Quality of the Light

Running to Keep Up

2009-07-26T00:54:00.006-05:00

Doing our best to keep our heads above water

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Con-way Inc. (NYSE: CNW) today reported net income to common shareholders for the second quarter of 2009 of $31.5 million (after preferred stock dividends), or 64 cents per diluted share. The results compared to second-quarter 2008 net income to common shareholders (after preferred stock dividends) of $48.7 million, or $1.02 per diluted share. The 2008 second-quarter net income included a net gain from discontinued operations of 4 cents per diluted share.
...
Revenue in the 2009 second quarter was $1.06 billion, a decrease of 21.2 percent from last year's revenue of $1.34 billion. Operating income in the 2009 second quarter was $66.0 million, a decrease of 30.5 percent compared to $94.9 million earned in the second quarter a year ago.
...
Con-way Truckload continued to manage effectively through a difficult market for full-truckload services. "The volume of shipper bid activity moderated from what we saw in the first quarter but weak demand and over-capacity kept pricing under pressure," Stotlar noted. "Our truckload unit took steps in the quarter to right-size its fleet, selling 195 older tractors and aligning its resource base closer to market demand. Con-way Truckload remains well positioned as a premium service provider with sound operations, a loyal customer base and excellent cost controls."
...
TRUCKLOAD

For the second quarter of 2009, Con-way Truckload, the company's full-truckload transportation operation, reported:

-- Operating income of $6.9 million, a 44.7 percent decline from last
year's operating income of $12.4 million. Results included an asset
disposition loss of $2.5 million from the sale of 195 tractors as fleet
capacity was realigned for market conditions, and a $1.0 million
write-down related to the 2007 CFI acquisition.
-- Revenue of $89.8 million was down 34.6 percent compared to 2008 revenues
of $137.4 million. The quarterly revenue reflects the elimination of
inter-company revenues of $53.5 million in 2009 and $44.2 million in
2008. The truckload market continued to experience soft demand
exacerbated by excess capacity.
-- Operating ratio on revenue, before inter-company eliminations and
exclusive of fuel surcharges, was 94.7 compared to last year's
operating ratio of 90.6.

Like I said earlier in the month, "It ain't bad but it could be better."

Forty four point seven percent down feels like the end of the world some weeks but at least there is a paycheck coming in every week. The suits at my company are really trying hard to keep all the moving parts moving together and doing a remarkable job.

Many of my kind are simply out of work.

2nd UPDATE: UPS 2Q Income Dn 49%; Sees 3Q Earnings Below Views

And, there might be light at the end of the tunnel

Freight volume: Tough times may be receding

Jul 24, 2009 3:26 PM, By Sean Kilcarr, senior editor

Though the slump in freight volume is expected to continue for the rest of the year, many transportation providers believe the toughest stretch may now be in the rearview mirror. And if the downturn removes weaker competitors from the playing field, some companies believe that may open up opportunities for growth and market share gains. ...

Just a glimmer but light all the same.

Ozark, Alabama

2009-07-03T17:21:00.003-05:00

Well, it 's been better but it's not bad for the Friday before July 4th. Everything basically shutdown at noon today as far as freight is concerned, so

we'll be here awhile. Such is trucking on holidays. Been here since nine Thursday night. Learning all there is to learn about Ozark.

View Larger Map

Here we remain at the intersection of US 231 and Jernigan Rd until the gods find freight. As I say, It's not bad but it's been better.

Dreaming on down the road

2009-06-29T07:38:00.005-05:00

My friends, rj and Migs, seem to be in an introspective mode, so, I suppose I can join them along the path. Seems I dreamt all night or perhaps only an instant - who's to say, it is the dream I recall when I awoke - about rolling a ball across the floor to a seated infant whose back was to the wall. The infant who could crawl and stand but not walk without support was faceless, or perhaps not faceless, not some horror movie blank faced no nose, no mouth, no eyes infant but rather just an infant whose features I did not recognize. It seems from this narrative that it, the baby, was a boy doesn't it. Anyway, I would roll a ball to the baby from some short distance across the floor, I was I believed seated on the floor, open legged, facing the baby. The baby was seated in a similar pose, opened legged, towards me and propped up by the wall behind him. The ball would roll into the area between his legs near his crotch and he would bat the ball away, generally making the ball go back in my direction. The very last scene in the dream the baby bats the ball in a direction that requires that I get up to retrieve the ball and then I lob the ball back to him in the air and the baby catches the ball on the first bounce, stands up and walks the ball back to me. Bingo! Eyes open! Awake! That's it. You go figure and comment here. Yes, I will answer questions about the dream content and anything else you might want to ask that is related to the dream. Waiting outside Charlotte until Wednesday morning when delivery is scheduled to occur. Waiting here since yesterday. Trying to expedite delivery to today but it's JIT and likely I'll just have to wait it out.

I Believe

2009-06-21T11:58:00.002-05:00

I Believe
an essay by George Henderson

I believe in the power of love, in the healing and redemptive power of love. I believe that we should love everyone as we love ourselves. And, that in that simple statement, the encouragement to love our neighbor as our self lies a huge puzzle that we can profitably work on all of our lives. The puzzle is this, in loving someone else we learn to love ourselves and we must love ourselves in order to love someone else. The idea can be summed up but not elucidated in the phrase, "the unforgiving are most often the unforgiven" or its corollary, "the unloved are most often the most unloving". Forgiveness and love are so tied together as to be nearly the same thing, one does not exist without the other. "What is love?", you might ask. Well, you'll know it when you feel it, my friend otherwise I will have to refer you to Dr Maslow and his ideas of "unconditional positive regard". Unconditional positive regard is a great idea but expressing that idea is sometimes tricky. Often times we will do what we consider to be a loving act and the object of our action, our beloved, will either not notice our action or misinterpret our actions and then the fun begins.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4, down toward the end, as I recall.

Love yourself fully so that you might love another as well as you love yourself and let another love you fully so that you might learn to love yourself fully.

Got it? OK, do it!

Waiting for delivery in Hammond until Tuesday

2009-06-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

Sherry,

Thanks for this wonderful story. Here is the complete article from the Washington Post with the photo essay

Something About Harry

Old Dogs are the Best Dogs

By Gene Weingarten

Sunday, October 5, 2008; Page W16

Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast ~read more~

Without your forwarding of the chain letter I would not have found the original and the wonderful photo essay. In my unkinder moments in the past I would have done a "reply all" to send this little note to everyone in the chain with a preface excoriating them all for not having the gumption to attribute the work correctly and leaving out the photo essay. I will give the chain letter author credit for having included the Washington Post reference at the bottom of his text, complete I might add with the apocryphal caveat about being reproduced by permission. Chain letter writers, the writers of mass forwardings, the old send your friends a Xerox or a clipping of a magazine article approach to correspondence, have good intentions but it is a kind of laziness that galls me still to this day. But, I have grown older, wiser and more loving so I restrict my efforts to replying to you. The photo essay is a gem and should get wider distribution and to that end I might, emphasis might, post this in some fashion on my blog with the vain hope that it would get out to a wider audience.

I'm going to call you now and if I get you on the way to church, well, good, I'll talk to you and if I don't get you, well, I suppose I'll stop dawdling and go take a shower.

I love you more than words can express and time will allow, but I can write and I do have the rest of my life so I press on with the main task at hand, Loving Sherry, The Last Dance.

Later with love,

George

Nothing works today!

2009-05-25T05:14:00.004-05:00

From: George Henderson <xxxxxxxxx@xxxx.com>
Date: Mon, May 25, 2009 at 4:23 AM
Subject: INABILITY TO ACCESS ACCOUNT INFO AND MANIPULATE ACCOUNT ONLINE
To: NYRcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am extremely frustrated at the moment by the inability of your website to allow access to my account using correct account information.

Account Number:XXXXXXXXXX

Name:George Henderson

Address:Po Box xxxxxx,Clarksville,TN 37042,United States

E-mail:xxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.com

I am essentially a mechanized mahoot, I live in my over the road truck for all practical purposes and my mail goes to a Postal Box as you can see from the information above.

I am getting ready to move and cannot change my address online this morning nor can I access my account information to confirm the billing information you have. Additionally, and most frustratingly, I cannot enter gift subscriptions for my son’s nor my nieces upcoming graduation gifts.

I have registered successfully for The Digital Reader which is a big plus in my particular situation.

I have attempted several times this morning to enter the gift subscriptions, rechecking and confirming all my address and credit card information each time. The system always responds with some cryptic message about “an error occurred in committing your order”

Unfortunately the following errors occurred:

There was an error committing the order.

https://magazine.newyorker.com/ecom/subscribe.jsp?oppId=1100290&_requestid=8290161

with no direction as to what the specific error(s) might be.

Your prompt response to this email and your prompt resolution of these issues will be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

George M Henderson

P.S. Remember, everything you have now came to you on a truck.

There might be hope for the future

2009-05-23T05:35:00.004-05:00

There might be hope for the future but it seems frought with difficulty and will be slow in coming

From The New Yorker

In Search Of Success

by Steve Coll

May 25, 2009

In Pakistan’s tribal regions, near the Afghan border, the United States deploys the armed flying robots known as Predator drones in attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. About a year ago, the United States began to acquire better intelligence regarding these terrorist groups. The recent accuracy of the attacks has caused Al Qaeda to murder suspected spies in self-defeating fits of paranoia, a trend that has disrupted the organization’s ability to plan attacks against the U.S. and its allies. General David Petraeus, the over-all American military commander in the region, told CNN, “Al Qaeda, in particular, has sustained some very serious losses over the course of the last six to ten months or so, and there is a considerable concern among those leaders because of the losses that they have sustained.”
It would be difficult for any President to set aside military analysis of this tenor; in any event, Obama has persisted with the Predator strikes at roughly the same rate as George W. Bush. There is no evidence, however, that the drone campaign has yet moved closer to Al Qaeda’s senior leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, or dismantled the group decisively; instead, the targeting still seems to be stuck in the middle of Al Qaeda’s leadership lists. Moreover, Pakistan’s government, although it apparently facilitates the drone attacks in private, finds it necessary to vocally oppose them in public, knowing how unpopular they are. Opportunism and hypocrisy hardly seem the foundation for a sustainable political-military partnership that breaks with the unhappy past.
There are some ideas in train that may truly be transformative. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, a bipartisan plan to provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid, for at least five years. The legislation is intended to “mend a broken relationship with the Pakistani people,” as John Kerry, who co-sponsored the bill with Richard Lugar, put it. The bill has been well designed to support, for the first time in years, the long-term goal of rebalancing U.S. aid to strengthen pluralism and democracy in Pakistan. “Most Pakistanis feel that America has used and abandoned their country in the past,” Kerry noted. Indeed, most Afghans feel the same. Obama has inherited a toxic legacy; Congress, at least, could ease his burden.

Yes, it would be very nice if Congress began to work in earnest to ease Mr Obama's burden as well as the burden all the world bears from the toxic legacy of the Bush administration.

Inspiration

2009-05-21T12:01:00.001-05:00

Friends ,and Loved Ones, Children and Grandchildren,

Gus Lloyd's blog Reflections is good his post today about the changes in the American Catholic Church as regards satisfying the obligation for the Feast of The Ascension is very informative.

Also, from a Protestant Evangelical perspective you might also be interested in Hank Hanegraaff

Hank Hanegraaff serves as president and chairman of the board of the North Carolina-based Christian Research Institute. He is also host of the Bible Answer Man radio program, which is broadcast daily across the United States and Canada—as well as around the world through the Internet at www.equip.org.

Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading Christian apologists, Hanegraaff is deeply committed to equipping Christians to be so familiar with truth that when counterfeits loom on the horizon, they recognize them instantaneously.

~read more~

Last Sunday, as we Catholics are aware from childhood, was the "Fifth Sunday After Easter", "The Fifth Sunday of Easter", or "The Fifth Sunday of Pacaltide" depending on which flavor of English you speak.

Recently, I have returned to a church to which I have a deep and long standing emotional attachment, St Michael's Houston, Texas, it is the building to be sure that I have the emotional attachment to and the Wicks organ. I have been going to Saint Mike's since it was built and I was there during the several days when the Wicks was installed.

Coming up this Sunday is Pentecost an important day in the Christian tradition. As much as the Western Protestants would like to object the liturgical calendar is still set by The Pope in Rome as far as I know and the best source I've found for the Christian liturgical calendar is The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wherein you will find Liturgical Calendar 2009 for the Dioceses of The United States of America. The USCCB also has an excellent page of documentation, Committee on Divine Worship, about the Catholic liturgy, if you're interested in such things.

Many of you, my children and grandchildren in particular, are of some faith, in some way, Epsicopalian or Protestant Evangelical, and one of you was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church in infancy. Some of you, my friends in particular are of no particular ostensible faith but still seem to have some sense of something beyond the senses, some measure of "the force" if nothing else that lies within human life and its various expressions in art and literature as well as social and political organizations.

I have had some extensive exposure to other philosophical traditions, in particular Zen Buddhism, and no less a person than His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama himself has encouraged me to continue in a spiritual tradition that is familiar to me, especially if that tradition and its training extend back into my preschool years. So, with the Dalai Lama's exhortation in mind I have begun to refamiliarize myself with my Catholic faith.

Pentecost is coming up this Sunday. No matter your faith, whether you have one or not, whether you have a little or alot, whether you can express your faith or lack of faith in words or hold it close to yourself in a nonverbal way, I encourage you strongly to at least read about the history and meaning of The Pentecost and perhaps consider the true meaning of the word inspiration and how it might apply to your life on a daily basis.

Inspiration

c.1303, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from O.Fr. inspiration, from L.L. inspirationem (nom. inspiratio), from L. inspiratus, pp. of inspirare "inspire, inflame, blow into," from in-"in" + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit). Inspire in this sense is c.1340, from O.Fr. enspirer, from L. inspirare, a loan-transl. of Gk. pnein in the Bible. General sense of "influence or animate with an idea or purpose" is from 1390. Inspirational is 1839 as "influenced by inspiration;" 1884 as "tending to inspire."

Quick definitions (inspiration)

▸ noun: arousing to a particular emotion or action
▸ noun: a product of your creative thinking and work ("He had little respect for the inspirations of other artists")
▸ noun: a sudden intuition as part of solving a problem
▸ noun: arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity
▸ noun: the act of inhaling; the drawing in of air (or other gases) as in breathing
▸ noun: (theology) a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings

From the Tent Maker, a few words worth thinking about, in my opinion, in this context, no matter how much you might not like the Tent Maker or his greater body of work, here he has, I think, something worthwhile

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

In My Own Words, By Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama XIV, Rajiv Mehrotra

The journey is the destination

And, from our old Hebrew brothers

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.

Well, I'm sure you've had enough by now. I can only encourage you to have some LORD in your life, some guiding principle verbalized or unverbalized, something you can be inspired by every waking moment.

Without competent and immediate medical intervention we are at any given time about six breaths and three heartbeats away from the next adventure.

Every breath is a gift, every beat of your heart is benevolence.

Be thankful, be inspired.

May the God of Hope fill you with all Joy and Peace as you trust in Him, so that You may overflow with Hope by the Power of the Holy Spirit. Amen! ~read more~

Love,

George

!-)

P.S. Yes, freight is slow. Sitting in Chicopee,MA waiting for a load since last night.

God does not call those who are ready but rather God makes ready those He calls.

www.qualityofthelight.blogspot.com

And now for something more positive

2009-04-26T21:09:00.004-05:00

There maybe hope for those of us who know what to do now.

It's fire sale time again and there won't be an RTC. Ladies and Gentlemen get your licenses in order and your websites up and running.

Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, says,"My point is that retreating from market opening is not a solution to the economic crisis. For countries that depend on trade and have specialized according to comparative advantage, a reversal of openness will impose significant costs on the economy. What is more, setting up new barriers to trade will be seen as protectionism and will risk retaliation from trade partners. One country's exports are another country’s imports. Rather than reviving economies, the effect of this will be to worsen the global crisis."

~read more~

Mr Lamy seems to be dead on to me but as he says Washington seems to be a bit slow on processing and implementing ideas like his, but perhps slow is better than not moving along at all. There is always hope that things might pick up if they are at least moving in some way.

Where are we now?

2009-04-26T20:58:00.003-05:00

'splain to me, Lucy, where are we now.

Does anyone know where we are now?

Last summer these guys knew where were and where we were going or thougt they did. Really, they really did. Does anyone really know now?

Slow Day

2009-04-13T08:56:00.004-05:00

Zachary,LA - A slow day here.

Duhzn't get mo betta dan dis ma bruthers and sizters. No hit doan beez much mo betta.

Seven and a half hours from the area near the Bud brewery in Houston yesterday. Leaving at noon we arrived here in Zachary, read that far north Baton Rouge, at seven thirty last evening, a distance of two hundred eighty three miles. What rate of progress is that class? Only had to change clothes twice, once in Houston at the start and once in Zachary at the end. Did I mention the rain? We really do need to look into being able to raise the landing gear from the left seat. The load here seems to be canceled or at least has a severe SNAFU. My hotel and other travel arrangements for my niece's wedding in Charleston,SC on Saturday coming up are all in place along with my beautiful date for the event, the lovely Ms Bee Pee Oh. Beautiful woman Bee is, perhaps you've met her brother, Three. I should have been in Memphis by now.

Yas Sir, If dog farts wuz air I'd be N a Gotdamned hurricane bout now. Gawd! I just luvs de air here.

At least I've got Bee Pee Oh!

Anybody seen Three? Three, hey Man, we got to do a better job of getting these ducks in a row next time.

Everybody tried, the home office did a great job, the travel booking agents were superior and the shipper tried but sometimes ...

