In Memoriam

 Get out those albums and stacks of photos stashed in the cabinets!  Get them out before the week of the funeral!  Try to remember the infinite detail of a loved one's life before the last rites!  Make those big, unwieldly poster board collage-thingies of drawings and pictures ahead of time, get together and remember, have a drink to your love and sympathy together!

 --

In Memoriam E.O.W.

If my voice should die on land,
take it to the shore;
fire it on a viking strand,
scatter ashes on the sea
with a broadcast quick and carelessly.


If my voice die on a mount,
take it to the valley plain,
and erect a strong redoubt;
there circle bold megaliths upon,
ancient troves… Agamemnon!


If my voice die in ocean trench
raise it from that deep abyss;
stretch it on the littoral bench,
like a whale whose youth misspent
seeks Leviathan and will repent.


If my voice dies in the air,
then do not cry
and do not care
for I am but a step away
from lace, from ribbon...and eternitay!


--

ps

I received some comment that the poem was a bit "upbeat" for funerary times...
I said that it was about life eternal, and - in my mind - life eternal is a reason to celebrate and hoot!

Reporting to the Captain

  USS Lyon

My father, a lieutenant in the US Navy in WW II who served on the USS Lyon, reported to his Captain Sunday at 7:30 PM.
I had just finished reading his favorite writing, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, in The Wind In The Willows. As I was reading, I was wondering whether to stop and continue on the morrow, but something would not let me. When I had finished, I sensed that I had opened a door that could not be closed, and it might be used that evening.
On leaving, I told the nurse to call me any time of the night if anything happened.
My mother and I drove 9 miles home, put out the garbage for the morning, and my cell phone rang....
--

The Morality of the Extended Mind

I have written that the religious task of the near future is the improvement of the morality of the group mind. No doubt, most people think this nonsense.
Think of an extended mind as Science as it exists: scientists worldwide and in touch with each other. Before 1800 and something, even this did not exist. There were no scientists to speak of, and there were no journals and conferences. Think of how Science has defined itself in the last 200 years.

Now there is the rest of us.
We have a Journal and a Conference right at hand in the Internet. It is a tool to create a network.

The journal and conference of communication is at hand. Now we need to understand morality somewhat more deeply than the nonce notions we have of it, and we'll be on the way.
--

The Dream Factory: The Tidal Wave

It was the early morning of January 26, 2013. I was at home, having come from the hospice where my father slept the afternoon of Friday, the 25th, and I was within the comfortable ambit of my own bed on a cold and wintery morning. I had risen very early and had gone back to bed after having lit the colored lights of the small Christmas tree still standing on the dresser in the bedroom. The lights wrapped in front of the statue of the Virgin, the one with the Christ child with a broken ceramic arm, the one I call La Madre del Brazo Roto, and she stood upon the gleam of a blue candle.

Sleeping again, my family was in a city on the water. It was a park area, fairly new; there were no signs of older structures. It seemed like a combination of a park on the water, bright cottages on canals, a modern Venice built in a sunny spot in Florida, maybe. Perhaps something like Johns Island north of Vero Beach - smaller houses, however - with numerous canals through the properties and some small commercial properties near the park and amusement areas.
We were on the edge of a large body of water, like Johns Island borders the Atlantic, or a town like Empire, Michigan borders Lake Michigan.

We seemed to be doing what folks do in such places, walking, talking, looking: nothing too interesting. It was a sunny day; everything was very bright.

At some point I saw an enormous amount of water in the air, held up as if by an invisible enormous tablespoon. It was at a distance, but close enough to instill a sense of wonder and fear.

The invisibly gigantic tablespoon dumped its load of water into the large body of water nearby. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, apparently since the massive amount of water in the sky was not to be dumped on top of us.
However, I felt certainty that there would be a tidal wave or tsunami as a result of the displacement of water in the ocean or lake equal to the massive amount of the sky-borne water. I was sure that it would overwhelm us.
There was a long moment of anticipation, like waiting for immense change, like staring at Richard Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, and making a painful effort to hold one's breath on the edge of chaos and change.

The tidal wave did come, and I saw water pouring from openings in various architectural objects, thinking it was, perhaps, but a small bore, and would prove to be an inconvenience and nothing more, but then I looked up and saw the crest of the approaching wave far over my head, and I knew we were all to be killed.

The wave hit; we tumbled in it. My mind seemed to be straining at this point to continue the story, to follow the churning wave and see what happens to us; it seemed as if there were scripts available and shots edited from films of people being pulled choking from the water, and these could be used or edited in.....

However, we died.
I do not think I have ever died in a dream before.
Afterwards, we inhabited together a cottage with a warm wooden interior with plantation blinds on the windows and doors. We were in a life between normal life and death, an in-between state. I think we briefly discussed it, some saying we survived, and some saying we had not, but now were in another state of being.
There was a front door, a small foyer area, and about four steps leading down into the living area of this mahogany cottage of another life; I remember watching a family member - maybe myself - sweep those steps and ponder the future.........

It was like a limbo. We seemed to go on as before, but knew we could not be perceived by anyone alive... maybe. It is not quite clear.
There was a kitchen of the antiquity of my dreams; it had been used a thousand times by my personal Morpheus, and must stand in the back lot of Montag Universal Dream Films. It was a shadow kitchen to which someone walked from a brightly lit hall, and there was an old time telephone on an old time hall stand... but not visible. I knew it was there just beyond the dark shape of the person entering the dark kitchen, but it was out of the picture, for my view was from inside the darkened kitchen and I saw out into the light, and the stand and telephone were off to the side.......

--
notes

I had come from the hospice; death is all around us. I suppose it is clear enough. I did mention Richard Dadd to my nephew on January 24, a Thursday.

