Wally Weet

Craig and I have been having an interesting discussion about a fact of life few are ready to talk about. We humans seem unaware of the illusion of our separation from nature. In fact, we’re quite straightforward about the notion we are not the same as nature. We are forever talking about “man and nature” as though humans were not part of nature. If we truly believe we are separate from nature, we are a danger to our selves.

So, I've been pondering Craig’s explanation for this phenomenon, an explanation suggesting how we come to be conflicted about our relationship with. Craig says, "… we are not separate but our state of mind might embrace a notion of separation or our behavior might suggest separation. Separation itself might not be an illusion but a psychological state and it may have a reality as such." I can take his point. Certainly all of the technology we live with: our houses, telephones, cars, tvs, industries, even food helps ratify this psychosis, this mental disorder in which our connection with reality is lost.

Let's be very clear about the source of this problem. Industry, advances in technology, our warm homes and powerful automobiles, indeed any artifact of creative engineering and science is not to blame for our psychosis, has in no way caused our pervasive psychological disorder. The problem is rooted elsewhere.

Let me get to the problem in a round about way. It may be we’re confused about human meaning here. A philosophy that was widely accepted in the fifties, Existentialism, embraced absurdity -the meaningless of existence - and I think this thinking still lurks in the minds of people influenced by scientific discoveries in the 20th century, people who have come to believe life is without meaning.

To others the meaning of existence is revealed in the Bible. Call it arrogance but for me the illusion of separation begins with the Bible. Traditional religions encourage humans to believe we are separate from earth. God, we are told, places us here for a short time before we go on to our true place at His side.

I believe Existentialism and the Patriarchal religions are both dead wrong. Life is meaningful as I will show and we need no heaven to make it meaningful. Life is filled with rich and significant meaning without superstition. Ironically, I believe the deep meaning of human existence depends entirely on precisely the new knowledge developed by science that led the Existentialists to see only absurdity in existence.

The new understandings of the universe we have learned through astronomy and physics, chemistry and biology have come together for the first time in human history to tell us who we truly are; an amazing and unprecedented achievment. To put it simply, I find profound meaning in life because of my awareness that I am -you are, we all are or could be - the universe aware of itself.

I know people sometimes have a hard time comprehending what I mean when I say we are the universe aware of itself. It seems difficult to grasp the idea that the vast cosmos should come to be aware of itself in something as small as a human being. But such is the demonstrable truth. It is fact, not myth, not intuition. Does it mean I have the universe in my head? In a way, perhaps yes.

To me I am the Universe Aware of Itself is a simple statement of fact that follows on the evolution of the universe from the big bang to now: energy to matter to stars to atoms to gravity to planets to life to animals to you and me. In this process all the earlier creations of the universe come to awareness in us. I am astounded by this fact. I need nothing else to make me see how filled with meaning our lives truly are: all the significance of the universe lives within us, is part of us.

Consider one fact. When we drink water we actually and literally commune with the first matter that came into being in the universe. Science has shown all the hydrogen ever created was created in the first creation of matter. Water is hydrogen and oxygen, so when we drink water we participate in a communion with the beginning of existence. Ponder the meaning of this for a moment. A simple thing like a drink of water literally puts us in contact with the first matter created in the universe. Time is erased. Space itself is compressed into one moment, one act; an act that keeps us alive: consuming water.

Moreover, from the time we were born our bodies have contained the original hydrogen. We are partially made of matter created at the beginning of time. This fact infallibly demonstrates our connection, our communion, with Earth and Universe. It is in this connection -our relationship to all that exists- we find our meaning. For me it is a more meaningful communion than anything religion has offered. And I think those religious traditions will have to find a way to incorporate these facts into their teachings or wither.

By the way, I must not fail to mention all the other atomic elements and molecules that make up our bodies which were also created in the bellies of a star, exploded into space, become part of our solar system, whirled by gravity into a great cloud that eventually became our sun, our planet, ourselves. These facts tell us who we are and where we came from. It is simply not enough to say to the faithful knowledge is sinful.

I must also say Craig’s notion that began this discussion, the idea separation is a psychological state, has been validated over the years. Studies by developmental psychologists have observed children around three or four years beginning to see themselves as separate entities, taking on identities or "persona”.

But it turns out our adult belief, even conviction, about this state, probably a conviction evolved early on in human history, is wrong. We are not separate. It is an illusion to believe we are separate and the belief leads to an unconscious alienation. I call this illusion of alienation our original sin because by believing this seeming alienation we, as a species, damage Earth, its children and ourselves.

I'd even argue evil itself rises from the human illusion of alienation, as evil is found only in humans and nowhere else we know of in the universe.

Were we not convinced of our separateness and consequent alienation we'd take more care, be less cynical about compassion. If we were all aware of our deep connection we'd behave differently and think differently. And yes as I shall argue later on, we'd make better choices.

Convincing people of these truths is a daunting task, perhaps impossible, but I see no other way for human kind given the state of technological progress we have reached. If we fail to see our true connection we can look forward to ravaging the planet and our own species. Some will say this is nothing but a foolish rant. So be it. Maybe there are other ways into a happy future for the planet. I just can't see any other way.

However, there have always been a few humans in every period in every culture who intuited the deep connection, called mystics they did what mysticism does in its best manifestations: Zen for one example. They intuit the knowledge of our profound connection to Earth and all its children, to the cosmos. This intuition is called the "perennial wisdom". In our time science has revealed the factual reality beneath the ancient intuitive realization of the perennial wisdom, but these new factual revelations of science are unprecedented and offer an equally unprecedented global source story of the human reality for all human beings not just the few followers of the mystic vision.

In this new understanding human bodies -like all the life forms before us, which prepared our way- are simply recycled within Earth. For those no longer burdened by the fallacy of heaven and hell our continuing role in the future manifestations of Life on Earth engenders no angst at all. The psychosis ends with the realization consciousness ends with death. Connecting and reconnecting with Earth is our reality. Atom to Atom, molecule to molecule, Life to Life.

No one knows what Life forms my molecules were part of in past ages or what my molecules will inform in the future but the possibilities and the mystery make me smile. My little bits were once out there in space then they participated in the formation of Earth. Now my little bits are part of the endless return of Life in new forms.

Consciousness of the small short term “me” will end and knowing who this embodiment of life on Earth truly is gives my life profound meaning.

But is all this enough to undercut the fallacious psychological illusion of separation evolved over our history? Only time will tell. But we can hope. My own hope is that we will come to see ourselves in a different way vis-à-vis a new understanding of Life.

I propose there is one Life and it is part of the design and organization of the universe like time & space, energy & matter. We know Life emerged on Earth some billion or so years ago when conditions were ripe. Maybe this Life has always been extant in the universe, we don't know. Anyway, I propose we think of all self-reproducing conglomerations of chemistry as simply the different masks – the persona? - worn by the seemingly infinite manifestations of Life. This includes ourselves. So, I suggest there is, in a real sense, only one Life expressed in perhaps infinite forms including ourselves.

What is Life? We don't know. We know it reproduces, uses atoms and molecules cooked into being in the bellies of stars. But we don't know what it is. We seem to think energy and matter are separate forms of the same thing: energy/matter. (E=MC²). I'd like to propose that Life is these two forms existing together, not separated. Life is energy/matter not separated into one or the other. The connection of the two realities is Life. Scientists may well shoot that idea down, but I propose it anyway. Perhaps Life ought be considered part of the universe like energy/matter & time/space. Is there a way to falsify this notion?

In these notes, I’ve been suggesting a human source story. The Bible is a source story. Every culture creates a source story. And these stories are always fundamental to the choices humans make in a culture. Our Biblical Garden of Eden source story suggests knowledge is sinful and women are inferior to men. Source stories influence choices. Our Biblical source story suggests Earth is the center, even the entirety, of the cosmos and from this idea emerges the difficulty our traditional religions have had with science, and what religionists call the sin of knowledge. Our Biblical source story has influenced the development of Western Civilization since Constantine. The same is true of all source stories; all of them influence the development of a culture. The choices, the actions, the ethos, and the ethics of every culture are deeply influenced by the source story it tells and believes.

Today the literal interpretation of our Biblical source stories is under challenge. And part of the reason for our political and religious divisions today is caused by the collapse of the Biblical source story as factual truth in the minds of so many people. That the Biblical source story has been challenged as literal fact causes fear and panic in some because in their minds everything depends on its acceptance.

Now we know only the new universe story is literally true. Only the new universe story told by science reveals to us our deep connection to Earth and all of its children, and has within it the power to lead us to make better choices in the way we relate to each other, the rest of Earth’s children, and the planet itself.

Truly, we now have the greatest story ever told.

Editor's note: The following was sent in by the god of the forge in sympathy with the trials of academe...

AN ODE TO TENURE

You shake my bones and you rattle my brain!
Too much StarStuff makes a man insane!
String theory here, Brane theory higher,
Goodness gracious,
Great Balls of Fire!

Top down, bottom up!
Sis boom bah
Two bits, four bits!
Diddle dee Wah!

