental control which has been the lot of most people in most places since the beginning of time. When will the yoke of tyranny become too heavy to be borne? What will be the spark that lights the torches and brings the incensed villagers to the gate of the castle demanding, “Bring the monster out!” so that a stake can be driven through the heart of tyranny and freedom can return to the land?

When that day comes what will we the people do? Will we try to resurrect the government of old that ultimately brought us full circle or will we be bold enough to forge a new the social contract and design better ways to ensure that the beast of tyranny doesn’t once again break the chains of restraint.

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GRIMM AND BARE IT

mistermuse — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:40:13 +0000

My recent post, HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, was a tribute to the famed author of children’s stories and the 1952 film bearing his name as its title. Several days ago, I noticed that a 1962 movie about equally renowned children’s story tellers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, titled THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, was scheduled to be shown on TCM last evening.

It’s a movie I hadn’t seen before, so I made certain to watch it, in preparation for which I did a bit of research to learn more about the Brothers Grimm. It turns out that, in contrast to the original stories of Andersen, the Grimms did not actually compose their famous fairy tales, but were painstaking compilers and preservers of old German folk tales gathered from those who still remembered them. Some of the tales were so gruesome that they had to be toned down to make them suitable for small children. Others, such as “The Cobbler and the Elves,” are pure magic and must have been so from the start. It is one of several tales charmingly integrated into the storyline of the film.

Of the two films, if one were to compare, the Grimm film is, by all accounts, the more true to life, the Andersen film more taken to liberties and less critically acclaimed. The latter film, however, has one great advantage: a treasure trove of memorable songs. But Grimm has its own singular advantage, visually speaking: the cast includes Barbara Eden, the lucious lass who would go on to iconic fame as the star of that fairy tale of a TV series, “I Dream of Jeannie.”

“I Dream of Jeannie” was one of my favorite sitcoms of the early decades of television, along with “Get Smart” (coincidentally, both ran from 1965 to 1970 and produced an almost identical number of episodes). To me, the strangest thing about “Jeannie” was that censors of that period wouldn’t allow her navel to be visible, yet her costume was otherwise probably more revealing than any on TV. Funny, but at the time, I didn’t even notice that her navel was off limits.

Health Club Memories

Minnette Coleman — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:13:34 +0000

Shortly after 9/11 I abandoned my health club membership because it was just to costly. It was one of those things I felt I could do without. Besides at home there was an exercise bike, several weights, a treadmill on the lower level and a contraption on the top floor that put you into cross country skis. I can’t think of the name of it but I had been using all of these for years on days when I couldn’t go to the gym and join the trendy to work out. Why not go back to the basics of things one could do at home?

And though I still follow that practice, though I can’t use the treadmill because of my knee, I remember the first year I joined a health club in Atlanta and some of the things that happened there.It was a gift from my husband to be after watching me sit on a stationary bike that I got for $19.95 in the basement of my parents’ home and peddle my way to a healthy weight loss. A health club- it wasn’t called a spa then- seemed like such a far reach for someone really bad at sports but I had an idea it might be enjoyable.

Things were so different back then. At these clubs men and women never worked out together. Women went on one day, men the next. In this chain of clubs if you became addicted to working out you could travel all over Atlanta to the different clubs and sweat it out every day.

Women also dressed differently. No baggy sweats or yoga pants. In the gym we wore leotards and tights as if going to dance class. But we had to wear sneakers. No woman wanted a man to see her in leotards and tights unless she had a perfect body and trust me most of the bodies at the gym were far from perfect. Including mine.

You started out on the exercise bike for six minutes. Then you followed a circuit which had a variety of machines including one that looked like a fan belt that you wrapped around your waist. You don’t find these in health clubs anymore- thank goodness. They really didn’t do a thing for you.

They offered a number of exercise classes though they were not called aerobics. They were quite simple by today’s standards and designed for the delicate little woman. Mostly I remember classes for flattening your stomach- women didn’t have abs back then. And there were other classes for hips and thighs. Buttocks and love handles were not mentioned.

The changing area had several showers as well as several little rooms for women to change discreetly. Nudity was permitted but frowned upon by those whose bodies left a lot to be desired. There was a sauna and you were required to wear a swim suit. Steam rooms were only for good old boys clubs attended by men only. Several of the clubs had swimming pools and aquatic classes. It seems like the dark ages of exercise but this was pre Jane Fonda and the thigh master. Women didn’t work out as hard as they do now.

There was a very small woman who worked out for several hours everyday at one club I attended. I guess she was what you could call her addicted. But she had several health problems and one day while doing the lat pull down with what the attendant said was too much weight the club got a phone call. Her husband wanted to speak to her so she told them to say she wasn’t there. Fifteen minutes later he showed up in his Mercedes and lam-blasted the managers for letting his wife workout. She was what we now know as a a bulimic and she was also on several medications. They banned her from that club but weeks later I saw her at another, hiding behind dark glasses and looking totally emaciated. They banned her for that one as well and revoked her membership.

On one occasion I saw a woman working with a trainer and doing some exercises that I had never before. She was standing near a wall and actually climbing it with her arms. I asked one of the floor attendants what she was doing and I was told the woman had had a radical mastectomy and the club I was visiting that day was one of the few places in Atlanta in the 70′s that offered any kind of therapy to help women recovering from breast cancer heal. Cancer was still not talked about in public much so I was glad to see this.

But not every woman in the club relished the thought of having to look at a woman who was scarred by a disease that they could easily succumb to. Screening back then was what it is today. One of the best things they found to help women regain the use of their arms after so much tissue and muscle had been removed was swimming. So when the woman in question stepped from her dressing alcove in a one piece bathing suit revealing her singular breast so asked the woman standing next to her to aid her in hooking it in the back.

She flatly refused to help as if the cancer that had been cut from the other woman’s body was contagious. I was about to step in when an older woman said “Don’t bother I got it for you.”

The woman with cancer smiled and said thank you leaving to go swim towards her recovery. The woman who had refused to help started making all sorts of excuses but no one spoke to her. In fact her friend asked her to be quiet. After that day I never saw the two of them together at the club.

Of all the memories I hold of this time going to the Atlanta health club chain at least three days a week (gas was cheap then so I could do the town) my favorite one of of the two ladies who joined for the soul purpose of losing 150 pounds each- a little less than half their body weight. It was their first day and quite a memorable one for me.

They appeared in leotards, pantyhose (for there were no tights they could find in their size) and bright colored shirts that flared and covered their hefty midriffs. Each new person worked with an attendant until they got the hang of the place and the one assigned to them was a light weight. She was small in stature, tiny of waist and not mentally prepared for people who have trying all their lives to do something they will never do.

She tried to get them to stretch, but they complained that it hurt. When she asked where one said everywhere. Instead of reminding them that this was something to adjust to she gave them another exercise and another. There was always a problem with each one. Finally she took them to the exercise bikes and put them on level one for six minutes. Of course they complained about that. When they got off sweating only a little they told her they thought this was enough for the first day and maybe they should shower and go to the sauna. She agreed just to get rid of them but made them promise to come back on the next women’s day and try again.

When I completed my circuit and my cool down I went to the shower and then to the sauna. The new ladies weren’t in their yet, they were asking other women about the club and how they liked it. I had been in the sauna about two minute when they arrived dressed in plastic bags (to help sweat off pounds) carrying a thermos and, believe it or not, Ritz crackers and cheese whiz. None of us could believe they had brought a picnic into the sauna. One by one the women left disgusted. I had hoped the thermos contained water but I learned when they poured it that it contained sweet tea. You know the very sweet, sweet tea that southerners drink that could kick start diabetes in anyone. As I was leaving the club that day the manager and attendants were trying to figure out how to handle these two souls who had decided they had worked out so hard they needed to replenish unlost calories.

It was a different time for working out. I am glad it changed. I am glad women lost the dainty feel and started taking real care of themselves. But it had to start somewhere. And I remember when ladies didn’t sweat. We perspired or got a bit moist.

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POOR LITTLE BUGGERS

mistermuse — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:40:34 +0000

NOBODY HERE BUT WEE MOTHS

To be, or not to be, moths?
We moths be not free not to be moths.
Be moths he or she moths, we moths
Wish wee moths were behemoths.

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND COAL BURNING CARS

hujsaked — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:36:17 +0000

Systems engineering draws together different disciplines within the engineering field and is concerned with organizing and integrating a project, taking into consideration virtually everything that makes it function as planned throughout its life cycle, including attention to risk reduction, impacts on the surrounding territory, logistics, performance, etc. To illustrate: a manufacturer of, say a ready-to-operate rocket (or a car) delivers his finished product at the loading dock, The buyer of the rocket (user) must then deal with transportation to the launch area, payload integration, design and maintenance of a launch platform, provision and loading of rocket propellants, flight control software, range safety and a host of other operations to make the rocket lift off and deliver a payload to a promised location. That would be the user’s system. Lots of independent functions that have to be organized and integrated in the most efficient way possible. But this operator may be servicing an even larger system, like the International Space Station, a product too of system engineering. In recent years, largely due to the growing complexity of products, systems engineering has also been widely applied in the design of products, like a rocket, a car. or an e-book. It focuses on the nature of customer needs and desires, as well as functional aspects early in the process. It establishes a management plan for achieving the objective of a finished product. It proceeds with modelling and actual design followed by prototype construction, development and proofing tests, production, quality control, packaging and delivery.

We’re going to hear a lot more about systems engineering. The applied discipline is only seventy years old. We’re not yet at the point where world governments have the insight to recognize the global significance of systems engineering to keep Earth livable long into the future…..in one word: sustainable. Sustainability is the capacity to endure. Essential elements are long term maintenance of responsibility, with environmental and social dimensions, stewardship and the responsible management of resources. The tendency seems always to capitalize on opportunities the easy way, disregarding the consequences.

In the case above where the product is a car, there was little awareness in the industry and in political circles trumpeting the wonders of the electric car, that a little more systems engineering would have been beneficial. When the power for operating a car originates in a power plant hundreds of miles away, the electric car in fact turns out to be quite different from the energy saving wonder that automotive producers would have one believe. Converts to electric cars believe they are doing a good thing. They have a car that goes and they are making their contribution to the environment. Advertising tells them that they are right on both counts, but only the first is true.

Plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars that have been developed and marketed might have been banned had they been subjected to end-to-end analysis of energy consumption. Such an evaluation would have demonstrated that they do not improve the energy picture, and in fact are detrimental, as well as unhelpful for environmental improvement. Electric cars, unless their batteries are recharged by renewable energy sources……photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biofuels….. are little more than coal burners. They are less efficient than the worst of gasoline powered cars.

System engineering could have delayed construction of nuclear power plants until safe storage of nuclear waste was concurrently provided; there would not be mountains of tires and automobile junkyards scattered around the country; disposable dry cells would be outlawed, as there is no trustworthy system for disposal of their toxic contents, and providing power in this manner is a colossal waste of resources. (How much more elegant… a generator on an exercise bike where you can recharge all your household batteries).

About three-quarters of the electrical energy in the United States comes from coal fired and nuclear plants (50% coal and 20% nuclear). Both operate at around 30% thermal efficiency although a few newer high-tech coal burning plants are demonstrating higher efficiencies. Transmission losses from the generator through the grid and terminating at the car’s battery approximate 10%. An electric car is at best 85% efficient. At a little over 20% overall energy efficiency, the electric car hardly compares with gasoline powered cars, which are closer to 30% efficient. Of course, a thorough analysis would show that there are regional variations. Some parts of the nation depend solely on coal generated power. Some are a mix of power generated from several sources that can show better thermal efficiency. Power transmission losses are however unaffected.

Were fifty million plug-in’s and hybrids to hit the roads, there would be a huge upswing in both coal and natural gas consumption. Renewable sources would rise too, but would likely remain at 30% of the total power generated. It’s hard to compete economically with coal. Total energy consumption would far higher than if automobiles were to continue to operate on gasoline.

An electric car design that would reduce total energy consumption would consist of a drive motor on each wheel, a moderate complement of batteries, and an internal combustion engine that operates at constant speed at its point of highest efficiency and functions only to charge the batteries. Such an engine could be much more efficient than conventional gasoline burning engines, for which a 40% operating efficiency is still an elusive target. It thus would result in overall reduction in energy consumption. Such cars could boast a thousand miles between tankings. For that matter, there are European automotive Diesel engines that already fit the requirement. These engines could evolve easily into burners of various types of biofuels.

Yesterday a mature juniper tree, its roots humping up my sidewalk, was removed from my front yard. As I watched the workman’s truck depart for the city dump, loaded with greenery, I imagined thousands of such trucks arriving at city dumps every day across the nation. Potential biofuel, destined to become buried or chopped into garden mulch. Is it that much of a stretch to imagine driving your electric motor powered car to a station at the entrance to the city dump and tanking up with biofuel?

Systems engineering can keep the planet livable, for all species. There is no other option. Should a time arrive when it is necessary to pray for miracles, it will be too late.

THE THREE WISE MEN GET PROMOTED

mistermuse — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:55:21 +0000

Leave it to a woman to spoil the best laid plans of mice and men. I’d just about put the finishing touches on this post when Minnette came along with her “Letter to the Mice Who Use My Desk After Hours,” which (after I was done laughing) required me , for obvious reasons, to re-write these opening lines. Nice going, Minnette — really!

Anyway, as I was saying BEFORE I was so rodently interrupted, have you noticed that with the exception of Richard Cahill, Don Frankel and a certain mistermuse, SWI writers post little humor (some might say there is little humor, even including the aforementioned Holy Trinity)….but if you think I’m lamenting the paucity of comedy, think lament again. Seriously.

Far from this being a call to righteous arms, funny bones or devilish minds, please remain cool, calm and dejected. Lord knows the issues of our times are nothing to laugh about, and even if they were otherwise, far be it from me to encourage funny competition. By all means, those who get all bent out of shape over political, ideological or any other convictions but mine, please continue exercising your agendas so vigorously that eventually they lose weight. It’s a loss worth the wait.

In conclusion, blah, blah, blah….

Tree

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:04:51 +0000

I admire your rough ..un-baptized bark. No grief here..

No pain .. no need for absolution or regret. No hell or

purgatory or even heaven with promises of crowns of

gold. You are straight and bent … already in the earth.

My circus lights demean you a bit and yet you wear

them well … you know who you are.