Three, yo dude, you got any double ought. Yeah, I know a bit heavy for ducks, but hey, if we hit'em they'll drop, right!

Oh Happy Day

2008-11-05T18:16:00.022-06:00

It is a very happy day, indeed. Despite all the personal distress at the moment I can take some significant joy from last night's delivery of the prize after nearly two years worth of work by Obama and his team. Work with me here and just start the video below

and let it play while you read the rest of this post. Obama has shown his ability to fill the office of president ably if by nothing else than the highly effective campaign organization he has built and run. Obama is nothing if not plugged in to the modern media environment and all the tools it can provide for a new method of governing as Joshua Zumbrun writes in Forbes today, Obama's Machine. It's definitely a new day when you've got the co-founder of Facebook doing your campaign website.

Today, forty five years after Dr King's march on Washington and the "I have a dream" speech in August of 1963 and the fight over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law just ten months later in July, and all the civil unrest that followed we may have finally come to the beginnings of a post racial America. Now, if we can only get moving on getting to the post Neo-Con America.

It's going to be a bumpy ride I'm sure, a real roller coaster of a ride, one that may last beyond my lifetime - I participated in the Kennedy campaign in high school -, but a necessary ride that has finally begun. Obama is up to the ride I'm sure if he runs his administration as well as he has run his campaign.

If you're done with Choeur Gospel Celebration de Quebec with Sylvie Desgroseilliers and Oh Happy Day a few more videos are linked below and you might play these while you read Stephen Henderson from the Detroit Free Press today, Obama's win creates a new reality for world, and spend a bit of time on your own thinking about how far we've come, how far we have got to go, and how you, that's right you, are going to help get us there. Get us there today, tomorrow and all the next days. We surely need to get there.

Lyndon telling the nation "we shall overcome".

Pete singing We Shall Overcome.

And, finally Gill Scott - the father of rap music - telling us it won't be on the TV.

Oh Happy Day! The door is open now, we have to walk through. It's time to walk the walk!

And, just so we don't get too far from the cultural roots of this event here are a few quotes from the book of Romans, the fifteenth and the twelfth chapters as I recall, as best as I can recall them

May the God of Hope fill you will all Peace and Joy as you trust in Her so that you might overflow with Hope by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Do not repay evil for evil. As far as is possible live at peace with everyone. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

And finally, thanks to Marlyne who got me started today with her email entitled Oh Happy Day

What a night. I teared up when ABC predicted Ohio for Obama, as it sealed my conviction that we would win. ... I feel as if I got my country back tonight. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can reclaim the true values of America and move on.

See more of how things look at The Big Picture, The next President of the United States.

Feed, feed, feed

2008-10-19T16:04:00.005-05:00

RSS, Atom, Feedburner, Google Stats, sitemaps

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead,
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head"

did we get there? I think so, there's an RSS chiclet at the top right hand corner.

We'll see, we'll see, darkly through the glass very likely but we'll see.

Perhaps the doormouse had it correctly, it's been nearly a year now, now let's see how do we go about this ...

Perhaps some pictures to start with, yes, that might be the ticket.

Here's one from another soul who follows the doormouse's instructions scrupulously hour by hour like an office.

And, in my office last week on Sunday we found an early Winter in Beaver, Utah and a wonderful Fall in Detroit on Wednesday.

Walked to Greektown for a lovely lunch with a former workmate who I'd not seen in nearly forty years and whose sparkling blue eyes revealed that as always she has avoided being bored by a tireless dedication to life.

How would we get rj and Marlyne together? They would enjoy each other immensely I think. Oh, yes the virtual world that's where they could meet, here.

IED

2007-12-11T19:05:00.000-06:00

Acronyms, so many meanings for so few letters. Here, now, tonight, typing with my thumb on my phone to force a slow pace, it's explosive alright and intermittent but it's not a device it's a disorder. Like my "lysdexia" only a "reasonable accommodation" is possible never victory, never recovery. The dyslexia was reasonably accommodated in some serendipitous ways beginning at the age of four in 1951 when my father who had been teaching me to read using phonics discovered, much to his displeasure, that I could not read sentences of more than two or at most three words. After several visits to various extended family members who were teachers and the pediatrician it was decided that perhaps the best thing to do was to place me in school as soon as possible and hope that I either caught on in the hands of professionals or if necessary caught up by repeating the first few grades as often as required. The September before my fifth birthday in November I was placed in a private kindergarten and then the September before my sixth birthday I went into the first grade with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at St Mary's School. In every room at St Mary's there was a placard above the front blackboard with the caption

Read it, Say it, Write it and Know it

displayed beneath a lithograph, some Renaissance Master's work I suppose, depicting a toddler Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the traditional family pose with Joseph standing behind a seated Mary, Jesus in Mary's lap and both Mary and Joseph looking down beneath their halos at the three or four year old Jesus who stared with the Deity's omniscient eyes straight out at the viewer. We did lots of oral recitation as a group and lots of "read it, say it, write it" individually in school and at home. By the sixth grade most traces of dyslexia were not manifest as long as I kept to the program which was simply lots of drill in the old method, filling reams of paper with my work. Eight years with the nuns and this method seemed to do the trick. By my senior year in a public High School I came out of the middle of my graduating class with ninetieth percentile SAT's and advanced placement in English, Russian, French and Math. I went on in the space of the next twenty years through a complete baccalaureate program in Biochemistry but never graduating, did two years of graduate work in Physiology and Pharmacology and later actually earned a BS in Computer Science, the only actual degree. No one seems to know but me and perhaps my writing coach of these last ten years who has simply been patient, leaned on me hard to straighten out my tangled thoughts and never even suggested the obvious. So reasonable accommodation is possible in one area at least. But, with Intermittent Explosive Disorder reasonable accommodation seemed to be at best at the tender age of sixty still a distant and perhaps unachievable goal until today. The U S Navy, from which I am now officially retired, innumerable hospital laboratory jobs, countless outside sales jobs, marriages and sundry other relationships have all at one time or another fallen victim to IED. Today the current position as a mechanized mahoot nearly became a casualty due to my extreme displeasure over some rather long repair delays, I'm still here waiting on repairs nearly twenty four hours after the problems erupted. Repairs that could have been avoided if some timely action had been taken earlier as I suggested. I would have exploded and walked off this morning if it were not for a few kind words from a very insightful site manager who himself has many of the same opinions about our company as I do. My site manager, who if he hasn't had training as a counselor or analyst certainly seems to have the skills, simply dissuaded me from taking a rent car and going home by saying that perhaps things would work out today if I just gave it all some more time and that often he had the same urge recently but has restrained himself and found a good result in most cases, if not exactly the result he wanted at least better than things were before. His opening statement in response to my question as to what would be the best cab company to use to pick up my rent car was, "Oh, that's not necessary I'll have someone drive you. Are you going on vacation?" My site manager has been placed in one of my company's major locations as a trouble shooter to straighten out a few wrinkles that have developed over the years. This fellow, my site manager, who grew up in Germany but has only the slightest trace of not having had English as a first language, is a shining example of how respect is earned not demanded. He is firm but sympathetic, an excellent listener but not incapable of giving orders and expecting them to be carried out. He is renowned among the longer term employees as a fair, straight talking guy who can get things done. It was in that vein that he presented his suggestion this morning that I just wait a bit, not quite an imperative but a soft command that might best be followed. Where was this fellow in all the other jobs and situations in the past when I needed him? Perhaps the old Zen aphorism, "The teacher arrives when the student is ready", has come to me in the flesh. Perhaps, just perhaps, some reasonable accommodation with IED is possible before we take the dirt nap. No big boom today, thank God and my site manager. Onward ever onward and upward, nearer my God to Thee. Wonder what happens if you write "JMJ" in the notes section of the daily log? Perhaps the nuns were right

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 'In your anger do not sin' Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

their method seemed to work before. A good manager, everyone needs a good manager. What do those troublesome Pentecostals always say, "Let go and let God." Hmm. Hmm, indeed.

All the correct connections

2007-11-30T22:43:00.000-06:00

Tired of right and left, red and blue, well, try connecting correctly for a change to good solid thinking about some political issues, try

Friday Fronts: David Cole on Jack Goldsmith on The Daily Blague

and don't forget to try the PodCast.

Thawing out

2007-11-29T11:54:00.001-06:00

Idling away the morning folding laundry and watching Iceman on AMC. Took my road bud back to his truck around six, came back home and took Pelé to school around seven, came back home again and began on the INet with The Solar Queen's new notebook, Compaq Presario C727, where the keyboard is just too small for my hands. On mine now, my laptop, Compaq Presario V6171CL, a bigger screen and a much larger and more comfortable keyboard. I don't think anyone truly understood the real meaning of "personal computer" until the advent of laptops, notebooks and handhelds or smartphones, they are for me truly an extension of my being. The physical devices themselves, my smartphone and my laptop are so personal, so known to me in their look and feel that they are like my shoes or my truck, they are in every sense mine and I am as uncomfortable using someone else's as I would be wearing someone else's shoes even if they were the same size and a proper fit. Iceman has been taken down now by The Solar Queen's preprogrammed recording of Democracy Now on Free SpeechTV with Amy Goodman. I'll dump Amy in a minute and probably hear about it later tonight but for now I just marvel at the marketing in play here with Amy's physical appearance and apparent left sided vagus nerve compression, she has all the signs of a mild case of Bell's Palsy to me. God forbid that she has Ramsey Hunt syndrome, not nice. Amy looks like a Mennonite or Amish woman in the privacy of her own room, plain straight unstyled hair, no visible makeup and certainly "plain dress". The content is not remarkable just the presentation format, image and marketing, it is all image and marketing. Style is everything they say, different styles for different marketing niches, I suppose. Where will all this fragmentation end or better yet lead us? Trent Lott is on now with video that was done on a cell phone or some lo res video but fairly high res audio device, it is noted in the upper right hand screen corner as " live on 26 Nov." Back to Iceman and soon back to my road truck to retrieve my own power adaptor for my laptop, I robbed The Solar Queen's just a moment ago to power up my laptop which had gone completely battery dead in "hibernate mode" since I last closed the lid on the road truck probably the day arrived here back on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. As I say, I have no one except Pelé to simply to talk with and he does a fine job within the limits of his small but ever expanding and developing realm. I try not to stretch him too far too soon. I suppose I talk to a lot of people daily but all within the bounds of the particular social context, fuel desk clerks, counter clerks at the food shops, drivers on the radio, my company's administrative staff on the phone, my shipper's and receiver's personnel on the phone and in person. Sort of an "open prison" I'm in it seems. Well, enough I'm sure, you have a life. This is in many ways the same stream of consciousness, the conversational monologue, if you will, reduced to writing that I was so prone to write for you three or four years ago but it seems more readable now. Not much better content but more readable. Perhaps we are on the way to really learning to write readable interior monologues for a larger and more organized narrative, a short story perhaps. But only perhaps, so many things stand in the way, mood, my personal mood and the time remaining in a lifetime not being the least of the obstacles.

I'm going to copy this to Quezon, if only to provoke an email conversation. I have other email to answer from him and will do the answering by one thirty when I have to leave to pick Pelé up from school. Pelé could, I suppose, ride the bus but we have fallen into the habit of my taking him and picking him up when I'm at home and able.

I feel a certain kinship with poor old Charlie, the defrosted Neanderthal, in Iceman. How long have I been thawed out now, thawed out in terms of relationships, loving or physical - it really doesn't matter at this point, physical will do - with other humans of my kind? What are my kind, I wonder?

Quezon has included in the email that I need to answer this morning a very well worded rant about his dissatisfaction, and the general dissatifaction of many educated Filipinos, with his country and culture. I will ask if I can excerpt that part and foward it to BoozWha for his comments to both of us.

Have a pleasant day. My phone is on and with me. Call, write or come by.

Tricks of the trade

2007-11-28T11:50:00.000-06:00

How do I send email to someones cell phone?

Well, Bubba, here's how, at least for a number of CSP's that I've used successfully.

You have to know your recepient's CSP and then address the email to their "10digitphonenumber @ CSP MessagingPortal".

For example, for a Verizon cell phone whose number is 7135551212 use 7135551212@vtext.com.

Verizon: @vtext.com
Former AT&T customers: @mmode.com
Sprint: @messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile: @tmomail.net
Nextel: @messaging.nextel.com
Cingular: @cingularme.com
Virgin Mobile: @vmobl.com
Alltel: @alltelmessage.com OR @message.alltel.com
CellularOne: @mobile.celloneusa.com
Omnipoint: @omnipointpcs.com
Qwest: @qwestmp.com

Remember, any charges incured and the way messages are
delivered and displayed depends on the wireless device and service
plan.

How cozy

2007-11-28T05:22:00.000-06:00

How cozy and it will be that way for quite sometime in fact for evermore it would seem

2. Supporting the Republic of Iraq in its efforts to combat all terrorist groups, at the forefront of which is Al-Qaeda, Saddamists, and all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation, and destroy their logistical networks and their sources of finance, and defeat and uproot them from Iraq. This support will be provided consistent with mechanisms and arrangements to be established in the bilateral cooperation agreements mentioned herein. 3. Supporting the Republic of Iraq in training, equipping, and arming the Iraqi Security Forces to enable them to protect Iraq and all its peoples, and completing the building of its administrative systems, in accordance with the request of the Iraqi government. ~read more~

I try to restrain myself from drinking this early in the morning but this morning I just might relent. Won't someone, please, rid us of these troublesome NeoCons! And, the sooner the better. Where are Lee Harvey, James Earl or Charles when we really need them or is that just the way crazy people do things? Why surely no one would go out and create a stable of the unstable just in case no one might need to push them over the edge. Pushed of course in the right direction over the right edge. Well, let's not pursue this line of speculation lest the professional speculators send their cretinous goons out to talk to us, eh.

Trouble, we ain't got no trouble. None!

2007-11-24T07:55:00.000-06:00

Sidiki Conde lost the use of his legs at the age of 14. In Guinea, where he was raised, the handicapped are looked at with suspicion and fear. In an effort to fit in with his culture, Sidiki learned to dance on his hands. He now performs as a dancer and teaches other wheelchair users to do the same. This pod is set in Miami, Florida and follows several people in wheelchairs as they prepare to perform in public. ~read & see more~

Doesn't hurt my eyes any, no not at all.

2007-11-23T22:07:00.000-06:00

Now the heart, well, that remains to be seen. I would rather sail through a storm or two than stand on the pier. Every storm comes between long periods calm seas and fair winds. Looks like a pair of very rosy sunsets to me. With any luck there will be no red dawn, least wise nothing we can't handle. Ain't that right there, Quezon, ain't that right? And, me mate, Quezon, he said,"Try oranges." Funny fellow, Quezon, perhaps too much Curacao in his coffee lately. And so, Quezon and I have put out to test the seas again. How does it go

If you smile at me
I will understand
'Cause that is something
Everybody everywhere does in the same language

Something about wooden ships on the water as I recall, very free and easy I believe it went. Oh yes,

Go take a sister, then, by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away, where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don't need us

And it's a fair wind
Blowin' warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I'll set a course and go

I'm sure David will forgive me this lifting, he got it so right, so very free and easy.

Such a sweet sound to my ears

2007-11-23T21:41:00.000-06:00

Aggies top Longhorns!

Tidbits

2007-08-14T12:01:00.000-05:00

From The New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Catch Me, I’m Falling
By SAMUEL I. SCHWARTZ
Published: August 13, 2007
THE horrific collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis was but one more in the history of infrastructure failures, and I’m afraid it will be old news soon. In 1967, during the busy Christmas shopping season, the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, W.Va., and Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed, plunging scores of people into the river and killing 46. During my nearly 20 years as an engineer with the New York City Department of Transportation, I witnessed ~read more~

"Money is like manure, it should be spread around." - Brooke ( Russell Kuser Marshall ) Astor, 30Mar1902-13Aug2002. How do you properly list all the previous surnames w/o a narrative?

Jonis Agee, author of TheRiver Wife, related to James?

From Early Warning
Posted at 08:43 AM ET, 08/14/2007
Partisan Warfare
In the coming weeks, as Congress and the American public prepare for the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of the surge in Iraq, we'll hear a lot about the value of "professional" military advice. As President Bush has said, Washington ought not substitute "the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders."
But are military officers, specifically flag officers (generals and admirals), also political partisans? Increasingly -- and sadly -- they are. More important, the brass is profoundly "political," which is to say that its recommendations and decisions are hardly ever made for purely tactical or operational reasons....continue >>

From The Biscuit Report
Think about that for a minute. There are people in this country who believe, when hired to screen out naughty language and naked people, that non-profane criticism of George Bush somehow qualifies. We live in a country where it's possible to have such a "misunderstanding".Bravo, Republicans! Bravo! Why make it an actual crime to criticize the Dear Leader when you can just convince people to censor the criticism as a matter of course?

All I need now is a scene to plant this dialog within

Someone asked me recently at party, "Do you believe in Bush?" Not wanting to start a political conversation, I coyly replied, "Busch? No, God, no! Don't you have Miller Lite? Or, Killian's Red, that would be great," while I tensed with angst not knowing if they would take the bait and go to the bar or press me further. They took me for drunk and wandered away. Then I felt a warm surge of relief wash over me like the surf, "Believe in Dubbya? Believe? George W Bush? Really! Certainly not! Believing in or believing Dubbya is so ludicrous it makes believing in God seem rational," and I felt much better.