Better not cry and you better not pout:
That Ol' StarStuff will turn you inside out!

Holey Moley! The Pope and the Dope!
Twistors, Quantum Loops and
Boop, boop, a doop!
Thermoes, bobos,
and Great Balls of Poop!

You shake my bones and you rattle my brain!
Too much StarStuff makes a man insane!
String theory here, Brane theory higher,
Goodness gracious,
Great Balls of Fire!


(With apologies to the greatest cosmologist of them all, Jerry Lee Lewis.)

Just remember the real purpose of quantum gravity and high-minded philosophical speculation:
Tenure at a great university of your choice.

Hephaestus

Dear Sean and Liam. I want to tell you a story, this story is the most exciting and the most important story you will ever learn.

I suspect you are too young to take much interest in this letter today but when you’re about 17 or 18years old I reckon the questions I want to deal with here will become important to you, so you might want to keep this letter someplace where you can easily find it. Along the way other people will offer you different ideas. I hope you will test my ideas about these questions against ideas others have to offer you.

Know this too. Science is the source of this new knowledge that my father never could know. But the learnings of science are always subject to change. Science cannot tell us everything about the universe, and science will never be able to tell us the total size of the universe. Some of the things I write about here in 2005 may change by the time you are adults. And that is what is so exciting about science. There are always surprises! And sometimes disappointments. And that's ok. There is one unchanging fact about this universe: Everything always changes. Science always goes after those changes.

OK. NOW TO THE THREE QUESTIONS I HAVE IN MIND: Where did we come from? Who are we? and What is our purpose here on planet Earth? And just so you know, I’m not thinking of local family facts but something a lot bigger as in, “Who are human beings? Where did they come from? What are they supposed to do here on the planet Earth?" In one way or another most human beings have probably asked these questions since human beings first appeared on Earth.

And I think these three questions are the reason religions were invented. Even the word “religion” which comes from the Greek meaning “to link back” suggests religion arose to answer those questions. But because religion didn’t answer those questions for me in a way I could accept, I’ve been seeking the answers all my life and now that I’m 73 and retired, I’ve made these questions and the answers I’m finding the most important thing I can write or think about. That said, I think you’ll understand why I want to share my thoughts with you because I think I’ve found a way to make life happier and more spirituality satisfying.

Like you, when I was a boy I went to Catholic schools. In fact, I went to Catholic schools from the first grade to the end of high school. Nuns and priests were my teachers. And they spent time every day teaching us about Catholicism. It was a lot more than the Catholic school required of you in the Netherlands. Twelve years of religious instruction; very little of it remains with me today.

I do remember one response from the Baltimore Catechism, a series of questions and answers that we were all required to memorize when we were about ten. One question and a typical question was, “Why did God make me?” I’ll never forget the response: “God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and be happy with him in the next.” At first I took in these lessons without questioning them in anyway. I just accepted them, put them in a kind of mental storage, which is not quite the same thing as “believing” them. But by the time I was 17 and still in high school under the tutelage of priests I did begin to question. And the questioning itself unglued the ideas I had put into that mental storage. That is why so many religionists demand unquestioning faith.

As soon as I began to question the religious instruction I had been given, it began to fall apart. I don’t know why. It was simply off. It missed the bulls-eye some how. Maybe because it seemed to be all about obedience and obedience is certainly not what I -a rather rebellious boy from first grade on- wanted any part of in my spiritual search. Twelve years of people demanding obedience of me was all the knuckling under I needed. So I started to look for the bull’s eye, the heart of the answer to those three questions: Where'd we come from? Who are we? What are we supposed to do here on Earth?.

It has taken me decades of searching but I think I’ve found the heart of the answer.. And I want to share what I’ve learned with you so you don’t get trapped in unquestioning obedience. ...or superstition which is what a lot of religions - not all - are about: unreal fantasy and superstition.

SO BACK TO THE QUESTIONS: WHO ARE WE, WHERE DID WE COME FROM, WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO HERE ON PLANET EARTH? First question first: Where did we come from? Well, when my father -your great grandfather- was born in 1898 nobody on Earth, not the most eminent philosopher or scientist knew what I know now. Maybe only a dozen on the entire planet Earth knew what I know now by the time my father died in 1948. My father certainly didn’t know about the Big Bang and the origin of the Universe which is the greatest story ever told because that story holds the answers to at least two of my questions. The amazing thing is that the story of the Big Bang and the Universe was first told in my lifetime. Astonishing. Ungelouflik! Amazing. Yes. Why? Because no one on planet Earth knew this truth before my lifetime. No one. Not ever before. Not Jesus. Not Mohammed. Not Buddha.

Ok, no one knew the facts until the mid twentieth century. So what does this newly discovered story of the universe tell us about who we are and where we come from?

FIRST YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT EVERYTHING AROUND YOU, EVERYTHING ON EARTH, EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS ENERGY/MATTER. Energy/Matter is the two sides, the two manifestations of the same thing and that thing is the Universe. By now you probably know about this fact and that Einstein put this fact into a mathematical formula: E=MC². Energy becomes matter, matter again becomes energy and the two forms of the same thing keep changing back and forth. That is how stars are made.

About 14 billion years ago all the matter in the universe was in its energy form and because energy isn’t matter it doesn’t take up any room. Fourteen billion years ago all the matter/energy in the universe was simply energy. Even today a star the size of the sun somewhere out there in space can implode and force itself to get smaller and smaller and smaller and as it gets smaller it crushes all the stuff that’s in it into molecules and then atoms and then protons and then neutrons and a star about the size of the sun might get to be as small as Amsterdam; a ball the size of Amsterdam. A neutron star. Nothing but neutrons which are just a step away from being pure energy: little particle/waves, strings that vibrate. When it gets down to that vibrating essence it is no longer matter. Just pure invisible energy. Some scientists believe that is what happens in a Black Hole.

Well the universe 14 billion years ago was pure energy. No material stuff at all. All the matter/energy was in the form of that intense vibrating energy and it exploded. Yes, there was a moment in time when the universe was very small and it exploded and that explosion has never stopped. The universe is still getting bigger. All that bottled up pure energy went into its combined matter/energy phase and those two aspects now fill every cubic centimeter of this ever growing universe. Where the universe isn’t stocked with stars and dust and galaxies like our Milky Way (and there are billions of those galaxies), where the universe isn’t stocked with matter it is filled with energy.

And that is all there is. There is nothing outside the universe. There is no “outside” the universe. No edge. No place where nothing exists. There is no there out there. Think about that. It’s hard to think about nothing being outside the universe isn’t it? That’s because there is no outside. The universe is not like a balloon that fills a black and empty space. There is no space other than universe space. The universe is the only space and everything in the only space. There is no space other than universe space. It is impossible to get outside of the universe because there is no outside.

OK. So, where’d we come from? We came into being because of that explosion, the explosion that has been going on for fourteen billion years. At first it was all unbelievably hot energy, pure energy. Then it started to cool a bit, and sub atomic particles began to vibrate themselves into being and they joined up - the universe is always about making partnerships and joining up with others. The particles became protons and at a specific temperature the protons joined up and became Hydrogen. The first and simplest matter! It cooled some more and the hydrogen atoms began to clump together and swirl in the embrace of gravity and more and more hydrogen atoms got into the swirl and it went faster and got bigger and began to heat up and it suddenly became a star. The first stars were all hydrogen and a little bit of something else. ...helium maybe? Not sure. I’m not a scientist.

AN ASIDE -an amazing aside- the first hydrogen? That primeval hydrogen? That hydrogen exists today! In fact, all the hydrogen that exists was made back in that early primeval time. Think about it. Water is H2O: hydrogen mixed with oxygen. When you drink a glass of water you consume that primal hydrogen! Your drink of water is a communion with the beginning of time. Indeed, there is a lot of hydrogen in your body. Your body is filled with the first matter from the beginning of time.

Anyway, these new stars, these hydrogen stars were cookers like all stars. In their bellies the new stars cooked that primal hydrogen and some of it became other elements: lithium, oxygen, nitrogen, iron. Gold. Silver. That is what happens in stars: nuclear fusion. Stars fuse elements together and make new elements out of old. The chart of the basic elements on the classroom wall tells you all about this fusion process. Fusing. Coming together. Sub atomic bits coming together to form other kinds of atoms: iron, gold, etc.

At some point in its life, the star will burn up, consume everything in it. Then it will either implode or explode. If it explodes it will send all that stuff it cooked up out into the energy/space of the universe. And gravity will grab it up and start another swirl and pretty soon a new generation of stars is born. And that process of star birth and destruction keeps happening over and over again and more and more elements are cooked into being: aluminum, nickel, everything: all the forms of basic matter; all the forms of matter on that classroom chart.

Eventually one of those new developing stars -our Sun- also developed some planets. Not all of the StarStuff from the last explosion went into making the new star, the Sun. Some of it swirled around the Sun and clumped together and formed our planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars etc. And this actually did happen about 4 to 4 ½ billion years ago. Remember, this is history, Gentlemen, not fantasy or myth. History.