Letter to The Mice Who Use My Desk After Hours

Minnette Coleman — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:39:56 +0000

Dear Small Rodents:

I know your size by the tiny tips of excrement you leave every few days on my desk. It seems you have been having a party here and making yourself at home. I have a simple request- could you find some place else to hang out? I really don’t like sharing my space with you.You must understand I have nothing against you except I don’t like rodents. Most humans don’t but my problem is special. You see when I was 18 months old my mother came home and found several of you guys running around the apartment. She held me as she screamed and went to the street to find some men to remove the sofa where your relatives had nested. Perhaps as an infant I found the little guys cute, I don’t know or remember except they were running everywhere. And mama was screaming.

With memories like this you may ask why did I move to New York, Rodent central for the United States? Well, I was never really bothered by the fact that I had to share the planet with you until you started coming into my house on a regular basis. To make a long story short there is now a cat in residence.

Can’t do that in an office, although I have given it some thought. The boss is allergic and several people here don’t like them. So you are lucky.

The big puzzle is why my desk and my desk alone? Everyone in this office eats at their desk. Everyone in this office keeps stuff in their desk they shouldn’t but me. I know about you little guys that can squeeze into the tiniest of place.The guy across the hall found a half eaten almond in his file cabinet two weeks ago- and he doesn’t have any almonds in his office!!!! That’s when you guys started showing up. This was right after they started drilling in the basement here and I guess you needed a new party space. Let me provide you with a bit of information: it ain’t my desk and it is not my entire office.

We have people here who scream at the sign of a roach. So be aware that we are on the hunt for your little gang. The exterminator has put down traps and food and I have a few concoctions from home that I plan to bring in if you keep dancing on my desk and taking craps on my keyboard. I notice that you don’t like it when I wipe the space down with Clorox wipes. Maybe that is the way to go for the moment.

Do me one favor as you vacate these premises- and please do vacate. Don’t let me see you. I was in therapy for several years getting over my fear of you and now am considering drugs if I see any of you alive again. I ain’t that crazy about seeing you dead but that is the only way I can stomach you.

So move along. Take your nightly sojourn’s elsewhere please. And STAY OFF OF MY DESK!!!

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My middle grade loon book to be published!

Katherine L. Holmes — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:16:33 +0000

On April 16, I signed a contract with Silver Knight Publishing for my middle grade book The Wide Awake Loons.
That book felt “meant to be” from the first. The conception of books is a subject that mystifies. The Wide Awake Loonsis the only book that I planned in my head before writing it down. My other novels usually began as a short piece or story that developed as I wrote.

An unusual shot by Steve CushmanLoons became a symbol of writing for me. Does a writer travel from here to there or does a writer dive into their material, submerging ideas and experiences before surfacing like a loon? I never wrote a first draft so quickly again. And strangely, I hadn’t really learned how to plan a book in my head. It may have been the hours at work one summer in Minneapolis and the muggy weather that had me planning a book I put off writing.
Or the reason was better stated by these authors:
“In writing, there is first a creating stage–a time you look for ideas, you explore, you cast around for what you want to say. Like the first phase of building, this creating stage is full of possibilities.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” - Willa Cather

“To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.” - Aldous Huxley

“Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.” – Ann Beattie (from the Paris Review, 2011)

Whether I begin a novel in my head or on paper, I usually write as if I’m on a journey with a map rather than an outline. Events are starred places, however I’m not sure about how I will get there and what is on the way. That sultry summer when I planned my loon book, I spent some days in Northern Minnesota where I’d vacationed since childhood and where I always heard loons. Loons are enigmatic, sitting on the water like ducks, but if you see one and approach it, the loon will tease, diving under and making you guess where it will emerge on the lake.

The Common Loon by Judith W. McIntyre

I read up on loons and while reading nonfiction, the book took form. At that time in Minneapolis, I lived one block from a branch YMCA. While writing my loon book, I swam once or twice a day and sat in a sauna with an after-work group. Since, I’ve known that if I feel writer’s block, I should swim.

As a child, I was so enamored with Dr. Dolittle that after reading a chapter, I rewrote it in my head with me as Dr. Dolittle’s daughter, talking to animals and traveling with him. It was probably my first experience, writing in my head. Animals communicate; you just have to introduce a kitten to a cat and soon, the cat will tell it where it can sleep and when it can eat, and that it should groom itself before approaching. Birds intrigue, succeeding at navigation and establishing nest sites that are recovered from one year to the next. Having read many animal and anthropomorphic novels, I’ve long been fascinated with animal communication and also with telepathy. The Wide Awake Loonsportrays two worlds, that of humans as we know it and that of animals communicating between themselves.
I’ve already set up my fan page for the book, anticipating the cover, and plan to chronicle the publishing of this middle grade loon book. Here is the Facebook page address: https://www.facebook.com/WideAwakeLoons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://katherinelholmes.blogspot.com/

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“College” vs. “Uni”: Why does the U.S. calls college “College”

itsDVguy — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:05:07 +0000

“College”: This is how Americans commonly refer to places of higher-education. It didn’t matter if you were in fact actually attending a University. As an American, one would still call it college. Even for students involved with distance learning, they would call their classes online college courses, not online university courses. However, if you were to ask most anybody else in the world what they called their equivalent higher-education (or postsecondary) institution, they will most likely refer to it as “University” or perhaps the more affectionately-tinged “Uni”. So what’s the deal with the difference colloquialisms for the same types of institutions? We must first start by defining what the difference is between the terms in general.

A college is defined as an institution that bestows a bachelor degree or a four year degree in one specific area, whereas a university is usually a collection of colleges that can also offer a graduate degree status and study. In the United States, most undergraduate schools are called colleges, in keeping with the historic foundational aim to supply an education for a specific purpose. Harvard College (now University) was founded in 1636 for the express intent “to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches,” as one of its early brochures read. American undergraduate schools were formed to license and credential specific populations, like West Tennessee State Normal School, now the University of Memphis, created as a teachers college.

Universities, however, is a group or collection of colleges that offers at least one graduate degree, such as Oxford University of England. In smaller geographical areas where land is at a premium, like Europe or Great Britain, it is economically sound to group all institutions of higher learning in one location to keep costs low and make commuting easier. In the United States, though, the geographic size is much larger and widespread, easily the third or fourth largest country in the world. Great Britain is the size of the state of Oregon, one of the medium sized states of the accumulated 50 states. It would create a hardship for all institutions of higher learning within the United States of America to be located in one section of the country.

Other differences in common terms between the United States and Great Britain are the use of the word “mile” and “meter.” Ironically, the standard mile used in the United States was determined by an edict of Queen Elizabeth I, in 1593, who stated a statute mile was 5,280 feet. In Europe and England, that measurement has changed periodically from mile to meter, and the distance has changed according to which country and which ruler has been in favor.
America is the only industrialized country in the world which doesn’t have the metric system as its predominant system of measurement, although many of the other countries differ in opinion to the usage of the word meter and kilometer. In England the road signs are listed in metres but in Ireland they are written in kilometers.

The Fahrenheit unit of measure was invented in 1724 and is used in the United States, the Cayman Islands, Belize, and Canada in regards to weather forecasting. Celsius, formerly known as centigrade, is the unit of measurement used by the European nations commonly after 1742, and is used for scientific measurements, even in the United States. The Fahrenheit and Celsius measurements are not used interchangeably, but the terms Celsius and centigrade are the same scale.

eFestival of Words Awards Announcement

Julie Ann Dawson — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:58:04 +0000

The eFestival of Words Virtual Book Fair announces the nominees for the first Best of the Independent eBook Awards. The complete list of nominees can be found at www.efestivalofwords.com.

The eFestival of Words, scheduled for August 17-19, 2012, is the first virtual book fair designed specifically to highlight the best of the independent digital publishing community. The awards program is one of many events being ran in conjunction with the fair.

According to Event Coordinator Julie Ann Dawson, “The goal of the eFestival of Words Awards is to highlight those independent authors and publishers that have worked to raise the bar in terms of the literary quality and production value and of digital books. Many people still think of ebooks as nothing more than scanned pages of print books. We hope that both the fair and the awards will help readers discover the amazing wealth of original content being produced in digital formats.”

Dawson, who has operated Bards and Sages Publishing since 2002, says that all nominees were nominated by their peers in the industry. Only authors, publishers, and others involved in the production of digital books were invited to submit ballots. Nominations were accepted in over two dozen categories, including genre categories (horror, romance, thrillers, etc), format-specific (short story, novella, novel) and a few just-for-fun categories (such as The “I’ve Been Shyamalaned” Award for Best Twist Ending).

Each category will be narrowed down further to five to seven finalists, which will be announced July 1, 2012. Final voting will be opened to all registered attendees of the eFestival of Words, with winners announced on the last day of the fair. Registration is free and entitles the attendees to not only vote in the final awards, but also participate in panel discussion, author chats, workshops, and more.

For more information on the fair and the awards, visit www.efestivalofwords.com.

Know the limits of China envy

Muhammad Cohen — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:54:25 +0000

Even amid forecasts of slowing growth, there’s a lot to like about China’s economy. China Versus the West: The Global Power Shift of the 21st Century catalogues the advantages China enjoys developmentally and demographically over Western rivals. In fact, my book review suggests author Ivan Tselichtchev understates China’s economic clout in some areas. Most helpfully, the book helps Westerners understand the rivalry from China’s point of view.

But like many fans of the red team, Tselichtchev gets carried away with China envy. His book contends that China’s political system and even its moral and ethical standards equip it for superior performance. Yes, the West has had a rough decade or few, highlighted by the Wall Street-led crash of 2008. But along comes the Bo Xilai case combining politics, corruption, murder and money laundering at the very highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.

Most telling, as told in the Asia Times article above and attached links, the sprawling scandal reveals how fragile the Chinese political structure has become. The emphasis on stability has rendered the system so brittle that a single crack can shatter the entire system. The scandal reminds China’s best and brightest of the dangerous beast they are riding, one perfectly capable of turning on them at any time. In comparison, the West doesn’t not look so bad.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his biography, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com.

HELLO TO MAY

mistermuse — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:01:05 +0000

Though the name for the month of May is generally thought to derive from Maia, the Roman goddess of spring and growth, some scholars hold that May is short for majores, the Latin word for older men….but enough about me. Let us turn now to the good stuff:

Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
–John Milton, Song on a May Morning

What is so sweet and dear
As a prosperous morn in May,
The confident prime of the day
And the dauntless youth of the year,
When nothing that asks for bliss,
Asking aright, is denied,
And half the world a bridegroom is,
And half the world a bride.
–William Watson, Ode in May

The fair maid who, the first of May,
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.
–Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme

Ah! My heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May:
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
Where the woodbine alternating
Scent the dewy way;
Ah! My heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May.
–Denis Florence McCarthy

Finally, no heralding of May would be complete (don’t ask me why) without mentioning the mistermuse island of the month….

So let us set forth this fifth month’s first day
For Scotland’s fair island called the Isle of May,
Which is found in the north
Of the Firth of Forth
Off the coast of Fife,
Where they live the life
Of the life they live,
And I hope this poem, they’ll forgive.

Predicament of an Imperialistic Soldier

Ashfaq Saraf — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:21:36 +0000

Since injected into this sonorous song,

my nights haven’t grown weary of longing,

and thence from the ruins of this hapless wrong,

I’ve constructed a casino for the ‘demon-crazy’ king.

Me—for my sake,

and for that of a promised sum—

played glum

and valorously fake

in view, in honor; one word: the scum.

What ought have been my laborious days,

when gauged in middle-class piqued ways?

What ought have been my silent nights,

when lodged in the holes of penniless bites?

So far the ruin, so near the spoon,

I volunteered into the abyss of a promised soon.

Wooing my yet-so-reluctant gods,

Seeking a treasure-hand from promulgator lords,

I embarked on a sapphire voyage,

and like the whiteness of an untouched page

(rudimentary in its essence)

I witnessed our gongs enrobing the menace!

How so dowdy the bate we groped for,

A scar, a merciless scar

is what our hands sculpted,

Devouring the ill in a hushed up bid,

scowling at the displeasure (scowling)

we marched—opening up the corroded lid—

(Vietnam watered corrosion in precision)

we marched like hungry wolves,

incessant boots, fermented hoots

like the offshoots of an illegitimate relationship!

Pause!

‘Yield’, we said, ‘Yield’

as we fed the reminisces of our clash,

into their civilization!

two, three or one,

the attempt to open that stink yielding lid

was unkempt—the attempt.

We hailed the barter,

nailing deep into our eyes a picturesque slaughter;

‘Frisk and whisk them away to a dungeon hole,

Not a death toll, least not a countable toll!’

Staring grudgingly at their amputated feet,

we met our consciences in one bloodied street:

Red in morning, crimson at noon,

though sparingly coloured in a foreign tone.

Agape mouthed, we tied our hands

in threads borrowing colour from Euphrates,

the waters of whose abundance lurk

dry, as on the contours of its shrieking bridges,

and tied these threads to the dauntless machine

scattering bullets, the gift of what we have been,

unseen, scathingly unseen.

Sigh!

Call me a warrior; my fellow mates,

call me before time erases the bribed slates!

Call me the beginning of a democratic spa,

call me before YOU see what WE saw!

Call me a soldier, call me a soldier,

call me before a son rapes another’s mother!

Call me the duty; call me the need,

call me the recompense of a poisonous weed,

Ah! Call me whatever, in however tales,

Call me before they recompose the measuring scales.

Insane O ye the eyes Insane,

World knows and not knows the bargain,

what grows on the pain would feed on it,

whose heels are cut shall on toes sit

that bit by bit, drop over drop

blood draws near to a violent exhaustion,

and there is no more, no less of justice undone,

Insane O ye the eyes insane!

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Mother’s Day Book Giveaway

liafairchild — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:05:56 +0000

Want to win a bunch of Kindle books sent directly to your kindle? And maybe even a few paperbacks? Quickie Book Reviews is having a huge Mother’s Day Book Giveaway. Entry is super easy. Check it our here on the website: http://www.quickiebookreviews.com/2012/04/motherload.html

More than two dozen titles will be given away!

Here’s some info about QBR:

Quickie Book Reviews is a website and Facebook Fan Page that is driven by reader participation. The main focus is book reviews for readers by readers. All of the QBR reviews are first posted to the fan page wall by readers. Some of those are posted in photo albums on the fanpage and slowly they are being transferred to the genre tabs on the website.

Also on the fan page, we post freebies and play games like “Guess the Book.”

NEW FEATURES: Readers are now providing Top 10 lists and guest posts like “This Book Changed My Life” for the website. From time to time an author feature will be posted.