That dialog is largely stolen and reworded from Ann Lamott in one of the last chapters of Plan B: FurtherThoughts on Faith. Ms Lamott reminds me of Laurie Beth Jones who brought me Jesus in Blue Jeans: A Practical Guide to Everyday Spirituality but Ann is far more accessible to me. Laurie and Ann and I could talk in the church lobby but only Ann and I could go out and have a beer - I would be the only one drinking, Ann quit - and talk about faith and fucking. Admirably for a committed Christian Ms Lamott despises GWB and weaves this desperation and her wrestling with the resulting depression throughout Plan B where she deals, in language appropriate to the the topic and her mood at the time, with her daily battles in life and how her particular faith has sustained and strengthened her. Lamott is never preachy and though you might not agree with her you will, like I have, want her on your Lunch Dates I'd Love to Have list. I suppose that I should disclose that I listen to most books and have listened to unabridged versions of the two linked here. Both Laurie and Ann have soothing voices for the road but Ann just draws me in when she recounts how the apostles must have felt in the upper room on Holy Saturday, "... in a room filled with clouds of cigarette smoke I see some really wigged out guys drinking a bit of wine and thinking to themselves, 'boy are we really fucked!'"

Joni and the Cheshire Cat

2007-08-14T10:40:00.000-05:00

Warm as ice, cold as fire.
Bright as night, dark as day.
I've looked at
the Cheshire Cat that way.
But, still somehow
it's cat's illusions I have known,
I really don't know cat's at all.

Is it what it seems
the Cheshire Cat
the smile
the smile in my dreams?

Watch for Bubba meets the Zen Shrimper in Bubba's Bait & Sushi, coming soon.

I'm back

2007-08-12T17:50:00.000-05:00

Nearly a year since I've done any regular work here. Sometimes I feel like Amy, who commented on DB

Wow, how earnest and clever I was. And how utterly moribund Biscuit is. Every day I think to post on it, and then someone cries or yells "MOM, I need a box cutter and some glue!" and the moment is lost...

about not being able to tend to her blog because of her other responsibilities.

I am in Knoxville, TN since about eight my time, Central Daylight, last night when I fueled up and parked the truck to wait for my Monday morning delivery. It's a bit tight here at one of the older and smaller Pilot truck stops on the west side of Knoxville along IH-40. After I fueled up I had to circle back out in the street, come back in the parking lot, and then I waited for another driver to squeeze his fifty three foot dry van into one of the only open parking spaces directly behind the fuel islands, and then he very kindly got out of his truck and "spotted me" to back into the space next to his truck. There is just barely enough room to do it, pulling up through the fuel island and backing up to "hit the hole" puts you within inches of several obstructions, various curbs which bruise the side walls of your tires, the fuel island pump, trucks in the adjoining parking spaces and all the while other trucks are backed up in the parking lot coming in to fuel and waiting for you to park. Once I had gotten my truck settled into the space I got out to thank the driver, Anthony, who helped me. Anthony and I talked about trucking and all manner of things standing in the parking lot from around nine Knoxville time until nearly midnight with one break to buy soft drinks. It's a solitary business this over the road trucking and personal face to face conversation of any merit does not come often nor last long. Last night was a very unusual occurrence, generally such conversations last only minutes and are pure ritual courtesy but in this case we hit it off for some reason. I know Anthony lives in Chicago on the lakefront downtown with his wife and children, some of his past work history back to Seattle, WA and that he is originally from a small town in Mississippi and he has a similar grasp of my life. It turns out that we are both veterans of the US Navy though our service dates a very far apart, he enlisted in 1989 and I enlisted in 1967. I never asked for Anthony's last name nor he mine and likely we will never see each other again, but if we do meet again, there will certainly be the basis for another friendly conversation of some depth. Anthony and I are both from the South. Perhaps it's a Southern thing not asking for nor giving a last name when you spend some time with another person in a chance meeting, it felt very familiar and comfortable to me. We both agree that cornbread has no white flour nor sugar, only coarse ground yellow corn meal, bacon fat, salt, soda and buttermilk. And, we both recalled having regular family meals, as children, of ham hocks, navy beans, sliced purple onions, chow-chow and, of course, cornbread. All this is generally served with chilled buttermilk, ice water or sweet tea, your choice and sometimes you have all three yourself in the course of the meal. I can't recall in detail all that we talked about standing in the parking lot for nearly three hours but it ranged from the best routes around the traffic in the major areas of congestion to parenting practices.

Now after a mile and half round trip by foot along the Turkey Creek Greenway to the Wal-Mart Super Center I'm blessedly back in my air conditioned truck where the air is down in the high seventies and relatively dry, outside at five this evening it is still in the high nineties and even though the NWS shows the relative humidity at under fifty percent it's still seems "wet" outside to me. Perhaps lumping my week's supply of groceries back to the truck just made me work a little harder than usual or it is just damp along Turkey Creek. You don't realize what a half gallon of milk, eight packs of yogurt, a half gallon of orange juice, a half pound of pepper cheese, a pound of crackers, two rolls of paper towels, a half dozen bananas, four apples and a few other odds and ends really weighs until you pack it three quarters of a mile over the blazing asphalt back to your house. Now it's time to attend to some tedious financial issues just like last year at this time. And then, naptime until about six local time tomorrow morning when I'll set out to cover the last six miles to my destination. Living in forty eight square feet is interesting especially when you realize that you have to get a bed, first and foremost, into that six by eight foot area. But the adjoining office is only a single pace away and it's a spacious thirty two square feet, four by eight feet, with a very nice picture window view on three sides, high up where you can see what's going on. Three years off the road and now a full year back on the road. Yes, I'm back.

What Really Matters

2007-08-12T09:11:00.000-05:00

Did you ever want somebody back?
Not necessarily
in the way
that you might have had them before?
And, this is really sorry language , this had
this verbal talisman of possession.
But anyway, let's just suppose
that you want to revive a relationship
with somebody.

And,
so you start to chat 'em up
and maybe even direct them to
right here.
Well, if you're here,
this is where you're supposed to be.

Did I wound you?
Uh huh.
Deeply?
Yaep.
Am I sorry?
Uh huh.
Does that change anything?
Nope.

But, what's important,
I think,
is that somehow
my behavior
can demonstrate to you,
hopefully over an extended period of time,
that the faith and trust that you once placed in me was not misguided.
And,
that within whatever limits you would like to set for any further interaction,
I am prepared, as well as committed,
to perform.
Perform to your satisfaction.

And, that's
what really matters.

Dreaming of Connections

2006-12-31T12:04:00.000-06:00

Reading in Julian Barnes's "The Past Conditional" in this week's The New Yorker

Perhaps Grandpa would have taken his celestial pipe out of his mouth, given me an uncharacteristic wink, and murmured complicitly, "I once knew a very nice girl called Mabel."

I'm drawn back to a novel which takes the same imagery to begin as Barnes uses to close

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

and I wonder if that is a good enough reason to remember Jailbird and Vonnegut, wonder if such a connection is of any value, wonder if I shouldn't be able to place Kurt is some larger context and in some more particular relationship to the larger cannon of writing that is thought to be important. Then I think, "What the Hell, self abuse is good enough." Especially after having read Oran Pamuk talking about writers

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man—or this woman—may use a typewriter, or profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I do. As he writes, he may drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time, he may rise from his table to look out the window at the children playing in the street, or, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or even at a black wall. He may write poems, or plays, or novels, as I do. But all these differences arise only after the crucial task is complete—after he has sat down at the table and patiently turned inward. To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.

in "My Father's Suitcase" just a few pages later in the same issue of The New Yorker. Perhaps it is all self abuse, innumerable writers pleasuring themselves spewing their words out on page after page in medium after medium.

If as I heard WFB say once eyeing the stopwatch at the top of his clipboard while interviewing an author, "If an unexamined life is not worth living then certainly I'm a corpse." and knowing fullwell that WFB intensely examines his life and that he's just not telling anyone about it, perhaps not even himself, then perhaps writers are no more or less alive or worthwhile than others they just live and measure worth differently. Thinking now about how the NOW, the current moment, is the point of tangency between God and Man, the best taste of the infinite that can be had, I settle back into the hot water of my bath, open the tap for a bit more and read Pamuk's paragraph again thinking of the writers I know, RJK, Migs, Elisabeth and Vito Esterno wondering how writers might be like painters. If writers are painters, then I am a house painter, eh? Or perhaps a madman scraping a bit of color off everyone else's canvass and saving it on my pallette for some grand canvass of my own, a grand canvass which has as yet not even a charcoal cartoon.

Yo soy un conductor, yo soy un viejo Tejano gringo puro. ¿Y, yo soy un pinturista? No se.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be looking for a place to park my truck in Chicago as close to the Dan Ryan and West 51st St as possible until I can get it unloaded at eight o'clock Tuesday morning and all this will be a dream.

Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood.

2006-08-13T20:14:00.000-05:00

... non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

And that indifference to the state can be contagious. Lebanon's Christians may think of themselves as "Lebanese," but most of Hezbollah's Shiite constituency don't. Western analysts talk hopefully of fierce differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, but it's interesting to note the numbers of young Sunni men in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in recent weeks who've decided that Iran's (Shiite) President Ahmadinejad and his (Shiite) Hezbo proxies are the new cool kids in town. During the '90s, we grew used to the idea that "non-state actors" meant a terrorist group, with maybe a few hundred activists, a few thousand supporters. What if entire populations are being transformed into "non-state actors"? Not terrorists, by any means, but at the very minimum entirely indifferent to the state of which they're nominally citizens.

Hence that statistic: Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim. By comparison, in the most populous Muslim nation on the planet, 39 percent of Muslim Indonesians consider themselves Indonesian first, 36 percent consider themselves Muslim first. For more than four years now, I've been writing about a phenomenon I first encountered in the Muslim ghettoes of the Netherlands, Belgium and other European countries in the spring of 2002: Second- and third-generation European Muslims feel far more fiercely Islamic than their parents and grandparents.

That's the issue: Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood.

-read more-

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST, August 13, 2006

Think well, write well, it's always worth your time.

2006-08-03T18:46:00.000-05:00

Think well, write well, it's always worth your time. Tony Blair must have an outstanding group of researchers and speech writers. In speaking recently about the current conflict in Lebanon Blair said in part

It is still possible even now to come out of this crisis with a better long-term prospect for the cause of moderation in the Middle East succeeding. But it would be absurd not to face up to the immediate damage to that cause which has been done.
We will continue to do all we can to halt the hostilities. But once that has happened, we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region.
To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: We will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.
The point is this. This is war, but of a completely unconventional kind.
9/11 in the US, 7/7 in the UK, 11/3 in Madrid, the countless terrorist attacks in countries as disparate as Indonesia or Algeria, what is now happening in Afghanistan and in Indonesia, the continuing conflict in Lebanon and Palestine, it is all part of the same thing. What are the values that govern the future of the world? Are they those of tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity or those of reaction, division and hatred? My point is that this war can't be won in a conventional way. It can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative. Doing this, however, requires us to change dramatically the focus of our policy.
Unless we reappraise our strategy, unless we revitalize the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.
What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future.
It is in part a struggle between what I will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. But its implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values.
The root causes of the current crisis are supremely indicative of this. Ever since September 11th, the US has embarked on a policy of intervention in order to protect its and our future security. Hence Afghanistan. Hence Iraq. Hence the broader Middle East initiative in support of moves towards democracy in the Arab world.
The point about these interventions, however, military and otherwise, is that they were not just about changing regimes but changing the values systems governing the nations concerned. The banner was not actually "regime change," it was "values change." What we have done therefore in intervening in this way is far more momentous than possibly we appreciated at the time. -read more-

The British prime minister delivered this speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on August 1.

A speech well worth anyone's time to read and ponder.

Taxing thoughts

2006-07-29T10:32:00.000-05:00

A friend reviews Little Miss Sunshine today leading me to compare Mary Lynn Rajskub and Renee Zellweger, adding them both to the "Lunch Dates I'd Love" list I begin to wonder who said, "Wanting to meet the artist because you like the art is like wanting to meet the goose because you like paté." A woman I think from around here somewhere, a novelist, passed on I believe. Then I begin to ponder why I want

... when a grad student with whom he fell in love fell in love with the second-best Proust scholar

in my friend's review to read

... when his lover, a grad student, dumped him for the second-best Proust scholar

Taxing my brain again when what I really need to do is figure and pay my Federal and State income taxes for 2005. August 14th draws near. The weather here today is miserable, there's a real chance taxes might get paid today but who did say that about art, artists and geese? Ankle deep ponds of last night's rain litter the gray streets during the sunrise walk this morning with gray overcast skies nearly hugging the ground. Damp, close, windless, a bit more heat and New Orleans or Houston would come to mind. Ancient gray Schnauzer snoring at my feet now. Out the window green peppers and clusters of red cherry tomatoes tugging the vines down to where the Westie can graze. A dog who eats tomatoes, who knew? Pick tomatoes and peppers or pay taxes? The morning is young still. How many taxes could a pepper picker pay, if a pepper picker paid ...

Which is better

a dog who active verb ... or a dog that active verb ...

which is correct, does one or the other convey a different meaning? If there is a rule, can we break it to get a different meaning? Is it like Uncle Sid's middle aged housekeeper riding along Westheimer from downtown between Louisiana and Montrose Blvd for the first time, fresh off the plane from Guatemala going to meet her new jefé, eyeing the crowd on both sides of the street saying softly to me, "Mira, Jorge, los femininas.", using the contrast of gender between article and noun to avoid the vulgar M word? Can we cross languages like that and keep the mood, keep the meaning? Subtlety, subtlety, all is subtlety except penalties and interest.

Taxing thoughts.

Surf's Up! Who's got that coin from the fish's mouth?

2006-07-29T04:35:00.000-05:00

Surf's Up!, a call that always interferes with work. Work will always be there but good surf comes and goes.

A nice start from memeorandum a political news summary site with some interesting sister sites.

A few nice runs from the Washington Post, one from three years ago, one from this week

Hussein's Baghdad Falls
U.S. Forces Move Triumphantly Through Capital Streets, Cheered by Crowds Jubilant at End of Repressive Regime
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, April 9 -- Swept aside by U.S. troops who drove through the streets of Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein's government collapsed today, ending three decades of ruthless Baath Party rule that sought to make Iraq the champion of a modern Arab world but left a legacy of fear, poverty and bitterness.
As U.S. Army troops occupied the west ... -read more-

'Waiting to Get Blown Up'
Some Troops in Baghdad Express Frustration With the War and Their Mission
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 27, 2006; Page A01
"How did it become, 'Well, now we have to rebuild this place from the ground up'?" Fulcher asked.
He kept talking. "They say we're here and we've given them freedom, but really what is that? You know, what is freedom? You've got kids here who can't go to school. You've got people here who don't have jobs anymore. You've got people here who don't have power," he said. "You know, so yeah, they've got freedom now, but when they didn't have freedom, everybody had a job."
-read more-

Very tubular from Time

World
Condi in Diplomatic Disneyland
Viewpoint: The Secretary of State tells the Lebanese that the blood they're seeing represents the birth of a brave new order. She's convincing nobody
By TONY KARON , Posted Wednesday, Jul. 26, 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a thankless, all but impossible task in trying to sell the Arab world on the U.S. policy of delaying a cease-fire so that the Israeli military can continue its anti-Hizballah campaign. But her case was hardly helped when she explained that the violence that has already killed more than 400 Lebanese and turned more than a half million into refugees represents the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." Phrases like that and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that "whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East" carry a revolutionary ring that scares the hell out of America's allies in the region. It was revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao, after all, who rationalized violence and suffering as the wages of progress, in the way a doctor might rationalize surgery painful, bloody, even risking the life of the patient, but ultimately necessary. Social engineering is not surgery, however, and its victims find little comfort in the homilies of its authors.

-read more-

One final run from an obscure SciFi author

When there is no real hope, we must mint our own. If the coin be counterfeit it still may be passed.
- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light, 1968

Why am I having trouble sending tax money in?

OK, W-2's, 1099R's, 1009I's, bank statements, 2004 Intuit passwords, coffee ...

Ready, begin, www.turbotax.com. Who's got that coin from the fish's mouth?

Gets my attention

2006-07-19T06:12:00.000-05:00

In Western literature, the form of the novel is coincidental with the emergence of the bourgeoisie in the late seventeenth century, and this is why, for its first century, the novel is all about birth, possible orphanhood, the discovery of roots, and the creation of a new world, a career, and society. Robinson Crusoe. Tom Jones. Tristram Shandy.

To locate a beginning in retrospective time is to ground a project (such as an experiment, or a governmental commission, or Dickens's beginning to write Bleak House) in that moment, which is always subject to revision. Beginnings of this sort necessarily involve an intention that either is fulfilled, totally or in part, or is viewed as totally failed, in successive time. And so the second great problematic is about the continuity that occurs after birth, the exfoliation from a beginning: in the time from birth to youth, reproductive generation, maturity. Every culture offers and circulates images of what has been wonderfully called the dialectic of incarnation, or in FranÁois Jacob's phrase, la logique du vivant. Again to give examples from the history of the novel (the Western aesthetic form that offers the largest and most complex image of ourselves that we have), there is the bildungsroman or novel of education, the novel of idealism and disappointment (L'Education sentimentale, Les Illusions perdues), the novel of immaturity and community (like George Eliot's Middlemarch, which the English critic Gillian Beer has shown was powerfully influenced by what she calls Dar- win's plots for the patterns of generation that structure this great novel of nineteenth-century British society). Other aesthetic forms, in music and painting, follow similar patterns.