Eventually, one of the planets created out of all the dust and rocks and minerals from the earlier exploded star became our Earth. Our source. And we after billions of years actually emerged from all the dust and rocks and minerals of that exploded star.

Think about that new Earth for a minute. Remember stars had been cooking up new matter and exploding it out into space to form new stars for 10 billion years so by now the StarStuff had everything in it to begin some very interesting creativity. About 2 billion years after Earth was formed it began to develop life. Liam and Sean, you are made of: StarStuff. Your little bits, your atoms were Out There! I think that history is the most exciting thing I can think of. It is hair raising. Everything on Earth is made of StarStuff. Including you and me. We came from a star. We were out there in our little bits, the atoms and molecules that make us who we are.

And that is the answer to one question; where did we come from? Starstuff.

Well, now Liam and Sean, you know where you came from, where all of us came from, where all the animals and all the plants on Earth came from. And that also tells you the answer to my second question: Who are we?

We are the stuff of stars. But how did this stuff come to life? All the atoms in our bodies were cooked into being in a star. Our little bits were actually out there in space mingling with the stars. Pinch your finger. It was out there once upon a time, a long long time ago. The stuff that is Earth and fish and you and me was out there, then became part of Earth, and then afterwhile began the process that led to Life. Inert StarStuff became LifeStuff. And that process still goes on today every time a seed becomes a tree or an egg becomes a bird or a human.

How did the process begin, how did it happen? How did Life begin? We don’t know. Religionists say you must believe that someone called god started life as though a figure mightier than us but like us waved a hand over the elements and life stepped forth. I think that makes good poetry but it does not make for literal truth. The God story is not factual, not history. And all we can say for now is this: how life formed is a mystery. Science may or may not ever figure it out. There are some scientists who have some hypotheses about it now in 2005 but they haven’t figured out the answer. We also don’t know for sure if Life exists on other planets. It may. It may not. We don’t know in this year 2005. We may know sometime in the future unless people who are afraid of the answer become powerful enough to stop science.

But let’s go on and examine this question further: Who are we? We know that at first, maybe two billion years ago, the life forms on Earth were simple, then as eons of time passed the forms Life took on got more complex. And that tendency toward complexity kept happening with Life. Life likes to show itself in many, many different forms. Think of it as wearing masks. Life like to wear many different masks. Here is a picture of Life wearing a mask we don't like. This is a cancer cell, a living thing.

At first Life formed slime -algae, we still have algae growing all around us. Then it formed maybe a one celled bacteria and then some bacteria clumped together (there’s that universe tendency to get together coming forward again) and out of the clump came maybe a simple seaweed. Evolution had begun. Life, by the process of evolution, had begun to take on, to create, what would become infinite forms. Life. Life is the process that allows the two basic aspects of the cosmos: Energy/Matter, to work together in a process that allows Matter to reproduce itself. Once begun Life began to create an infinite variety of forms constantly over and over through millions and millions of years until about 250,000 years ago people like us emerged from that Earth based process of Life: new Life forms. New masks on the face of Life..

THE MASKS OF LIFE. We know from DNA (which was discovered only about 40 years ago so that my father would not have known all this!) we know from DNA there is only one kind of Life but that one kind of Life takes on many forms. And human beings have known this for thousands of years. Human beings are called persons. There is wisdom in language. The word person comes from the Latin persona which means mask. We are humans with a persona, a mask that covers who we really are.

Now, think of all these Life Forms as the many different masks that Life on Earth wears. There is the mouse mask that Life puts on all mice and the oak tree mask Life puts on all oak trees and the cat mask that life puts on all cats and the human mask that Life puts on all humans with many variations. One Life, many masks. Now stop and think about this fact: because there is only one kind of Life, we human beings are the same basic Life as every other Life form. We wear a human mask on that single basic kind of Life. That’s amazing? Think about this: it is even more amazing when you realize that every cat and mouse and oak tree and human being under the mask of Life is different from all the other mice, cats, oak trees, humans and whatever!

And therein lies our biggest problem. We humans have this terribly wrong belief -this illusion - that the mask is not a mask. We wrongly think we are separate from the rest of Life, from the rest of Mother Earth’s children. We believe an illusion. We are told we humans are a different kind of Life. It is like putting on a Halloween mask and deciding that from now on you have become that mask. That would be crazy. It is exactly the same thing with the Mask that Life has given us and that we wear everyday. It is just crazy to believe the illusion of separateness. Under the mask all life forms are different, but still they are all the forms of Life on this Mother Earth. In the most profound and basic sense we are all one. Remember that. It is the most important idea to know about Life.

SO, You have the answers to the first two questions: Where did we come from and who are we.

So WHO ARE WE? We who were born in the twentieth century literally know now for the first time in history of humanity the facts that tell us precisely who we are and where we’ve come from: We are StarStuff, StarStuff that was born in the belly of a star that exploded somewhere out in space. Our StarStuff got to be part of Earth and went on to become part of that still mysterious chemical-to-Life process. Out of that process we humans emerged as yet another of the infinite masks on the face of Live on Earth.

Now we come to the simplest but hardest to understand question: What is our purpose.

If you have any questions put them in the "comments" section.

So, Liam and Sean, the first two questions have been answered by science in my time: We who were born in the twentieth century literally know now for the first time in history the facts that tell us precisely who we are and where we’ve come from: We are StarStuff, StarStuff that was born in the belly of a star that exploded somewhere out in space. And our StarStuff got into the region of our newly developing Sun, got to be part of Earth, went on to become part of that Chemical-to-Life process. Out of the process humanity emerged as another mask on the face of Earth Life. We never knew this story before the 20th century. Now there is, for the first time in history, a cosmic story all Earth people can share. There must be consequences arising from this fact. What are those consequences?

In a minute we’ll examine the third question: What is my purpose? But first, another aside. We are something more than just a mask on the face of Earth Life. And this is important.

Earlier I pointed out that all the hydrogen in our bodies entered existence at that first moment billions of years ago when Energy became Matter. Thus we are partially composed of the first materials ever created in the universe. I think it is important to know that don’t you? We are in our selves in a Holy Communion with the universe.

Here is another interesting fact you must not ignore. The atoms and molecules in our bodies were surely used many times over the last 2 billion years in the evolutionary process to make fish and dinosaurs and palm trees and dogs and worms and viruses and germs and elephants and anything else that emerged from Life’s forming processes. Our little bits have been used over and over again until eventually it was used by Life to make us as we are now, wearing the Mask Life gave us. And to survive we’ve been eating other of that LifeStuff ever since we were born so we could grow and reproduce. Make no mistake, Liam and Sean, we are just like all the other life forms and to be that way we must do what life does: Life eats Life.

We’re getting closer, Liam and Sean. We’re getting closer to the truly amazing thing we are.

Let me take you another step. Life eating Life is what resurrection really is. It is the recycle process that keeps Life going and enlarging its scope and creating new forms. Recycling is the engine of evolution. And the recycling produced us, you and me, and what has happened? What is the result of our having all this basic universe StarStuff in us ...making us who and what we are? We’ve used the universe stuff for hundreds of thousands of years and by doing so we have become the Universe Aware of Itself. Got it? Think about that. Who are we? We Are the Universe Aware of Itself
When I first realized this incredible fact, I jumped off the chair. Truly. I did. The hairs on the back of my neck rose up. I yelled and woke the dog. I feel that excitement whenever I think about it! I am an expression of the universe that is aware of being an expression of the universe!
Ungelouflik!

Nobody had ever told me that awesome fact. And it is so important for all of us to realize. And here is what I mean; through this marvelous process beginning with the Big Bang the universe has produced Life on Planet Earth (maybe other places too we don’t know yet). The Life of the Universe has then gone on to produce StarStuff, LifeStuff, that can read and think and learn and come at last to understand that we -you and I! - are Universe Eyes, Universe Ears, Universe Brains!

Furthermore, these Universe Eyes, Ears, and Brains have come to realize their relationship to this universe by knowing literally that we are an aspect of the universe that makes the universe aware of itself. That is knowledge beyond and above anything I was ever taught in twelve years of religious school. It goes beyond anything I learned in the next fifty years of teaching and reading and living. I think knowing we are the universe aware of itself is the most outstanding fact a human can know about being human and as far as I know in this year 2005 nobody is teaching this awesome reality to kids in school.

Now, the third question: What is our purpose? What does it mean to be StarStuff? Here is my answer: since human beings are -together will all other living things- the children of Mother Earth, then Mother Earth and all of her children must be sacred to us.

We share our DNA, the chemistry Life uses to structure its many differing forms, with all of Earth’s children. So they are family. We cannot mistreat family. And if they are sacred we must treat them with reverence. That is our human responsibility. That is our purpose. It is what we must do while we wear the mask given us by Life. Our intentions and our actions must all center on caring, on treating all of the sacred Earth’s children with reverence. And all of our ethics will arise from that understanding, that responsibility. Religions say they are the source of ethics, and by and large they do offer ethical standards, but they are not the only source of good ethical behavior.

Our relationship to the sacred Earth is the most fundamental source of our ethical standards and behavior.