--
--
Addendum

Dreams are very interesting, and here is a germane one:
http://joe-ouellette.blogspot.com/2012/08/dream-about-massive-tsunami-tital-wave.html

Mr. Ouellette forces meaning based on old stories onto his dreams, but we all do.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

DREAM ABOUT A MASSIVE TSUNAMI TIDAL WAVE

Dream August 1, 2012 by EJ Ouellette

Dreamt a bunch of us were running for our lives up north somewhere. I knew Nibiru was coming and was going to cause a massive flood around the world. I was panicking and running as fast as I could pulling my daughter behind. I saw an apartment building and we ran inside to get as high as we could. As we got to the top I could see a giant wave coming quickly in the distance and before I could even think about it, it was upon us. I took a couple of huge breaths of air and held my daughter really tight. The wave pounded against us but then I realized we were alive and not washed away. I was out of breath since we were under water so long. I realized we were would be fine after that. I started to cry, as I knew many people in the Arctic were washed away and that the arctic was seriously destroyed and thought maybe all the snow had melted.

NOTE: I just read somewhere that Nibiru’s debut in our solar system would be on August 17^th and would leave around the Sept 17th. Also Nibiru supposedly takes 3600 years to return to earth. 7200 years ago was the FLOOD. Also interesting to note is that every culture from around the world talks of a flood 7200 years ago. 3600 years ago was when Manna fell from heaven.

EJ Ouellette

Expectations and La Penumbra de la Paloma

 La Calle Desconocida

I don't believe in God.
I expect God.
I expect that if I turn the corner onto a new and different street -  a street I have never been on before and whose shops are filled with odd objects, a true calle desconocida en la penumbra de la paloma - God will be on the corner, wearing his distinctive dark fedora.

If I believe in God, however, I also believe that the new and different street is either narrow or broad; it is paved with gold or asphalt; the shops are open or they are closed, although things are not always what they seem.
If I do not believe the street will run to my destination, others will try to convince me that this street is the real way and truth, giving me copies of their GPS Salvation. If there are potholes, believers will try to exorcise them and cast them out.
If I use this street enough, the believers will tell me that it is not enough to think that it runs true and straight, for I must read and understand the infrastructure of the street, the pipes beneath, the gas mains, the grades and sub-grades of sand and stone; they will take me to the time when there were no streets and all was virgin forest and edenic peace, and then their God said "Fiat pavimenta!", and then there were pavements of many kinds...

Expectation is the Dawn Consciousness of Children expecting Santa Claus: St.Nicholas is never really absent;  it is the ritual of how we focus on life that allows for being filled or emptied. The ritual of Christmas puts us in a state of apartness and leads us to a state of togetherness... but in actuality, we are always one with St. Nick, with Christmas, with the Christ Child.
Belief rituals are used for a state of constant emptiness, giving us a feeling of never being satisfied.
Expectation is the state of being on the verge of fulfillment, and we easily tip over into the landscape of fullness.
--

Mind and Reality

I do not believe that Mind creates any Objective Reality. I believe that there is a dynamic system that has a vast number of components, some of which correspond to what we used to call mind or body or external reality.

We exist in a realm of non-linear interactions between these things.

Mind creates Reality and Reality creates Mind; everything mirrors every other thing.

And, I believe God is a unitary component.
--

Survivalist

There are two types of survivalist:  (1) Mountain Man Individual, and (2) Collegial Prospector.

Jeremiah Johnson pretty much lived alone.

The prospectors in the Klondike lived alone or with their partners, and came into town for the winters or for supplies. At those times, they formed a rough libertarianism; their collective votes determined justice and the law.

Now the Second Amendment has two different viewpoints: the needs of the individual against any government, and the collective rights of things such as States and their militia needs.
For all x, the right of x to keep and bear arms...

Both viewpoints are "narratives" and the survivalist or libertarian individuals who are the class for the values of "x" are actors in a "role" we have created to fill the "yarn" of the Second Amendment we have spun. The view of the law changes with change":  mobilis in mobile.

We fight for our stories.

I have discovered that all stories come to an end. My father faces the Guy who says when it's a wrap.
--

Prayer

Prayer is not magic; prayer does not seek to inform a God of our needs, nor to persuade him to our point of view.

Such a process is magic, old time magic; knock and it shall be opened... like magic.

Or move a mountain!

Faith must be selfless, else those mountains stay right where they are.
How do we learn to be selfless?
--

A Normal Lack Of Intelligence

Aid for the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy has been passed. I do not wish to go into details, only to mention that some sharp-eyed and dull-witted Republicans wished to offset the spending by cuts elsewhere... exactly the same thing Rep. Cantor tried to do when tornadoes ripped through Joplin, Missouri.

Well, dull ones, with Climate Change there is coming a time when all your budgets will be rendered to zero in order to pay for disasters.

You had better come up with  something else other than mere offsets.
--

Justice Scalia and The Second Amendment

Justice Scalia, eternally trying to get a wedgie into the perouques and linens of the Founding Fathers, would never be able to support any right to bear automatic weapons under the Second Amendment; it would be quite clear that the Founding Fathers did not imagine any such weaponry, hence, it could not have been "in their heads".
--

note:
He may have said as much in Heller.

The House of Dorian Gray

--

Planning The Garden

--
pix: the cat and the eye

Ade Ileke 51: Водная жизнь (Life Aquatic)

The Life Aquatic --

Zero Dark Thirty

I have been reading reviews of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The writers are quite convinced that the effort is worth the candle. I personally doubt it; they remind me of mediaeval savants arguing about how many angels dance upon a pin's head. It always brings to mind DeQuincy's On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts

I am sorry to say that [there] exists in London... [a] Society of Connoisseurs in Murder.

They profess to be curious in homicide, amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criticize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art...

Insert "torture" for "murder" and you have the current disputation:  torture as a murderous tease.
To argue Technique and Style, and to ignore Morality and Virtue is a grievous mistake.

Our age is not so much Secular as it is Amoral. It avoids virtue like the plague, from the market place to the halls of government to the home, virtue is treated like a homeless person.