If you are interested in participating in the site by doing a guest post, go to the “notes” section of the fanpage. http://www.facebook.com/Quickie.Book.Reviews/notes

Spiritual Pay Back

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:10:54 +0000

Thank you … I appreciate all the divine gifts that you

offer me on a daily basis … all the Universal water flow.

I would like to accept all future blessings on summer days

while swimming with angels .. without all the usual

meaculpas and retributions.

Serenely devoid of excruciating pay backs.

I am already holy.

I have been so for years.

A letter.

NatPGray — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:28:31 +0000

Certainly the truest test of manhood isn’t physical strength. It’s not the man’s capacity for love, and it’s not his capacity for hate. It doesn’t relate to his talents, nor his inabilities. Manhood doesn’t rest on the shoulders surrounding, but rather the human within. It has no correlation to what the man has, but rather, what the man can live without. Strip away the house, the car, the money, the clothes. All worldly possessions burned. All these stolen, can the man still survive? Deeper, we take away his loved ones. His mother, his father, his siblings. Onto his friends. The best, the good, the acquaintances. Finally we land upon his other half. The one other person, who against all odds, has ended up with him. Whether they’ve been together a week, or a lifetime. Once this has been taken away too, can the man survive? Is he still a “man”? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. To lose all of manhood over one mistake, that is not a risk That I, nor any man, is willing to take. To suffer through a life without you, I can not bear the thought. I’ll live, and so will you. But even with this knowledge of a life post-you, I don’t want to. I don’t want to move on, I don’t want to get over you. To continue the journey of life without a traveling companion such as yourself is a near impossibility. Whether we are “soul mates”, whether such a thing exists, I don’t know. I don’t care. If living a life without you is something I can’t do, and that inability makes me less of a man, so be it. Maybe I am not a “man”. I’m a boy. Perhaps there exists to future of romance between us. Fine. But I know there exists a future of communication, of understanding. This isn’t a letter of love, but a letter of humanity. Need is a strong word, but a connection to you, on any level, is a primal, instinctual need. So here I am, a boy, on (metaphorically) one knee, asking you, a girl, can we still talk?

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FAREWELL TO APRIL

mistermuse — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:35:27 +0000

I’ve been doing a little spring clipping, so to speak, and here is some of what made the cut:

It’s spring fever…. You don’t know quite what it is you want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so. --Mark Twain

Spring comes unusually late or unusually early every year — as usual. --Evan Esar

In the spring a young man’s fancy, but a young woman’s fancier. --Richard Armour

This I saw on an April day:
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud

And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a new moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.
–James Hearst

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. –Edna St. Vincent Millay

You start in April and cross to the time of May
One has you as it leaves, one as it comes
Since the edges of these months are yours and defer
To you, either of them suits your praises.
The circus continues and the Theatre’s lauded palm,
Let this song, too, join the Circus spectacle.
–Ovid

April showers bring May mowers (just pretend there’s a rhyme there - unless you don’t care – if there’s a rhyme there).
–mistermuse

Growing up goes way too fast!

Bob Grant - Editor — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:05:48 +0000

For tortured hours she did spend,

upon this seat for miles on end.

Not one complaint or even three,

a friend, of sorts, the DVD.

Was always up for any thing,

on the trip we took this spring.

Be it Kin that we would meet,

or sitting on a tractor seat.

She seemed at ease though far from home,

in new settings we did roam,

It helped she brought some friends with whom,

she talked to in our motel room.

She is a ham – there is no doubt,

with many smiles and little pout.

It is a joy to have her near,

a privilege that we sure hold dear.

She’s coming close to turning three,

enjoying time with her’s the key.

Her Mom was little in the past,

her growing up went way too fast!

“Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” A Metaphor, Says Ted Nugent

Richard Cahill — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:42:37 +0000

Celebrity gun fetishist Ted Nugent recently had to explain to the Secret Service that his statement at the National Rifle Association convention that he was going to “chop off heads” come the November elections and that President Obama and other Democrats deserved to be “shot like coyotes,” was a metaphor for working hard to defeat Democrats in the next election

Nugent said afterward that the Secret Service was satisfied that after the interview that “chopping off heads” was a literary device. “Educated people know what a metaphor is,” said the guitar and pistol-packing sixty-something.

This reporter caught up with Nugent right after the Secret Service finished their interview.

Metaphors, huh? Ted, a review of your song lyrics doesn’t show much of an attachment to metaphor. For example, your hit “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” seems to be an outright, unblushing salute to vagina.

“Absolutely not. That song is chock-full of subtle metaphors.”

“Poontang” isn’t a metaphor. It’s just slang for female genitals.

“Well, that’s true. I wrote the song when I had just discovered vagina, and was very enthusiastic about it. I wanted everybody else to know about it, too. I was slightly embarrassed when I found out everybody already did. Even my mom knew about it.”

Other lyrics in the song seem to lack metaphoric impact, Ted. For example, the line “She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat” strikes me as pretty straightforward.

“Absolutely not. That’s a complex metaphor for when a female Republican politician solicits my willing vote.”

And when you sing “I’ve got it right in my hands, this is for you, baby?”

“Obvious to anyone I’m talking about my ballot for politicians that support gun rights. I know my metaphors, buster. Didn’t I write “Dog Eat Dog? Bet you didn’t realize that was about a certain dog-eating Indonesian named Obama.”

Bet nobody did, Ted, since it came out in 1977, when Obama was sixteen. You don’t really know what a metaphor is, do you?

“I do now. Right after an educated person explained it to me. My lawyer. Right before the Secret Service showed up.”

IN The River

Michael Crumling — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:36:54 +0000

IN The River

After you cram your way along for a few weeks, there comes a need to escape the pressure and jump INTO the Rabbit Hole. There must be a booby- hatch whose secret doorway offers a long chute which lands you in the middle of a day away in order to maintain your sanity. Today was one such day. I slept my Friday evening and all night to energize for the adventure. This morning with dispatch we departed the humble domicile to parts unknown at least until now!

I find myself lying back with my arms propping my head like a pillow, semi-floating in the Colorado River only the circle of my face not encased in refreshing cool water. The liquid is deep and you can feel the alternating of warmer and cooler currents deviated throughout the comforting float. The sun is hitting my face, and while it is hot, I am not discomfited. It is now when mind can wander to any place you wish. Alas, you are surrounded by peace and harmony, no ringing to hurry your step, no discord to interrupt your experience in living. You are at your own time and pace; you are at one with life.

As my head comes out of the water, and I look around, I am greeted with a vision of huge bluffs. They are a motley bunch of shaped rocks which seem to make up an almost intentional block wall. But this is not so. It was trillions of gallons of water over millions of years which created the structure without. A little ancient hydraulic-fracking if you will. Mother Nature gives her secrets from time to time, if you just look for signs of them.

I am intrigued by the global system of recycling. It is interesting when you follow the rock outcroppings in the bluffs, to see proof of geo-subduction. The cramming of one plate over another is a curious long-term process which makes our current version of Earth a reality, and conveys to us the eventual disfigurement she will experience as she becomes a different Earth at some future metamorphosis. But here and in this moment, she is perfect and all is as it should be.

The swim ended only to be followed by a lengthy sit under the three wise trees in a spot designed for catnapping. The shade with dapples of sunlight made a pleasant retreat for the balance of the hot afternoon. The generous breezes made up for any moisture to be found on ones forehead.

After the siesta was over, celebration ensued with a couple of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales. It is a sharp hoppy brew with a distinct flavor and creamy texture. Just what the relaxation needed. Then the light of day started to dim a bit, I spent twenty minutes watching the predators flying in the sky near the bluffs, looking for their supper as I thought about our supper to come. We settled for Creole Pork Chop on the camp ring, with baked potatoes and roasted sweet corn-on-the cob. It was delicious and tasty camp fare. It was also low fat, a rarity for me. And the coffee which followed was well-accompanied by the setting sun and impending darkness.

In the darkness, contentment is found in the strong breezes. I sit with the light of the computer screen, and a Coleman lantern to write to. I hear the hiss of the gas arriving at the mantle, and feel the heat coming off of the light source. This heat is evidence of the sunburn I will have on my face tomorrow when I awake, and return to the land of work. I will have to make up for Saturdays scheduled labors and finish Sundays as well. My phone rang a few times today, and I admit that I tried to retrieve the messages and return the calls; I just didn’t have enough phone-signal. God or chance bestowed upon me the impossibility of being responsible for anything today, except for living… just living!

To See More:

INTO The Rabbit Hole

Chapter 1 – IN The Weeds: http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2012/04/into-the-rabbit-hole/

Thanks for stopping by!

Two fine novels from the pen of Kate Rigby

georgepolley — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:41:16 +0000

Far Cry From The Turquoise Room

What happens when a beloved eldest daughter drowns in a boating accident and her sister feels at fault and left out by both parents because they are so torn apart by grief? In this case, she runs away and lives with people who live in the fringes of society, about as far away from her parents world of wealth and privilege as one can imagine. Far Cry From The Turquoise Room is a story that could easily have been romanticized, but isn’t. It is gritty and real and, as novelist and reviewer Susannah Burke says, “is a novel not to be missed.”

A definite 5 stars.

Savage to Savvy

Savage to Savvy is the story of an eleven year old girl who was bred to be a feral child who was raised by dogs. It is also the story about a place called the Institute of Developmental and Behavioral Psychology and its Director, an Albanian immigrant named Elena, a dodgy character named Aleksander, a man named Rob Ivory (aka “the Singing Man”), and Heidi, the young psychologist who solves the riddle of who Nikki is, how she became a feral child, and exposes the Professor and “research” as frauds.

Ultimately, Nikki escapes her minders and returns to where she is the most comfortable, living in the wild with the animals she loves and understands. From a savage, she has become savvy to the ways of humans. As a young teenage girl caught between two worlds, Nikki is also very vulnerable to harm, as she lacks the knowledge she needs to live successfully in a world that is controlled by humans. She isn’t savvy enough to make it in the world, and I fear for her future.

I give this one 5 stars because of its theme and the skill with which Kate Rigby tells the story.

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David …. A Sonnet

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:17:00 +0000

I was inside a very bad fetus

I was so bad inside my Mother’s womb

Is that why agonies did befall us

or am I blessed but in a veiled way

My task is great

not seen with every eye

The secret is in faith and constant trust

Although at times it’s hard not to ask why

Commitment and acceptence is a must

and so my Jesus life does make me feel

A martyr dripping blood

A soul past dust

Faith reveals grace,

a heart of love

To God I will be true

as he made me

Whatever his plan it’s he that let’s me be.

Of Sticks And Stones

Don Frankel — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:34:40 +0000

Well we got it on good authority from Vice President Joe Biden no less that the President has a big stick.

Remember now that the Vice President as we’ve been told a million times in our lives is only a heartbeat away from the Presidency so he should know.
Hey I’m not implying anything here. Not that there is anything wrong with it. It’s just men are men and a little known secret is, well guys in locker rooms, well we check each other out. Afterward you can gain respect from your peers or you can become an object of ridicule. Behind you’re back of course.

But it is reassuring to know that the current occupant of the White House is how shall we put this Presidential?

But boys will be boys which brings us to the Secret Service. I don’t know about you but I’m shocked. I mean shocked that men a long way from home in a country where how shall I put this? Companionship is inexpensive would actually partake of this. Okay, okay so I’m not so shocked. But the American people have a right to be. I mean these guys are supposed to be plotting the President’s course of travel in a foreign country and providing for his security not… well you know.

By the way too bad President Bubba didn’t know about this. No it’s, better he didn’t. He got into enough trouble by his own self. But it is ironic. I mean when President Bubba got himself in all that trouble there was actually testimony about his stick. It’s somewhere in all those pages tucked somewhere between Monica and Paula. It’s even described as bending in a certain direction, just so Paula could give proof that he’d done what he did and she had seen it.

I mean when you stop to think about it the whole country spent about two years talking about it but the whole time no one ever mentioned and the one thing I think the American people needed to know was… was it Presidential? At least now we know.

I don’t know about you but I’ll sleep better tonight. Like ole TR said. “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” We don’t have to worry about him either. But it does make me think about other Commanders in Chief like JFK.

There’s a few libraries worth of books about all his philandering but there is never anything on his how to I put this, substance? I mean actress Angie Dickerson said that her soiree with JFK was the most exciting five minutes of her life so it doesn’t sound like he was much on foreplay but it doesn’t answer the big question. Or the not so big question that we want to know about all our Presidents, did he have gravitas?

By the way before I get a lot of comments here about how wrong it is for Secret Service to behave like that you are right. I mean I can already hear Kaye if she reads this.

But this indignation is brought to us by politicians? Come on now! Let’s see John Edwards, Mark Sandford, Eliot Spitzer, Barney Frank, that guy tapping his toe in the men’s room who’s name I can’t remember, Arnuld and I’m not even going to start on the Kennedy’s there’s not enough space on the SWI website.

Someone else be shocked please! Hey how’s about athletes? Yeah I’m kidding. Now wait Priests? No I got it Football coaches? Who then you ask? Okay I give up too.

Maybe they should just be fired and people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I mean it does sound like they didn’t waste the taxpayer’s dime. I mean 47 dollars sounds a lot more reasonable than say 832 thousand dollars so some fat guy could sit in a hot tub in Vegas. Well at least the fat guy was with his wife.

Boycott Monsanto

mhbrownstein — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:05:30 +0000

During the American War–the war we call the Viet Nam War here in the states–many of us boycotted Dow Chemical and it was forced to change many of the ways it did business. It’s much harder to impact on major corporations today–like Dow–because their products are integrated into so much that we use. Since I began Project Agent Orange with a few others from the USA and Viet Nam, we have been trying to find how we can effectively boycott Monsanto because they, like the present day Dow, have products that make it almost impossible to boycott. Finally, we have a list.

Can everyone who reads this please help us to publicize this list? If people begin not to purchase these products–though I know the one for GMOs is still one that will be very hard to do–Monsanto will have to change the way it does everything. After all, it worries only about it’s bottom line and little to anything else.

Here is the link to the products Monsanto has its hands in. Everyone reading this has our permission to copy, share and use the link in any way you like.

Click here:Boycott Monsanto.

We also have a poetry link on the same boycott issue:

Click herre: http://projectagentorange.com/wordpress/

Also of interest: Click here: An American Visits Viet Nam

Thank you in advance for your time and interest.