I must clarify my language. What do I mean by “sacred” and “reverence”, “holy” and “consecrate”? If you check with the Oxford English Dictionary, the most highly regarded authority for English usage, you will find that sacred can mean “Regarded with or entitled to respect or reverence similar to that which is attached to holy things.” And holy? The OED tells us that the definition of holy is “consecrated, dedicated, whole, inviolate, to be preserved whole, intact.” Consecrate means “dedicate, devote, make sacred, set apart.” And revere or reverence? What does the OED say of them? To revere is “to hold in regard with deep respect or veneration.” And reverence is “to show deep respect, treat with deference, to esteem or value highly.

I believe we must now begin to think of Earth as sacred, even holy. As never before, we must consecrate ourselves to revere our Mother Earth and its children. So we must treat both Earth and Earth’s children with reverence. And make no mistake, I deliberately choose those words which have been used for millennia to speak about the idea of a god beyond the universe. I believe it is time to focus on what is truly important to us: the Earth from which we emerged, the Earth that sustains us, the Earth to which our little bits will inevitably return to participate in the ongoing and literal recycling of the little bits that make all of Life’s forms possible. All of that is sacred fact.

If the Earth is sacred how do we show the reverence I speak of? First, remember who we are: StarStuff, one of the children of Earth wearing the mask of the human being and deeply related to all the other children of Earth: a member of Earth’s Family. Remember that we wear the Mask and that to believe we are separate from the rest of the family is a lie. An error. A mistake. An illusion that poisons us, makes us miserable, and can lead eventually to crime. The illusion of separateness is indeed the Original Sin; the sin that makes all other sinning possible.

Remembering all that how do we show reverence to the sacred Earth? We have to take care of it and its children. It is as simple as that. And how do we carry out that caring act? Must we all become members of the Red Cross or the Red Crescent? Must we all become nurses or veterinarians? No. Of course not. Caring is based on the way we use the Earth we are responsible for, the way we treat the children of Earth including our fellow human beings. Any man or woman regardless of occupation must be caring, must use the Earth in a caring and responsible way.

That is the first objective. The primary intention. To make money is a mistaken primary intention, one that leads to exploitation of Earth and its children. To become famous, to become powerful, to exploit in anyway are false and poisonous primary intentions and by even nurturing those objectives or intentions is to exploit Earth and its children; always remembering that you -we - I are those children too and exploiting any of us poisons the exploiter.

Life becomes bleak, dark, a joyless experience for the exploiter because all his energies arise from the illusion that he is separate from everything else, that he stands alone, that the only thing he needs to care for is himself. The exploiter will always be discontented. Unhappy.

In brief our primary intention must always be to revere Earth and its children and to care for them. We can do that by taking care of our home, our things, a bicycle, a car, our clothes, our friends. We need to become caring materialists remembering that matter is part of the basic Energy/Matter universe. Caring for our material things is good and helps create a habit of caring. We need to make a habit of caring because that leads to a compassionate attitude.

We have to care for ourselves first because we cannot care for Earth’s other children compassionately if we neglect ourselves. It is also true that making money or working to become the best we can become are acceptable, even necessary secondary intentions that must always be tested against that primary intention of caring. Developing our talents is also good caring. It is good and compassionate caring to help others develop their talents because talent is the way to creativity. Developing our mental capacity is good caring. Developing skills for living compassionately with others is good caring. Developing our strength is good caring. Developing our ability to defend ourselves and other of Earth’s children is good caring. And it may be that learning is the best caring of all because when we learn all we can learn we are best equipped to actively and knowledgeably care.

Why is learning the “best caring’”? Because it is through education that we become best at caring. A deep knowledge of who we are is the best way to learn how to care with compassion!

Compassion is often sneered at, looked upon with contempt by persons caught in the illusion of separateness. So, compassion is not easy to learn. We have to make the practice of compassion a habit we continue for our entire lives. We have to overcome the illusion of separateness and the selfishness the illusion encourages. And compassion is the path along which that practice takes place.

Be clear about one thing. When I speak of learning, I don’t mean learning the way it is attempted in the schools of mass public education. The objective of mass education is not to encourage you to learn -to educate you, to lead you to new possibilities- but to train you in a few skills like numbers and writing and reading so you’ll be ready to join the work force and thereby keep the corporate business financial manufacturing system rolling. No. That’s not learning.

Learning is a hunger. Learning is a joy. If school is not a joy you are not being led to new strengths, new possibilities. If you find out how to learn joyfully you will be the happiest human being you can be for the rest of your life. You will become an educated person. ...persona. Remember? ...the mask? You will educate that mask.

Education is not training in a skill. Education is a matter of leading you -by yourself or with a teacher- in ways that will more fully develop your talents and knowledge. That development is what learning is really about: the fullest development of your abilities, talents, creativity, and imagination; education is the fullest development of mind and body.

Perhaps most importantly education teaches you to think. Thinking is a skill. You have to learn to think the way you learn math or music.

My belief is that to learn is a fundamental human need as much as the need for food. And we enjoy learning as much as we enjoy eating good food. We hunger to learn unless that hunger is somehow blocked or stymied, often by poverty or the brutality of others. Some will disagree but I say to learn is a fundamental human need. So, Liam and Sean, Get loaded with knowledge.

When I was a kid I was sent to a high school that had no shop, nothing they taught required you to use your hands. Manual development was forgot. And they made a virtue of it. They said they were there to teach your mind, implying that minds are more important than bodies. That was a lie. Mind/body is not two separate things. Mind/body like Energy/Matter is One.

So it was a false idea to say we’ll teach your mind. First of all, it was a Catholic school and their purpose was to condition us to the Catholic Teaching, to condition us to accept that Teaching, not to develop our thought processes. Think about that. How many Catholic universities are great universities like Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Utrecht, Stanford, Chicago, Penn? How about Notre Dame? Catholic U in Washington? You tell me. Schools like Notre Dame and Bob Jones University are more like seminaries designed to create true believers not challenging thinkers. True believers. Faith without challenge, unthinking faith instead of a faith in free thinking.

To become truly free you must learn to think freely and have confidence in your ability to think, come to conclusions and then evaluate those conclusions.

The fact is the Catholic school I attended didn’t offer shop because they didn’t have the money to offer shop. That was not satisfactory because it discounted a natural path of learning: the development of our physical talents. If their purpose was to educate, to open me to learning, they failed. It didn’t happen mentally or physically. When I left that school I was in no way ready to begin the great adventure of learning. They even gave me scholarships to go to two Catholic colleges in Philadelphia. I didn’t go because on some level I knew I was not ready to learn especially at Catholic colleges. Instead, I worked for awhile and then joined the army where I met men who opened my mind to literature, to history, to art. Only then did I begin to feel an excitement I never felt before. Learning became exciting. Fun.

So Liam and Sean, I was beginning at last to learn! And I have never stopped. I was so hungry to learn that I did the four year college course in 2½ years. I gobbled it up. And I hope that kind of excitement for learning happens to you. I don’t care if it’s college or a trade. Either way learn all you can learn. Your father didn’t go to a university but he is a fine craftsman and student of 3 or 4 languages. He’s a model of what a craftsman can do.

So what do you learn? What learning path do you follow? A very great and wise man, Joseph Campbell, a man I knew, said that we should all “follow our bliss.” And he was right. It sometimes feels like a risky thing to do but he was absolutely right. Along the way of bliss there is lots more we can learn too. We can learn about all the manifestations -the different forms - of Energy/Matter. Energy exhibits different forms from unbelievably small vibrating strings (maybe) to electrons to protons to galaxies to you and me. And you don’t have to be a physicist unless that’s your bliss. You can learn about every form Life takes and you don’t have to be a biologist unless that’s your bliss. Learn about all the ways matter forms. Learn about planets, stars, and galaxies. Learn how gravity connects all that together in one vast many layered all inter-related fabric in which there is never nothing because Energy/Matter is All.

Learn about designing. Painting. Carpentering. Working with stone. It’s fun to read about architecture but you don’t have to be an architect unless that’s your bliss. Same for writing, easel painting, sculpture, music, poetry, theatre, the silver screen. The world is yours! You can dig it. Love it! Fill yourself with it and fill it with yourself. And by all means take a risk.

Most of all, regardless of anything else, learn about relationships between human beings, between people and all the other children of Mother Earth’s Life process. Learn how to make relationships survive and flourish. That requires skill. So learn how to take care of Earth and her children, all of whom are our cousins. No matter what your bliss is, develop masterful skills in this area of relationships. Learn how to get along with people in a skillful way. When people don’t know how to relate their blundering leads to the bad things that happen in people’s lives.

Your grandmother, Mimi, is the most skillful relator I’ve ever known. Learn from her. I did. Your Mom did. Mimi is/was known across America for her relational skills. Her work was so important she was featured in Who’s Who of American Women. And I think it is important to note that Mimi didn’t try to become famous. She just followed her bliss, had a great time, and made all the money she wanted to make. Today? Today your grandmother is one of the happiest most caring women alive. She lives everyday with a reverence for Life. And that reverence motivates all of her objectives.