Therefore, why should a critic speak of the vile nature of our entertainments, seeing that most of us are dead to the most basic concepts of virtue?
--

The Dream Factory: Coffee Grounds

 The Gate Keeper of Dreams On Break

My used coffee filter ripped, spilling a few tablespoons of grounds onto the floor. As I got down on my knees to clean it up, a memory suddenly flashed into recognition: that I had had a dream last night of being on my knees drying the floor of a bathroom where the tub or a sink had overflowed.

As I write this, I have another memory that my mother actually had a sink overflow last Thursday, a sink which strangely had no drain to prevent such things. We discussed it briefly. So there was a forward pointing and a backwards pointing, a prescience and a memory that combined in the present..., past, present, and future mind.
--
note:
Later the day that this was written, I was at my parents and discovered my mother had overfilled the sink again. There was water enough to wet the floor of the basement. 

 --
pix: http://eategofeedsoul.tumblr.com/post/34209194577

The Life Aquatic and Steve Zissou

May The Life Aquatic be within you!
--

pix:  http://armagansenol.tumblr.com/

The Gaithersburg Patch Op-Ed and Violent Roles

I don't suppose you read the Gaithersburg Patch, Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Good local news sheet.

An article there today:
http://gaithersburg.patch.com/blog_posts/sandy-hook-copycats-and-a-culture-gone-mad-wake-up-america

Sandy Hook, Copycats and a Culture Gone Mad: Wake up America

Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:44 pm

    
Dr. Michael Milgraum

I am only interested in the concept of "copycats", although it is a fine article and worth your reading time.

I am interested that the notion of "copycat" underscores the idea that things like such-and-such manner of Mass Killer is a socially defined Role, and various people may step into the "role", just as different actors will play Hamlet or King Lear.

--

Tlamictiliztli (Human Sacrifice) News!

 The Aztec God Tlaloc

 http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/24/us/washignton-bar-shooting/?iref=obnetwork

(CNN) -- One person died and one person was wounded when an apparent altercation led to a shooting at a Seattle-area bar, police said Monday.

The shooting occurred just a few hours after the Seattle Seahawks won their way into the NFL playoffs. Several players and other celebrities were among hundreds of people gathered at Munchbar, a popular nightspot in Bellevue, Washington. No players were injured in the incident, which occurred just after 1 a.m. PT Monday.

The month of Tititli has been chock full of sacrifices; a good month for the Snake Goddess, Cihuacoatl !
Go, Cihuateteo !
--

Downton Abbey III

 "Stay at Downton, Watson, and keep an eye peeled for his lordship's linen."

Well, well, well...
My, my, my,....

What shall I say about episode 1 of season 3 of Downton Abbey?

O'Brien and Thomas are on the outs !
He has given his one-time partner in skullduggery and crime the air because she had the effrontery to recommend her nephew for the position of footman...

The bloody nerve of O'Brien! Takes your breath away, don't it?

The marriage night of the newlyweds, Mary and Matthew, was silently blushed over, not like the marriage of Bates and Anna last year, in which we saw someone ( as I recall dimly ) cavorting shirtless or chemise-less or blouse-less... and a bit of the old pillow talk. Apparently Julian Fellowes believes that the upper classes should not be portrayed in the throes of passion...  except when they are in flagrante with a Turkish gentleman, or whatever.

Shirts went missing (probably with the collars and collar studs!) only to suddenly reappear, and acid made its way into the blueing bottle. If I had not known better, I would have called it Baskerville Abbey.
--

Merry Orthodox Christmas!

And Merry Little Christmas...

This is the Epiphany and the last day of the Twelve Days, leading into tomorrow, which is Orthodox Christmas. With a little thinking, we could make the feasts of lights stretch through the entire year.

Merry Christmas to our Orthodox friends! Merry Christmas to our Coptic friends!

--

Some People I Shall Miss

Russell Means left us in 2012.

Russell Means and Daniel Day-Lewis 

He was an important voice for Native Americans.

--

Tribal News January 6, 2013

I was in Port Huron, Michigan on January 5, and was looking forward to a skirmish in the area of the Blue Water Bridge: the Idle No More movement was supposed to have a demonstration and close the border...

Read about our neighbors and friends and what governmental debacles they may be facing:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/idle-no-more-ceremony-planned-us-canada-border-january-5-146738

With the Idle No More movement rapidly spreading outside Canada's borders – seeing Indigenous rights protests emerge as far away as Texas, New Zealand, New York and the United Kingdom – activists in Washington State and British Columbia are planning an action Saturday, January 5th that literally spans the frontier.
The meet-up at the famous Peace Arch monument – described as a “peaceful prayerful gathering of Indigenous women, supported by our Indigenous men, standing united – will see Indigenous activists and supporters rally their drums, songs and prayers for change on both sides of the border.”
“It's a peaceful, prayerful action,” Kat Norris, spokesperson for the Indigenous Action Movement, told Indian Country Today Media Network. “We, the organizers, want to ensure that we are going into this with good and strong hearts. Doing this at the border, with our relatives from the other side of the border joining, we're making a statement that support comes north and south, and east and west to join this. It's a symbol of support for Idle No More and everything it stands for – and for Chief [Theresa] Spence...

--

Rural America January 6 2013

Food Writers Who Forget Rural America

A Montana rancher tells us more in 100 seconds about how to change the nation's food system than a New York Times columnist can in a year's worth of writing.

By Bill Bishop

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman continues to write about food as if farmers and rural communities didn’t exist.
Bittman’s column Wednesday was about “fixing our food problem.” Bittman finds quite a bit that needs attention. He writes that what we grow and how we grow it has “been a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy, tortured billions of animals… I could go on.”
What the nation must do, Bittman commands, is to “figure out a way to uninvent this food system.”
Great! Maybe Bittman has something in mind for farmers and rural America.
Well, you can read for yourself. The column is here. But you can take our word for it, there’s much more in this column about what should be done to improve the lives of farm animals than of the men and women who raise them....

A good illustration of how we read, write, and jibber-jabber in an unusual way that is blind to much of the world hidden from eyes... hidden because it is not premasticated and predigested for us by the Media.
 