Michael H. Brownstein
Click here: projectagentorange.com

How Old are You? at What Age will You Die?

michele39 — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 11:40:15 +0000

Recently I had another birthday. I wonder if, at my real age, do I need to celebrate this event again and again. Will I look younger to folks who are older than me? Will I look out of date and feeble to the younger generations? I cannot say for certain what each person’s actual perception will be.

Right now I have had two husbands ( one divorce ) and a total of four children. Why do these wonderful people whom we have raised to be responsible adults feel the need to constantly honor my date of birth? I just don’t know. Will they be as gracious and responsible when I finally leave this mortal life? Or will they fight over a dozen photo albums and my fine jewelry? I already gave each daughter one piece of the latter. Will they be kind and share the rest? I could put labels on each velvety box and name who gets what. I tried that twice already and I could not decide. kept changing them and finally said that won’t work either.

I had a crazy thought yesterday as I dressed up for dinner. I had asked to be cremated in my will. I thought if there was to be a squabble, I would just wear all the jewels he had bought me or hide them under my funeral gown. Then it all would be ashes; they would become a part of me forever, locked up in an airtight wooden box. What a thought that was and it even seemed sensible to me. A sign that I am really getting into my dotage.

On Saturday, my husband insisted he would take me out for my birthday but…I had to name the place. It was like a game to me. I thought somewhere very nice but not too fancy. Somewhere the food is very good but the servers are kind. No jeans and sweaters for us; we dressed up a little formally. He found it! We savored our meals in a room away from the rest of the noisier diners. Our server, Monica, was a sweetheart. I had asked for an escort through the servers near the kitchen waiting for their orders. A gentleman waiter gave me his arm and said, “I will be your body guard.” Then I began to sing the theme song from the movie “The Bodyguard,” adding only for this evening since I was with my husband. All this foolishness just to get to the “dame” room.

I winced when I left the rest room and tried to hide but…she recognised me and told this big lug of a waiter to offer me his arm and back I went, smiling the whole time. It is difficult to be embarrassed when a person is smiling so I did until my face began to hurt. Time for that second glass of wine, I thought. We were thinking of leaving and were waiting for the check when Monica presented me with a tall cup of mocha mousse with whipped cream and a strawberry to hold one white lit candle up. I said, ” Oh, what a sweet surprise, thank you !” and I held her hand and my husband’s hand and made a wish for all three of us.

Maybe I will be 39 again next year; it is just a case of mind over matter, any way and who would mind if it did matter? No one in my family, bless their hearts for all the cards they sent to me. Each one now a precious memory I will save until I die. Then the kids can deal with it! Ha! Ha! Oh,no! I laughed again–another year added on until I forget how to count.

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The Alchemist

SANDY ROCHELLE SCHACHTER — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:33:10 +0000

You are an Alchemist. You have resurrected both Plato

and Aristotle and joined them in an agreement of their

theories of darkness and light emanating from both the

eternal soul and the changing physical world.

You have completed their conflicting researsch and

validated their differences.

You are Plato and Aristotle.

You have provided the proof that light emanates from

both the internal and the external.

You have confirmed phenomena in the diverse theories

of their divine discourses.

You give meaning and validation to Newton.

You complete these experiments in a way that rises

above the intellectual and gives proof to the hypothesis

of the mind.

You are a modern day emissary that rises above the

theoretical.

You are light personfied … and you were given to me

to light the way and guide me in unobservered and

unreflected areas of my life … as a Guru of sorts … a kind

of Monarch.

If I Wanted to Make America Prosperous Again

Robert R. Owens — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:38:17 +0000

First, I would ask myself how did our ancestors build America from an agricultural colony on the edge of civilization into the number one manufacturing and commercial nation the world had ever known.

Why reinvent the wheel if round ones still roll?

The early American colonies of the British were founded based upon the economic ideas of Mercantilism. Governmental regulation of industries, trade, and commerce characterized Mercantilism as every aspect of the economy was utilized for national policy. This was especially true with foreign trade, which was determined more by national aims rather than individual or local interests.

The definition of wealth began to change in the sixteenth century. During the Middle Ages, wealth was defined by the amount of productive land a nation possessed. As transportation, especially by sea, improved so did the ability to conduct foreign trade bringing with it an increase in the amount of cash generated by that trade. The definition of wealth came to be the amount of cash a nation possessed. Therefore every nation sought to have a favorable balance of trade. They also sought to develop monopolistic type environments wherein they provided their own raw materials thus avoiding imports which meant money flowing out and fostering the export of finished goods raising the level of money flowing in. Defining wealth as the accumulation of cash, the nations of Europe desired to conduct foreign trade on a larger scale, and they began looking for foreign sources of gold, silver, and raw materials.
This brings us to the British effort to develop North America as a source of wealth.

The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland were the first successful British colonies in what was to become the United States of America. Though the initial colonists came looking for gold they soon learned that prosperity came not from a shovel but instead from a plow. It was tobacco that primed the pump and lifted the colonies from a burden to a benefit for the mother country. After years of mounting expenses for the British and years of starvation for the colonists the cultivation of tobacco brought prosperity. Virginia’s production of tobacco grew from 200,000 pounds in 1624 to 3,000,000 pounds in 1638 overtaking the West Indies as the number one supplier of tobacco for all of Europe thus boosting Britain’s balance of trade.

The cultivation of tobacco fostered a plantation system based upon indentured and slave labor. A gentrified class of great planters sought to replicate the social structure of Britain with a small number of very rich ruling a large number of small land holders who prospered to a certain extent but never enough to challenge the status quo. The wretched poor of Britain who had come to the Chesapeake colonies to find a better life did find more opportunity and the ability to advance from the landless poor to the ranks of yeoman farmer. However, there was little opportunity to enter the ranks for the gentry which became a type of American nobility.

New England, because of the soil, the climate, and the fact that there was no major cash crop that grew well in the area, did not lend itself to large plantations. Most farmers were operating at a subsistence level. If they did generate a surplus it was in crops that were not easily transported across the ocean, and they were also crops that could be grown in England and were not needed as imports.

This climatic and environmental adversity did not condemn New England to being a poor relation to the Chesapeake nobility. Instead the New English diversified, innovated, and used individual enterprise to not only match but to surpass Chesapeake and every other colony in the British Empire. Those who settled New England were Puritans who sought to purify the Anglican religion of ceremony and return it to what they saw as the simplicity of early Christianity. They did not believe that good works brought salvation but they did believe that salvation brought good works. Therefore they sought to occupy their time with productive activity to glorify God through their labors. This was a manifestation of what the sociologist Max Weber later called , “The Protestant work ethic.” Whatever you choose to call it, it was this drive to succeed no matter what the adversity that led the New English to look beyond the soil, beyond the climate and to the opportunity.

First they exploited the fisheries of the Northeast. In 1641 the New English caught 600,000 pounds of fish much of which was exported to Britain. By 1645 they were catching more than 6,000,000 pounds per year employing more than a thousand men on 440 ships. They came to dominate the fish trade shipping not only to Britain and its empire but also to Spain, Portugal, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands.

By the end of the 1600s the merchants of the New English coast began to circle the globe trading the fish, surplus crops, and lumber of their area to all parts of the British Empire. They became such shrewd traders that soon American ships were carrying trade from one colony to another even when the cargo didn’t originate in New England. This secondary carrying trade generated a growing profit that in turn rebounded in a number of ways. The increased profits brought home financed increased industry and growth at home, and it also spawned a shipbuilding industry which exploited the vast resources of the northern forests.
Between 1674 and 1714 the New English built more than 1200 ships, totaling more than 75,000 tons. By 1700 there were fifteen shipyards in Boston which produced more ships than all the rest of the British colonies combined. Only London had more shipyards. This was a significant engine of economic growth. To build one 150 ton merchant ship required as many as 200 workers, mostly skilled craftsmen. The shipyards also supported the growth of numerous enterprises to supply their needs such as saw mills, smithies, barrel makers, sail makers, iron foundries, and rope makers. In addition, the farmers of New England benefited by feeding the craftsmen, supplying the ships, and providing the timber.

By 1700 Boston was the third city of the Empire behind only London and Bristol and the New English shippers were earning freight charges for carrying produce and material that was neither produced, shipped to, or shipped from their home colony. The enrichment of the area spread prosperity far beyond the sphere of shippers, sailors, and their sundry suppliers. According to Boston’s shipping register for 1697-1714 over 25% of the adult males in Boston owned shares in at least one ship.

All of these linkages produced an economy filled with diversification and development as opposed to the stratified monoculture of the Chesapeake colonies.
These trends continued as time went on leading to the industrial North eventually overwhelming the agricultural South. The expansion and growth of America was based upon a foundation of hard work and innovation born of adversity. Finding themselves in a hard place Americans found a way to prosper and grow like a young plant reaching for the sun. Freed from the rigid restraints of the home country and then guaranteed freedom by the constitution and the limited government it provided America surged to the front ranks of nations.

Today, America labors under self-imposed adversity. We are in the grip of an oppressive Progressive Movement that after 100 years of incremental advance is poised to transform America from what she has always been into what they want her to be. America has traditionally been a constitutionally limited Republic operating on democratic principles providing individual liberty and economic opportunity. The Progressives envision America as a centrally-planned highly regimented social democracy where the wealth is spread around from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs .

If I wanted to make America prosperous again I would take off the self-imposed shackles of a central government on steroids, stop imposing new regulations, and reduce taxes everywhere on everyone. Then I would stand back and watch our economy takes off like a rocket and we take our place beside our ancestors as free people with economic liberty and a will to succeed.

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Divorce Changed My Brain

SteveG — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:10:13 +0000

Looking back 23 years ago when I was divorced I can see a clear pattern of how I view things and see things for that matter. I now divide my life into two portions, before and after divorce. One of the most notable changes is how I see faces. Prior to my divorce going all the way back into my childhood I was very aware of faces. If I saw you at a supermarket and then 10 years later saw you again I would remember your face. Living very close to where I was born I will often run into people I haven’t seen since childhood 50 years ago. They are shocked when I recognize them. I prided myself in that I could remember almost word for word every conversation I ever held with anyone, or the exact circumstances that I may have seen a particular face.
Since my divorce the opposite is now true, I can sit and have a cup of coffee with you and if you show up a week later I won’t have any recollection of ever having met you before. I no longer have any clue of who I spoke to yesterday or what we talked about unless it was very important. I actually feel a lot more normal now without all the clutter. I know longer am concerned about what made you what you are or have any interest in where you came from. Sometimes I miss the old Steve but I have to admit I feel better today and am far better off at actually accomplishing things.
Another significant change I have noted is that since early childhood I had an obsession with certain types of statistics, primarily geographical outputs of natural resources and products from different countries, this part of my brain was literally erased! Looking back I suspect that I may have been mildly autistic and the divorce shocked me into a more normal way of thinking. No real point to this except I find it interesting.

Mother’s Day

Linda Fields — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:07:21 +0000

he looks so proud

strong, sinewy man hands

proffer a long white

box adorned with

a velvet bow

beneath neat folds

of crisp tissue paper

lie baby’s breath

and a dozen flawless

de-thorned and dew-tipped

long-stemmed golden roses

“I love you, Mom.”

“I have always loved yellow

flowers best,” I tell him

while arranging them

in a fine crystal vase with

ceremony befitting a pricey gift,

I think back to when

the baby’s breath was his

he looked so proud

a chubby, grubby toddler hand

proffered a fistful

of broken, battered

and mud-caked

dandelions that I arranged

in a recycled jelly glass with

ceremony befitting a priceless gift

“I love you, Mommy.”

“I will always love yellow

flowers best,” I told him.

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ARBOR DAY VITAE

mistermuse — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:32:10 +0000

Today, April 27 (as one of our SWI seers foretold several days ago), is Arbor Day — actually, it’s National Arbor Day, as many states celebrate Arbor Day on different dates. For example, the four states (California, Washington, Maine, Florida) at the corners of the 48 contiguous states observe the day on other dates, as do the two outliers, Alaska and Hawaii.

As it happens, my calendar denotes Earth Day on April 22, but not Arbor Day on April 27, so in my (and my calendar’s) ignorance, I used up my supply of tree poems (one) in my Earth Day post. Not to worry — no way mistermuse leaves you out on a limb on National Arbor Day, even if he has to steal someone else’s poem to save the day. Fortunately, that won’t be necessary, as the muse has managed to come up with some interesting(?) treevia instead.

You probably know what your own state tree is, but how many other state trees do you know? You never know when you may find yourself in another state wanting to impress the natives with your knowledge of the local area arborescense. Although mistermuse doesn’t have time to list every state tree, he thinks you will find the following sampling sufficient for most of your travel needs. If not, simply avoid traveling to unselected states — they’re probably not worth visiting anyway.

ALASKA — SITKA SPRUCE (named for Sarah Sitka, who could see Russia from her treehouse atop a previously nameless spruce)
COLORADO — BLUE SPRUCE (you’d be blue too, if a less civilized state had a more high-class name for their spruce)
FLORIDA — SABAL PALM (named for Sarah Sabal, who could see stars after a coconut fell on her head)
GEORGIA — LIVE OAK (at least, until it’s sentenced to death by a lumber company — then it’s called timber. TIMBERRR!!!)
HAWAII — KUKUI (unsure of pronounciation, but when you’re a tourist in Hawaii, who gives a Kukui?)
ILLINOIS — WHITE OAK (aka WHATEVER OAK, except when snow-covered)
LOUISIANA — BALD CYPRESS (not really bald, but it sounds better than Hairy Cypress)
MONTANA — PONDEROSA PINE (named after the steakhouses which preceded it)
OHIO — BUCKEYE (the greatest tree in the greatest state in the greatest nation in the greatest world in the universe….and mistermuse just happens to live there!)
SOUTH CAROLINA — CABBAGE PALMETTO (who knew cabbages grew on palmetto trees?)
TEXAS — PECAN (who knew pecans grew on pecan trees?)

“As the poet said, Only God can make a tree, probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.” –WOODY Allen

Kindle Direct Promotion Days :: The Science of Offering Your Book For Free

herocious — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:41:28 +0000

Hi,

I’m not only the author of Austin Nights, I’m also the co-founder of Tiny TOE Press, a publisher of handpressed books.

This is what I do when I’m not working:

and this:

Some of you may have already heard of this kitchen-table DIY operation.

But most of you probably don’t know anything about Tiny TOE Press or our three titles, which I’m about to rectify.