But there are also exceptions, examples of deviation from the overall assumed pattern to human life. One thinks of Gulliver's Travels, Crime and Punishment, and The Trial, works that seem to break away from the amazingly persistent underlying compact between the notion of the successive ages of man (as in Shakespeare) and aesthetic reflections of and on them. For it bears saying explicitly that both in art and in our general ideas about the passage of human life there is assumed to be a general abiding timeliness, by which I mean that what is appropriate to early life is not appropriate for later stages, and vice versa. You will recall, for example, the stern biblical observation that to everything there is a season and a time, to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die, and so on: "wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him? ... All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean ... -read more-

The text above likely tests the limits of fair use and was lifted from the first chapter of On Late Style by Edward Said, posted on The New York Times at First Chapters. An NYT registration is required to follow the links. I may have bitten off more than I can digest here but what I've read here will move me toward buying the book. There is, I'm sure, a vast literature in the history of the novel of which I'm completely ignorant save for Jane Smiley and there, as is indicative of my depth, I have read only the review linked here. I encourage your recommendations in the area to increase my resonance.

L'esprit de l'escalier

2006-07-12T22:01:00.000-05:00

Mes amis,

Remorse, regret, recrimination are they of any value at all in this party we call life? Such thoughts haunt me today. Let the rough side drag, eh? Ditch the past and run with the moment!

Perhaps, all I really need is a nice ride with the top down to the Bolivar Ferry and back, eh?

Un jour nous serons victorieux au dessus des escaliers, n'est-ce pas?

Le maître de l'esprit de l'escalier,

George

Something worthwhile

2006-07-12T19:15:00.000-05:00

Finally, from the daily stream corporate email something worthwhile

On July 25th, 2006, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies. If you have a cell phone, whether company owned or not, you will start to receive sale calls, and YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS. To prevent these calls you should do the following to get your number on the National DO NOT CALL List:

1) Call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time.
It blocks your number for five (5) years.

Or,

2) On the Internet, log onto: http://www.donotcall.gov/ and follow the on-screen 3 step instructions completely.
Again, it blocks your number for five (5) years.

I would, and you can, register any phone number, not just cell phone numbers, using this information.

Enjoy!

Elephants, Snakes, Blue Candles and Red Feathers

2006-06-02T22:50:00.000-05:00

Elephant repellent can be anything you like from the whimsical to the outrageous, from crossing your fingers to an excuse for public flatulence. As long as there are no elephants in view or recalled in recent memory by the audience any action serves to repel elephants. Generally the audience is young and gullible. Snake repellent works about the same way as elephant repellent. Always looking out for an elephant you might miss the snake and get bitten, while always looking down for the snake you might get squashed instead. Looking out and listening for elephants and snakes is hard work but having a repellent is much eaiser. Elephant and snake repellent is great fun but only if it is facetious. Let's go back a few years and search Wikipedia - admittedly not the best reference source but a convenient one - for some recent elephants and snakes

World Trade Center bombing on February 26,1993 in New York City; The Oklahoma City bombing on April 19,1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building; Centennial Olympic Park bombing on July 27, 1996 in Atlanta; The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.; Anthrax Attacks in the United States during the Fall of 2001 following the 9/11 event; Bali Nightclub bombing on October 12, 2002; Beltway Sniper Attacks during October 2003; Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004; London bombings of the subways and buses on July 7 and 21, 2005.

Just a few of the major elephants and snakes in the last thirteen years or so. Some are solitary snakes that would have been hard to detect, some are either dens of snakes or herds of elephants, depending on your point of view, that should have been at least partially detected. Wikipedia has even more comprehensive lists and I'm sure better sources like LexisNexis and others could reveal a mountain of events that could be termed snakes or elephants in the context of risk here. There just seem to be snakes and elephants everywhere. Damn! Maybe we live in a jungle. Who knew?

Real threats, real risks if you will, require serious avoidance measures. Risk avoidance requires risk detection and assessment. Detection is the real problem and precedes assessment and avoidance. Quine and Wittgenstein are correct, no matter how much they are ignored, how the question is framed is crucial to getting an answer, a real answer. No one wants to get bitten by a snake or squashed by an elephant. But, poor detection methods, poor ways to see snakes and elephants, ways that are very high tech but have very poor discrimination, ways that generate mountains of data about all the animals in the jungle but are very poor at unambiguously finding snakes and elephants or even traces of them, ways like the NSA's data mining of communications records, are in the last analysis nothing more than snake and elephant repellent. 'Who is talking to who?' may not be the best question, especially when the question is more like 'who is everyone talking to?'

Until the NSA either publicly fails, God forbid, in the face of another catastrophic event or publicly succeeds in foiling such an event the current methods will serve only to set public opinion against responsible and productive detection work. Maybe, just maybe, Stephen Kappes return to the CIA as the second in command under General Haden will produce more real detection and less in the way of snake and elephant repellent. I wonder what General Alexander will do now at NSA, will he continue the mining?

Maybe trying not to attract snakes and elephants unnecessarily would be better than believing that the current actions have repelled all the snakes and elephants. It's been nearly a year now since any snakes or elephants caused any trouble. Let's sift and chain another terabyte of communications records this week and see if the elephants and snakes stay away, eh? I hear they're lighting the blue candles and using the red chicken feathers this month in New Orleans too. Nope, no elephants, no snakes, no storms here, not a one. Anyone got any more rum, my hurricane is getting a bit light?

More light reading on snakes and elephants, feathers and candles

The NSA is on the line -- all of them
LISTENING IN
Big Brother Is Listening
Wiretaps: How to Fix FISA
How the NSA Does "Social Network Analysis"
Blue Candles, Red Feathers
Mo rum, pleeze

KISS, bad ideas are reason enough

2006-06-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

God bless Anthony Lane who in his recent review of The Da Vinci Code, both the book and the movie, points out the most fundamental and best reason to ignore the book, it is quite simply badly written. And, the movie can be ignored for the same reason since in the director Howard's own words it is a faithful adaptation of the book. All the press about the premises of the book, which are laughable at best, immediately turned me away from any attempt to read it. Like Lane I was able to see the movie fresh without being contaminated by the book experience, and like Lane I found the movie a complete waste of time except to have been well received as an entertaining outing by my mother-in-law, a retired librarian, who has read the book and found both lacking in merit. I am sick to death of all the Christian hand wringing over the Brown's book and Howard's movie and amazed, if not envious, about the cottage industry that has grown up debunking the book. Oh! Should I be so smart to write either the bad book or one of the debunkers. Forty million copies, who knew?

All of this hullabellew leads me ponder Lane's idea

Should we mind that forty million readers - or, to use the technical term, "lemmings" - have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text?

a bit more deeply as regards the blogosphere. Brown's work, at least from what I've seen in the movie resembles nothing so much as an extended blog entry from one of the tens of thousands of blogs claiming to have the truth about everything from Hiroshima to hemorrhoids. Bad ideas, and from what Lane says just plain bad writing also, are more than reason enough to ignore a book like Brown's. In the same way much of the blogosphere can also be ignored. Lemmings, perhaps like the poor, will always be with us. Watch the lemmings carefully and quietly move quickly out of their way. Hell hath no fury like lemmings blocked from their journey to the edge. Oh, by the way, did I mention the mid term elections are coming up. Lemmings anyone?

Earthworm Tractor Co

2006-05-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

Miserably slow here at work. The strangest things come up when you have idle time with the Net. I may have mentioned to you in the past my interest in reviewing old Saturday Evening Post archives to uncover the author of the Earthworm Tractor Co. fiction pieces I recall reading as an eleven year old. Searching on Wikipedia I found a very nice entry for The Saturday Evening Post which led to the web site for the current incarnation of the magazine which is now a bimonthly. A bit more digging found LookSmart FindArticles which produced

Botts and the biggest deal of all: the world's greatest salesman was face to face with the world's toughest customer

which revealed the author as William Hazlett Upson. As you can see from the link on Upson's name some of the work has been collected in books. The article linked above recalls all the flavor of what I remember reading as a ten year old, sort of Wodehouse like but not nearly as good as Wodehouse. Armed with Upson's name finally a treasure trove of information came up on Google and other sources. Perhaps the material is too dated to be of interest to any eleven year old today. We shall see since I plan to turn one of the books over to my eleven year old this month.

Before & After

2006-05-12T20:46:00.000-05:00

Dear Reader,

Rugs, that's what it's all about really. Absolutely the most amazing Dubbya piece recently. Thanks to rj for the heads up on this one. On the way home today Before and After: Telling Time by Calamity by Andrei Codrescu got me to thinking in a similar way about the ampersands in my life, the events that like an ampersand come between the befores and afters that demarcate ones life. Today the third child turns twenty one and that would get anyone to thinking, especially if, as in my case, you would be sixty five when the fourth child graduates from high school.

Before & After

High School

The living with mother of the first child

The first year of college

The first new car - a 1967 Austin Healey

The marriage to the mother of the second child

The second attempt at college

My twenty first birthday

The hospital jobs

The third attempt at college and finally the degree

The sales jobs

The marriage to the mother of the third and fourth children

The death of the mother of the first child

Driving the truck all over America and Canada

The irrepairable death at 250 000 miles of the last new car just last week

This current bout of the blues

Perhaps I just need a broader scope, say, something more like

Before & After

Dubbya

Peak Oil

GWOT

Or, maybe a narrower scope

Before & After

this next bite of birthday cake

writing the next entry in this list

Yup, that's it narrower scope. Breathe in, breathe out, enjoy. That's it, enjoy the moment,

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you ...

Don't drink to much, dear, and drive safely ... Call, if you're not coming back home tonight, please.

at least for now while the larger scope seems to be, at least in speculative anticipation, thoroughly unenjoyable.

Perhaps Codrescu has it right, shared calamity is the ampersand that builds community. Perhaps that's it, not having anyone who has shared all the calamities of my life.

RJ says it helps to write. Everyday he says write everyday. For me it's like knitting, I simply enjoy the typing. The prose suffers from that enjoyment of physically plunking down the words I'm afraid.

Wondering now if fifty nine is too old to go back over the road in a big truck. The simple life, 'git 'er done', get it from A to B on time more often than not. Two hundred and sixty nights away from home more or less but a hundred at home, maybe a few more. Not all bad, an individual income level that begins to break into the lower levels of middle class, generally all of Christmas week and New Year's week off. Money in the bank, relatively low stress, low oversight, see America. Hum!?

Join us later for the next entry in the continuing saga of George goes on with the continuing calamity of his life.

Cheers,

Points of Interest

2006-04-27T20:35:00.000-05:00

The careful reader ( I judge that there are perhaps as many as six readers of this blog worldwide ) of this blog will note some subtle changes in links and an increasing sparseness of postings. I have friends who live in the blogosphere and one in particular who is a master of the art of blogging which is only to say that he has been at it, blogging, for nearly a decade and really at it, writing, for a lifetime. Various factors have contributed to my dearth of postings over the last six months and my appraisal of these factors has changed over the months. At first I attributed the decline in postings to technical issues not the least of which is the miserable nature of a dialup connection, and then to spam comments, spamments. And now finally, I have come to see it as nothing more than a very delayed mid-life crisis. I am nearing the end of the sixth decade of life and will be half way through the seventh decade when the last child graduates from high school. From the last fact it should be easy to imagine that my history might be somewhat off the norm. That history for me seems to demand some recounting, if not explanation, but for now any effort seems to be blocked by what at first seemed to be regret which has now turned to remorse. Perhaps it is akin to K-R's stages of grief. Perhaps the progression is regret, remorse and then reappraisal with final acceptance of what has been brought forward that is worthwhile and what can be left behind. A tall order to pursue in writing for anyone but I'm sure my friend, the master blogger, would be the first to point out that the effort is well worth the time and pain. So we begin again here today with the bare minimum, nothing more than perhaps what is diary entry, some recent points of interest from the radio and the magazines.

Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 26, 2006 · Religion scholar Bart D. Ehrman, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, talks about his new book, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend.

Ehrman looks into the lives of three major followers of Christ, plumbing legend and the writings of the New Testament to illuminate facts and details about these figures.

Ehrman is also the author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew which chronicles the period before Christianity as we know it came to be.

Pentecostals Mark 100 Years of Worship
by Greg Allen

All Things Considered, April 26, 2006 · One hundred years ago this month, a small house in Los Angeles was the scene of a series of religious meetings where participants had a new kind of spiritual experience. They had emotional displays, spoke in tongues, and experienced remarkable healing -- all manifestations, they believed, of the power of the Holy Spirit "filling" the participants.

Today, Pentecostals claim more than half a billion adherents around the world. It's one of the fastest-growing social movements ever, and one that has had a profound impact on even mainstream religions.

THE LESSON OF TAL AFAR
Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?
by GEORGE PACKER
The New Yorker, Issue of 2006-04-10

The lessons that McMaster and his soldiers applied in Tal Afar were learned during the first two years of an increasingly unpopular war. "When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship, with ethnic and sectarian divisions", he said, in his hoarse, energetic voice. "When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things." Later, he said, "You gotta come in with your ears open. You can't come in and start talking. You have to really listen to people."

All of these items made me think for awhile putting aside for a few hours ruminating over my own life history. If you've not been exposed to any of them, I would suggest that all of them are thought provoking and well worth your time.

My connections here are uniquely personal I'm sure. What has all this to do with retrospection and mid-life crisis? Simple, it's summed up in McMaster's words from The New Yorker article with only a change of setting from the war zone of Iraq to the war zone of the mind and its brutal neurotic dictators, ego and doubt. And, then within that setting a consideration of hope.

If courage is acting correctly in the face of fear, if courage is not fearlessness, which is likely some kind of brain damage, but rather the ability to act and act correctly when the most basic emotions tend to paralyze, then perhaps faith is the sense of hope that sustains action in the face of doubt. If faith is acting correctly in the face of doubt, if faith is not surety, which is also perhaps some kind of brain damage as well, then faith is the ability to sustain hope in the presence of overwhelming doubt.

I would modify one of the pulpit pounder's favorites, "I know that I know that I know", to better reflect my reality, I know that I know that I don't know, that nothing is settled in this life, that only hope is the correct response to doubt. Hope, an abiding, unfathomable, wordless hope not reason is in the last analysis the only counter weight to doubt, doubt which defies words. There is likely only one correspondent who has been alerted to this posting that can even begin to see my connections here without further writing on my part. So we have some work to do, eh? Should you be that one correspondent with some insight, please, post a comment or write to me directly.

May the God of Hope fill you all with all Peace and Joy as you trust in Him so that you might overflow with Hope by the Power of the Holy Spirit!

Does it have a name? Dicami, per favore.

2006-02-18T20:05:00.000-06:00

In a large twelve inch cast iron skillet bring about three tablespoons of olive oil to sauté heat. Quickly brown one pound of hot Italian sausage in the olive oil. Cover and reduce the heat to simmer.

Core and dice several medium bell peppers, one green, one red, one yellow and one orange, if possible.

Peel and cube, about sugar cube size, four tennis ball size Yukon gold potatoes. Place the potatoes in a covered microwaveable dish and nuke on high until tender, about five minutes. Similarly, dice, peel and nuke a softball size Spanish onion.

Add the cubed peppers and the microwaved onions to the skillet around the sausage, cover and continue simmering about ten minutes.

Add the microwaved potatoes to the skillet on top of the sausage, peppers and onions. Salt the top of the potatoes, and grind on a good measure of mixed fresh pepper corns and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Cover and continue simmering for forty five minutes or so.

Drain the accumulated liquid from the skillet and discard. Remove and reserve all the sausage. Increase the heat and use a spatula to turn the potato, onion and pepper mixture on high heat until the potatoes are slightly browned. Add a bit of olive oil, if necessary. Remove the skillet from the heat when the potatoes are just beginning to brown.

Slice the sausage into generous medallions and combine with potatoes, peppers and onions in the skillet.

Garnish with a small amount of crumbled crisped bacon, a small amount of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a tiny sprig of fresh rosemary.

Serve hot in broad shallow bowls with a good strong red wine and garliced or plain French bread. Excellent on bitter cold days under gray snowy skies for lunch.

What is it, does it have a name? Got me, but it tastes great. It came to me in a dream.

Goda!

Giorgio

Bumbling along

2006-01-21T17:28:00.000-06:00

So, my friend writes the other day about reading these Cheever short stories

Just a thought

Late the other night, I was reading a John Cheever story, "The Wrysons," in which a suburban woman is afflicted with a recurring dream of nuclear holocaust. The dream winds up with a sort of yacht-club immolation scene in which boaters are drowned as they over-crowd the waters of refuge. In the dream, she weeps "to see this inhumanity as the world was ending."

Well, it isn't the world that is ending. The post-holocaust planet will go on spinning somehow, and opportunistic life-forms that have been waiting for the opportunity will flourish. (For example, a virus that replicates through the digitized memory of chatted vacuities such as "I'm standing outside your building, where are you?") Life will begin the long trek back to Descartes. This much we know. But I found myself wondering this evening about cultural extinctions in our own long past. One hundred fifty thousand years is no time at all on the geological scale, but it's plenty of time, I imagine, to scrub the traces of human artifact from the face of the earth. We think of the time between the moment of homo sapiens's unmistakable arrival (whenever that was) and the composition of the first granary account as a long, boring and unrecorded progression toward us. But what if we've done this already a few times? What if there were was a New Yorker seventy thousand years ago - and all record of it has been obliterated by natural processes, just as natural processes would clear Earth of our record in, say, fifty thousand years? What if, far from living in savannahs and bumbling our way toward speech, we've done this sophisticated cultural thing a few times already, but with such catastrophic results that We Don't Remember?

As you know, my mind doesn't drift toward science fiction. But I found myself plausibly wondering...

(But it's another Cheever story altogether that I urge you to read, a lovely tale called "The Duchess.")

And, I tried to respond with a comment

RJ,

From the World of Unintended Results

I know you intended to point me to Cheever here and just might not be interested in where the images in your note here have taken me but indulge me for a moment, please.
bumbling our way toward speech, we've done this sophisticated cultural thing a few times already, but with such catastrophic results that We Don't Remember?