I think I’ve answered the three great human questions. If you have any questions please feel free to add a “comment”. Any comment!

And I have one more essay to add to this. I won’t say any more now. You’ll just have to read Part Four.

A Christmas Tale from Hephaestus:

“The Wager at the Intelligent Designers Club”

In a space-time, long ago and far away, in a gentlemen’s club rather reminiscent of a place which might have been featured in an H.G. Wells tale of time travel and paradoxes, several professorial-looking gentlemen, looking for all the world like Michael Faraday, William Thompson, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Charles Darwin, Francis Crick, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman sat at a large table littered with ashtrays filled with cigar butts, half-empty glasses, sheaves of papers scribbled over with symbols and diagrams.

The gentlemen’s gentlemen and other servants had gone home long since, and it was near the end of a long evening of good conversation, academic gossip, and arcane but good-natured banter and jovial philosophical put-downs fueled by something resembling the Irish whiskey of another place and time. The occasion was the annual dinner at the Intelligent Designers Club, and the subject of discussion just concluded had been a contest, a kind of wager, to be conducted over the year to come, the winner to be decided at the next annual meeting.

These ten gentlemen had over the past year each come up with an entry in a contest sponsored by the club to design a cosmological model. The winning model in the contest would be created in an experimental universe laboratory (the EUL) and allowed to play out its destiny, with the results to be presented at a future meeting of the club. These ten entries were the finalists in the contest, but the club’s prize committee had been unable to decide upon a winner, so these ten affable, but argumentative, and inventive gents had repaired to a private room in the club and, fortified by immense amounts of whiskey and cigars, haggled over the differences, resolved the contradictions, and, near dawn, had arrived at a single phenomenological cosmological model.

This “Intelligent Designers Club All-Purpose Experimental Universe”, as they named it, contained a number of variable parameters, e.g. the number of space and time dimensions of the space-time, the number of families of quarks and gluons, the mass of the electron, the value of the fine-structure constant and so forth, which had to be specified in order to determine the evolution of what turned out to be a multi-universe, with non-communicating universes which each evolved independently of all the others, its destiny determined by the parameters chosen to describe the universe in question.

Much debate ensued about the values of the parameters to be chosen in order to yield the most harmonious universe, which would become aware of itself through the consciousness of the living beings arising in the course of the evolution of the universe. The hour growing late, or early depending on your point of view, and the whiskey running low, it was decided to settle the matter by a wager. The multiverse would consist of ten independent universes, a universe for each of the ten gentlemen, who would choose their own set of parameters on the basis of their best guess for peace and harmony and good times for the inhabitants of their universe.

The experimental multiverse would be created, turned on and allowed to play out the destinies of its universes, with the ten gentlemen monitoring the results, deciding who had won the wager, and a final report made at the next meeting of the Intelligent Designers Club, with all of the ten agreeing that their choice of a winner would also receive the prize offered by the Intelligent Designers Club, namely the George Gamow Medal. Then, if any of the experimental universes proved particularly disastrous, the parameters which resulted in these universes would be banned from any future use, and the universes in question terminated immediately, with extreme prejudice as they used to say in another place and time.

So, what was the wager amongst the ten gentlemen and how was it meant to be decided? First, the prize. Each gentleman agreed to put up funds adequate for the salary and expenses for five years of a post-doctoral fellow, not an insubstantial sum. The winner would then have ten post-docs for the following five years, including the one which the winner had agreed to fund himself. This proves that the so-called Matthew effect, i.e. him that hath, gets, and him that hath not, gets even that which he hath taken away, was operative in that time and space. Now, how was it to be decided? Well, even with the relativistic effects and such in effect in the Club’s experimental universe laboratory, the fabled EUL, there would not be time enough to make a rigorous statistical study of the results over an adequate sampling of space and time in each of the 10 universes, so the 10 gentlemen agreed to turn on the machine and let it run for one day, which, with the magic gizmos of the EUL amounted to about 10 to 20 billion years in the time units of a representative small planet in an undistinguished galaxy, which ought to be sufficient to get an inkling of how things would turn out in the fullness of Time.

Each gentleman would select such a planet from his universe, and all ten would probe it in their own chosen manner. This would give the 10 gentlemen time to get some sleep and to think over some appropriate criteria which would be suitable to judge which of the 10 showed the most promise for further development, on a pilot plant scale of course, and which to terminate forthwith, without so much as a fare-the-well. During the long evening they had discussed a few criteria on which to judge, and had settled on general categories of classic philosophy, the Epistemology, the Ontology, the Politics, the Ethics, the Logic, the Physics, the Metaphysics and the Aesthetics which prevailed on the chosen planet in the selected galaxy and let it go at that.

Now, why had our learned gentlemen agreed on such a hasty, unfair, and unscientific approach? Well, as it happened, it was very near the cutoff date for the submission of proposals to the National Science and Humanism Foundation and, as was well known, in order to compete successfully for funds for proposed research and scholarly activities it was necessary to already have obtained the results for which you had proposed the research and scholarship to obtain in the first place, and preferably to have won some sort of award for it. So, exigency ruled even in the cosmos of the Intelligent Designers Club.

Well, you might ask where were the humanists, the women, the philosophers, the playwrights, even the comedians necessary to judge how well the experiments turned out or even, heaven forbid, to participate in the planning of the experiments? Is this the old-boys club approach to science that the rabid feminists had been accusing the Intelligent Designers Club and even the National Science and Humanism Foundation of for years now, without really getting anywhere? Well, maybe they had a point, and maybe that’s just the way this universe had evolved, or “the way the cookie crumbled”, as some old fogeys said. And, by the way, wasn’t Mr. Darwin’s and Mr. Crick’s evolution supposed to take care of the development of women, culture, and all of that, automatically, in the experimental universes, even though the results would depend on the parameters inserted into the model by each of the gentlemen (past performance being no guarantee of future results).

Besides, if either Mr. Crick’s or Mr. Darwin’s entry into the contest turned out the best, wouldn’t that vindicate all their claims, which I must say the other eight gentlemen were getting pretty fed up with hearing anyway? And, weren’t Mr. Einstein, Mr. Bohr, and Mr. Mach philosophers? What about religion and ethics? Well, Mr. Einstein was always going on about Herr Gott this and Herr Gott that, and Mr. Faraday and Mr. Maxwell were well known for their sincere Christian beliefs. What about Aesthetics? Mr. Feynman was a well-known musician (well, a bongo-drum player anyway), an artist, and he liked women a great deal, so that should take care of any sour-grapes grumblings about misogyny. What about Mr. Thompson, or Lord Kelvin, if you insist, and Mr. Boltzmann? Well, Lord Kelvin and Mr. Boltzmann would make sure that the 2nd law of thermodynamics still reigned in other universes, which all the Intelligent Designers wanted to keep in effect to dispense with any spurious claims about eternal life and all that, and, besides, Mr. Boltzmann wanted to check out some base canards perpetrated about the H-theorem by Herr Zermelo, who claimed that all this second law nonsense was just because they hadn’t waited long enough for the universe to return to its original state. Oh, you might object that they had forgotten about medicine and the social sciences. Perhaps they had, but Mr. Boltzmann was very depressed, and that would just have to do in that regard.


The date and place of the trial monitoring for universe number 9, the one designed by Mr. Darwin, is Christmas, 2005 (in local space-time coordinates) on what is called, in the local dialect, planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy.

Will this universe (Number 9, Number Nine, …in case you forgot), depending as it does on the state of affairs regarding benevolence, religious beliefs, and the other philosophical categories of this one tiny planet, Earth (what a name, ugh), survive the cosmic cut or will it be terminated with extreme prejudice? Will offerings (well, bribes, really) and prayers to the members of the Intelligent Designers Club affect the outcome? Well, you will have to just wait and see.

Is there a moral to this tale? Yes, I think there are many that are possible, but my favorite is “Beware of invoking Intelligent Design; you might just get what you are asking for”.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Or, if you prefer, Good night and
Good luck!
Hephaestus, the divine forger.
(This posting of the scientist's cosmic fantasy was sent to Wally Weet by a sometime commentator on this screen who is known only by his pen name, The Good God of the Forge, Hephaestus)

Celebrate! The Light Returns. Today, the oldest holy day in the northern hemisphere, The Winter Solstice, the shortest day, the longest night, the day when Earth and Sun continue the annual cycle re-assuring us of the Return of the Light, of warmth, fertility, re-birth.
And wasn't that the perfect time for early Christians to nominate as the birthday of Jesus, the one they call the Light of the World??

We live in an era when there is no generally accepted idea of what is good and what is evil. Some would say the distinction is absolute: Good is always good, evil is always evil. So says the current Pope. In fact, however; when we look at planetary behavior the matter is starkly different and entirely relative. Good and evil are relative and agreement depends on one’s point of view.