Since 2011 we’ve brought 3 beautiful babies into the world:

Miss Gone-overseas by Mitchell Hagerstrom

The Mosquito Song by M. L. Kennedy

Austin Nights by herocious (me)

Our titles are available both in handpressed and ebook versions.

We distribute our books through TheOpenEnd (http://theopenend.com/) and Amazon.

While the most lucrative part of our business is the handpressed books — popular for their authentic feel that cannot be matched by machines — the ebook has garnered the most readers.

I know some SWI writers aren’t a proponent of offering free electronic versions of their books, thinking that:

The only trouble with the free offerings to owners of the e-book readers, some of them will only download the freebies, but when you take your book off the free list, sales drop like a rock.

While I respect this sentiment, I can’t say I agree.

Last month each of our titles went free for ~2 days, and last month Tiny TOE Press saw a peak in paid Kindle sales corresponding with promotion periods.

Our 3rd title, Miss Gone-overseas, is currently being offered for free here http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Gone-overseas-Pillow-Book-ebook/dp/B006YJ5PEM, and it’s enjoying prime-time visibility:

As of 5:40PM today, she has 3,016 new Kindle readers, and counting.

I know this kind of marketing strategy seems wrongheaded.

Many of you probably think it decreases the value of a writer’s work.

It makes it more difficult for writers to make a living.

It ruthlessly pushes prices down.

But even if that’s what it’s doing, think about what Mitchell Hagerstrom is getting in return.

New readers: on the order of thousands every month.

Tiny TOE Press plans to take full advantage of the Kindle Direct promotion days.

Even if we only get 500 new readers each time, that’s 6,000 in a year.

And those numbers don’t go back to nil after the year’s over.

They accrue, like an encaustic painting, gradually layering toward a critical mass, sure to get there.

After all, aren’t writers after readers?

Don’t writers write to be read?

What’s the point in doggedly selling your book for 0.99?

Why not make it free every now and then?

AS IF THAT WEREN’T ENOUGH

I’m also experimenting with the PAY FOR A TWEET business model.

The idea behind this is simple.

Anyone can download the full pdf of any Tiny TOE Press title in exchange for a tweet (or Facebook post).

On days when multiple people download the free pdf and tweet about it, our homepage sees ~5 times the normal amount of unique eyeballs.

People from all over are coming and looking at our titles, watching our book trailers, learning about the process behind Tiny TOE Press.

And it’s our books that get them there.

Our books do all the work after our authors put all their work into them.

Seems to make sense to me, a logical chain of events, better than keeping your pages perpetually caged behind a price point.

But I’m writing this post because I want to get feedback.

I plan on documenting my adventures as an independent writer/publisher in great detail, for people to improve upon.

I know there’s still much to learn.

I know I’ve made mistakes and am still making them.

But, the way I see it, experimenting with these strategies — having the flexibility/mobility to test them out — is the one thing that gives Tiny TOE Press some kind of competitive edge in a world full of giant publishing houses.

That and our handpressed books, which really are quite beautiful.

6:20PM – 3,093.

Thanks for your time

TheOpenEnd and blog at MySwag. Like Don DeLillo, I believe each word triggers an electrical impulse inside our brains. When a perfect string of tiny explosions goes off, both readers and writers experience the deepest kind of pleasure. Austin Nights is my first novel.

Bus Story: And I Didn’t Take That Bus Because

Minnette Coleman — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:41:37 +0000

Monday morning I can barely handle going to work. Getting out of bed, doing the required exercises so that my body will move slightly better than Quasimodo with a limp, and getting dressed is more than enough drama for me. So some mornings I just wait longer at the bus stop. Some mornings, especially Monday mornings, I will not get on certain buses.I thought about going to a popular deli and getting some things for the office. I do that some mornings without hesitation. But it was Monday and that meant catching the M4 bus, pickling up the goods then taking the M104 to my office. That was not a big problem. I could go to the bank and do some personal errands once I reached my shopping destination. Than hop on that M104. So when the M4 rolled up I was thinking about getting on. Thinking mind you. It looked like rain and I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk that.

The decision was made before the doors opened. I decided not to board because of the characters on the bus. Characters on and getting on.

To start there was a man in the front seat wrapped in a white blanket. From outside it looked like hospital issue. The M4 does pass Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on its way downtown. What ward did he escape form, I wondered. He had on a cap and a shirt under the blanket. Maybe he was just cold. Maybe he had lost his coat and had decided that in New York someone would think this was a fashion statement. I was thinking that if I got on the bus and saw he was wearing those hospital slipper I would turn around and get off with no explanation.

But there was the man at the bus stop who did get on. Another character that I was not up for before 9:00a.m. While waiting he had taken a stance behind the bus shelter with a large stick with a fan of many colors attached to it and an empty fifth bottle of Hennesey on the sidewalk before him. He wore eye makeup that reminded me of a warrior and a bright red vest over his long white robe. His hair had been chalked, the latest fashion, with several pastel colors. And he wore rings on each of his fingers.

When the bus arrived he moaned loudly. Right before he stepped on he let out a shriek which startled the driver. The man in the blanket on the buss got up and moved. Maybe he was to close to the noise? But I let that bus leave without me. No way was I ready for what might happen if those two characters were to meet physically or mentally.

You take a chance when you ride the bus or subway in New York. Some days you can tune out the characters that come with the subway or bus ride. When my bus finally arrived it wasn’t all the congenial. There was a woman who talked on her cell phone for my entire trip. And loud. There was the man who kept changing seats. A seat at every stop. There was the woman who hissed everytime he did it but never said a word. And, of course just because it was Monday, there was the screaming spoiled Westside brat who was having a fit at the bus stop, on the bus and on exiting the bus because he wanted to play on the swings and not go home. He was using his outdoor voice the whole time, his mother not being a bit firm with her little darling at all. In fact when she started to hug him he pushed away kicking.

Still it was better than what might have erupted on the bus with the characters.

This morning I got on as an irate woman bellowed at the driver as she exited. Bellowed is the right word, trust me. She was angry I found out later because he had stopped short to avoid hitting a car when she was changing seats and she spilled her coffee on her clothes. This moment was followed by death threats and screaming at him until she left the bus. He told another passenger “She was all mouth. That was easy.”

Still I was glad she did not remain on the bus. Sometimes you just need a little peace and want everyone to keep their crazyness to themselves.

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CAN WE TALK?

mistermuse — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:51:09 +0000

ELSEWHERE

In order to have great art,
you must have great audiences.
–Walt Whitman

So where
is everybody?

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:56:23 +0000

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

Mr. Trowbridge’s citing of Justice Stewart, whose remarks are merest paltering, and Justice Rehnquist who dismisses the Enlightenment itself as “metaphor based on bad history,” misunderstands both JFK and with those judges all of civilized history, East and West, including China and Sumeria. [Letters, 14 April] Rulers always ruled from the authority of gods or god. The Israelites erred in demanding a king, and got manic/depressive Saul. Jesus suggested separation of Temple from State, and Vespasian later put paid to the priesthood of Israel. Nearly 1900 years later Garibaldi had to free the Pope’s political prisoners. And after our Constitution was approved, before the French Revolution, our Great Seal was readied for the dollar bill on which is declared a “New Order for the Ages, [NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM]. That is for an age in which Church and State were separate, and no ruler could have authority from a “Supreme Being.” “In God We Trust” is a 20^th Century reversion. As Islam demonstrates, clerics who are the ultimate guardians are dangerous persons.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

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GENEROSITY AT THE PUMP

hujsaked — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:28:13 +0000

GENEROSITY AT THE PUMP

Gasoline prices are excessively high, but do you know that the price you run up at the pump is not all that you pay for that tank of gasoline?

Oil companies are awash in cash. Some find ways to avoid paying any taxes at all, and as a group they manage, through the services of skilled lobbyists, to get the government to give them money, lots of money, described as subsidies.

Gasoline consumption in the United States is around 135 billion gallons a year.
Oil company subsidies average about ten billion dollars a year.

Let’s see…. it’s simple arithmetic.

Ten billion dollars is a trillion cents. Divide that by 135 billion gallons and you get .74 cents a gallon. In other words, each time you tank up ( a modest 14 gallons), you tip the oil companies just over a dollar.

Feel better now?

Letters to the World (Series) by Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:26:52 +0000

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Letters to the Editor

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

New York City

Dear Letters Editor:

Ms. Hendershott and Mr. White, celebrating the improvement in the rate of recruits for the Catholic priesthood [“Traditional Catholicism Is Winning,” 13 April], cite newfound attractions: the church’s philosophy, art, literature and theology, its armamentarium in the culture wars of our era. What is missed in their boosting is recognition of any screening criteria for those to be ordained, as is obvious from the many failures of the past century. Any slightest acquaintance with the literary historical record would suggest the perennial problem of the [celibate] male sacerdote from the first. Over 7 centuries ago, Dante placed many in INFERNO. Chaucer shortly later portrayed a slew of Catholic pilgrims, but commended only one, a poor parson from a village, who said:

If gold would rust, what shall iron do?

For if the priest be foul, in whom we trust,

No wonder that a layman thinks of lust?

And shame it is, if priest take thought for keep,

A shitty shepherd, looking after clean sheep.

A truly good example a priest should give

In his own chastity, how his flock should live.

In short, it is not what attracts to priestly service, but who is attracted.

Sincerely,

Jascha Kessler

Professor Emeritus of Modern English & American Literature, UCLA

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I ONLY WRITE THEM

mistermuse — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:19:55 +0000

THE HUMAN POETRY

Those who love you do not understand you, and
those who understand you do not love you.
–Annick Geille

On behalf of virtually
all of my poems
this poem
thanks you for loving it
or understanding it
(as the case may be)
but though it would love
it does not seem to understand
why you can’t do both.
Isn’t that just like a poem?

I DON’T WRITE POEMS

mistermuse — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:41:46 +0000

Ideas materialize mysteriously,
emerge from the chaos of language
and give birth to poems in the
flash of a moment we call creation.

Those we call poets are but jugglers
of words, re-arrangers, evolutionaries,
revealers of self to strangers
among whom must be found kindred
spirits in the mist shrouding the world
since the dawn of time.

The Worst Thing Ever- Through the Eyes of a Five Year Old

Minnette Coleman — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:14:43 +0000

Most people will tell you that children did not deliver or inspire for that matter scintillating conversation. They say things that are interesting and funny to us but often in their world the things they have shared are quite important. I had to remember this as I listened to my five year old granddaughter tell me the worst thing she had ever heard.It was to be a piece of gossip, just like adults share. And it was something so terrible that she had to crawl across the bed to whisper it to me. It was a fairly loud whisper but it didn’t matter for we were the only two in the room. But her method, her actions, her determination to share this bit of horror was on the level of my girlfriends when we are sharing coffee or wine and suddenly we erupt with “Oh I have something to tell you that you are not going to believe.” My ears perk up in case they go into the infamous gossip whisper. My head is wondering what could this possibly be and who this is about. And my heart is asking me to be calm until we hear that it is truly, truly terrible.

If it is I do something physical to mark that I understand this departure from good. Sometimes its a hand over my mouth feigning shock. Sometimes I exhale saying “No way” or “Get the f… out of here.” If it is terrible sad, a loss, a hurt of someone who didn’t deserve it, a critical change in someone’s life I cover my mouth, shake my head and say a solemn “My God, that is so awful I feel for them.”

And I do. The worst thing I ever heard has its own place in our lives. We prepare but are never really ready to hear it. If I think about what I have heard over the years I would say that the worst thing creeps into my life almost every day. That’s if I listen to the news media or watch television. I wonder how can people come up with creative means of torture- and why. I don’t understand hurting other people to the point of destroying them. I have a problem when people inflict pain on others.

And then sometimes I ham reminded of the statement “God gives us no more than we can stand”. So when I read that a woman born with Down’s syndrome was suffering from dementia while dying from Parkinson’s I had to say aloud “What did she do to deserve this? That is the worst thing I ever heard!”

But I am not five.

At five we have need of more than a few band-aides for hands, knees and hearts. To loose a parent so young would be awful. A grandparent just as sad. To see your dog get hit by a car. To watch your parents fight. To have the doctor tell you you have to get three shots instead of one. Those are probably on the list of horrors for the life of a five year old. But horror or not little things are earth shattering for them.

Like dropping your ice cream cone after one lick. Getting punished for looking at ‘adult’ magazines. Having your play date cancelled. Getting so sick you miss your best friends birthday party.

And then there is what my granddaughter shared with me.

She starts talking about school and one boy in her class. “He’s bad, grandma.” She says this while shaking her head like an old woman recounting the activities of her juvenile delinquent grandson. My granddaughter starts spouting that he is always bothering her and I know what that means, but I say nothing. I am posed to listen. He is always in trouble and I remind myself he is a five year old boy. He couldn’t be any worse then my nephews were at that age.

Suddenly her head pops up and she almost screams. “Grandma, I have something to tell. Something he told me. You can’t tell anyone. (Of course I have told everyone I know over 20). It is so awful. It’s the worst thing I ever heard.”

I am almost holding my breathe in anticipation of this worst thing as she crawls across the bed to me. The look on her face is a cross between happy (because she has found someone to share it with) and shock (because it is, after all, the worst thing she ever heard. I lean into her tiny face, her tiny hands cup my ear and she half shouts: “He said ‘You can smell under my armpit for free.’”

I hold my breath, i.e. holding back laughter, as she looks up at me with big woeful eyes and says. “Grandma, isn’t that terrible?”

There is no smile on her face as if she has just played a joke on me. She is quite serious. In her five year old world this is akin to finding out your best friend’s husband is cheating on her. I cannot laugh at her or what she says although I have had others almost wet their pants when I tell them. It is not just age difference it is priority difference. Who wants a boyfriend that is selling sniffs to his armpit? Who wants to get one for free?

Some have asked why I didn’t ask her what she told him. I couldn’t I was too busy trying not to laugh and hurt her feelings. This was serious business for her. For reply when I finally got control of myself was for her not to tell anyone else and yes that was the worst thing I ever heard.

I was a little girl again. Our over 50 year age difference ended the moment she whispered in my ear. There I was in pigtails, climbing up a tree faster than the neighbor boys and not getting one scratch until my mother calls to remind me that I am a young lady and that I have to come in for a bath. At that time in my life boys smelled so I didn’t think they bathed at all except for going to church. To smell a boy’s armpit? That would have been too gross!

So perhaps it is not the worst thing you have ever heard. You’re an adult and your world has so many options for the terrible that you can take a moment and step back in time to when you were five or even ten and thought the worst thing in the world was. . . .