My head is still reeling from finishing Sam Harris's End of Faith last night. Harris deserves a good rereading with substantial note taking, but that will wait, I think, until we've finished Freeman's Closing of the Western Mind. End of Faith creates for me its own special flavor of intellectual and spiritual vertigo which is only amplified this morning reading your note here and being led back to Augustine, Manichaeism, Origen and the issue of reincarnation. Spooning out some of the bigger chunks from this soup pot of philosophical rememberances we find the tasty morsel of

THE SENTENCES OF SEXTUS AND OF THE PYTHAGOREANS CHADWICK J Theol Studies.1960; XI: 349
wherein we find

Whatever you honour above all things, that which you so honour will have dominion over you. But if you give yourself to the domination of God, you will thus have dominion over all things.
and
The greatest honour which can be paid to God, is to know and imitate Him.

causing us to remember how in the eighth grade we posed questions to the dear Sisters of the Incarnate Word and the Society of Jesus Fathers about Constantine's influence on the early church and Neo-Platonist influences in Augustine's writings. And, causing us particularly to remember how irritated they all were by these questions. Fortunately for the fathers and the sisters but unfortunately for us we didn't know much about the Buddha then. We really thought we had put all this to bed after the debacle of the first college year in Austin. Perhaps, we are reincarnated but we can only hope that it comes without the memory of the troublesome issues while still somehow preserving and transmitting forward the benefits of whatever positive accomplishments occurred in previous steps. We are perhaps a bit micro-reincarnated every year of the current life and there is much We Don't Remember for good reason. Meanwhile, later that same lifetime we have put "The Duchess", which appears just after "The Wrysons" in The Stories of John Cheever, on the reading list. Page 347 in my copy, how about yours? Likely it's time now to do a bit of sitting, eh?

Bumblingly yours,

George

But, his antispam measures have taken over and everything is now subject to approval. Approval, the bane of my bumbling life.

Git 'er done!

2006-01-07T19:29:00.000-06:00

"Git 'er done!", seems to have a venerable history.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Thomas H. Huxley
English biologist (1825 - 1895)

from The Quotations Page

Perhaps this year we will progress further in a more thorough understanding of this principle.

A fine fellow, former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, has passed on, but he will not be forgotten

2005-12-11T12:03:00.000-06:00

A fine fellow, former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, has passed on, but he will not be forgotten anytime soon in my house. The following narrative is taken largely from the AP report today.

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.

He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery.

He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.

With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.

In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.

In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."

In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick."

In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems."

On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.

In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.

"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."

McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.

In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons -- "they strut and waddle" -- and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together.

He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good.

McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988.

For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

"I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday.

The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs.

Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen."

My early involvement during high school to encourage the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was my first exposure to Eugene McCarthy who has been recognized publicly by this nation as a singular force in civil rights legislation

Eugene McCarthy has exemplified the highest standards of public service and dedication to constitutional principles through his efforts to shape legislation on civil rights,

From Section 1. Findings, (3), S. 663, To authorize the President to present a gold medal on behalf of Congress to Eugene McCarthy in recognitioin of his service to the Nation., IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, March 29, 2001

Campaign activities for Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Edmund Muskie form the backdrop of many of the best years of my early and middle twenties back when it seemed possible to turn the behemoth we call American culture at least partly in a better direction. But, now the words of Emerson in "The Method of Nature", An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841 seem to ring more true than in the day they were written

The land we live in has no interest so dear, if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of days of reason and thought. Where there is no vision, the people perish. The scholars are the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of the earth. No matter what is their special work or profession, they stand for the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a common calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the material interest is so predominant as it is in America. We hear something too much of the results of machinery, commerce, and the useful arts. We are a puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following, are our diseases. The rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man. -read more-

Once upon a time Democrats and Republicans alike could inspire young men and women to noble action, but lately the only inspiring actor on the political scene for me has been Barack Obama who has yet to find an enduring national audience. McCarthy is an enduring inspiration, a man whose life and thoughts are well worth reading into if you're not old enough to have been involved in his presidential campaigns.

Just when you think

2005-11-28T16:55:00.000-06:00

Just when you think you couldn't find a better gift than say the John Bobbit signature set of Ginzu knives along comes

Who could resist it at just less than a c-note? I must write to Lorena, I know she'll just love it. And, our thanks to RJ for pointing out this little gem and others that are so necessary this time of year.

Beautiful and not so beautiful

2005-11-27T16:00:00.000-06:00

There is a place in China, Harbin, where from time to time some beautiful things happen, namely the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival which has been recorded in magnificent detail in 2003 and 2005 by R. Todd King. Over the years with the changes in the political and economic climate Harbin has fallen on some hard times

It was once a bustling hub of heavy industry, but many of its people have been out of work for years after local state-owned enterprises collapsed under the pressure of economic reform.

The Sunday Times, 27 Nov 2005

and most recently some very hard times

Cover-up can't hide murky water truth China Daily 20051125

Wen visits Harbin; Russia offered sorry AP 200511270918 from China Daily

China's premier visits waterless city 20051126

When the taps run dry 20051127

with the recent spill of over one hundred tons of benzene in the Songhuajiang River several hundred miles upriver from Harbin at Jilin. One hundred tons of benzene is an enormous amount of benzene by any measure, a large economic loss for those who spilled it, and a huge environmental and public health disaster for all those along the river. The immediate and future potential harm this benzene spill can have for millions of people is simply immense. The sheer ugliness of this chemical spill in every dimension stands in stark contrast to the great beauty that you can see in the photographs we've linked above from the Snow and Ice Festival. As China races headlong into the industrialized future, one she will likely dominate soon in the region and perhaps globally, the tension between economic and human values will only increase. We can only hope that broad public exposure of events like the recent ones in Harbin will help to achieve a better balance between the economic and human values. China will perhaps prove in the near future to be the ultimate test of how large societies can balance economic growth through free market systems, or nearly free market systems, with a broader concern for basic human values like adequate sources of clean water. What has happened here in China will affect the entire length of the Songhuajiang River downstream from Jilin through China, on through Russia and out into the North Central Sea of Japan which washes the shores of not only China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and Japan, but also ultimately the Pacific Rim and the rest of the world. This is a global event that bears watching closely not only for the Chinese response but also the responses of all those affected.

More of one thing leads to another

2005-11-26T08:02:00.000-06:00

More of one thing leads to another was demonstrated this morning while reading

The Method of Nature

An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi,
in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841

by R.W. Emerson

we came across the word inchoation

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it? That rushing stream will not stop to be observed. We can never surprise nature in a corner; never find the end of a thread; never tell where to set the first stone. The bird hastens to lay her egg: the egg hastens to be a bird. The wholeness we admire in the order of the world, is the result of infinite distribution. Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new emanation. If anything could stand still, it would be crushed and dissipated by the torrent it resisted, and if it were a mind, would be crazed; as insane persons are those who hold fast to one thought, and do not flow with the course of nature. Not the cause, but an ever novel effect, nature descends always from above. It is unbroken obedience. The beauty of these fair objects is imported into them from a metaphysical and eternal spring. In all animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can account for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but makes the organ.

and knowing from the context that inchoate can't possibly have any meaning we look up inchoation and find a caution about the age of the definition and the age of the source of the definition

Quick definitions (inchoation)

(n.) Act of beginning; commencement; inception.

(This definition is from the 1913 Webster's Dictionary and may be outdated.)

And, of course who can ignore such cautions, so we are led to,

inchoation : Webster's 1828 Dictionary

which is nearer the year of Emerson's address and very likely his reference. And, what do we find but

Webster's 1828 Dictionary, Electronic Version by Christian Technologies, Inc.

where from the tone of the other books available from Christian Technologies I would doubt that the folks at CTI would be much in line with me or dear old RWE in terms of theology, but I would bet my bottom dollar that CTI claims American culture as Christian in origin. In fact we find on the page titled The American Student's Package on CD a note at the bottom of the page

*American Quotations includes a comprehensive compilation of nearly 4,000 quotations throughout American history from Presidents and historical figures plus biographies, all based on the US Christian heritage; passages and phrases influencing early and modern American history, referenced according to their sources in literature, memoirs, letters, governmental documents, speeches, charters, court decision and constitutions.

which if it doesn't give the game away certainly begins to make my speculations more solid, eh? When will these dunderheads realize that Jefferson, Franklin, Emerson, Parker and scores of others were Christians whose theology would mystify if not totally appall the modern American Fundamentalist Christian?

Recently we saw the movie Kingdom of Heaven, and it wouldn't seem to me to be much of a stretch to me to give a sound Biblical basis to a line from the movie, where Balian hammers home the point about the supremacy of religious tolerance when he hands over the Holy City to Saladin, he tells his followers

God is in your head and your heart, not in any particular place.

And, we might logically add not in any particular book. It would seem easy to me to use no more than

Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

and one of the last verses of Matthew

Matthew 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

to give Balian's line a Biblical basis. As we mentioned yesterday, the only unforgivable sin Jesus spoke of

Matthew 12:31,32 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

was to deny the presence or power of the Holy Spirit. So it would seem to me that the only dispute would be the manner in which I choose to see that power and presence expressed and the mode of my connection to it. But, then what do I know, the RC church excommunicated the likes of me a long time ago.

Jesus remains to my mind one of the best kept secrets of the Bible and the most unknown figure of Christianity. And, America's Christian heritage remains the best kept secret of American history. A little more reading of American history wouldn't hurt anyone, and a good deal more reading of Emerson and Jefferson would be of great benefit to the "Christian Heritage of America" crowd, they just might realize that they are not in the same room with these folks. Or, Praise God!, they just might become Christian Deists, or Christian Transcendentalists, or, wonder of wonders, Christians tolerant and accepting of another view of the world. For a good take on the simplified view of life try "A Little Knowledge" from our friends at Outer Life.

Miracles and Metaphors

2005-11-25T06:27:00.000-06:00

A number of people seem to be reading Erik Reece's recent essay in the December Harper's "Jesus Without The Miracles: Thomas Jefferson's Bible and the Gospel of Thomas" and writing about the essay. The two best that I've seen so far are

"Thomas, Jefferson, and Stewardship", posted November 24, 2005 at The Daily Blague

and

"The gospels of Thomas", posted November 23, 2005 at Philocrites

Particularly interesting from Philocrites was the link to R. W. Emerson's 1838 Address to the Divinity School. These three pieces have reminded me once again how small, how absolutely petty, and contentious the legalists can be and they, the rabbis dancing on the head of a pin as I like to call them, can absolutely suck the life out life itself leaving a hollow tasteless husk that they will claim to be the essence of life when in fact it is nothing more than the wrapper. And, before the metaphorical apologists get started on wrapper, let's set that straight, I said wrapper, not peel or skin. Wrappers are external to a product and of no substance, peels and skins are integral to a fruit, vegetable or animal and do contain nutrients. But, we said wrapper didn't we, so don't start with the wrapper having the life in it, eh? The richness of Emerson's language and the depth of his thought along with the interesting takes on Christianity by the blog authors and Reece which again have a good deal of depth and richness stand in stark contrast to the tedious legalism of the Fundamentalist Christians and their tag alongs who have recently been seen featured in the national news magazines and other venues cheerfully wanting to explore the arguments about the origins of life from a point of view they want to term "intelligent design" so as to some how separate it from the arguments of "creationism". The "intelligent design" arguments real flavor can best be tasted in the near charlatanism of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and its director, Dr. Stephen Meyer, in the position paper THE WEDGE STRATEGY the opening introductory paragraphs of which would be nearly laughable if only they weren't presented seriously, and especially if they didn't have the ear of a number of members of the current administration in Washington. We have been down these roads before with the conservatives so perhaps there is hope in this instance, but the road was last time a bit of a rough ride down to the intersections where reason was available and there is no guarantee that this time we will not be swallowed by one of the potholes the conservatives have created like the War in Iraq.

The only unforgivable sin Jesus spoke of

Matthew 12:31,32 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Jesus, the best kept secret of the Gospels and the least known figure of Christianity.

I am rambling again. In any event read R. W. Emerson's 1838 Address to the Divinity School and the other items I've cited above and then compare them to what passes for thought with the creationists. Consider the broadness of Emerson's view and the narrowness of the current administration's view of life in general and then perhaps you can wonder as I do if the root causes of the conservative malfeasance in thought and policy like we've seen from the Bushies are not really spiritual in nature. Miracles and metaphors are in many ways the same and as I recall the mircales were not for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, but for those to whom the Gospels would appear as foolishness.

Honk, if you like "Horn Of Plenty" aka www.hornofplenty.co.uk

2005-11-24T06:30:00.000-06:00

Recently, we wrote to the author of Horn of Plenty, a site well worth your time I belive.

Mr Quink,

Honk, if you like "Horn of Plenty" aka www.hornofplenty.co.uk.

We held this sign up recently on my block and the noise was deafening. Of course mine is the only house on the block.

A small typo you might want to attend to under the Parodies heading

As we always tell our lawyers, writing a parody does not involve stealing someone else's ideas. It involve stealing their ideas, ...

might better read

As we always tell our lawyers, writing a parody does not involves stealing someone else's ideas. It involves stealing their ideas, ...

I found your site attempting to chase down the "Horn of Plenty" link on the sign in page from GMail this morning. I think I have gotten the far better end of the deal in finding your site rather than whatever GMail was trying to show me with their dead link. Whatever free time presents itself today will likely be spent in further digging into the strange twists and turns of your mind. What a fine piece of work the collection of parodies on Horn of Plenty is, thank you.

We have our own not so nearly interesting nor well done blog, The Quality of the Light, largely as the result of encouragement we have received from an old roommate and far more accomplished blogger who writes, The Daily Blauge.

I expect a good deal of resonance from reading your work since I have a number of old workmates who are UK expats and who now live in Texas, an ex in Maidstone who works for the National Health Service, a deep affinity for Guiness and good Scotch Whiskey, and I also spent eight years under the care of the nuns, mainly the good Carmelite sisters and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. Who could possibly forget a grade school principal whose name was Sister Mary of Perpetual Help.

I think we'll just post this note on my blog to make the world a bit more aware of your site.

Again, thanks for your effort with Horn of Plenty, we look forward to spending more time with you today.

Best regards,

George

Re: Southern Girls

2005-11-12T09:27:00.000-06:00

Recently, I had some correspondence with a friend about GRITS, she is from Huntsville,Texas and I am from Red Hill, Texas.

Charlotte,

A clean copy with a bit more material can be found at

G.R.I.T.S. - Girls Raised In The South

All of the entry is good, but if you just want the text scroll down to

I have a friend from Bawston, bless her heart, who thinks it's hilarious when I say I've got to "carry" my daughter to the doctor or "cut off" the light. She also gets a giggle every time I am "fixin" to do something. And, bless their hearts, they don't even know where "over yonder" is, or what "I reckon" means! My personal favorite was my aunt, saying, "Bless her heart, she can't help being ugly, but she could've stayed home."
Southern girls know bad manners when they see them:
a. Drinking straight out of a can.
...

and go on from there. As you may or may not be aware this is also the title of an exellent book

Grits (Girls Raised in the South) Guide to Life (Illustrated)
By Deborah Ford, Edie Hand
Hardcover / 224 Pages / E P Dutton / April 2003 / 0525947264

Thanks for reminding me of a wonderful text that's been passed around the net for quite awhile and the book, which I really do need right now for another question.

I don't think of myself as being from the South do you? I don't find much in common with the Southerners, people who constantly remind you that they are from the South, from AL, MS, GA, SC, AR, VA. I do find a good deal of resonance with people from rural backgrounds or from families where the immediate parents are from rural backgrounds. I think of myself as being from East Texas, The Big Thicket, Texas, but not a typical TEXAN not the loud JR from Dallas type, perhaps more Billy Bob Thorton is my style. As I learned to say in South Texas where I lived for over a decade,

Yo soy un Tejano gringo puro, y yo soy un viejo vacquero tambien, verdad

I am a pure Texas gringo and an old cowboy as well now, ain't that so.

Keep'em coming in Charlotte. You got any fat back so I can make beans tomorrow. Just a bit, if you've got it, please. I've looked the beans and changed the soak water once, tomorrow morning I'll change the water again, throw out the floaters and start them to boiling. You comin' for navies, cold sliced purple onions, chow-chow, bacon and corn bread tomorrow for dinner. And, you know dinner will be after church in the middle of the day don't you now. Supper, the meal closer to sun down than noon, is often skipped on Sundays since dinner is usually big and always after church, generally around two or three, eh? But, lately I've heard people refer to this same meal as Sunday supper and that distresses me, since if they invite me for Sunday supper this time of year I probably won't show up until five or six in the evening.

On 11/12/05, Bioniclady
Subject: Southern girls

> > Southern girls appreciate their natural assets:
> >
> > Clean skin
> >
> > A winning smile
> >
> > That unforgettable Southern drawl
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their manners:
> >
> > "Yes, ma'am."
> >
> > "No, sir."
> >
> > "Thank you darlin."
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls have a distinct way with fond expressions:
> >
> > "Y'all come back!"
> >
> > "Well, bless your heart."
> >
> > "How's your Mama?"
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their summer weather report:
> >
> > Hazy

> >
> > Hot
> >
> > Humid
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their vacation spots:
> >
> > Hilton Head beach
> >
> > Daytona beach
> >
> > Panama City beach
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know the joys of summer:
> >
> > Golden tans
> >
> > Flip-flops in every color

> >
> > Strapless sun dresses
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know everybody's first name:
> >
> > Honey
> >
> > Darlin'
> >
> > Sugar ("Shugah")
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know the movies that speak to their hearts:
> >
> > Fried Green Tomatoes
> >
> > Driving Miss Daisy
> >
> > Steel Magnolias
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their religions:
> >
> > Baptist
> >
> > Methodist
> >
> > Football
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their country breakfasts:
> >
> > Red-eye gravy with country ham
> >
> > Grits
> >
> > Homemade biscuits with mama's homemade jelly
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their cities dripping with Southern charm:
> >
> > Charleston (Chawl'stn)
> >
> > Savannah (S'vanah)

> >
> > Atlanta (Adlanna)
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their elegant gentlemen:
> >
> > Men in uniform
> >
> > Men in tuxedos
> >
> > Rhett Butler, of course!
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know their prime real estate:
> >
> > The Mall
> >
> > The Country Club
> >
> > The Beauty Salon
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know the three deadly sins:
> >

> > Having bad manners
> >
> > Cooking bad food
> >
> > Wearing too much makeup in the summer
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Southern girls know men may come and go, but friends are fo'evah!
> >
> > Now, darlin', send this to some GRITS (Girls Raised In The South)
> >
> > or ones who wish they had been!
> >
> >
> >
> > If you're a Northern transplant, bless your heart, honey, fake it.
> >
> > We know you got here as fast as you could.