Read something other than the New York Times, or listen to something other than FOX.

They are all urban chauvinists!

--

I Love The US Post Office....

... at least I used to. I still think the USPS is pretty cool, even though I have to drive all the way to Pontiac's west side to pick up my vacation accumulated mail.

How the Postal Service began prefunding retiree health care and fell into a deep hole

January 2, 2013


Good article on how Congress fixes one problem by creating at least two more problems.
--

Art-ful Adjectives.

J.S. Copley's Watson And The Shark

Today's a sprightly, booming day! It's a Watson and the Shark day, mates! Full of tension and action!

--

Django Insaned

I don't think I have ever seen a film as bad as Django Unchained.

Spike Lee was 100% correct in saying that he was never going to see it.
It is awful.

What Hogan's Heroes was to the Holocaust, Django Unchained is to Slavery.

Perhaps I was too annoyed that Django's wife was variously named Brunhilda and Broomhilda:  this was too overt a hint that the whole thing was a knock-off of comic strip story telling.... sort of like Terry and The Pirates meets Smokey Stover .

I am serious. At the end, the plantation mansion is blown up, and Jamie Foxx uses the next few minutes for showing off his abilities with horses, doing a few dressage bits. The only thing missing was a sign saying "etaoin shrdlu".
--

Roles

By our interests and pursuits, emotions and behaviors, we create the outlines for the scripts that define the roles which people assume in our society: mother, father, policeman, judge, homeless person, religious leaders. Look at images of saints and holy people and see just how much they are forced into the same model of holiness. Most of them look very much alike. It is not, however, they who are perfect images of each other, but it is we who insist on viewing them according to the set of holiness rules we have established.

We also define Mass Killers.

Sick people are not invariably drawn to murder and mayhem. They look about their society and milieu to see what roles are available to express anger and hate. They are actors looking for the juiciest parts which we, as vital members of society, have created for them in news reports, films, books, images, jokes,... any form of information.
If we obsessed about other ways to express anger as much as we obsess about using violence to express anger, things would be a bit different when it came time for a troubled soul to pick up the bushwhacker. But we do not. Our violent way of expressing anger has been around a long time, and it has been anointed by a great numbers of movies and stories which use violence to restore law and order and to render justice.


Violent films and games do not lead to violent behavior, but they do define violent roles and ways to act, and they provide scripts and stories and ideas........

Homage !

Homage is a word used in cinema criticism. It is used most often to describe a director who shots a scene just like someone else has done before, in order to honor that someone else.... or to get out of a corner into which they have painted themselves and from which they lack the creativity to extricate themselves.

So, in the recent mass murders, do we see any Homage to our stories and films and imagery, etc.?

Guns do not kill people; people do... with their acting out violent roles which have in great part been defined and outlined for them by the rest of society.
These roles contain guns; you cannot do "For A Fistful Of Dollars" without a gun. 

The mass killings with guns are often very similar because the shooters are acting out the very same roles
--

Soothe The Anger

The events of the last few days made us all frightened and angry. This poem from 2009 reminds me of a calming influence and feeling of charity we need and search for.

People have been interviewed, and they moan our best days are behind us.
We are angry and we are pained, but we have the future, and the future is what we make it.
I always think of Mary, or Miriam, when I read this, guardian against fear and anger.

Mothers' Day 2009


Mothers teach us how to pray before we
go to bed, kneeling beside white sheets
and using the currency of our innocence
to try to set the world upright again,
and save us all from atom bombs
and things that go bump
in the night.

Mothers teach us how to dress before we
go outside - we who want to naked run
and throw our clothes in a thoughtless pile -
she buttons up the surrounding collars;
and orders the chattering teeth
of shameless zippers
to subdue!

Mothers bake yet are not bakers; mothers
heal yet are not doctors; they open eyes
to art, many never having held a brush;
design pillow forts, yet aren't architects.
the grace of God they
dispense, yet are
not priests.

Mothers are an ancient holy order,
taken vows of silence, crying why? but
never speaking, door keepers of God's grace
that beats upon our shut monastery door:
she bids enter! the divine
visitor to wash
and eat!

Mothers sit shiva upon their dreams and
never let us know the shipwreck of desires
they had for the princes and princesses
of their fruitful bodies, for mothers yet
may resurrect the hopes and dreams
of mankind grown old:
young harts leaping!
--

notes:
young harts leaping:
from the Song of Solomon.



At the time, no one commented on this poem. I think it is rather good, because my wife says it is, and she is a "tough house" as they say in the comedy clubs.

--

Poetry Blogs

I like art blogs. Even the ones with the worst taste in anything have an incredible vibration of life...
except poetry blogs. They are sort of drab. Drabulous... a new word made from drab and crapulous.

Poetry blogs are drabulous.

Give me a poetry blog with a splash of Watson and the Shark, eh, Mate!

J.S. Copley's Watson And The Shark

Not a drabulous pixel anywhere.

--

Violence

Violence - and, by implication, mass shootings and killings - is not a mental health problem. It is not a mental state which is dysfunctional.

Violence is a culture construct; we create behavior patterns and scripts of violence, and when the time comes, we answer the call to begin to act our parts.

Violent acts are a trauma. When the participants leave their violent actions, and they return to a more "normal" state of affairs, the distortions  of violence in society prevent the trauma from being assuaged, and the "normal" states of affairs become more and more dysfunctional.

Violence and anger breed more violence and anger.

We are not insane.
We have a history of violence and intransigeance. We do not forgive. We are monsters of our own destruction..., but we are not insane.
--

The 18th Brumaire

 Napoleon On the 18th Brumaire

On  the 18th Brumaire - according to the French Republican Calendar - Napoleon overthrew the French Directory and replaced it with his Consulate. It was a coup d'etat, and it began his dictatorship.