Remember it.

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A valuable companion to take along on the adventure of life

georgepolley — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:57:02 +0000

Reading Quantum Meditations is an adventure and, like everyone knows, adventures take patience and time to bring their rewards each step of the way.

The best way to read this book is to sit down with it and take your time to savor each poem as you would a fine meal that is served in multiple courses, each one delivered when the one you’ve been enjoying has been savored and it is time to move on to the next. If you’re looking for a fast food kind of book, you’re better off looking elsewhere. But if it’s wisdom that you’re seeking, this book is a wonderful companion to spend some quality time with.

As the great mystics and poets have shown us so well, change sometimes appears to occur suddenly when all the pieces come together. In “Quantum Leap” (page 51), PD allen writes:

“Change in a complex

system occurs incrementally

bit by bit

below the surface

while the system as

a whole appears stable until

some critical threshold

is exceeded. And then

the entire system appears

to change in one instantaneous

bound.”

The key word and concept is “incrementally”, the way our universe was created in the cataclysmic explosion we call “The Big Bang”.

The first poem, in the section called “Opening Enigma”, is “The Flame”:

“I am the flame,

not the reflection

I am the flame,

undisturbed

by the fluttering

of the moths.

I am the flame.”

In his commentary on the Opening Enigma series (page 221), he writes: “Our journey begins with the unanswerable riddle of who we are. There are no words to answer this riddle, but if you look within you will find the answer. We are that which is forever outside of its definition. We are that which defines itself.”

So take your time with this great book. Breathe calmly and deeply, linger with each poem, taste each syllable and sound. There are three volumes of Quantum Meditations now available to take with us on our journey through life. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are (I am 78); what matters is that we learn to live our lives consciously and without fear.

“Have wings that feared ever

touched the sun?

I was born when all I once

feared — I could

love.”

– Rabia of Basra, c. 717-801

In “Our Song” (page 49), he writes:

“The world sings for me

All I need do

is listen.”

PD Allen’s Quantum Meditations is a valuable addition to meditation literature. You will never finish reading it, just as I never finish reading those books in my library

from which I draw sustenance and insight.

This book is a clear 5 star read, one that I highly recommend.

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A BOY NAMED SUE and A MOTHER NAMED EARTH

mistermuse — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:38:38 +0000

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

–Joyce Kilmer

The environment isn’t commonly thought of as a fun subject, but there is such a thing as earthy humor, and today (April 22) is International Mother Earth Day, so…. Actually, the reason I bring up such a thing is that I was rooting through my old poems for an appropriate one to post on Earth Day, and I found the Wood-be poem which awaits at the end of this tome….but, since I rarely know enough to leave well enough alone, I decided to write a humorous introduction to the poem. This is truly your lucky day.

Speaking of what I am speaking of, if you manage to make it as far as the first line of my found poem, hopefully you will recognize that it starts with the name of a poet once famous for a much older poem, titled TREES. Also hopefully, you will know the gender of that poet, which serves as the connection between this introduction and my poem. Should you be genderless – that is, clueless as to the poet’s gender – you will not only become trivialized — that is, learn more trivia — but you will understand the need for this lead-in — that is, why this lead-in is needed.

So, by way of continued introduction:

Country music great Johnny Cash knew “A Boy Named Sue.”
Dana Andrews was no sister — he was a mister (and a damn good actor, as a matter of factor).
Evelyn Waugh….was a male British writer, n’est pas?
If newborn baby Leslie (“Don’t call me Shirley”) Nielsen had been able to talk, would he have told his parents, “Don’t call me Leslie!”?
Poetry gave voice to a man named Joyce (who, too, had no choice)….

….which now (and not a “now” too soon) brings us to the poem:

“WOOD-BE” PUBLIC SERVANTS

Joyce Kilmer notwithstanding,
Most politicians aren’t impressed:
They don’t know a tree
From poetry….
Or if they do, they’re not distressed.

They think that they shall never see
A tree lovely as a board….
Which is fine in moderation,
But virgin forest devastation
Is a plank this Earth cannot afford.

Please let their eyes be opened –
Save the forest for the trees.
A little reflection
Beyond their election
Would serve better by degrees.

INTO the Rabbit Hole

Michael Crumling — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 02:37:29 +0000

IN THE WEEDS

Some people see a field of tall grass and weeds, yet others wonder what lay within a thicket of tall grassy, leafy, greenish-yellow stickery stuff. What wonder appears just around the corner of these bushy bushes and top-heavy trees? When you hear the word garden, you envision a bunch of rows all staked with corn and peppers and tomatoes. Or one could think of giant well-manicured chess board with rows of tall trees or specimens of small rounded trunks with so much fluffy green at the top that they are akin to cotton candy at a carnival; or they resemble a poodle’s sculptured tail. Pretty little flowers are interspersed with the larger rounded or angled beds. Yet some gardens are unexpected, surrounded by nothing of note which hides the treasure within.

One should achieve sure footing while looking for such places, and seek out the best way to travel to the keep. Care should be exercised when searching, as snakes, scorpions, or some other native resident of the jumble of green might find your visit rather unsettling. There may be nothing of note in a few steps, or then again there may. With a keen eye you can spy the baby raccoons curled up with their mother. If you happen to wake them, you will also hear her make quite a fuss until she has forced you away from her home. A similar visit to the nest of a feral sow would not end quite so pleasantly.

Some of the native leaves are interesting to look at. There are sharp spears and soft fronds within steps of each other. An occasion buttercup or patch of wildflowers or prickly pear cactus makes its way along your path. Partnered with the clear cool air are the melodious sounds of avian grandeur; so many different tunes to discern just a single song. It is a disorganized but beautiful symphony of sound and visual delight.

There is also occasion to spy some interesting trees, with hobbit holes in their trunks and inviting you to visit the maze. But if the rabbit appears in the garden, you might just consider following where he leads. You do not know what this little fellow does; he may lead you to another place. Through the looking glass waits an adventure if you’re game!

The course of passage is sometimes well-worn yet at other times quite unclear, and Mother Nature has a plan and she executes it very well. But there are rare spaces where only a human touch will do. At times your path takes you down the hill and round the bend where a nearly hidden passageway takes you to the Garden of Intent; a place where human hand is evidenced and attentive planting yields the land to a special spot amongst the masses of flourishing verdant splendor. Proof that perfection can be found most anywhere if the determination is there to make it happen.

Sometimes in life…you just follow the rabbit.

To See More:

Chapter 2 – IN The River: http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2012/04/in-the-river-2/

NATURE’S GOVERNORS AND THE HUMAN DILEMMA

hujsaked — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:36:17 +0000

If you own a 1903 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (as I do, but Wikipedia will do) you can learn all one needs to know about Nicholas Otto’s invention of the internal combustion engine during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Like James Watt with steam engines, he built on developments by preceding inventors, arriving finally at the four cycle engine that underpins most of today’s petroleum fueled power plants (Otto’s early engines burned hydrogen!).

Photos of early engines, steam engines too, taken from the right perspective, will show appended to the engine two or three metal balls, usually shiny brass spheres about the size of tennis balls, on a vertically spinning shaft, contrived with linkage so that with increasing speed, centrifigal force will cause the balls to move radially outward from the spinning shaft. Within the linkage, this movement is used to control the speed of the engine. When there is added load on the engine, it wants to slow down. That causes the balls to retract radially toward the shaft, and mechanical linkage to the fuel supply increases fuel flow to the engine. Similar devices were used to control the speed of steam engines. On some single cylinder engines, called one-lungers, the design provided for saving fuel by skipping firing for several strokes before firing again to keep the speed constant. A big flywheel on the side of the engine provided the momentum to keep the engine smoothly rotating. It was not an unpleasant sound, across the countryside….. a green John Deere tractor going chuff, pause, pause, pause, then chuff chuff chuff chuff when it had to work harder.

These spinning brass spheres were called governors. For good reason…. they governed the speed of the engine to respond to whatever load was placed upon it. They still do, but have evolved to improved, often computerized methods. The governor for the automobile engine, however, is the linkage between a person’s brain and foot, responding to whatever the condition is on the road, or the driver’s sense of urgency, thrill, or other emotions.

Nature provides for governors in vast variety to control population. The seasonal movement of lemmings, who reproduce prodigiously, reduces the population by mass migrations across waters. It is a culling process, where the strong emerge to produce the next generation. The rest are fish food.

When deer get numerous, nature’s design is for wolves to move in. In many cases, however, the natural course of events was gummed up by interference of hunters, historically capable of wiping out entire species. Only recently has there been an awakening that mandates humans working with nature if the natural world is to be preserved. There is a moral imperative to act the part of governors.

Nature’s governors are quite remarkable in their variety and flexibility. During my early years when living on a dairy farm there was a period when our barn was infested with rats. There was plenty of food, and the manure pile beneath the barn, fermenting and providing a warm environment, was a perfect place to bear and raise young ones. One day a pair of owls moved in, staring down from the rafters. They hardly had to move to snatch up the next dinner. Three stray cats also took up residence. In short order both parties took care of the rat problem. In the springtime, when the none-too-pleasant job of shoveling the manure beneath the barn was upon us, we noticed a pair of long, gray-hued snakes slithering along the back of the dung pile. Eventually we came upon empty rat nests. The snakes had dined heartily, it seemed, on all the young ones.

Therein lies the problem of large numbers of rats in highly populated areas. Food is plentiful and nature has been literally squeezed out of opportunities to govern. Natural processes are thwarted. Rat population control has devolved into whatever means humans can devise to keep the problem manageable, with poisons and other practices whenever there is public complaint of a large infestation. Humans and rats grudgingly coexist.

Nature’s ways are both elegant and subtle if left to itself to perform its on-going symphony. But Nature can be helpless when the balance is upset. An impressive example was the introduction of European rabbits to Australia in 1788, and again in 1859 and 1866. Just a few dozen rabbits. In Australia rabbits had no natural enemies. Some rabbits soon went feral and the ensuing problem of millions upon millions of rabbits on the loose has not been fully solved to this date and has resulted in unprecedent ecological disaster for countless other life forms.

Nature has also struck out on the human scene. Methods available to Nature for population control don’t work on humans. If there was once a natural governor, it turned ineffective centuries ago. The last time there was a real scare was in the 1300’s when the Bubonic plague struck China, and then migrated west along a trade route that led to the Black Sea, where further carriers were believed to be rats on merchant ships. Starting in Mediterranean countries around 1347, the disease spread north to include England and the Scandinavian nations. By the time the black plague, as it came to be known, had run its course in 1352, Europe’s population of 75 million was reduced by a third to 50 million. But world population, then at about 360 million, was diminished by less than ten percent. In current times, when a deadly virus appears an advanced medical profession around the world immediately takes up the attack, to understand it and to mitigate its effect.

Everything now works to preserve and grow human population. In my lifetime world population has doubled, and nearly doubled again. The totality of the human mind, the psyche, is to preserve life regardless of cost, but remains blind to an aspect that obligates it also to preserve quality of life. Reproduction and preservation contains darker elements in some areas of the world where children are a commodity to be sold into the workplace and girls into early marriage. Children are their parents’ survival and retirement packages. Wars have no overall effect on population growth. All the wars and political turmoil of the twentieth century barely made a dent in world population.

There is evidence that humans could self govern, as in more advanced nations birth rate has dropped to levels that maintain steady populations. This appears to correlate with higher levels of intelligence and improved quality of life. So perhaps that is where humanity should head. It would mean major shifts in thought process and abandonment of allegiance to the Good Book, which is okay with wars, relationship between slaves and their masters, retribution, accumulation of riches, concentration of power and superiority of men over women. It would mean ignoring Papal advice that there is no such thing as coincidence, that all is in God’s plan, and commit instead to the reality that we are on our own.

But it would be difficult. Even today, in an advanced nation, we have the spectacle of wannabe Gods who proclaim that an embryo, from the moment of conception has all rights, the same as when born. Where did that come from? In the light of day it appears to be the mischief of those who cling the notion of male superiority over women….. males who were shattered upon learning just a few decades ago that there is an egg involved.

There is an uncanny parallel between the rabbits of Australia and human occupation of the planet. Ravages on the environment, at tragic cost to other living forms correspond to consumption oriented societies, exploiting resources at a rate that foretells misery for future generations. Paradoxically, humans will eventually devise a governor for the rabbit population. (Scientists are trying to develop viruses to accomplish this. Nothing else has worked).

With humans the solution arguably lies in education, universal improvement of quality of life, and adoption of mindsets that vilify excessive accumulation of wealth, along with eliminating existing concentrations of private wealth. Movements are underway. There are budding worldwide organizations like GTI Perspectives (www.gtiperspectives.org). That organization is beginning to develop something called “The Great Transition.” This is also the substance of admonitions in lectures by sages like the Dalai Lama, who sees more clearly than most the human dilemma.

As yet, the human scene lacks a dependable governor. God is detached, and we’ve not yet found our way.

Approval of Fecal Transplant Procedure Means Useful Life Possible for Rush Limbaugh

Richard Cahill — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:04:23 +0000

With the news that a Canadian man cured himself of a painful, potentially fatal gastrointestinal bacterial infection by a self-administered fecal transplant this past week, fecal transplants are once again in the headlines.

The procedure, in which donor feces are ingested through an enema or nasal tube by the patient, has a 90% cure rate in the treatment of dangerous c. difficile infections.

Immediately American medical scientists pointed to Rush Limbaugh as a nearly unlimited reservoir of transplantable matter. The Canadian specialist whose patient performed the procedure on himself, Dr. Baroudi Fashir, was questioned about the medical usefulness of Limbaugh’s personal output. Dr. Fashir, being Canadian, was not at first familiar with the talk radio host, but after being acquainted with several Limbaugh statements, such as any woman who uses birth control should be considered a slut, and that Mexicans who enter the United States looking for work are unwilling to work, Dr. Fashir grew quite excited.

“This man is obviously full of life-saving feces,” he said. When told that Limbaugh also has said that people who exercise regularly are the ones putting the most strain on the US healthcare system, Dr. Fashir was gape-mouthed with awe. “This American Limbaugh could be some kind of universal donor!” He added jealously, “We Canadians do not have access to such vast bloated bags of human waste, otherwise we could wipe out C.D. infections in our lifetimes! I blame our socialist medical system.”

When told that Limbaugh would no doubt agree with him, Dr. Fashir nodded happily. “It just keeps oozing out of him, doesn’t it? Access to Limbaugh means a constant supply of therapeutic ordure. There’s no need to maintain transplant lists and no possibility of losing patients before a suitable donor can be found.”