Different religions, different tribes, different parties, different nations will disagree. One says killing oneself is evil, another will say “it all depends”, another will say suicide is the only response one can make to one’s shameful deeds. Result? The debate rages within a society to no conclusion. The issue of abortion likewise. The goodness of badness of sexual behaviors are widely varied depending on the point of view of the persons behaving. Our society largely honors those who struggled against laws of racial oppression. Fifty years ago laws of racial oppression were largely accepted as good.

Why is it that we find it so difficult to come to agreement in these latter days? A hundred years ago one would have completely disagreed with me, finding in American society widespread agreement about suicide, and sexual matters. For most the answers were found in the Bible and in common law. Today both are challenged. So what can we learn from our own rational tradition? In Chapter 6 of Leviathan, (April 1651 -355 years ago) Thos Hobbes offers this analysis of good and evil:

“But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire,
that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule thereof.”

Thus doth Master Hobbes endorse the reality I have found in my modest experience, to wit; that good and evil are relative concepts notwithstanding the efforts of Pope Benedict XVI, would be tyrants like the current President of Iran, or ideologues like Revs Dobson or Falwell all of whom wish to impose their point of view and their will upon a fractious community. Yes, as the god Hephaestus has said in these pages, it is tough to form a community without a commonly accepted ethos vis a vis good and evil. Tyrants try to impose. In democracies an ethos emerges from debate, debates sometimes debased by demagogues, of course.

But all agreement about accepted ethos concerning good and evil begins with an accepted cosmology within the community. In the case of Judeo Christian communities that ethos has traditionally come from the Biblical stories of creation. Because said stories can no longer be taken in the literal sense the ethos emergent from the stories has broken down. Thus a new ethos will emerge only when we come to accept a new cosmology. My candidate for that new cosmology -and I can see only one candidate for the future and for this planet - is the new universe story revealed by science in the last century or what I like to call StarStuff - see earlier postings.

Hi There! It’s December! Yes it is!! So, Joyeux! Happy Days!
And Frohlich Weinachten!
(That’s German for: Frolic in the White Snow!just kidding)
And here it is time again for our Annual Christmas Carol, Card, and letter!!
To begin I offer my contribution to our national, annual, never to be missed holiday! with: The Christmas Excess Song!
(music lifted from Jingle Bells. Rhymes you should forgive & forget)

Christmas Sells,
Christmas Sells,
Wallets all astray!
O what hell it is to stride
‘Round the Malls for Christmas Day!

*****OK!******

Hi Everybody! Happy Holidays!
You too Bill O’Reilly! Revs Dobson and Jerry Falwell too!
Happy Holidays, you old geezers!
Happy Kwanza! Africa!
Joyful Hanukkah! Jews everywhere, and
Merry Christmas! Christians All!
(Christians, I gotta tell you, you are not being put upon and attacked!
You guys are peaking right now! So Enjoy!)
And to the millions of Buddhists who celebrate every day they are alive:
Right ON, Old Buddy!
**********
And finally to all our primitive brothers and sisters
who still think they’re part of nature and who started
the first and most primal of all these celebrations:

Welcome to the Renewal of the Light!

My Little Wren!

Happy Holidays!

According to Webster’s 1913 dictionary the word "holiday" is a variant spelling of the words "holy day". We are now in the season of holy days: Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukkah, and the Coming of the Light celebrated since pre Christian times in Northern Europe: the Winter Solstice.

When we use the word "holiday" now we usually mean a vacation day, or a festival day. That is because holy days have always been days away from the daily grind. So it was and so it is now. Our Holy Days have become our leisure days too. And they are still Holy: Hanukkah, The Coming of the Light, Christmas, Kwanza.

So, let’s all celebrate our holy leisure days together. Let’s celebrate ALL of them starting with the Solstice! Let’s re-examine each one and bring to each one all the happy, joyful holiness we can muster in our selves. It sounds almost like the Twelve Days of Christmas doesn't it?


To do it right we might take as an example our other great secular holy day when we give thanks: Thanks Giving Day, the day we feast together and forget the pressures of commerce. I think it is a holy day because we celebrate all we have and all our friends have and give thanks together. We celebrate everything every tribe brings to the table with generosity and good humor and respect. There is nothing sour about holy days.

Happy Holy Days!

Marnie sent the following recipe which she got from Miss Sharona. Marnie says,”Eating this cake brought a smile to my face, and a giggle from my throat. Just to read the direcshuns made my mouth H2O!
Happy Holidaze,
Marnie!”

So here is Miss Sharona's and Miss B.Bonneettee’s Tequila Christmas Cake!
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• lemon juice
• 4 large eggs
• Nuts
• 1 bottle tequila
• 2 cups dried fruit
• (Sample tequila, check quality)
Take a large bowl, check tequila again.
Be sure it is of highest quality.
Pour one level cup.
Drink
Repeat
Turn on the electric mixer.
Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl
Add one cup of sugar. Beat again.
At this point it’s best to make sure the tequila is still ok.
Try another cup.
Just in case.
Turn off the mixerer thingy.
Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and
chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick the ferigging fruit up off the floor
Mix on the turner.
If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers
just pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the tequila to check for tonsisticity.
Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something.
Check the tequila
Now shift the lemon
Sample the tequila to check for tonsissticity
Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something.
Check the tequila
Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar. Or somefink.
Whatever you can find.
Greash the oven.
Turn the cake tin 360 º and try not to fall over.

Don’t forget to beat off the turner.
Finally, throw the bowl through the window.
Finish the tequila and wipe counter with the cat.
CHERRY MISTMAS

We can be happy today. We legally killed a North Carolina man who committed two murders in the late 80's. We killed a South Carolina murderer too. The Saudis beheaded a criminal and in Singapore they hanged a man for carrying drugs. We’ve legally killed a thousand and one people in our American prisons since 1976. A day like today and a record like ours ought make supporters of punishment by death happy. But does it validate what we’ve done? Has all this killing made us better, safer, happier? Wiser? Or could it be hurting us?

Why have we done this? What is the reasoning behind legal killings? Why are we so enthusiastic about death? Do we really believe death punishes? Punishment for murder ought be something a murderer thinks about afterwards, a lesson learned, something to ponder during a lifetime in solitary without parole. I can imagine no more severe punishment. But instead we inject a chemical. The person sleeps. We call that punishment. Why?

Some believe it sends them to hell. Maybe. Some believe legal killing inhibits others from killing. If so we should allow legal killing to be seen publicly. But we do not. Are we hiding the horror of our belief? There is no evidence to prove punishment by death inhibits killers from killing. Is the belief a mere hope? Or is it a way to cover up, deny, a hidden motive: revenge? Some say death is the way to get killers off the streets. So would life without parole and it would severely punish. Some say the Bible demands an “eye for an eye”. Does it demand a life for a life?

Studies say it cost New York $23 million per person sentenced to die. North Carolina pays $2.16 million per case. California spends $90 million annually on death penalties. Texas tax payers spend $2.3 million. In Florida it cost $57 million to eliminate18 people. All these figures come from the Death Penalty Information Center.

Compare those costs with the cost of life without parole. Apparently the average cost of the death penalty in America is $2million per case. On the other hand, the average imprisonment costs $17,000 per year. To imprison a killer for 50 years would cost $850 thousand. A bargain compared to the death penalty.

So why do we do it? Why do we, supposedly the most enlightened and religious country in the world, do so much legal killing? Why do we prefer death? I believe we want revenge. And I suspect we need to exact revenge because we misunderstand forgiveness.

We have come to believe that forgiveness means absolution or clemency or amnesty or exoneration. NO! Wrong! We do not absolve the criminal when we forgive. Forgiveness is about letting go of the anger and hatred within us. It is about detaching ourselves from the need for revenge. Letting go, forgiving, is for victims, their hearts, their emotional health. Forgiveness removes the physical and emotional stresses of hatred and the anger eating our insides. Forgiveness eliminates the need for revenge. Forgiveness allows us to find the solace of compassion. When we learn to forgive we feel easier, wiser. We remember. We never forget but in remembering we learn to replace anger and hatred with compassion. And we will be a more contented nation while killers remain imprisoned faced with the consequences of their crime.

And having forgiven, we shall no longer, everyone of us, be responsible for killing killers.

A Three Minute Play:
DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM,
(Descartes: Doubt Everything.)
By Wally Weet


THE REVEREND
Believe, my son, Believe everything in the Bible. It is God’s Word.

WALLY
Really? I always think, Who should we believe? A preacher who demands unthinking faith or a French philosopher who demands that we think?

THE REVEREND
Wallace, how can you trust your puny brain’s efforts against 2,000 years of Christian tradition which tells us about the presence of Almighty God through his Son, Jesus Christ as told in the Bible?

WALLACE
But how can I believe all that is true?

THE REVEREND
Wallace do you think you know better than the millions and millions of people in hundreds of years before you? They have known the truth and believed it was true. Do you think you know more than they?

WALLACE
But how did they know it was true?

THE REVEREND
Because great and wise holy men told them it was true, because the Bible is true, because the Bible is God’s sacred word.”

WALLACE
But how do I know the Bible is God’s sacred word?

THE REVEREND
Because God told us it was his word.

WALLACE
Where does it say that?