What we witness today is a coup d'etat in a vacuum... in reverse! By abdicating it responsibilities and beseeching the Senate and the White House to come up with a deal to soften the fall from the fiscal cliff, the House of Representatives has overthrown itself, and asked a whole group of "Napoleons" to take over its role in government!

We are suddenly mindful of Karl Marx, who wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon in 1852,  an account of the 1851 coup by Napoleon's nephew, which begins with:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

As noted yesterday, the abdication of responsibility by the Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

Today we witness the farce of the House of Representatives and its right wing in their inability to formulate any sane policy beyond sound bytes.
--

Metropolis, Megachurch, and the Towns of Rural America

I am not going to say much here. I know that is surprising, for the title was so ambitious, but I am merely going to point a thing or two out, and leave it to you to do the rest.

There is an article in the Daily Yonder, a publication geared towards rural America:  
Rural Social Activism, Born in a Stable
By Timothy Collins
http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-social-activism-manger/2012/12/17/5546

...Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and leading Social Gospel theologian, outlined the movement’s principles in A Theology for the Social Gospel in 1917. Echoing the title of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum, that sought justice for workers, Rauschenbusch wrote: “The new thing in the social gospel is the clearness and insistence with which it sets forth the necessity and the possibility of redeeming the historical life of humanity from ... social wrongs.... Its chief interest is concentrated on those manifestations of sin and redemption which lie beyond the individual soul.”

This reminds me mightily of what I was trying to discover in talking about the group mind or the extended mind:  we have a nation full of good individuals who go on to form extended groups, crowds, and factions, that are anything but good.

Megachurches have not addressed the Spiritual Evolution to the attainment of a higher morality of the group mind. Megachurches come about by the simple logic that there was an injunction to go forth and teach, and the way we judge success in any endeavour is the absolute numbers of heads under our tent or marquee.

The Metropolis is a similar misbegotten creature, large and lumbering and unenlightened. Ditto for the Nation State.

In this so-called era of Globalization, the minds of all mankind touch. Whether their touch will be Charity or whether it will be Flint to the Powder is up to us.
--

The Fiscal Tonkin Gulf

 Gulf of Tonkin

The Congress has abdicated its power and responsibilities many times in my life. I remember the Tonkin Gulf resolution:

Tonkin Gulf resolution, in U.S. history, Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia.

On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action.

On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia.
Although there was disagreement in Congress over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. 

The measure was repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995 meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred.

Now the House of Representatives has fallen prey to its own internal Tea Party-Republican discords - a problem anyone with an ounce of sense saw coming when the Republicans embraced the Tea "Baggers" - and can no longer execute its responsibility to oversee national finances......

This is the fiscal counter-part of the surrender after the Gulf of Tonkin charade.
__

Mozart, Cezanne, and Einstein

There are geniuses of Science.
They change the paradigm and the way we see the world.

So also are there geniuses of the Spirit, and they change the way we experience the Holy.

There are geniuses of Art  - music, painting - and they change the way we experience those aspects of our lives.

There are intelligent beings and their behavior. There are the innovators of behavior, for good and for ill. Life is a continual odyssey of change for the better. If not, it recedes from Paradise; even though you may feel you are not moving, the stagnant world moves beneath you.

This is the point at which we say "Excelsior!",   I suppose.
--

All Grown Up

A young man whom we have known since birth stopped by after Christmas. He is working in China and living there, and is betrothed to a young Chinese woman. They are expecting a child in the summer of 2013.
His sister, my goddaughter, is to be married in 2013 also.

I could say "circle of life", but then I would betray the spirit of The Poetry. Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010. It is to him and to them I refer in the poem. The people are not static, and the father and children are facets of family, not individuals strictly speaking. It is never quite clear whom is being addressed or spoken of.

I have used the Anglo-Saxon word trūw in the last stanza in order to try and capture the many meanings of "true", which range from "not logically false" to "firm and steadfast" to "aligning tires to run in a straight line". It should be pronounced as the modern "true", however.
The "Georgia" referred to is the Caucasian State of Georgia.

Nomad Mikhail

when did you get home?
and did the ocean roar?

did you see your pals again
at the Georgian shore?

did you look into a store,
did you hold your child high?

and why was he a kid again,
and why was I a sigh?

i have already been there...
i shall not go again.
go and find your future
and sometimes i will send

an email of Christmas time,
Easter email too,
picnics, woods, and running twain
for we shall ne'er be trūw...

-------
note:
It seems to be trūw to the yearnings of past and the dreams of future.
When I say "Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010",  it is written in the Apparent Future, referring to a time when one may travel to other worlds.
I use the Apparent Future a lot these days.
--

Les Miz

Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean

I was shanghaied into Les Misérables. I do not know about the rest of the audience, but I was très misérable.

Rarely do I enjoy plays made into films, and rarer yet do I like musicals made into films.
In the theater, actors of a human scale and size are dwarfed by large stages and great scenery. The only way these actors can transcend their size is Song; their voices and the music makes the action inflate to fill up the entire universe of the spectators, filling every nook and cranny.

That is not the function of Music and Song in the film, a medium in which the actors already appear to be great heads about 30 feet high.

The Song and Music perform no magic in the film. We may hum along and smile and are amused, but we are not for the most part entranced.

I mean, I like Anne Hatheway, but to see her close-up 40 foot head and 10 foot lips singing her farewell song was more than I could bear to look at and feel any human emotion other than an urge to flee... which I did... to the friendly Mens' Room; then I stood around the candy counter for a few; then I trudged back, like Jean Valjean,

Everybody was very good, and Hugh Jackman was superb, and he promises to be a great actor, not merely a very good one. The material, however, was not right. The film worked only from the rising of the barricades to the beginning of Cosette's wedding: images were conveying the story, not the music so much;
images and a flowing story.