When told that Limbaugh’s crap is already consumed by millions of Americans without ill effect, however, Dr. Fashir looked doubtful. “I don’t recommend anyone try Limbaugh without a doctor in attendance. Absent medical supervision, the fecal transplant procedure is not without its risks,” he said. “The nasal tube can rupture, causing the transplant to fill the brain cavity instead of the intestines. Then you end up with a bunch of shitheads.”

Another famous idiot featured in today’s post–“Wang Dang Sweet Poontang A Metaphor Says Ted Nugent.”

The Jesus of a Dozen Religions

Robert Flynn — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:30:15 +0000

If you study religion rather than or in addition to studying the Bible you discover that there are a number of stories similar to those found in the Bible. You find even more if you study mythology. By myth I do not mean a widely held but false belief such as “urban legend.” I mean universal stories that help us understand who we are, where we came from, and what that means. For a long time I avoided knowing about myths for fear that a myth might have the same plot as the Gospel of Mark. If Horus was crucified, buried, and resurrected on the third day, wouldn’t that lessen the story of Jesus? Like others I eventually faced that fear and found faith in the story.

There are some universal myths or stories that people need to know or create in order to answer universal questions, understand their own existence and give meaning to it. I believe those stories are similar to Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious.” Every tribe, every nation, every family has a creation story to explain how it began, where it came from and what that means. Many family stories are sagas of the “old country,” the ones left behind, the heroes who braved the unknown and began a new life.

Those stories are similar to the universal story of destruction and new creation. For the Babylonians (Sumerians) God (Cronus) appeared to the king and told him that the world would be destroyed and that he was to write the story of the world from the beginning and save it by burying it. He was also to build a boat and, after writing and saving the story of the world, with friends, kinfolks and animals he was to set sail. After many days the king loosed birds and they returned to the boat. Again the king released birds and they returned with mud on their feet. The third time he released birds they did not return. He grounded the boat, made a sacrifice and disappeared with his wife and daughter to live with the gods. When the other survivors sought the king and his family, God told the remnant that they were in Armenia and were to go to Babylon, recover the story and share it with all mankind.

In the Jewish Bible it is the more familiar story of Noah, the ark, the flood, a new creation evidenced by a green twig and a new covenant. In the Christian Bible it is the Easter story of crucifixion, death and resurrection. The same thread is found in Revelation: the destruction of the world followed by a new creation of a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven, (Rev. 21:1-4) with a new temple (Mark 14:58), a perfect tabernacle (Hebrews 9:1l), an eternal house not made by hands (2 Cor. 5:1). This is the formula we use in baptism. Buried in Jesus death and raised to walk in a new life with him.

Historians use the same plot to tell of the birth of America. Washington’s defeat in Pennsylvania, the agony and despair of Valley Forge, the resurrection in the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the new creation in the US Constitution. It’s the story of Texas. Defeat at the Alamo and Goliad, triumphant resurrection at San Jacinto, and the birth of a new republic. It’s the rationale of Marine Corps boot camp. Break down the boot’s culture of me first, easy victory, easy defeat, easy life, self-protection, self-pampering, and create a new ethos: the Marine Corps comes first. And a new mission: run to the guns.

It’s the appeal of Cinderella and a thousand variations of Cinderella. Zoroaster is treated with ill will in his mother’s house until the Holy Spirit gives Buddha an invitation to the place where he belongs and Jesus enters the palace. Those present recognize who he is. They shout hosannas and throw palm branches at the feet of Krishna, son of a carpenter. But the clock strikes midnight in the garden, Dionysus is killed and his body eaten by believers to purify themselves. Deliverance comes with the dawn bringing a crown fit for only one head. Boy loves girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.

The similarity doesn’t reduce the story, it verifies the story and the universal need for such a story of redemption and rebirth.

The problem the Gospel writers faced was to tell of an event unique in history with words that were not singular but ordinary. Think of the birth of your own child. Didn’t you think he/she was unique? And it was. Had there ever been born anyone like your child? No. How did you explain that to others? You couldn’t without the template of a noble child born in ordinary circumstances, welcomed with gifts from people who recognized the child’s worth, raised among those who did not acknowledge the child’s magnificence. Nevertheless, your child would ride into town with flags waving, people cheering, and bands trying to be heard over the hosannas. Like Mary you harbored those thoughts in your heart.

There had never been anyone like Jesus. How could they tell of his birth in a unique way? They couldn’t. The universal longing to touch the eternal had already created the story, a story that required transfiguration. Jesus was of royal blood, like Cinderella or Siddhartha, but born into low estate like Muhammad. He stood apart from others, like Saul or Samson or David. Rather than going mad like Saul because his own disowned him, finding redemption in self-destruction like Samson, or planting the seed that would undermine all that he had created like David, Jesus triumphed over death and created a new foundation for a new life.

The similarity of stories shouldn’t be surprising. The yearning for a relationship to something greater, more lasting than oneself is universal. That yearning produces the stories. The closer we get to the original stories, the more primitive they are. The refinement of the stories is progressive revelation. The Greek word “logos” means “word” as the expression of thought. It is translated as “sayings” (Mat. 7:24) , “communications” (Luke 24:17), “treatise, book, narrative, story” (Acts. 1:1). “In the beginning was the Story, and the Story was with God, and the Story was God.” (John 1:1) The story became flesh (John 1:14) and walked among us.

As the presence of the story “that dwelled among us” faded, followers of the way neglected telling the story and seeking to enlarge the relationship in order to collect Jesus’ words and codify his stories. To keep the story from growing beyond them they sought to enshrine it, embalming it instead. The story made flesh became institutionalized, embedded in tradition and dogma so that it would not change and grow even as the relationship changed and understanding grew. Those in power held the story privately from those who wanted to make it their story, reserved to a few, first the Jews, then the Greeks and the Romans, then a war between the Eastern story and the Western story. Debating the details of Jonah, they forgot the message of Jonah. They withheld the story from those who wanted to make it their story, the Buddhist story, the Hindu story, the Muslim story.

Rather than allowing the story made flesh to be reincarnated in other stories and creating a commonality that could make us a brotherhood the Eastern story and the Western story chose exclusivity warring over whose story would prevail, creating a new story of exclusivity with attendant wars and strife. Christianity became less a relationship with the story made flesh and more an approved way of thinking and acting. “Every thing begins in mysticism and ends in politics,” wrote the French poet Charles Peguy.

The story made flesh cannot be entombed in one place or one time or one religion. The story that was from the beginning is resurrected by those who seek the eternal and find the story made flesh.

We are not at the end of revelation. Living in the story of the one who walked among us will move us from devotion to commandments of stone, the Christmas tree, baby Dionysus in the manager to faith in our common parentage and our unique part in the story until the story made flesh dwells with all of us.

Hand-Me-Down History: I heard It Through the Grapevine

Minnette Coleman — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:17:24 +0000

Going to try something new here. A little bit of history every now and then that has been handed down to me and others by a combination of books and world of mouth. Over the years while researching novels I have talked to people and read things that most people may not know or find familiar. But they are little bits of history that are worth sharing. After all, what are we without our history?As a teen my father did not want me to listen to a lot of rock and roll and soul music. Some was all right, as long as I sprinkled my musical likes with other types of music. Thanks to him my appreciation of music is quite broad.

But as a teen I still wanted to fit in and the songs he did not turn up his nose at most of the times were songs done by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Perhaps it was his personal interest in her career, having met and talked to her after her stint as a child on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. So I was not surprised that he liked the song “Heard it Through the Grapevine”. The catchy tune is about discovering that your lover is going to dump you through the grapevine. And the grapevine, in case you didn’t know, was the way news spread through the community without being printed. It was not just gossip that traveled the grapevine, but important information that helped save lives. But before we put our news on the grapevine we put it on the banjo.

It was against the law to teach slaves to read and write. But that didn’t seem to matter to those who wanted to learn and those who wanted to hand down their history. History traveled down generations by word of mouth long before. Music was something to soothe those taken from their homelands and held in bondage. At first their culturally different music was tolerated by the slave owners. But it soon became apparent that drums and songs from the motherland did not soother what they called savage beasts. Drums were outlawed, slaves were force fed Christianity and soon they were creating songs about the heavens and the new god that had come into their lives.

Those first songs were not always religious. They were directions and clues to get to freedom. The lyrics were so intricately constructed that the humble tunes actually became part of plantation lore. But for the illiterate slaves and after emancipation former slaves there was a knowledge of hymns and music that was kept safely locked in their brains. Entire congregations knew the bible and hymnals by heart. They knew page number and each verse. This is what happens when people are not allowed to read and write. They put everything to memory.

So how does the banjo play into this? Well after emancipation now freedmen took any kind of job they could get. The desire for formal education was there but the desire to provide for families meant work still in fields and in mediocre jobs. Often this meant migrant work and traveling away from the family. Often it meant spending nights around the campfire with fellow workers discussing the day. Sometimes stories were told, folktales, tales of masters and slave. Many of these have been handed down by mouth and some ended up in Virginia Hamilton’s classic children’s book The People Could Fly.

Gossip however was handled in a different way. It really didn’t start as a whisper behind one’s back. It was face to face and it started as a song on the banjo.

You had something you wanted to report, something or someone you wanted to talk about. You and the banjo player or just the banjo player would create a song about it. Of course it was meant to embarrass the person it was about but it was also meant as entertainment. This kind of exposure led to a lot of fights that led to a lot of changes over the years in how things were handled. Soon gossip was spread more secretively by whispers and innuendos that traveled from one person to another. I.e. the proverbial grapevine.

Looking back on the salves and their descendants who were not formerly educated reminds me of the many people I see today who cannot read or write and who have found over the years ways to get around the need to communicate that way. My mother helped people who could not even write their names get small business loans. These men, who signed X on everything were neither poor nor stupid. They made a business for themselves, could measure materials, calculate and count money without the ability to write it down. They had nice homes, formerly educated children and money, if not in the bank in metal boxes under their beds near a gun or, in some cases, a machete.

Some of the men of this breed become street hustlers. Not just the ones who pulled the five card Monty or other hustles. I am talking about singers and musicians. Sometimes blues singers talking about love and worldly woes. At times you couldn’t understand all they were saying. Sometimes they reminded you of the character Calvin Tubbs on the television show “In Living Color”. He put everything on the banjo. He would always say: “Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here’s how it goes.”

It’s all related. It’s all American history. Just a little bit of something to add to your knowledge. Think about it the next time you get gossip through the grapevine. Could have been a song. And I can think of a few instances where modern -day song writers have put what they heard on the banjo. You probably have heard those stories as well. They wrote a song about it. Everybody wanted to hear it. And they made a lot of money putting it on the banjo.

Class dismissed.

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Explaining India

Sachi Mohanty — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:19:53 +0000

How would I explain the latest happenings to an unexpected visitor to India? What do you know! There was a huge bang in the backyard last night accompanied by a bright flash of light which startled me and I woke up to investigate.

Of course I saw a nice little cute alien just like in that movie where Drew Barrymore is a baby. So I welcomed the trans-galactic visitor and offered him water. Slowly we got around to discussing the current state of affairs in India.

What a coincidence that an alien should visit me when the Pakistani President is visiting India too. I of course did not rake up the past with the alien … stuff such as some attacks in Mumbai or taking a percentage in deals.

I did mention that a baby died recently in AIIMS. All of two months old. She experienced a lot of pain in a short life. I didn’t ask ET if they believed in god in their neck of the universe.

We talked about the Chief being offered a bribe. That happens where ET came from as well.

I mentioned that the Supreme Court had cancelled all the 2G licenses issued during a minister’s tenure. ET and I talked about how they distribute exploration licenses to interested parties to explore different regions of the galaxy.

We talked about the prospects of the different teams in IPL 5. ET didn’t look into the future and reveal the winner to me. They have both male and female cheer-persons. Nude.

I mentioned that India had too many people and too little electricity. Everyone was immortal in ET-country but they have spread to many planets.

I proudly proclaimed that India is on the verge of becoming a member of a rather exclusive club of nations who have nuclear powered submarines. ET said that they don’t have any nuclear weapons at all!

With the number of people growing like it is, I talked about the tigers being endangered. ET can help with ensuring that tigers endure and dinosaurs come back to life and roam the jungles like they used to. ET can help with finding an appropriate planet where the wildlife can prosper.

I told ET that he had come at the right time since Sachin has now completed his 100th century. ET was mesmerized by Sachin’s batting style and thought Sachin can easily make it into their cricket team as well. With immortality and eternal youth guaranteed, Sachin can easily score a hundred thousand centuries on ET’s planet.

I told him that when he happens to be in this neck of the woods the next time, Rahul Gandhi will probably be the prime minister. ET hastily informed me that he is barred from interfering in the political arena on any planet he visits. It’s not because of some ethical constraints or anything that ET wished to remain neutral. It’s simply that whatever he does will leave an imprint on his indelible brain memory and when he goes back home and his brain memory is scanned, folks will find out that he had interfered in a planet’s politics.

I mentioned about the Naxal problem in some parts of India … what with an ongoing kidnapping in Odisha being in the headlines. ET said they have problems with rogue elements and lone rangers and the crazy dreamers too.

ET said: ‘People have to realize that everyone can’t be Steve Jobs.’ Those were ET’s exact words. So I said: ‘But I didn’t mention Steve Jobs. How did you know about him?’ Clearly, Jobs’ reputation has spread far.

The Naxals in ET’s land sometimes try to destroy a planet or two. But they have backed up everything on multiple hard drives. So when a planet gets blown to smithereens, they recreate the whole planet and restore it to the position it was in.

ET liked Manmohan Singh and asked me if I was sure he was just an ordinary human like the rest of us Earthlings. ET thought Mr. Singh looked like an ET himself.

I proposed to ET that we could go to a mall and watch a movie if he could promise to me that he won’t fall asleep. He said he could not give me an honest assurance in that regard. So I am downloading all the Bollywood (and some Bengali and Tamil) movies which I’ll gift to ET on an external hard drive. He can watch them on the long journey home.

Of course I asked ET how come he was here on Earth in the first place. It was predictably an accident. He was headed to a different planetary system in the Milky Way. He had fed the coordinates of the destination into the GPS (Galactic Positioning System) but apparently the Earth came in the way of the spaceship unexpectedly and so he crashed into my backyard.