THE REVEREND
In the Bible, the words of the Bible tell us when you read them that these are the words of God.

WALLACE
How do I know a man didn’t write that?

THE REVEREND
Ah, you see, Wallace, this is the point: You must have faith.

WALLACE
I must simply believe that God spoke to a man?

THE REVEREND
Yes. God speaks to us. That is faith.

WALLACE
Some would say it is insanity to believe you hear the voice of God speaking to you.

THE REVEREND
O Wally, I knew you would say that. You say that because you have no faith. And because you have no faith you are lost. You will spend eternity in hell.

WALLACE
Hell? How do I know there is a place called hell?

THE REVEREND
Again, Because God said so, because it is in the Bible, because wise Holy men for 2,000 years have told us so.

WALLACE
Faith? . This is all circular reasoning. No, it’s not even that. Faith? Accepting anything you say, that’s faith. Like, such and such is true because God told us so, we know God told us because Holy men have told us God told us. How can we know God told us because somebody said so? Because it is in the Bible. And because God told some man that the Bible are Gods own words. None of this makes sense.”

THE REVEREND
Right! You got it! It is not about thinking. You cannot depend on thinking which is why you must have faith.

WALLACE
But billions of people who are not Christians do not believe in any God or Heaven or Hell.”
Buddhists, Chinese. People who revere their ancestors. People wh..

THE REVEREND
They are wrong and they are without faith.

WALLACE
They have faith in their own view of life and the spirit.

THE REVEREND
But they are wrong. They will be lost and spend eternity in hell with all the other thinkers and doubters.

WALLACE
They believe there is no hell.

THE REVEREND
Wallace, if you are smart, don’t trust yourself to think you know everything. Copper your bets just in case you are wrong. Any one who has no faith? What I tell them is that the least they can do is copper their bets, prepare against error, be ready to accept Christ before they die so they don’t spend eternity in hell.”

WALLACE
But hell and heaven are just fantasies. Is it true faith to believe just in case? ...to not believe, but to sort of accept your story in case?”

THE REVEREND
It is a beginning. It’s the smarter way.

WALLACE
Not to me. No. It is like accepting slavery just in case you fear you won’t be able to support yourself.
What about seeking truth through learning, thru history and experience rather than through your questionable authority?

THE REVEREND
If my authority is questionable and you have no faith? Wallace, Without faith you are lost.

WALLACE
Circular. Always circular. Always the same message: Stop thinking. And I tell you there is another way to live in contentment without fear of eternity. A way that involves both thinking and faith.

THE REVEREND
I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other, Wallace. Your views are impossible. How do you even begin to challenge the Judeo Christian -the Muslim!- traditions? The wisdom, the insight, the knowledge of God’s word?

WALLACE
You’re right. You are right. We’ve nothing to say because the way to begin to challenge your so called tradition is by not brainwashing our children. By teaching them to question everything. By letting them see that there are other lively spiritual traditions. And most importantly having them learn the real facts about who they are and where they are from.

THE REVEREND
They are the children of Father God, stopping here on their way to eternal life. Or punishment.
That is who we ALL are.

WALLACE
No. Not true, Rev. A false myth. The facts, the real, true facts are different.”

THE REVEREND
And what are these real facts? And, Wallace, where do I find these facts?

WALLACE
The real and authentic and literal facts are in the Story of StarStuff. And you’ll find them in the rocks, the DNA, the story of the cosmos.

THE REVEREND
Wallace, my boy, you think too much. You will never be saved.

END

If you want an all powerful god, there can be no limits to God. We of the Patriarchal Culture say God is almighty. I ask, if there is a almighty God, can that God be good? No. God is neither good nor evil.

The almight Mystery, the infinite, omniscient God to be all powerful must be beyond and include all categories because separate categories are limitations. Those who say God is good, limit God. Result? They always have to wonder why God allows bad things to happen. To wonder thus is silly because by doing so they make God into a limited idol no better than the golden calf. That is idolatry and idolatry is an evil to religious persons. To be truly religious they must see that God is without limit.

Those who say God is good are simply making God into a mere reflection of human beings, a reflection of what we want to be, a mirror image of humans and thus limited. The image of the personal father god may be a hyper-super powerful image but it cannot be the true Great Mystery because the true God is unlimited and indifferent. So God is no more a super and personal human-like father than Satan is a super and human-like monster. They are both images of aspects of our limited selves. And that limitation doesn't work for the all mighty, the unlimited Mystery.

So, the literal idea of God and the Devil at war with each other is a silly idea. It can only be a metaphor of workings within ourselves. The Immense Mystery we call God is beyond competing with anything. The idea that God cares about galaxies, stars, planets, creatures, weather, anything, also limits God. Either God is both loving and hateful thus good and evil like us or God is indifferent. Your choice.

The idea that God looks after each of the 6.5 billion people on Earth (plus any inhabitants of the multi billions of galaxies with their multi billions of stars) every second of their entire lives deciding what should happen for them or what is good and bad for them is a silly idea. The idea that God might become angry at New Orleans for sinning is a silly idea. God is beyond all that and indifferent to the lives of people just as God is indifferent to the actions of the multi billion galaxies of the cosmos.

We like to say, “God is Love.” Yes, love is in the Great Mystery, but Love does not define the Great Mystery because to do so limits the Great Mystery. God can only exist without limits or be a minor god. The Big Daddy image of God is inevitably limited. Therefore God has to be non-personlike and beyond all definitions. If you speak of God as "He" or “She” you limit God. If you limit God you create an idol. Again, limiting God is idolatry. Thus God, the Indifferent Almighty Mystery (I AM!), does not define either Good or Evil.

I was taught in Catholic school that evil is a cosmic force that exists in a personal (human-like if monstrous and immortal)form separate from human beings, a force that exists in the Universe but beyond ourselves which we must somehow contend with. I have since come to understand these devilish forces not as literal humanlike immortal monsters but as images, as poetic images of something within ourselves.

Lucifer is a human attribute within us and there is no way we can escape this propensity for evil. That is why humans are inevitably sinners. All human beings are sinners because we cannot avoid doing evil. So, I think it is crucial that we understand the problem of evil within us and determine whether it is an absolute category or a relative matter depending on the situation we find ourselves in.

Many hate the idea of situational ethics, but I see no other kind. I see no evil in the rest of the cosmos. I see only indifference. Hurricanes, tornados, floods, earth quakes, exploding stars, volcanoes are in no way evil even though they cause damage, destruction, and death for all kinds of beings, plant or animal. There is an ancient wisdom in Hindu culture imaged in the goddess Kali. Kali dances. Her dance destroys but out of the destruction Kali causes new creation.

We know that to be true. The Earth and all life on it from viruses to elephants including humans emerged from the destruction of a star. Recycling is simply another way for us to participate in this pattern of destruction and creation. We perceive that pattern of destruction and creation as good. Not evil. It is a judgment we make destruction: sometimes, depending on the situation, it can be good.

We know that life is destroyed in order to sustain life: life eats life. There'd be no life unless we killed something whether it be chickens or asparagus. We know that male lions eat the cubs fathered by other males when they take over the female mothers to breed. There is film footage somewhere of a mother leopard eating her cub, a cub that is threatened by lions or hunters. Some would say that chimps can behave in an evil way. I say that depends on the point of view of the human being watching the chimps act out. For me natural behavior other than human is not evil because we cannot read the minds of chimps, leopards, or lions. Their’s is simply the way nature works and nature is indifferent to individuals and to species.

A visitor from another galaxy might come to the same conclusion about the behavior of human beings: that whatever they do is simply natural to their species and therefore the ideas of evil and good are purely human inventions designed in our own interest, our own wish to protect that which we need or protect ourselves from that which we fear.

Nature does not guarantee protection thus living things either die or succeed and that sets up the process of evolution. When you try to guarantee protection you invent evil.

The propensity for evil is in our unique nature. Evil exists because good exists. We have a system of ethics across the human race that defines what good is and so naturally and inescapably good defines what evil is: any behavior not good is evil. Like stealing. It is not good, we say.

Universally we believe that to steal from one another is evil. To damage another's goods is evil. This kind of damaging and stealing are the other side of caring for one another, giving, behaving compassionately. If we behave compassionately we automatically have to have the opposite in order to define what compassion is. Thus it is bad or hateful, hurtful or destructive to be less than compassionate. The paradox is that in order to have the good -compassion or love - we must have evil -hatred, hurting. One defines the other. It is the necessary yin-yang. If there were only compassion we wouldn't even need a name for evil.

However, imagine this: I’m a primitive man. I find good and compassion in protecting my family. The family across the creek is starving. They too find good and compassion in protecting their family. To survive they attack us or steal from us or try to dominate us. I see them as evil. I attack them back. They see themselves as good. We fight. Some die. To them we are an obstacle to their survival, an obstacle that must be destroyed or dominated. We see them as evil. They see us as evil. We both think we're good in ourselves. Humans create evil just by being human.