I was bored by everything else. Little things flitted about, like whether that was Helena Bonham Carter or not. I saw Sacha Baron Cohen and mused whether 'twas Borat or not, and I remembered Bruno instead, which led to unfortunate montages.
The worst part was the fact that I had a hard time with the English singing voices at the volume it was set at. The very climax of disgust came with the introduction of the street urchin, Gavroche, who at the funeral of General Lamarque pops himself up upon the catafalque and sings in an indeterminate Englishy accent so thick that I really needed subtitles.
I mean, why in the name of heaven was I watching a film set in Paris and being totally befuddled by English-speaking actors?!!? I could have understood Françoise Hardy much more easily.
--

Enough About Guns

No more gun posts.

I recalled the 2011 shootings in Norway, and there is pretty strict gun control there: 80 dead and sacrificed at a youth camp.

I think the answer is in learning virtue, and no laws can be passed to teach that, nor can any laws be repealed to let it flourish. It is in our hearts.

This is a matter I meditated on. There was a very quick intuition that this was a matter of the general violent attitudes that are so prevalent, combined with a meaningless parade of religions, mixed into a general lack of virtue and honor.
I may speak of virtue, but it is a waste of my time to speak of guns, and I recognize and accept it.

There are other, bigger fish to fry than guns. We have a lot to do in the short term.
--

Weather or Not

 Unisys Weather Home Page  December 26  2012

Weather Underground sucks.
It used to have Model Maps that were great; now their functionality has been reduced to almost nothing. I was so surprised recently when I went there...  I was so surprised I sent an email immediately telling them that I found it of little value anymore.
I mean, there is a drop-down menu upon which the last 5 items are superimposed over each other! Everything is very crammed together.
Furthermore, once you are at the Model Maps and give up, there does not seem to be a link back to the rest of the site. I can't remember seeing anything like this on the net.

I am told that The Weather Channel has purchased it. Last week I was at my parents and I turned on The Weather Channel to get the forecast, and then I was amazed to see a long documentary on some sort of weather activity - Tales From The Climatologist's Crypt or something like that. It went on and on.
It used to be that you could get "weather" on The Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel itself had been purchased by NBC last year. I knew when I heard about it that it would be the death knell of weather reporting. Soon Al Roker was on doing Today Show schtick, and weather was given the pink slip.

I am back at Unisys at

http://weather.unisys.com/

which was the original site with good weather modeling maps, and is still serving up weather 24/7.
--

Industrial Cloisters

 

 -- 

pix: synapticism  on Flickr

Japan Memories

--

Where I Stand On Guns

I uphold the Second Amendment.
I do not think the Second Amendment need be construed to be imagined as allowing automatic assault weapons, a weapon type I believe should be strictly regulated.

The Second Amendment does not care if people who own guns take pleasure in automatic weapons, it does not care if they wish to collect such guns as a hobby. Some people actually state that they wish to collect such weapons, and the Second Amendment gives them that right.
That is nonsense.
There is no right conveyed to hobbyists and collectors; the need and support for a "militia" does not include any notion of  pleasurable pastime, nor is it reasonable to imagine such a right is granted.

I believe that the basic tenet of Conservatism is that all rights require some sort of limitation, else they transform into anarchy, and freedom transforms into limitless license.
--

Veni, Veni

Brad DeLong had this hymn that I used to sing in choir at Midnight:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/12/veni-veni-emmanuel.html

Theotokos -  God's Mother

VENI, veni, Emmanuel,
 captivum solve Israel,
qui gemit in exsilio,
privatus Dei Filio.

Responsa
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel!



Which we sang as:

Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here,
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
will come to thee, Oh, Israel!



and the literal trans is more like:

Come, come, Emmanuel
and free captive Israel,
which groans in exile,
deprived of the Son of God.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
is born for thee, Israel!


The music is there, also. I have it in  my head.

--

Christmas

Christmas in Fukushima 2011

Merry Christmas... just in case no one else has said it to you so far today.

I have been up whipping up yeast waffle batter since 6:00 AM. That is no biggie... it was the staying up until Midnight on Christmas Eve that was sorely out of character.
When I stay up late, I feel as if I had smoked 2 packs of cigarettes (non-smoker) and drunk a couple of pints of vodka (tee-totaler). I guess virtue must be it own reward.

This year - and next, actually - we try to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, incorporating thereby Orthodox and Coptic Christmases with our friends in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Greece and the Balkans, Egypt and all over the globe.
Smile and wassail all the way to the Epiphany!

--

New - like - Speak ?

What's the new - like, mmm - speak dealy word for the present state of government?

Dyskratia?
Meaning "bad power"?

Dysarchy? Misarchy?  "bad leadership"? "hate leadership?"

Hmmmmmm... dunno?
Say, did you ever notice how much Ted Nugent looks like Nicholson's ice-cube Jack Torrance in The Shining ?
--

The PHYSICAL Cliff

I have decided to make fun of the theater of the absurd play "Fiscal Cliff" and its actors by calling it "The Physical Cliff", as if I were some sort of tosser released from the dafter for a home visit, Christmas time.

We live in an age where the speed of light has dumbed down to 55 MPH.

We live in an age where ideology is a paraphrase of "The Always-Denying Spirit" - der Geist der stets verneint as described by Goethe.

The geniuses of religion said "yes" to life, and we are being tutored to say a resounding "NO!"

The Physical Cliff is not as bad as the Spiritual Cliff we face.
--

LaPierre's Answer

2 firefighters killed in an ambush at a fire in New York... have armed guards on every fire truck.

1 killed and 1 wounded in a bar near Seattle... have armed guards in every bar.

Or maybe it would be sufficient if everyone in the bar had a gun themselves; I always liked going to bars where drunks had guns.

--

Movies

I am going to see some major cinema soon.

Lincoln, Hyde Park,... certainly the Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand film. I mean, I can usually judge from the trailers on TV whether a film is terrible or not.
The Hobbit looks terrible. The book was 1/40 the size of Lord of the Rings, and the megalomania of success is driving Cameron to extend it to a trilogy.

Mr. Cameron, how shall I put this?  Even Tolkien had some pretty boring and tedious moments... quite a few, actually, and those moments are the basis for the fluff to fill up your flick.