--
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--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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--
George
www.qualityofthelight.blogspot.com

Up and down, very nice all around, home safe and sound

2005-10-29T20:55:00.000-05:00

Up and down, very nice all around, home safe and sound. A fine day with the family up in the air, calm and clear with visibility unlimited and down in the ground, dark and cool with silver mold and the hibernating bats. Days like this are made in heaven but enjoyed on earth.

One thing leads to another, walk don't talk

2005-10-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, a friend posted a piece on precocity, Malcolm Gladwell at The New Yorker Festival in which two paragraphs really caught me

Malcolm Gladwell argued, quite persuasively, that the qualities that produce precocious children are not in synch with the qualities that distinguish productive adults. Children learn things to the extent that they mimic doing them, and precocious children are just faster mimics. Mimicry, however, is obviously not an important, or even desirable, trait in adults. Somewhere along the line, the outer-directed (or -focused) precocious child must grow into the inner-directed adult, and quite often this doesn't happen. One of Mr Gladwell's examples was the Hunter College Elementary School, an extremely selective institution that was designed to nurture future Nobelists and the like. It hasn't produced them. What it has produced is a crop of happy and successful people, but few superstars. Mr Gladwell's hunch is that these kids were so smart that they grasped the great sacrifices that aiming for the top requires - and decided to go for happiness instead. It seems clear that precociousness is not the fruit of ambition; it's simply an inborn characteristic. So it may well be that the gifted children at Hunter lack the deep competitiveness that drives some people toward the attainment of honorable fame.

The downside of privileging the precocious is that it demotes the importance of work. Of practicing an instrument. Of editing a text toward perfection. Of doing all the research that a project requires, unstintingly. Of leaving no stone unturned. Now, you can regard such work as drudgery, the necessary evil associated with achievement. Or you can look at it as the whole point. Achievement? There is no such thing as achievement, not for the achiever. Achievement notifies other people that something remarkable has been done, but it's the doing, not the having done, that matters. The only thing that we ever achieve is, as the French have it, death itself. We are achieved. At the risk of appearing to reinvent an "Eastern" philosophy, I am opening myself up to the idea that mindful work is the thing that counts most, perhaps even more than love. Perhaps the two go together.

And, then later I answered another friend who had written in conjuction with the care she is giving one of our other friends. She takes great comfort in the Christian Bible and was perplexed about someone dear to her who though an avowed athesist had lit candles in the church recently for their parents

Ch-------,
Oh, there is never enough on that subject, we just have other things to do and it is very complicated. Everyone has a religion even if that religion is no religion. We are as a group, a group of thinking primates, apparently compelled to pose and answer the questions, "What does it all mean?" and "How do I make sense of it all?" Why do people light candles and deny a belief in God? I don't really know, I can speculate, but it serves no purpose. I have found from decades of observation that the best thing to do is to keep your beliefs to yourself and do what you think is right, I emphasize you here, not your church, not your family, not your friends, not anyone but you. And, that is a process we spend a lifetime getting down. I can tell from what you've said here that you are actively engaged in the process, and when you say

try to live by God's word that that is what matters

you have got it exactly right as far as I'm concerned. As we say in East Texas where I'm from, up just to the Southwest of Texarkana in Red Hill, Texas

Bring me the baby! I don't want to hear about no labor pains, bring me the baby.

and even more to the point

If you be talkin' 'bout it you no have no time to be doin' it, and if you be doin' it, you no be havin' no time to be talkin' 'bout it, and if you gets to it and you can't do it, well, brother, there you is.

These instructions were generally prefaced by the phrase, "Lil Mark" and followed by the phrase, "Now get yo lil' white butt back out there in that garden and get them weeds pulled and hauled out before noon so's you can come in here and eat lunch like a proper person." Beulah Haskins was about ten years older than my grandfather, black and the caretaker of my grandfather, father and myself when all of us were around the age of ten. Beulah spoke these words to me often when I came in from the summer garden chores complaining about some difficulty, generally the heat or the bugs, in completing my assigned tasks. She has proven, as I get older to be one of the wisest people I have ever known. Beulah went to the Gum Springs Baptist Church north of Red Hill. One of the first 'uppities to not go to our church' as my relatives used to say about Beulah. My family had at one time several sections of land northwest of Red Hill and on the plot that remained, just slightly less than a section, where I went to visit in the summers, there was the family cemetery and the family owned church, St. Luis. Note that I said family owned, we never ceded the church nor the property that my great grandfather built in 1868 to the RC church. We had the Diocese of Dallas and later the Diocese of Texarkana send a visiting priest on Sundays to say mass and on request to say funeral masses, but the church and it's grounds always remained firmly in the hands of my family. Often times we buried our own and the funeral mass was later on when it was convenient for the priest to come out, I've been told. In Red Hill you had four choices for a last name, Henderson, Lambert, Blackwell, or Haskins. If your last name was Haskins, the other three of us used to own your relatives at one time in the past. One thing that Beulah always said and that has held true over the years in my experience is that you can talk all day about God and Jesus but unless you get out there with your mouth shut and show people God and Jesus through your life, you are wasting your time and very likely just might send people running the other way unless you are very careful. I've taken her message to heart and so it seems have you. One of my favorite verses is

1 John 3:18
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:17-19 (in Context) 1 John 3 (Whole Chapter)

If everyone who is so quick to quote Jn 3:16 at the drop of a hat would take 1Jn3:18 to heart then perhaps we could all follow this verse more completely

Hebrews 10:24
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.Hebrews 10:23-25 (in Context) Hebrews 10 (Whole Chapter)

I leave you with the best blessing I know

^Romans^15:13^{(New International Version)}

13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,

George

Later that same day I wrote a comment on the Gladwell piece noted above in which I said

Love is no more and no less than the mindful work of constantly holding another in what Abraham Maslow so wonderfully called unconditional positive regard. I do not believe that you have so much reinvented Eastern philosophy, especially a narrow branch of Zen, as you have come to live it, understanding it is beyond all of us.

And, now the same friend who wrote the Gladwell piece has written today Wunderkammer where he makes reference to an article on the web that characterizes blogs as Wunderkammer

A Web log really, then, is a Wunderkammer. That is to say, the genealogy of Web logs points not to the world of letters but to the early history of museums -- to the "cabinet of wonders," or Wunderkammer, that marked the scientific landscape of Renaissance modernity: a random collection of strange, compelling objects, typically compiled and owned by a learned, well-off gentleman. A set of ostrich feathers, a few rare shells, a South Pacific coral carving, a mummified mermaid -- the Wunderkammer mingled fact and legend promiscuously, reflecting European civilization’s dazed and wondering attempts to assimilate the glut of physical data that science and exploration were then unleashing.

Well I don't think I qualify as either well off or learned, though we hope gentelman applies, but this posting and this blog as a whole are if nothing else certainly a Wunderkammer.

As my friend, the author of DB, is so fond of saying, "It's all about connections."

As I say, "one thing leads to another." We hope if for no other reason than to honor the memory of Beulah Haskins but also we hope for larger reasons, as well, that we are "having no time to be talking about it", that in fact the talk has lead to the walk, at least more often than not. We fervently hope that this Wunderkammer would serve in some way to amplify the verse cited above

Hebrews 10:24
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.Hebrews 10:23-25 (in Context) Hebrews 10 (Whole Chapter)

Yes, let's consider how we might do that spurring. Talking it up is good, but walking it up is better. Given the choice walk quietly rather than talking while standing still.

Mere talk

2005-10-14T05:38:00.000-05:00

In Proverbs in the chapter which is the same as today's date we find

22 Do not those who plot evil go astray? But those who plan what is good find love and faithfulness. 23 All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. 24 The wealth of the wise is their crown, but the folly of fools yields folly.

And, in the news we find

Scandals Take Toll On Bush's 2nd Term
A series of scandals involving some of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have converged to disrupt President Bush's agenda, distract aides and allies, and exacerbate political problems for an already weakened administration, according to party strategists and White House advisers.

Jitters at the White House Over the Leak Inquiry
These days, the routines are the same for the White House. But everything, in the glare of a criminal investigation, is different.

Need we say or compare more? And, just to put the jittery humanists at rest, we do not intend to imply any inerrancy or predictive power to the Bible nor any special weight that you might not want to take from the Bible verses, but rather that what is known as the Wisdom of Solomon seems in a few short words to capture the tone of the times, just like any piece of good writing. Mere talk? Perhaps, you decide, you think about it.

Just in case you didn't get the message yesterday

2005-10-13T00:06:00.000-05:00

Just in case you didn't get the message yesterday

Sassoon's protest, "A Soldier's Declaration," written on June 15, 1917:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those how have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this War should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible for them to be changed without our knowledge, and that, has this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be eveil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the military conduct of the War, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them. Also I believe that it may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those as home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficienct imagination to realise.
Read before the House of Commons, July 30, 1917, printed in The London Times, on July 31, 1917 (ironically -- perhaps appropriately -- the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele).

How little we have learned in nearly one hundred years.

Write, listen, speak the truth

2005-10-12T03:58:00.000-05:00

Write, listen, speak the truth,

14 From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things
as surely as the work of his hands rewards him.

15 The way of a fool seems right to him,
but a wise man listens to advice.

16 A fool shows his annoyance at once,
but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

17 A truthful witness gives honest testimony,
but a false witness tells lies.

18 Reckless words pierce like a sword,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

19 Truthful lips endure forever,
but a lying tongue lasts only a moment

these traits alone would seem from the text above, taken from the 12th chapter of Proverbs in the Christian Bible, to serve well enough that perhaps nothing else is required. Believer or not these verses should give even the most radical agnostic or atheist some food for thought for the balance of the day. For you old RC types today is Wilfred Owen's namesake saint's day, today is St. Wilfrid's day. Any of Owen's work should give even the stoutest Neo-Con sufficient pause today to reconsider the course of the war in Iraq. And, likely this piece will give any sane person sufficient pause to wonder what the hell is running through my head. In response all I can say is, "Likely better things in the course of the day with this start than you might see without it." Have a good and thoughtful day. For further reference along the lines of what you think is what you are try Paul's note to the Phillipians in the 4th chapter where he suggests that thinking positively is good

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

No matter what you might think of the apostle or Christianity it is difficult to argue against the exhortation to think on whatever is good rather than the converse. Certainly, nearly a century of secular psychological thought and research would agree with Paul. As far as Wilfred Owen giving pause to anyone, it does to me particularly when I think that the thirty something mother of one of my son's playmates is in Iraq. It puts a different twist on Owen's work when mothers, just a few years short of retiring from the military, are the endangered ones. Mothers who have grade school and middle school children at home. Especially, when home is on the otherside of the world from where the mother is, eh?

Second Languages, you should have one

2005-10-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

Second Languages, you should have one. If you've not heard the NPR Talk of the Nation Program today, you should.

Nation

Americans and Learning a Second Language

Talk of the Nation, October 11, 2005 · Learning a second language is not necessarily required or expected of students in America -- but virtually everywhere else in the world, it is. What factors determine what second languages Americans choose to learn?

Guests:

Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association

Michael Long, professor of Second Language Acquisition, and Director of the University of Maryland's School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Richard Brecht, director of the National Foreign Language Center in Washington, D.C.

Professor Long's comments and area of specialization are especially worth noting and applying to your own life. In my experience nothing enriches your life more than some knowledge, no matter how limited, of another language than English. And, increasingly research is revealing that multilinguals are less prone to dementia not to mention far more interesting folks. You are never too old to learn a new language and the idea that adults have a harder time is largely unfounded. The attitude of the language student towards acquistion of a second language seems to be equally as significant as age.

Enjoy this and have a good day, my friends.

Goce de esto y tenga un buen día, mis amigos.
Appréciez ceci et ayez une bonne journée, mes amis.

Насладитесь этим и имейтесь хороший день, мои друзей.

There was a time

2005-10-08T07:02:00.000-05:00

There was a time over forty years ago when what happened in the pages of the NY Times about theatre and dance in particular was the most interesting thing I knew.

It was back when the quality of the light was a daily occupation as well as a career goal. Back when I wanted to know and light people like Merrill Ashley and Suzanne Farrell.

Back when Maria Tallchief's name might have appeared in the a piece like a friend commented on recently.

But, long before anything like NNDB started tracking every name in the news in the entire world. How much more interesting would it have been with computers to assist us then?

Well, enough nostalgia. The quality of the light remains to this day the most interesting feature of the day throughout the day.

And, then comes the night.

Dog flu, not to worry

2005-10-01T14:22:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've heard a lot of talk about dog flu and the internet seems to be filled with some disturbing but fundametally incorrect information. Below is an excerpt from a recent CDC teleconference on the issues surrounding dog flu. You should read the complete transcript to get all the details, but basically the message is not to worry and act with common sense.

Media Briefing on Canine Influenza
Note: This is a verbatim transcript. There may be errors.

Monday, September 26, 2005
2:00 p.m.

-a portion of the transcript-

MR. SKINNER: Thanks, Dr. Donis. Now, I'll turn the call over to Dr. Cynda Crawford from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, who will spend three or four minutes sort of giving us the big picture in regards to canine influenza in the veterinary community.

DR. CRAWFORD: Thank you. And I would like to underscore what Dr. Donis has already pointed out and on a couple of occasions that this is a newly emerging pathogen in the dog population. And we have managed to accumulate quite a lot of information on this new canine influenza virus over a relatively short period of time, and this was largely due to the multi-institutional collaborative work that has involved numerous people from the CDC Influenza Branch. I would like to thank Dr. Donis and Dr. Jackie Katz, and Dr. Alexander Klimov. And it involves colleagues at the University of Wisconsin's College of Veterinary Medicine and at Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine, and, of course, Dr. Ed Dubovi at Cornell, who has been the biggest key I think in discovery of this new viral pathogen in the dog population.

And with regard to what veterinarians will be interested in knowing is that this virus can cause a respiratory disease that mimics a syndrome that we call kennel cough.

Now, kennel cough is just a syndrome, and it can be due to a myriad of infectious agents--bacteria as well as viruses. So the most common cause of kennel cough has been a bacterium called bordetella bronchiseptica and with information that we have to date, this still may be the most common cause of respiratory infection in dogs.

So the canine influenza virus is really the new kid on the block for veterinarians to consider in their differential diagnoses for kennel cough. They should consider canine influenza if a dog presents to them with a cough. They may have a nasal discharge and a fever also.

And because kennel cough really is an infectious disease, and it's a contagious disease regardless of the cause, whether it's bordetella bronchiseptica or canine influenza virus or other viruses, these dogs should be handled with some precautions, precautions that veterinarians normally use when they are treating a patient that has a potential infectious disease that is contagious to other dogs. So this type of precaution would involve the isolation of the respiratory disease or at least protection of other dogs in their clinics, while this particular dog with respiratory disease is undergoing diagnosis and treatment and potentially hospitalization.

I'll also stress that despite the rumors that are out on the Internet and other such sources, this disease is not as deadly as people want to make it. Although it's a new pathogen in dogs and nearly all dogs are susceptible to infection based on our knowledge about the virus to date, about 80 percent of them will have a mild form of disease, just characterized by cough and maybe some nasal discharge that will resolve over time with appropriate therapy.

Only a minority of dogs, a small number of dogs, experience complications such as pneumonia, just like the humans infected with influenza, certain populations of humans are more prone to development of pneumonia. And it's a small number of humans compared to everyone else.

So that is the same with canine influenza virus. It's a small population of dogs that will develop complications, most likely bacterial complications and these dogs do need to be--have their treatment supervised by a veterinarian.

In addition, since not all dogs will show a clinical syndrome, showing that they have a respiratory infection, there is a minority that are infected with the virus, but will not show clinical signs to announce to everybody that "I am sick." And it is very difficult to find these dogs in the dog population. And we're working on a more rapid means of identification.

And lastly, I want to emphasize most of all that this is not the deadly virus that certain sources have played it up to be.

We have a very low mortality rate. And this is a disease that I would characterize as one of high morbidity and low mortality. Thank you

-read more-

Also more complete information can be obtained by reviewing a simple search on

dog flu bronchiseptica

with Google or any other search engine.

Add to your wish list

2005-09-19T05:51:00.000-05:00

You know all those web sites like Amazon.com and JR.com and countless others where you see "Add to your wish list". Well, here's a thought: Anything that you might have thought about giving to me for my birthday or Christmas send the same amount for Katrina Diaster Relief and send me a note showing you donated in place of any presents. And, if you want to wait until near the occasion, that's fine too, I'm sure money will be needed for a good long while in the future. Quite possibly you could do this for a number of other people as well, just a thought.

Numbers to Call and Web Sites for Relief Donations

The Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund

1-800-833-2660

The Red Cross

1-800-HELP-NOW
1-800-435-7669

The Salvation Army

1-800-SAL-ARMY
1-800-725-2769

If you've not heard this, you should.