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The Lure of Idiocy

Sachi Mohanty — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:18:08 +0000

Disclaimer: this is a personal reflection. As I observe a generation grow up in front of my eyes, I marvel at the choices they make. The lure of groupthink, the overwhelming herd mentality leaves me perplexed.

I witness the astonishing tenacity of meaningless customs. People grow up in conventional households and acquire some sort of a degree and land some job or the other. Then they fall back on some age old method of finding a wife or a husband as the case may be. When I consider the absolutely inverted logic of arranged marriages, I am flabbergasted that anyone in the modern age would opt for it.

And the youngsters are supposed to be educated. Why do they do it? Clearly the desire for sex outweighs the possibilities for pitfalls. Arranged marriages are above all safe choices … as safe as a choice of this sort can be. The alliances tend to take place among people who are already related to each other or belong to the same caste and district.

If divorce rates in a liberal society like America can be so high, how come they can be so low in tradition-bound India? In America, people usually go through a long vetting process before they commit to the long-term bond of marriage (well, perhaps with the exception of those who opt for Vegas style quickies). And yet, these marriages fail as people discover that they are incompatible with each other or that there are irreconcilable differences. How come couples in India who happen to be married to each other just because their parents decided that they should be don’t have these same differences?

I think that’s because Indian couples in a marital relationship are either not open to new thinking or they simply resign themselves to spending their lives in a loveless relationship.

It’s about how one defines one’s life. In India, the milestones of one’s life often tend to do with one’s family. So the married couple will live life according to age-old principles. The wife is confined to the household taking care of cooking and keeping the house clean. The husband is responsible for earning the money to provide for the family.

Just as youngsters go for arranged marriages like automatons, they produce babies like clockwork. So life remains superficially busy. Bringing up children keeps the wife busy.

Then there’s the matter of religion. Hinduism conveniently offers many occasions when the wives are required to perform many rituals. This too keeps them busy while not requiring them to use their brains for much creative thinking.

Rituals dominate the lives of people. There’s never a moment when you’re too far away from a ritual. If you marry, of course, you do so amidst a deluge of rituals that go on for many days. If you make a baby, of course, you remember to thank the gods for blessing you … hopefully with a baby boy.

When old folks die, again a bunch of rituals are performed which keeps everyone busy. Everything is more or less turned into social occasions involving hundreds if not thousands of people. This is all logical in a traditional society when everyone was a farmer and the cycle of life usually remained unchanged for generations and humans were clearly dependent on the vagaries of nature and were not at all the technologically powerful species that we are today.

What’s the harm if all this continues? I’ve a problem with quietly accepting all that has been going on for such a long time.

People argue that everybody is doing it. Well, that clearly shows a limited thinking as they define ‘everybody’ in a restricted sense. And also, everybody doing something doesn’t transform a stupid ritual into a meaningful one. All religions are stupid and Hinduism is only rather more so.

It’s a fact that there are harvest festivals in agricultural societies whereby the gods are thanked for a bountiful harvest. One can excuse the peasants for thinking that gods have been kind on them whereas in reality nature functions according to principles of science. People in villages worship the cow.

Surely people who have gone through 15 or more years of education to get themselves a professional degree can be expected to have a more critical mind. It doesn’t concern god that you bought a bike or a car. It’s silly to think that the direction in which the living room or bedroom of your house faces has any special implication. Surely the educated young have to go beyond ritual offerings. How does offering gold to a deity relate to your having a baby or its well-being.

Meaningless as these things are, the unfortunate truth is that these things persist with astonishing resilience and stubbornness. People rationalize the rituals in different ways: some will say that everybody is doing it, others will point to the need to continue one’s tradition as that will keep one’s racial and regional identity alive.

Competitive idiocy is widespread too. People will say: ‘look at them. They have so much more of rituals and are guarding their religion and race so vigilantly. We can’t let our guard down or we will be swamped by them.’

In all this idiocy, the loser is reason. The so-called educated people fail to realize that the very fundamental reason of education is to learn critical thinking.

Why is rational thinking so rare? What is the barrier that keeps atheist thinking from spreading?

Out of 100 followers of a religion, nearly 100 of them follow that particular religion unthinkingly … simply because they happened to have grown up with that religion, simply because that was the religion of their parents. Not many bother to question the basis of their religious beliefs. Otherwise, all the religions would collapse like sand sculptures faced with a tsunami.

I would have had respect for the young professionals of whom so much is expected in India if they had used reasoning to reach their religious beliefs. If the young men and women had wondered about the deep questions about the origins of humankind and of the universe and then realized that the Hindu creation myths and the plethora of gods offered the best explanation for the observable universe, then it would make sense if they believed in the Hindu gods. But most young people are not too concerned about the truth behind the religious beliefs. They simply blindly follow what has been handed down to them by their parents.

How do I know that there’s a lack of critical thinking with respect to religious matters amongst young Indians? I observe two sets of phenomena which convince me. Firstly, young people are too devoted to making money and too busy deciding which brand of flat screen TV to buy or which expensive cellphone to buy. They are too busy deciding which car to buy and which tourist destination to visit. Secondly, the existence of a growth market for religious gurus. It’s a booming business.

Unfortunately, there’s a price to be paid for the rising levels of wealth. Wealth does not buy happiness. When money increases, so does stress. So at some point people are somewhat confounded and perhaps dismayed and look for solutions. And what do we see?

The mushrooming of godmen. That’s one unique aspect of India. One would have thought in this scientific and technological age, the bullshit being uttered by these bearded (mostly) folk would be seen as transparent chicanery. But no. the new generation continues to be taken in. in fact, there’s a new class of savvy godmen who propound their message in English so as to appear modern. Some gods and godmen are very up-to-date with the latest social media technology such as having a website or being active on Facebook and Twitter. In a sense, you don’t have to travel to the Himalayas any more to find the truth. The purveyors of truth are just a click or two away.

What chance does science and reason have faced with these challenges from unreason and blind faith?

It’s unlikely that babies will be spared the onslaught of religious rituals from a very young and impressionable age. The household where no religion is followed is vanishingly rare. Similarly, the household where all religions get equal weight is also rare. Since we have got a bunch of kids who are pretty much indoctrinated with the values and beliefs of a particular religion, the battle to make them skeptical thinkers is an uphill one.

Skeptical thinking is not a required part of the curriculum in any degree course. People can blithely go on living a double life whereby they learn about rigorous thinking and scientific principles and the necessity of evidence in school and college and observe blind rituals at home with equal gusto.

Nobody points out the contradiction to them since it’s apparently not up to the teachers of science to repudiate the nonsense of religion. And with rare exceptions, the students are too busy memorizing the complex and boring chemical equations from organic or inorganic chemistry or trying to understand Bernoulli’s Principle or the Second Law of Thermodynamics to notice the apparent contradiction.

Who has got time to read up on biology and the theory of evolution. The simplistic nonsensical bullshit offered by Deepak Chopra appeals more than the deep writings of Richard Dawkins. Nobody has time to venture into the unknown. Indians are not explorers. They are not the kind of people who pick up a Christopher Hitchens book or a book by Sam Harris at the railway station or airport bookstall.

Indians do not use libraries in any large numbers. India is not known for any great libraries. Libraries do not form a part of the great Indian tradition.

Mike Tyson might be a well known name in India … at least to those of us who were already grownups when Tyson was biting ears apart from winning and losing matches. Neil de Grasse Tyson? Not so much. Michael Shermer and Lawrence Krauss are similar non-entities. The Michaels that Indians are familiar with are Jackson, Bevan and Schumacher.

Things being what they are, it’s unlikely that Indians will ditch the comfortable umbrella provided by religion which requires no thinking and the glib solutions offered by religious godmen to the deep mysteries and unanswerable questions of life.

Intellectual revolutions are rarer than political ones. Sometimes, people will hold on to the illusions of religion even at the cost of their lives.

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Honeysuckle Rose

Michael Crumling — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:00:13 +0000

Every honeybee fills with jealousy

When they see you out with me

I don’t blame them goodness knows

…Honeysuckle rose

Weeks go by and the view from the little green plot undergoes a continuous transformation for the next season. As the sun visits longer and strikes the native splendor of green, new family members reveal themselves in different places and in different ways.

It was with intent that we planted many vines to disguise the shed and the fences. Some of them have been wholly unsuccessful, and others have thrived! The honeysuckle “weed” is among those. As a friend mentioned a few days ago, a good weed is but beauty to the true nature lover. Many curse the honeysuckle as an invasive weed which grows larger and larger and takes over its spot. That is why we love it! In the hot sun, many plants don’t thrive, and others do. Not a fan of tiny “bonsai” garden residents, we selected to give wide berth to the vines. The sweet smell of honeysuckle starts to permeate the area now, as it blossoms into being. No sugar is needed today. The scent does not make the honeybees jealous; rather it attracts them to its source.

This hardy vine was placed with care all around a pergola, comingled with roses, grapes and Boston ivy. It now is in symbiosis with the others to create a shaded canopy above a walkway which leads us to a different room in the garden; it is a truly diverse community. There is also much to see on the other side, and much to experience while walking below. The little sisters, a vine of mini roses, are like ornaments amongst the green. The smells and the wildlife are abundant. Even on a cloudy day, the walk is pleasant.

One of the local felines “Spot” has made his way along the windowsill, up to the roof and over to the canopy, to hide amongst the greenery and lay in wait for playmates. He doesn’t kill anything, as he is well fed, yet he does slink around in the verdant tunnels “hunting” while concealing himself from view. At the appointed time, which is when the screen door opens, Spot heads for the table on the front porch for his supper. Funny, but that seems to be when the birds are most active; evidenced by the symphony coming from the jumble of thickets and labyrinth of small passageways.

The BUFFET BULL

Michael Crumling — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:09:38 +0000

By now, we have all heard of the “Buffet Rule.” Its proponents say that it is only fair that the very rich pay their “fair share” of income taxes. I can see what they mean, but as a not very rich man, I can still disagree with this disingenuous political ploy. Our President tells us that we need to make it mandatory that the wealthy should pay at least 30% of their income in income taxes. Of course that is notwithstanding the many other taxes, including state and local. A person living in New York, New York or some other high dollar liberal metropolis, who has the misfortune of being rich, could find themselves borrowing money to pay all of their taxes.

They named the legislation after Warren Buffett. Poor Warren has complained that billionaires and millionaires are paying too low a tax rate. He has every right to feel this way, but I ask you why he is fighting in court to keep from paying taxes he already owes. I say to Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomturd and all of the other rich folks who want to pay more; write a damned check! The IRS will cash it for sure; or they could just send an armored truck full of hundred dollar bills so the IRS could have a seminar in Hawaii or Vegas or somewhere. Perhaps they could just turn over their Microsoft or Berkshire-Hathaway stock to the FED. I have no objection to them parting with their cash if they would feel better about it. Maybe they could send a check to every citizen making less that 250k a year if that would ease their conscience. Maybe they could just give their secretary a bonus and our eardrums a break! If you believe in it, shut up and write a CHECK!

Our Treasury Secretary Timmy Geithner, a proven tax cheat, tells us that we need the rule to stabilize the economy. On “Meet the Press” he said “If you measure what we did relative to the record of the United States in past crises, and the record of other countries, history will judge what he did as remarkably effective crisis management.” Really Timmy; perhaps you didn’t talk to the Federal Reserve which says that this “recovery” is the most anemic recovery …ever! Well at least since WWII. And no, it wasn’t anywhere near the Great Depression in severity, though it is pointed out that the fast action of George W Bush on TARP saved our butts, they want to point to their crisis management while blaming the whole mess on Bush. “No excuses from us”…we are told.

After the Democrats who controlled Congress refused to pass the required budget for Bush, in fact no budget for the last 3 years, our debt has grown over 40% in the last three year. The country faces huge economic problems, including unemployment. The Obama stimulus bill was to get our unemployment rate under 8%, which we have yet to see; even after we charitably reconfigured how the unemployment rate is figured.

We are told that Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Of course they fail to tell you that President Obama pays a lower tax rate than his secretary as well (see his 2011 taxes). But how much in income taxes do rich folks pay? The top one percent makes 19% of the income and pays nearly 40% of the total income taxes collected. The bottom 47% pay NO income taxes (see CNN, Forbes or USA Today), and the rest of us 52% of the citizenry pay the other 60% in taxes.

Senate Majority Leader Dusty Harry Reid said “Republicans in Congress would rather end Medicare as we know it and slash education funding than ask the richest of the rich to contribute even a penny more.” Of course he failed to mention that it was the Democrats and “Obamacare” which changed Medicare as we know it and cut half a trillion from Medicare, all while painting Republicans as the folks protecting the rich at the expense of the rest of us. He also failed to mention that President Obama and the Democrats get the lion’s share of money from “Wall Street.” How many members of the current administration once worked at Goldman-Sachs? And how many have been caught cheating on their taxes?

Then you may have noticed that Chris Dodd (D) Connecticut, and Barney Frank (D) Massachusetts, both of whom had a big hand in all of this mess, are not seeking re-election. Is this because they are avoiding testifying under oath, or because their nests have already been feathered well?

Of course the Buffet Bull didn’t pass in the Senate. They couldn’t even get all of the Democrats to vote for it. And then again, President Obama’s budget failed to pass as well. So we lunge forward without a budget yet again. All the fault of the obstructionist Republicans I suppose, and the Republican plan is “Social Darwinism.” But what is the President’s plan? Oh yeah, he hasn’t got one! It is the Buffet Bull which is to fix everything; a law which would fund the government for 12 days if the next ten years worth were collected tomorrow…

Mitt Romney is really rich, true enough. Does that make him a bad person? He made his own money didn’t he? Isn’t that what our Capitalist country is all about? This is all just a symbolic political ploy and nothing more. It is similar to the dog on the car roof meme we keep hearing about. They are talking about dogs instead of how to simplify our tax code, balance our books and grow our economy. Let us not even mention the Constitution.

The Democrats and the Obama administration are devoid of real ideas. They seek to distract Americans from their intellectual bankruptcy with the “war on women,”” the dog on the car roof,” and the “Buffett Bull.” There will be more of these to come. But they ought to be careful what they choose to highlight, since our President actually ATE dog, as opposed to putting one in a cage on the roof of the car…

AIN’T IT GRAND! Our President wasn’t born with a “silver spoon in his mouth” but he has had dog meat there… Maybe a little Beagle BBQ at the state dinner… See what I mean?

Can’t we stop with demagoguery, class warfare and partisanship and actually DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE?!

Or would we rather just go to the dogs…