Les Miserables?
No way.
Django Unchained?
Only if I can indulge my fantasy - that first came into being when I heard of this film - that it is a story of Django Reinhardt and his discovery of the guitar.
--

The Gun Priests Sacrifice and Dance

 Elijah and the Priests of Baal

More laws probably will not work, because any such laws will be compromised and watered-down by the running dogs of the NRA; right-wing lawmakers will ensure that the mantra "More gun control laws won't work" will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This society has set itself on a path of self-delusion. Our deceits will only be corrected by disasters, such as the suicide of the Financial Sector in 2008, enormous climate events, such as Hurricane Sandy, and larger and larger immolations and sacrifices of citizens to a Second Amendment that has been deformed into the repugnant Idol in whose face danced the priests of Baal.

They danced, and the reality was revealed to them also.
--

Guns Don't Kill People?

There are drones that make their own decisions to fire upon their human targets...

So?

Well, so technology has created Guns that kill People...
and no longer pass the moral burden onto mankind.

The NRA would say true gun lovers would not want weapons that do their own shooting... that takes away the fun.
However, there is nothing in that shibboleth Second Amendment that forbids such technologically handy weapons.

Guns (and Drones) kill people... and people do, too.
--

War and Morals: Zero Dark Thirty

In war and violence, there is no grey area: murder is murder, torture is torture, and there is no way to escape the accountability of the outrage of the moral order. Patriotism is nothing compared to the vengeance of the Furies.

There must be an admission of guilt, and there must be remediation and reparation and forgiveness

There is no escape from wrath that we bring upon ourselves... none.
--

Op-Ed as Stupidity

Ross Douthat

Bloomberg, LaPierre and the Void

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Published: December 22, 2012 123 Comments

FOR a week after the Newtown shooting, the conversation was dominated by the self-righteous certainties of the American center-left. In print and on the airwaves, the chorus was nearly universal: the only possible response to Adam Lanza’s rampage was an immediate crusade for gun control, the necessary firearm restrictions were all self-evident, and anyone who doubted their efficacy had the blood of children on his hands.

The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole...

The fantasies and metaphors of a fool are once again forced upon us by a media that is too ignorant for its own good, much less for ours. We have enough idle baggage in our minds without Op-Ed columnists who are as obtuse - or more so - than we ourselves.

If it is not a certainty that the destruction of children is evil, then what is to a mind like Mr. Douthat's which is prepared to accommodate itself to any Lord of the Flies that happens by.

Prepare yourself now for Vile Lie to be heaped upon Vile Lie by the running dogs of death on the installment plan.
--

Metaphors We Live By

Look up the pdf of Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in Google, download it, read it, and think over and over how it applies to our fantasies of governance and guns.
--

Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers had Slavery in the Constitution.

They also had guns.

They had good things and bad things. That's life. If we cannot make the bad better, it is not their fault: it's ours.
--

Not Compute... aarggh!

"That does not compute!"

Let us get this straight:

The Republican party does not want to raise taxes; therefore, it is going to allow us to go over the fiscal cliff so that everybody's taxes will go up.

This is a script from a Star Trek episode, where the alien machine intellect is confronted with a paradox, and spins around in an infinite loop, until it breaks down, steam pouring from its orifices, saying despairing, "That does not...compute!"

Augustus Caesar

Augustus as Pontifex Maximus

I think I wrote about this before, but I'll repeat it.
I am thankful to the Republican members of Congress for such perspicacious insight into the dynamics of the times of Julius and Augustus Caesar.

For, indeed, I never had any first hand experience of ancient institutions falling by the wayside, and the freedoms and rights of the Roman ruling class being usurped by dictators.

But here is is right in front of us all:  The House has abdicated its role in governing the nation.

The Extreme Right Republicans have discovered they have ideology and a grudge and an attitude, but nothing more. In particular, they have no plan other than to disagree.

MARK my words:  the people will not sit by idly while these congressmen and women fiddle while the country burns.
Someone will push the House of Representatives aside, and most of the population will breath a sigh of relief and get back to their lives.

The Founding Fathers weren't always right.
--

NRA

The NRA seems to have hit the nail right on the head:  when you have created a society thoroughly saturated with guns, the only possible thing you can do is have more guns in the hands of some para-military force whose job is to use guns to keep the gun-toting population under control.

As they were speaking about this plan from another planet, 3 Pennsylvania state troppers were being shot and wounded.

I guess what they wanted to say is that this society is so certifiably insane that guns must be in the hands of the certifiably sane... and those certifiably sane will remain always good and godly, only killing when killing absolutely has to be done.

I at least agree that we are insane.
--

Bringing Home The Tree

Remember the Taliban

Polio workers in Pakistan have been killed. Threatened previously by the Taliban, they are now dead.

The thing I regret most about the Afghanistan war is the fact that the Iraq debacle took the front seat, and the Bush administration allowed the Taliban to re-establish themselves.

The Taliban are destructors of the soul, and wherever they rule there will be a realm of crap floating on the sea of history.

--

Hell Reconsiders Its Agenda

CNN today:

Private equity firm Cerberus has put U.S. firearms maker Freedom Group up for sale following Friday's killing of 20 children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. Freedom Group includes Bushmaster, maker of the rifle used in the shooting at the school in Newtown. Cerberus bought Bushmaster in 2006 before adding another 10 makers of firearms, ammunition and accessories to the group.

"Cerberus" is the name of the hound that stood guard at the gates of Hell, or Hades; same group that bought Chrysler and did not have a clue what to do with it.

Why would you name your private equity firm after the hound of hell?

Unless....
--

Sgt. Apone, Tough Love Principal of Regina High School

Sgt. Apone, Principal of Regina High School, Warren

I just finished listening to a news story on the ABC Detroit channel, wherein having armed teachers was discussed: it was seen as cheaper than having a policeman in every classroom.

So the guy sorta sez that if a teacher had laid down a burst of covering fire (the exact words are a little different), it may have distracted the guy, and then the lunchroom militia could have taken him out.