2005-09-18T06:30:00.000-05:00

Higher Ground Hurricane Benefit Concert

Laurence Fishburne hosted the five-hour concert from New York's Rose Theater. The line up is simply incredible

Wynton Marsalis Septet: 'Ain' No'

Renee Fleming with Mark O'Connor and Eric Reid: 'Amazing Grace'

Shirley Caesar: 'You're Next for a Miracle,' 'He's Working It Out for You,' 'This Joy'

Aaron Neville: 'Go to the Mardi Gras'

Herbie Hancock: 'Eye of the Hurricane'

Wynton Marsalis & Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra

Bette Midler, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra: "Is That All There Is?"

Abbey Lincoln: "For All We Know"

Joe Lovano: "Blackwell's Message"

Diana Krall: "Basin Street Blues"

Marcus Roberts: "New Orleans Blues"

Paul Simon: 'That Was Your Mother'

Dianne Reeves: 'The House I Live In'

Irvin Mayfield, Ronald Markham: 'Just a Closer Walk With Thee'

Norah Jones: 'I Think It's Gonna Rain Today'

McCoy Tyner

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint: 'Freedom for the Stallion'

Buckwheat Zydeco: 'I'm Gonna Love You Anyway'

Wynton Marsalis Septet: 'Dippermouth Blues'

James Taylor: 'Never Die Young'

Toni Morrison reading various passages from her novel Jazz

Jordan Family: 'Here's to Life'

Terence Blanchard: 'Over There'

Marsalis Family: 'Twelve's It'

Jon Hendricks: 'This Love of Mine,' 'Tell Me the Truth'

Peter Cincotti: 'Bring Back New Orleans'

Lincoln Center Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra: 'Havana Blues with Salt Peanuts'

Cassandra Wilson w/Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Mark O'Connor, violin: 'Come Sunday'

Closing: Music from Duke Ellington's 'New Orleans Suite'

Fishburne's and Toussaint's comments, both New Orleans residents and natives, are particularly touching and insightful.

-*-Read more and Listen-*-

Numbers to Call

The Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund

1-800-833-2660

The Red Cross

1-800-HELP-NOW
1-800-435-7669

The Salvation Army

1-800-SAL-ARMY
1-800-725-2769

The first one of you to reduce this to MP3 should then take the CD's and trade them for cash. And, if you have to ask me what to do with the cash, we really need to talk.

Anybody remember these?

2005-09-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

devoted both to the collection of packs and the history of package artwork is avaialbe in both French and English. What memories some of these images bring back. Hopefully we did not dose ourselves long enough with the evil toxins from the contents of these packs to do any real harm, hopefully.

It all changes so quickly, but sometimes just to circle back to the same place again.

2005-09-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

It all changes so quickly, but sometimes just to circle back to the same place again also. The piece I want to point out is more historical now than timely, but still very good

Reporters Give Voice to Post-Katrina Desperation
NPR.org, September 2, 2005 · You don't have to listen very closely to the news to register the striking tone coming from many of the journalists involved in covering the floods along the Gulf Coast. They're passing along public anger.
They are slicing through talking points, reflecting instead -read more-

For some brilliant and brief insight into the current situation try

The Brown Maneuver
The Daily Blague, September 10, 2005 · Anybody who's wondering how Michael D Brown can be relieved of his "Gulf Coast duties" while remaining head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency hasn't been paying attention. The White House has been so profoundly reconceived that the President, while remaining the Chatterbox-In-Chief, was relieved of his duties from the start. This arrangement allows -read more-

And, finally another friend writes from Austin, Texas recently

CNN just reported that Michael Brown, the acting head(ache) of FEMA has just been removed from his post in charge of the Katrina Gulf coast relief (disaster) efforts. A multiple choice question is appropriate here. Check to see how politically you savvy are...
Question:
Was Michael Brown removed from his FEMA charge as head of the Katrina disaster relief efforts because?
a. he was incompetent
b. he was a little "light in the loafers" , if you know what I mean
c. he was the "throwdown" scapegoat for "W" and his clan (could this be true?)
d. all of the above
The answer of course is D. all of the above. If you answered it correctly, you win a prize. I will buy a free beer for all winners on the second Tuesday of next week at 10pm. See you there...
*********
Dont get whinny. I just checked the FEMA website, there are 2 Tuesdays next week... dont believe me...
Go to the following site: FEMACANTFINDITSASSWITHBOTHHANDS.COM

See, I'm not alone in thinking this is a mess. Unfortunately, the FEMACan'tFindItsAssWithBothHands.com URL doesn't exist but it should. From what I hear, and painfully know from decades back, the bozos at FEMA could cook an agenda with two Tuesdays in next week, if it suits their purposes. If you want some truly enlightening reading try the enabling legislation for FEMA. The link I've just given is hardly complete but it does point up how things have and have not changed in some ways.

FEMA's enabling legislation, the Stafford Act, provided FEMA officials with powers that the bureaucrats didn't exercise. "We found that without state requests, FEMA could assess the catastrophic area, assess what assistance the state needed, start mobilizing that relief, present its recommendations to the governor, and, if necessary--as Andrew Card did--get in the governor's face to force the issue of accepting federal help. Before Hurricane Andrew, FEMA officials took almost none of these steps. Consequently, when a disaster occurred, FEMA's relief efforts were inevitably too little, too late." -read more-

I will try to follow up this week or next with more complete references to the actual bills and laws that are available online. From my experience nearly forty years ago with early bureaucratic and administrative structures that would coordinate government post disaster actions among military and civilian agencies FEMA is connected at the highest levels to government apparatus with the most frightening powers. FEMA can if necessary rule the USA under the right conditions, the conditions being a simple declaration by whatever authority survives a civil emergency to make such a declaration. That an agency which is vested with power and supposedly resources beyond the comprehension of the average American could perform so poorly in the current situation is simply appalling. No face saving weasel like recall of some department head from the field to Washington, D.C. will fade the heat on this one. You would think that the nutless bean counters, silver tongued spin masters and Machiavellian Mother Rapers that stand behind Bush would have had enough sense to at least fire Michael Brown. What a bunch of spineless weenies, or are they? Perhaps they have bigger plans, eh? Tune in! Turn on if you like, but I think at this advanced age it's counter productive. Do not drop out, tune in and stayed tuned in, the next few months up to November 2006 are very important.

One more thing

2005-09-06T00:06:00.000-05:00

If one person criticizes them, or says one more thing, including the president of the United States, he will hear from me. One more word about it... and I -- I might likely have to punch him."
-- Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., on ABC's 'This Week' defends sheriff's department.

"They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."
-- Aaron Broussard Jefferson Parish president pleads for help on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday.

Another thing: they were all full of gratitude.

2005-09-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

Another report from Austin

9/04/05
I don't care much for the word evacuee to describe the Americans displaced by Katrina. The word is bandied about so much in the media. It adds an uncomfortable distance and shields us from a reality. If I have a buzzword, I can talk about it with little sensitivity, without thinking so much about what an American evacuee really feels. We have become so accustomed to soundbites in America and their numbing effect.
So, let me say, I met several Americans today who have survived the aftermath of Katrina that flooded their homes, their community, their city, and their lives. The experience humbled me.

They made their way to Austin by bus and plane. Some by choice, others had run out of choices. They all had a story to tell and every story was a mixture and harsh reality and hope. That they had hope seemed a miracle to me. Another thing: they were all full of gratitude.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my youngest daughter reminding me of my commitment to go with her to volunteer at Brackenridge Hospital for the relief efforts set up for victims of Katrina. She had signed me up to be with her and one of her good friends, a Muslim American, whose youth group had organized to help out. At 9:00 am I am standing in the midst of 25-30 Muslim youth from across the city whose average age could not have been more than 19-20. All eager, all orderly and anxious to help wherever they could. The effort was a little bit disorganized at first, because there has been an overwhelming outpouring of volunteers in Austin. An overabundance of volunteers at 9 on a Sunday! All the volunteer stations in Austin were filled with back up lists. Austin is responding. But the need will go on for months. The donations throughout the city the last few days were everywhere, so much of the early help was sorting an organizing the clothes, the bedding, the toiletries, the food. Literally mountains of donations! The kids took off to do just that. The group leader asked me to help out in greeting, consoling, and welcoming the displaced as they were cleared by the medical triage teams. The next step in their journey being the ride down to the Convention Center to a more permanent facility. At first, I didn't consider the position of greeter- counselor to a good fit for me, but I didn't show up with requirements that I be used for certain tasks. I showed up to help where the help was needed.

Ill fitting or not, for the next 4 hours I got close to some of the survivors. I listened and they talked. A few were still visibly frightened and very uneasy with being in a place that was not home, with a future out of their control and in doubt, at best. Because I was at the Brackenridge station, the people I saw either had medical issues or had family with them that had medical problems. They were white, brown, black. They were of Asian, Mexican, central American descent and some, second and third generation Louisianans. You name it. If there was a common thread, it was socioeconomic. It wasn't race, nor religion, nor color. The people I met didn't get out because they literally had no place to go to. To my amazement, I read yesterday that 19% of the residents of New Orleans make $ 10,000.00 or less per year. Today, I met some of them.

I met real volunteers too. There was Mary Fran, Terry, and Sabiha. All social workers here in Austin and all expert at what we were assigned to do. They tutored me and I watched and followed their lead. We owe much to these people. I don't know how they do it day in and day out. But I am grateful they do.

I listened as man around 25 tell me he tried to stay and help as long as he could, but the smell of the death finally got to him just before the National Guard came into his area. He said he had floated to higher ground a few elderly people on an air mattress through his streets that had become a lake. Barney showed up with his 20 year old daughter, Stacy, who had cerebral palsy. His house had been broken into by 3 men in the middle of the night . They stole his TV and VCR. Another man of about 45 told me of how he had rushed to his parents home in lower N.O. and had moved them steadily higher to the second floor, then the attic and described a harrowing night of not knowing whether the water would reach the attic in which they had then become trapped. The good news is that it did not and both he and his parents are now in Austin. A young mother and her 5 year old, told of how they camped out with others on I-10 between Baton Rouge and N.O. with little food or water for 3 1//2 days before being rescued. Yet another showed me his Harrahs' employee card and said in broken English that his direct deposited paycheck for September 1 had not made it to his bank. He had no savings, no home and no job to go to after Katrina.

These Americans need our money and our help. The rebuilding of homes, communities and lives will take months. I urge each of you to volunteer a few hours per week, or as much as you can

You can call the Red Cross Hotline:

American Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW

There is nothing that can be added to this good report except to encourage you as strongly as possible to contribute in someway to the relief effort. Pray, volunteer, send money, take in a displaced person, provide a job, do something, please.

Is that really America or some third world impoverished country?

2005-09-05T09:47:00.000-05:00

I'm not the only one irritated by what I've seen recently in the Katrina disaster. A friend writes from Austin

There's "W" on the TV with his appearance a day or two late and several million dollars short. We have grown to expect his lack of leadership. His speech yesterday provided more proof that he is disconnected and, too many times, clueless. He is supported by a cacophony of politicians and administration wonks first wringing their hands then telling us that all the forces that the US can muster are "on it" as they speak. But of course, the media shows vividly that the catastrophe is broadening, that lawlessness prevails in many parts of N.O., that Americans—our relatives and our friends—are suffering greatly. Is that really America or some third world impoverished country? It is sad to acknowledge that it reminded me of pictures from the tsunami crisis just a few months ago.

You are not "on it", Mr. President. You are –"behind it and in the way of it", just as you were in the weeks and months preceding 911. Being "on it" is providing the leadership that would not have cut the millions in spending that was needed to shore up the levee system in N.O., leadership that would not consistently challenge as heresy the settled world scientific view of global warming, leadership that has too strain to find National Guard troops to help out because you have sent these American men and women to fight a war in Iraq that your own children will not.

It is just a suggestion, but you might consider that the presidency is not just another job where you get perks like flying around on Air Force One and take extended vacations in Crawford. Throw away your tired moniker as a Compassionate Conservative. The media pictures of what is actually happening on the ground and your canned response to a true American crisis prove otherwise.

Yes, America will rise to this challenge. We will beat this crisis in spite of poor leadership. But let us not forget in November 2006 and November 2008.

Thanks, friend, for another clear voice. Indeed, let's not forget our outrage over the current situation in the area devastated by Katrina, especially New Orleans. Take your outrage to the polls, make a difference, vote to change this sorry administration as soon as possible from the ground up at every level. It's not too soon to begin ramping up to the November 2006 elections.

loonytunes rotating empty space: Landings updating rotating spaces

2005-09-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

loonytunes rotating empty space: Landings updating rotating spaces

Sunday, September 04, 2005

I am in total agreement with Mayor Bill White of Houston, but the sad facts are, the city of Houston will be sued. The groups and lawyers will line up looking for money from the far right to the far left. Bill White should run for President and show the country what true leadership looks like. Instead of these hem haw around lets not look bad politicians. Look George W. This is your last time in office stand up and act like you should. -read more-

See, I'm not the only one irritated by the mess in NOLA and the rest of Katrina'a path. A few million more of like LoonyTunes and we'll be heard loud and clear. Loony has taken the words right out my mouth today, I couldn't have said it better, "Look George W. This is your last time in office stand up and act like you should." And, knowing LoonyT as I do, I can tell you from personal experience he knows about stand up guys, being one himself. Believe me, you would go anywhere with LoonyT. If LoonyT is telling Dubya it's time to be a stand up guy, we just might be headed in the right direction, right LoonyT?

Leadership in Houston

2005-09-02T19:16:00.000-05:00

Bill White, the mayor of Houston, today talking about commandeering facilities that have events booked said, ' ... if it entails someone suing us, well, OK, sue us and explain why money is more important than lives ...'. This is the new Gulianni, perhaps even a new presidential contender, if he chooses. White certainly demonstrated leadership today in Houston with words that ring clear as a bell about what's to be done, who will do it and why. White's statements and actions stand in stark contrast to the vague mealy mouthed rhetoric of the national leadership in Washington D. C. today, and stand in even starker contrast to Dubya's remarks at the NOLA airport today which were just so much sound bite and little else. It would be nice. even if you didn't agree with his policies and actions, to have a leader in national office who is as forthcoming and clear as Mr White was today.

Marketplace has done an exemplary job in covering all aspects of the Katrina disaster and well deserves a listen from anyone who wants a balanced and broad view of the situation.

The complete report from today

Friday, September 02, 2005, Marketplace

Quote of the day:"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

News Source of the day:NewsPath

Have a great Labor Day Holiday! About one million Amercians will not! Send money now for relief! See you back here, Tuesday 6 September 2005

Iraqianna, New Iraqoleans, truly deplorable

2005-09-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

Iraqianna, New Iraqoleans, that's what it looks like today. Truly deplorable, that is the only way to characterize the situation in New Orleans. A fine historic city and what once was a vibrant modern city has been reduced to absolute anarchy beyond my wildest nightmares of civil collapse. Although it would be nice to place all the blame on the national administration in Washington D. C., and much of the blame likely belongs there, it appears that the city, the county and the state all simply failed to make even the most simple prudent plans or preparations for the current situation. Compared to New York City after 9/11 and Florida after last year's storms the situation in NOLA is nothing less than deplorable. The State of Texas much to its credit has responded promptly and in a highly organized way to take in and take care of massive numbers of refugees from Louisiana. It all is a truly sad situation that will reverberate through our national history and the lives of millions along the Gulf Coast for decades to come. All I can do is send money for now. But come the midterm elections I will not forget these issues or the issues to come and I encourage everyone to do the same, send money and pay attention. Help and do not forget.

Apoptosis and other hot links

2005-08-20T20:19:00.000-05:00

I want to write about the wrongness of our course in Iraq but every time I start the topics and subtopics just seem to branch out endlessly in front of me. Fortunately, a friend wrote a very focused short piece a few days ago, "Wide of the Mark" at Daily Blague which has encouraged me not to abandon the idea entirely. As with most things I'm having trouble finishing I set the Iraq idea aside and started on something else. A search on "hubbert peak theory oil and gas" led to some very nice articles, but the best thing that turned up was Google Scholar. Google is good for news, views and products but most of the time it really falls down on science issues, very little useful material is returned. I'd been wanting to explore the idea of nicotine as cancer trigger for months but had not had much success and had set the idea aside until I got to a better medical library in Nashville later this year. Using Google Scholar on "nicotine cancer trigger" brought up a cellular biology term I just barely remembered, apoptosis, and also reminded me that I might better search on "nicotine carcenogensis genotoxcity" which was very productive and led to the very nice, recent and complete article, "Nicotine: Potentially a Multifunctional Carcinogen?" which gives a very satisfying answer to the general question of whether nicotine can trigger and promote cancer. Going back to apoptosis on regular Google we found "Apoptosis: Dance of Death" at Cells Alive. What a wonderful site Cells Alive is. I think going to school and/or doing research is a lot more fun now that it was thirty five or forty years ago, it's certainly more attractive. Seems like there was a war on then too. The war in Iraq is not like the war in Viet Nam, except for people dying, it will not respond to the same methods of protest as during my time in graduate school years ago. But it still needs to come to an end and needs to change its course soon. We definitely need to change the politicians soon also. Nothing like a little research in tetratogenicity of nicotine to focus ones mind, eh? Now, I wonder is teratogen an outdated term, is genotoxic a variant or a synonym?

Resonance

2005-08-13T23:28:00.000-05:00

At the tender age of fourteen I asked my High School French teacher, Alex Cason, who was Belgian, if the way particular languages were structured influenced the way people thought, if by the very nature of the language a French speaker, a Russian speaker - Alex was also my Russian teacher - and an English speaker might simply form different concepts in thinking about the same topic purely as a result of their individual languages, at the time we were reading All About Language by Mario Pei. Alex dismissed my question as irrelevant and we moved on. Now, nearly better than four decades later the dismissal still stings, but I have the beginnings of an answer that seems to indicate that my question might have had some merit.