I like it when we take Fantasy for Reality.

I mean, we have already tried to turn reality into Ted Nugent's dreams, and it is not pretty so far. But what if we just take it and extend it into a reductio ad absurdum of having elementary school teachers act like the interstellar Colonial Marines in Aliens:

Using a Catholic Girls High School as an example,

Sister Mary Leanne, Principal, as  Sgt. Apone, leader of the Colonial Marine squad,

Mrs. M. Weinert, Advanced Placement English, as Pvt. Vasquez,

Mrs. C. Tarpley, Math, as Pvt. Hudson,

Mrs. S. Capizzo, Fine Arts, as Pvt. Hicks

Mr. Beveridge, Maintenance, as Pvt. Spunkmeyer

Vasquez

----

Theology

God is never a waste of time.

Theology, however, usually is.
--

The Fantasy World Has A National Discussion On Guns

Some people say that it is time for a national discussion on guns. Even members of the NRA  say it is time. Isn't that great.

Too bad 20 children had to die before some people saw the light. Too bad those slow people were the ones who hold power. Too bad we had to go through that again. But apparently we need the sacrifice of children to knock us out of our fantasy world.

Too bad we had to have the financial system come to the edge of collapse before the government admitted anything was wrong.
Too bad we had to come to the verge of destruction in Iraq in 2006 before we realized Shock N' Awe did not work well.
Too bad we listen to people like Ted Nugent...

If the only way we learn is by mortal hard knocks, the next few years will be killers.
--

Susan Rice Runs Afoul of Republicans..... and... anyone? anyone?

I guess I never got the whole story on Ms. Rice.

http://www.dailyyonder.com/

Nebraska landowner group applauds Rice's withdrawal from Secretary of State nomination 

Rice Out — Susan Rice has taken herself out of the running to be the next Secretary of State. She had run into Republican opposition for how she had portrayed the attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador in Libya.
She had also come under scrutiny by environmental and landowner groups for her ownership of up to $600,000 in stock in TransCanada, the company building the Keystone XL pipeline. Keystone would carry tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. But first the pipeline must receive a permit from the, you guessed it, Secretary of State.

Rice's conflict of interest was not mentioned in stories in the Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Nor were her extensive holdings in other companies active in Canadian tar sands noted. Not only are the tar sands reserves an economic issue, they are an international issue, as China has begun investing in the field.
Landowner group Bold Nebraska, which has opposed the pipeline, favored Rice's withdrawal.

Let's hear it for the press and news media.

Fun With Gun

Ooohhh, fiscal cliff....!

The publicity of the fiscal cliff, and the endless and fruitless negotiations are part of the charade of fear and terror being used against us to make us embrace a dismal future of poverty.
--

Meditation 12/16/2012

reprint from 2008
Thinking of My Father in 2012

God is simple.
As seen in time, God becomes complex. Particularly the divine looks complex when it interacts with consciousness like ours.

We are made in God's image. Not a physical image, like some sort of body, for that is not what the Hebrew words mean in Genesis. Our consciousness is similar to the divine. Our life in the World is like the land under the sun, going on for mile and mile until it reaches the sea. At the beach and tidal pools, where the land meets the sea, it is like an interface between the World and the Self. All that has been experienced flows from the disappearing land and into the sea.

On the sea waves form in different patterns. Beyond these wave patterns, the surface of the sea reflects the sunlight in a million different shining facets, each one a new and different bit of data, and under the sea are unknown currents flowing boundlessly.

Within the utter complexity of the sea lies the Self.

Within the Self are Images and Memories and Language and Habit which bear with them the odors of land. In time, the sea comes to an end at some shore and the Self flows back into the external world, hopefully as good or better than before, for the land has its own complexities of a more durable nature.

We go from land to sea and back. The interface between the World and Self forces the complex to become simple, in order that the Self may assimilate the complexities of the World. In turn, the simple state of the Self begins a Wolfram process ( cellular automata) which leads to greater complexity within consciousness. To exit from the Self and return to the World, the complexity of the Self must become simple again and be re-incarnated into the World as a new day, and begin the process of complexity once more.

Then another complex of the working day begins until we tire and, with the setting of the sun, start to divest ourselves of our intricate costumes and cease to talk and shut down in sleep. We see sleep as withdrawal from the World and a parable for death. With God, there is no death and the sleep of God is a parable for life. (This was known from antiquity and is the reason why we see the picture of Persephone as Queen of the Underworld seated with Hades, both of them bearing symbols of life and increase.)

Absurdities

The logical reductio ad absurdum takes a premise and turns it into extremes, thereby highlighting various aspects of the internal logic of the premise itself.

Proposition A:  Guns don't kill people; People do.

(1) If guns do not kill people, then our focus is on the people themselves.
So what do we do about people?
Most proponents of unlimited guns think we should promote (at what cost?) programs for gun ownership, care, and safety.

OK. Good idea, but it is obviously not enough if Civic Virtue is not also taught to people.

To teach gun safety alone implies a future of gangs and mafiosi who are very conscientious about their weaponry.

This is an absurd result, but it is what will happen if the mechanics alone are taught, and virtue is ignored.

(2)
Consider this change:

Proposition B:  Atomic Bombs don't kill people; People do.

Is this as easily understood and absorbed and acceded to as proposition A usually is?

Consider this change:

Proposition B.1:   Atomic Bombs don't kill great scads and heaps of people; People do.

This is harder to agree with. Why? It seems that since the intention of atomic weaponry is to kill large numbers of people, and people left to their own devises, like fists and even clubs, can only kill a limited number of their fellows, that we tend to creep over to the side that says that atomic weapons actually do kill people.... at least great bloody heaps of them.
This proposition can flip-flop in our minds like a perpetual Romney-machine.

(3)
Proposition C:  Power does not tend to corrupt, nor does absolute power corrupt absolutely; People do.

This becomes very involved at this point.
--