Without sharing certain attitudes towards the things around us, sharing a sense of relevance and responding in similar ways, communication would be impossible. It is important, for instance, that nearly all of us agree nearly all the time on what colors things are. Such agreement is part of our concept of color, Wittgenstein suggests. Regularity of the use of such concepts and agreement in their application is part of language, not a logically necessary precondition of it. We cannot separate the life in which there is such agreement from our concept of color. Imagine a different form or way of life and you imagine a different language with different concepts, different rules and a different logic.
This raises the question of the relation between language and forms or ways of life.
Gently lifted from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 6. Rules and Private Language

A dear friend once commented decades ago about my distinct lack of learning in Liberal Arts, "that a good liberal arts education would have added so much resonance to your life". Now nearly in my sixth decade a little resonance is coming around. Perhaps, it is never too late to learn, but this late in life, resonance comes with a distinct feeling of embarrassment at having known Wittgenstein's name for years but little else.

Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife

2005-08-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

A friend writes today,

American Christianity: An Oxymoron?

It is very difficult for me to write about something that hasn't taught me something. To learn something new is to reconfigure the brain, if only slightly, and for me there is something about the process that creates a compulsion to write. No such compulsion was born of reading Bill McKibben's piece, in Harper's, "The Christian Paradox." Sure, there were a few little things that I learned from it, such as the dandy finding that

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. [!!!!!]

That's how the essay begins. -read more-

There is hope, as long as we have Andy and RJ.

2005-08-05T05:39:00.000-05:00

NORTH KOREA MOVES ONE MILLION CLONED CATS TO BORDER WITH SOUTH,Angry Kim Jong-Il Retaliates for Seoul’s Dog Cloning

One day after South Korean scientists announced that they had successfully cloned a dog, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il denounced the cloning procedure as “an act of provocation” and immediately moved one million cloned cats to the border with the South.
-read more from Andy-

Golfing For Cats
Patricia Storms has raised a very interesting question at Booklust. Can readers be divided into "men" and "women" simply by what they read? Behind the obvious thrust of the question - are there subjects that interest men but not women, and vice versa, and how important are these subjects to readers overall - lies the issue of authority. Do people read what they're supposed to read? I have only to frame the question to generate the answer, but it should be borne in mind that, until some strange moment in the past seventy to a hundred years, nobody read anything unless it was authorized or - small difference - forbidden. And authority is still with us. Only now it flows from cool people who have excited our envy, not from greybeards in ivory towers.
-read more from RJ-

Cleaning up ...

2005-08-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

A friend has written recently at Daily Blague about cleaning up.

"Team Vacation"
"Team Vacation Advances"
"Team Vacation Crests"
"Team Vacation Collapses"

I have my own physical, read that real world, disaster to attack myself and it's in the house not a storage room. And, I doubt that I will be brave enough to photograph my disastrous circumstances and publish them here with comments. But, my friend's effort did push me towards some long neglected virtual cleaning up. Perhaps fifty seven thousand files are a few too many for a 4Gb drive although there is still about 1Gb free. Finding things has become a bit of a problem even with nice tools like Google's desktop search. Three levels of folder directories in Favorites and My Documents and files that date back to 1998 is some real virtual clutter.

We reorganize and purge on, but it's slow going sometimes, moments of nostalgia, checking to see if old links are still active, and just plain 'what the devil is this?' moments impede progress. When the physical house has become inordinately cluttered in the past I have on occasion moved all the clutter to the garage or a storage room and then moved it back into the house a box at a time culling, discarding and rearranging as I go. Seemed like a good approach in the virtual world but it has proven otherwise. Beware! Power users will have no trouble locating the Favorites folder in the Windows subdirectory and simply moving the lot from under drivename:\windows\favorites to a new folder like drivename:\windows\favorites\oldlist. The procedure works, perhaps a bit slowly, but it works. However, and this is a big however, this massive file move creates thousands of dangling file references, "invalid paths" they're called, in the registry which slows the machine down, way down. My registry cleaner burps on the first thousand dangling file references and requires that they be cleaned out before proceeding again. Deletions, massive deletions, will likely cause the same problem.

With a fast new machine, a Pentium IV, and a big drive, one ten times my size, a 40Gb, or an 80Gb, or one of the mammoth 120Gb drives, the problem may not raise its ugly head right away, but it's there lurking in the background for you one day. Solutions? I'm not sure I have any good ones. Don't save so much stuff, that's always good. Do periodic housekeeping and move the old stuff to off-line storage like CD's or DVD's, that's good too and should actually be taken care of with proper periodic backups. If you're saying backups to yourself now and your facial expression is much like that of a calf at a new gate, we need to talk. If you don't know what a calf at a new gate looks like, we really need to talk. All of this brings to mind the idea that nothing is permanent or at least not much is permanently relevant in a Favorites folder. The best solution at the moment seems to be exporting the Favorites as a whole or portions of the Favorites to an HTML file which can be accessed fairly easily through the browser. The HTML Favorites list, however, is in chronological entry order and there is no clean way to sort it. Aren't you just overjoyed to know all this now? Probably all this belongs on Byte Butcher, maybe we'll move it, maybe not. And, so we come to the end of another session of very enjoyable typing. Ciao. EOF

Thorn in the side of authority

2005-07-26T19:55:00.000-05:00

The Administration and the Fury
If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House
By Sam Apple

Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick s face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me.

“Georgie's going to walk down to the Oval Office with me,” Dick said.

“I just hope you got him all good and ready this time,” Rummy said.

-read more-

Spoof of Bush Wins Faux Faulkner Contest
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. — A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the "idiot" in William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest — and touched off a literary spat.

Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple's "The Administration and the Fury" in its print edition — only on its Web site.

-read more-

Our sincere thanks to Don, an old friend and long time thorn in the side of authority, for these wonderful links.

Writing and Pleasure

2005-07-21T23:42:00.000-05:00

Recent pleasures from Outer Life

Texas

N.B.

The Book

Ce n'est pas ma façon de penser.

2005-07-09T00:16:00.000-05:00

Last night the kids got Flight of the Phoenix and I rented Almost Peaceful, Un Monde Presque Paisible, a recent French film set in Paris in the days immediately after WWII. Flight of the Phoenix was a bad "B" movie in the original and the current remake is a faithful copy in every stylistic respect.

I rented Almost Peaceful not so much because of any particular interest in French movies but simply because the jacket description looked interesting. It proved out so well on the first viewing last night that I'll do it again tonight.

The last good American movie I've seen was The Hours. It's refreshing to see a different cinemagraphic and directorial style after so much Hollywood material with the kids in the theater and on the DVD.

Some adults at home were put off by the occasional nudity and what they termed a cavalier attitude toward marital infidelity and prostitution that they thought was totally incredible for any surviving Parisian Jew immediately after the War. I thought it all rang very true.

I particularly liked the exposition and resolution of a theme that dealt with the fear of feelings that might lead to marital infidelity. A writer, posing as a tailor to make ends meet, has an interesting scene with an anti-Semite police inspector that might take you by surprise.

The color was magnificent. Bright, warm and primary but not overpowering.

What really caught my eye was the use of still frames as leads into and departures from scenes. Not stills that dissolve into motion or motion that dissolves into a still. Just still frames and then motion that is connected visually and thematically, but not merged. Fun! Crisp! New, maybe, you tell me.

Clotilde Cornau caught my eye. What a cutie she is with red hair.

Unlike Spanish or Russian movies where I can catch the occasional complete phrase, sometimes even an entire group of sentences, here I get just a word every now and then. You'll have to tell me how it is to your ear, if you take any time with it.

It might just be time to start talks instead of wars.

2005-07-08T02:01:00.000-05:00

A friend wrote how the events in London yesterday had turned his day into shards and how it is time to start talking to Islamic leaders. Another responded that the current situation in Iraq is in keeping with centuries of economic self interest in the West where currently we have no leaders and that America was intent on speading democracy.

Can democracy be spread or is it just smoke to cover other agendas?

If it can be spread, the methods we've seen so far aren't working.

One of the basic principles of leadership is to lead by example.

What example has the developed world shown the resource rich underdeveloped world over the last hundred years, and particularly oil rich countries in the last sixty or so years? Is the current situation any surprise? Where has the developed western world led the rest of the world?

There are no real leaders in developed countries and it is a two edged sword that cuts to the heart of the neo-con nonsense since there are also no good examples either for undeveloped countries to follow in terms of national aspirations other than ubridled consumerism.

For leaders we substitute spokesmen who serve up spin and ideology instead of inspiring rhetoric and firm principle. For cooperation, encouragement and support we substitute rigid foreign policy, hideously one sided economic development programs and domination, by military occupation if necessary.

Some offer that it is a capitalist conspiracy to dominate the world that causes all the trouble and others cite moral decadence as exemplified in culture and business.

Some posit an Islamic conspiracy that causes all the trouble with its roots in a flawed fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

It would be nice for all sides if it were a conspiracy, then perhaps the conspirators could be identified and defeated and at least one side would be victorious.

Value systems are not conspiracies. Value systems that are broadly shared and deeply ingrained in a society are not defeated by war, they are only suppressed, unless the war is a war of annihilation.

The developed world no longer seems to have the will nor the taste for effective warfare, to kill and kill again with such ferocity and scope that the enemy no longer resists.

War is killing and lots of it. Appeals to such civilities as the Geneva Conventions and definitions of combatants and noncombatants only cloud the issue, war is taking the gloves off, life or death, losing or winning by any means. Rules of procedure are purely strategic not moral, restraint enters only when both sides are equally or nearly equally capable of atrocity.

Value systems are not subject to declarations of war.

War on Terrorism has a nice ring to it, but that's all it is, just sound, hollow sound, no substance.

So unless your up for a bloodbath it just might be time to rethink the current situation, perhaps war is not an appropriate answer.

An answer implies a question. Maybe the wrong questions got the wrong answers.

Could the questions have been, 'What do we do if the Saudis fall, where can we insert troops in the Middle East, where can we get boots on the ground now to protect our oil interests when the Saudis fall?' Nah, no one could be that dumb. 'Can we fake major maintenance requirements to shut down huge power plants so that we can drive up the price of electricity and make more money? Can we do this cheaply, you know draw the troop strength down from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands quickly after occupation so that it doesn't cost so much? Can I rent a Greek island for my wife's birthday party, where would I get the money? Do we really need all those armored vehicles?' Don't be silly, no one would ask questions like that.

Maybe, just maybe, the United States should examine its relationship with Saudi Arabia, specifically the hideous economic development and military hardware programs that serve little purpose other than to enrich, beyond all reasonable expectation in some cases, the Saudi Royal Family at the expense of the bulk of the Saudi population and to recycle petro dollars back to United States and other Western business interests. Maybe the Brits and the rest of the G8 folks could think along similar lines productively for a number of other countries, as well.

The brutally simple economics of commodity markets which have been distorted in the world oil market until recently by western oil companies and governments will come more to the fore everyday. There is no longer enough excess oil production capacity in the world, nor the real prospect of any significant excess capacity, to prevent simple market forces from coming into play, especially with exponentially increasing demand in China and South Asia.

Maybe the questions should be, 'How are we going to replace oil as an energy source? Which countries are best able to implement high technology replacement options now so that other countries can continue to use low technology oil energy solutions until high technology solutions become broadly available? Can we bridge the gap with nuclear, solar, wind, or other energy sources? Can we envision a world society that is less energy dependent, not just oil energy reduction but overall energy reduction? How can food stuffs, pharmaceuticals and health care services be more evenly distributed across the world? Can we find equitable ways, both in large and small groups, to deal with each other in ways that tend to reduce rather than increase tensions and disputes? Is there an alternative to consumerism on a grand scale?'

It might just be time to start talks instead of wars.

Independence Day

2005-07-04T13:28:00.000-05:00

A discussion has begun on The Daily Blague under today's post Independence Day about the war.

Also, see today's post on Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:.

An extensive list of articles about the war is archived on The New Yorker with many by George Packer and Seymour Hersh.

Some of Packer's best would be

“The Home Front” from the issue of 2005-07-04 which is not yet available on line, but an interview about the article is available, "Sons and Soldiers", on line.

Also, another recent article from the The New Yorker, "Testing Ground", In the Shiite south, Islamists and secularists struggle over Iraq’s future, from the Issue of 2005-02-28, is well worth reading.

Additionally, from Mother Jones May/June 2004 Issue, "The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged", another Packer piece worth the read.

And finally, Packer on blogs and the war on NPR's The Connection from May of 2004. ( RealPlayer, opens in a new window )

That should be enough to read, hear and ponder on one day. And, a great day it is, Independence Day. The ability to post this material is a testament to the strength of the American system of government despite what many of us might consider it's recent terrible missteps in Iraq. Enjoy the 4th, and get ready for the 4th of November in 2008 and don't forget the midterms next year.

A great leap forward

2005-06-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

Don't you really want to read this book, sure you do?

Bill Gray in Mao II says:

"Do you know why I believe in the novel? It's a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy."

If you read Franzen's The Corrections you need to read DeLillo's Underworld and then perhaps MaoII.

DeLillo, interestingly, when talking about writers says,

"I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought.",

and

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."

DeLillo's books are widely available.

More ice in your drink, sir?

2005-05-15T12:14:00.000-05:00

Climate of Man
The New Yorker
by Elizabeth Kolbert

In three parts 25 April, 2 May and 9 May 2005

Part I Disappearing islands
Part II The curse of Akkad.
Part III What can be done?

Required reading on climate change for anyone who might think that nothing is really going on or that somehow the science might still fuzzy.

Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC)

2005-05-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

How will BRAC affect you? Follow the money. The most interesting trail is provided by contractors, for example, GMH Communities Trust is a publicly-traded Maryland real estate investment trust (REIT). Today almost every on base service from garbage pickup to weapons repair including housing, police protection - but oddly not yet fire proctection - and a host of other services that until about 1980 were provided by civilian employees and military personnel are now provided by contractors. And, from GMH's press releases there seems to be enough money to keep the investors interested.

Additional current BRAC information can be found at:

Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), from Global Security, a private information machine.

Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), a USGovt DOD site.

U.S. Department of Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) FAQ, another USGovt DOD site.

The usual suspects from Google "BRAC site:dod.gov"

And, even more of the usual suspects from Google "BRAC"

Enjoy!

Metacritic

2005-05-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

Metacritic, very nice within its limited scope which is essentially current marketing. A searchable collection of links to critical reviews for film, books, music, etc. taken from most major national newpapers and periodicals.

Sort of like a Manufacturer's New Products Section from a trade rag with collected reviews. An intersting idea. I wonder how they market on the other end to the film, book, and other consumer media producers?

A nice place to go when the children ask, 'Can we go see Kicking and Screaming?' It's not likely to retrieve the 1995 movie of the same name, and neither Eraser Head nor Pink Flamingos show up on Metacritic.

For the real reviews the best site is still The New Yorker Film File which collects nearly two thousand short reviews of films released from 1990 to the present.

Attention ETF Aficionados

2005-05-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

Information Management Network Presents

Super Bowl of Indexing

December 4-7, 2005 * Scottsdale, AZ

Who am I, Moveable Type?

2005-05-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

A friend writes in Anonymity "I daresay that anonymous bloggers have other reasons for keeping their identities to themselves."

Now, if only I can figure out how to post pictures to my blog, perhaps I'll identify myself to the blogosphere, but for now we'll hide behind the email address, which is explicit enough, and the blogspot veil. Putting out a decent post each day, much less creating an attractive setting to post in, is just a bit more work than most people might realize. The technical burden alone for novices is fairly tall, especially for the geek types like myself who want to focus on the HTML instead of the content.

I've become fond of opening links in new windows, a nice touch I think since it keeps the original page in place. However, I notice when I write a comment with "target=" inside an "href=" on a Moveable Type blog the "target=" phrase is striped out by Moveable Type. When you look at the Moveable Type preview source code the "href=" phrases don't have the "target=", it's just gone. Anybody have a clue how to overcome this? The eBlog engine here swallows my "target=" phrases just fine and they work putting up a new window with the link.

Beard to beard

2005-05-07T12:12:00.000-05:00

Reading along in Miss Gostery's Guide under Links and Permalinks I found rebarbative used to characterize Permalinks and realized someone had learned entirely too much French. I shouldn't complain though rebarbative led me to the AskOxford site and a wonderful compliation of dicitonaries, OneLook.

Fwd: All that's fit to Fwd:

2005-05-05T03:00:00.000-05:00

Well, almost all that's fit to forward. The burden is large, the connection is slow, and time is short. But, we include here what we can, and we encourage you to do the same.

Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:, that's the site where we have moved all the Fwd: material. You'll find the same link at the top of the right hand side bar under Features.

Post away.

Enjoy!

And, so we begin.

2005-05-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

And, so we begin. The quality of the light that's what really counts. How it changes, that's something to watch too. Subtle changes are the nature of all good things and life.

Watch how the colors slowly appear and change in actual hue as the intesity of the light increases.

Watch the the hues fade to monochrome as the intensity decreases.

Watch a sunrise, watch a sunset, stay outside, watch a moonrise and a moonset.

Watch! Watch quietly.

Who is this guy? George M. Henderson, that's who.

Where is this he? Tuckassee, that's where for the moment.

What is he doing? God only knows, really. For now, selling enough product to pay the rent and filling the page with words.

In the footer below you will see a copyright notice, it contains the link to the email address, put the mouse on Albedo Press.

Ok, that's all you really need to know now.

Read, think, hit the comment button and write, please.

Enjoy!