Evil is defined by people. To some of us killing is ok if it is in self defense. To others killing is always wrong. Yet we kill millions of cows and chickens everyday. Evil? Or good? Some think anything with a face deserves to live. My friend believes it is evil to kill or eat anything with a face. He has practiced the discipline of not killing and eating a creature with a face for 30 years.

The Catholic church speaks of justified war. So they have ways of justifying what others call evil when it comes to war. So Evil is not always evil. If I take my life, I'm told it is an evil act. But suppose I give my life to save yours. Does it become "good" only because I call it "giving" or "sacrificing" my life? If I fall in front of a car to stop the car from running over you. Will I have killed myself? Or did the driver kill me? Isn’t it evil if I have caused the driver of the car to be charged with murder by deliberately falling in front of him? ...or maybe not.

The new pope has decried our time for being "relative", that is,he wants “absolutes” and deplores "situational ethics." He wants to define the "absolutes". But Good and evil are not cosmic categories like “change”, the one cosmic absolute. What the Pope wants to do is put the genie back in the bottle to another century when the Church dominated the question of good and evil and burnt people at the stake who did not accept the Church's definition. Of course the Church thought those burnings were good.

Now evil and good are defined by many groups as well as by individuals but the church does not want individuals or other groups defining good and evil. Why? Because it is hard to control a society that is not in agreement about good and evil.

Do we know any societies where individuals have the right to decide what is evil or good? Yes. The USA to a large extent gives each person the right to protest; to challenge the laws defining good and evil. We do not see our laws as absolute even if they touch on matters Churches would hold to themselves. See abortion or homosexuality or racial inequality.

So,again, we humans decide what is good and what is evil. Thus they are relative not absolute categories into which we put our actions. And we in the USA like it that way. We rationalize good and evil as it suits our purposes. We call this process of rationalization Ethics. We decide with our ethical arguments whether a behavior is evil or not. Abortion is either evil or good depending on the perspective of the individual. Some agree with the Church's definition that life begins with conception. Others do not. That disturbs the Pope because it puts people out of his control.

Actually, it may be that abortion is neither good nor bad. When nature causes a miscarriage we think of nature as indifferent not evil. Or maybe, in the case of a miscarriage,we’ll think nature is good in that it disposed of a badly formed embryo (note that we do not think of it as a "person". If we think about these ethicl quandries too long we will get a headache. ...which is why some prefer absolutes.

When I was a boy gambling was evil. Today gambling is an industry we encourage. It must be good. Why? For economic reasons? Is that "good" enough? Bombing innocent civilians in their beds during war is called an unfortunate but necessary fact by our leaders. Winning the war makes it necessary to kill the innocent they say, thus making themselves innocent for making the decision. Are they innocent? It depends on the way you define evil. Does mere "winning" make the difference between good and evil? Or is it merely a way to rationalize evil? Can we say killing is always evil?

In civilian life we say killing -sorry- executing a murderer is not evil because the murderer killed thus deserves to get what he did. We rationalize evil to get revenge and punish and thus make an evil act -killing- into a good act. We even give it a good name: executing. But is taking revenge good for us? Or is revenge an evil act??

In spite of the Pope's concerns and in spite of his authority, evil is not absolute. There is no absolute evil. Any evil can and will be rationalized into good and made to seem an unfortunate necessity. The same with good. Good can be made to seem evil. It depends on your point of view, which side of the fence you are sitting on. It is all relative notwithstanding the fact that many hate the idea of relative morality.

The controversy over stem cell research is a good example of what I mean when I say evil is relative. The Pope will say that interrupting the life of only one human egg mass -an embryo only 3 days old - in order to use the stem cells (cells that can become any tissue in the body from bones to blood) for therapeutic purposes - is evil. Fundamentalist Christians like Mr Bush agree with him. But other human beings around the world: Buddhists, for example, plus other billions who are not Christians may say it is good. Thus again we see that evil and good are relative to the situation.

What will happen to the stem cell issue? Some will pursue the research. California has ponied up 3 billion dollars to do so, a law approved by 59% of the population. Some will fight it every step of the way. Christians in Congress have offered a bill to criminalize the California effort.

The fact that evil and good are relative matters can be seen all around us right now in other ways. Do gay people have the right to marry and live like the rest of us? Evil say some. Good say others. We are being led into making evil into good just now by our leaders in the matter of torture. Torture was always thought to be evil. Now we are finding situations in which -we are told by our highest elected leaders- torture is not evil but necessary to win the war against terror. ...that sounds a lot like bombing innocents in their beds.

How about terror? Is terror evil? Is the suicide bomber evil? It depends on your point of view, the way you look at your situation in the world. From the point of view of Palestinians the suicide bomber is a hero. From the pov of the Israeli the bomber is a criminal. etc. We rationalize behavior according to our perceived needs and determine whether it is evil or good. Situational ethics thrives.

Mr Bush talks about eliminating evil. It is a silly thing for him to say. There is no way humans can live without evil. We need evil to condemn those who hurt us. We need good to justify our own behavior. There would be no goodness without evil, only indifference as in the cosmos itself. And we cannot be indifferent because we are constantly moved to actions which impact others by our desires and fears. Unlike the cosmos we cannot become fundamentally indifferent. We always have a stake in some aspect of life that causes us to define goodness and badness as related to that stake.

We are unlike the rest of the cosmos because we have this stake in the cosmos. There is something we want from the cosmos. Fundamentally, we want food and water and shelter. Beyond that we want comfort. We want safety. We want protection. We want control. We want wealth. We want power. These wants can lead us to other wants: the fear of others or the desire to dominate both earth and its children including other humans. And therein and no place else do we find the beginnings of evil, the source of evil. To Live is evil.

Yea, funny isn't it? Evil is just live spelled backward.

Buddhists say that evil lies in our emotional attachment to -our need of - either desire or fear. The Buddhist idea is reflected in the above paragraph, but the Buddhist idea is another story even longer than this one.

We are living through a firestorm of controversy about government prayers in South Carolina and the controversy is doing nothing to resolve the prayer issue, but it is serving to tear us apart. Good communities are based on tolerance and a modicum of cohesion and mutual support. So, let’s try reasoning about the issue of government prayer instead of responding from our hearts.

True, our councils have probably opened their meetings with an invocation to God and Jesus since city and county councils first came into being. That makes for a tradition. And it was an acceptable tradition until communities began to change and become spiritually more diverse. Thus, formerly acceptable traditions are now challenged by an even older and more fundamental American tradition: the rule of law. The question is this: is the challenge to our tradition of government prayer a valid challenge?

In its interpretation of the Constitution, the 4th District Federal Appeals Court, one of the most conservative appeals courts, in a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court says the challenge is valid and that the rule of law forbids government prayer; not public prayer, just government prayer. Result? Many good Christians feel they have been stabbed in the back. After all, Christians have invoked Jesus’ name for three centuries in council meetings.

But let’s look at what this means from another perspective remembering that the Founding Fathers in 1780 looked back over the centuries and saw a Europe drenched in the most savage bloodshed in western history; bloodshed caused by religious conflict. Remember the Inquisition? But times change.

Today there are millions of people in the United States who are not Christians. Don’t forget Jews or communities in Louisiana with large minorities of South Asian Buddhists. In the Midwest and New York there are large numbers of Muslims. Suppose these minority communities voted members of their religions onto local councils. Suppose those representatives opened council meetings with government prayers to Buddha or Allah or Krishna allowing people to infer that the law would be based on religious beliefs. Christians would be properly outraged. Christians know American government does not derive authority from religion.

But some say the law of God does come first, trumping even the Constitution. Really? In a society like ours? There are some Muslims who make the same argument. They say that Sharia, Muslim religious law, should be their foundation law. What happens to Christians in Iraq if Sharia is the law? In the same way, what happens to Muslims in America if we made the Bible our foundation law? What would happen to all the other citizens in this diverse country who would not be able to follow the Bible according to their individual consciences? Convert? Leave? Die? Do we tell them there is only one acceptable religion in the United States? Only one way to believe? No. That sounds like the bloody 16th and 17th centuries all over again.

Religious tolerance is the oldest and wisest American tradition. The Founding Fathers were wise about religion. They deserve our unanimous approval because they made sure we could all believe as we wished. They made sure no government would persecute us for our religious beliefs and they did so by making sure religion would be banned from our official government actions. Public prayer? Yes! Government prayer? NO.

And so even though we’ve had a tradition for two or three hundred years of invoking Jesus at our government meetings, we now have to recognize in a thoughtful, mature, and tolerant way that the Founding Fathers made the right decision and that we can, like some good people who stood praying outside the Oconee Council Chambers a couple weeks ago, pray publicly anywhere we wish except in governmental situations.

Living in the South, I find letters to the editor, even columns, often contain theological justification for issues in the public square. Religionists offer these rationales as though there were only one acceptable theology. We are told Christian dogma is absolute and even trumps the Constitution when it comes to making law. Pope Benedict is one of these, having railed against “relativism” in our time thus bringing us all back to “the One True Church” notion that spawned the Inquisition. I’d like to offer an alternative view.

Religions of all kinds seek to answer two basic questions: who are we, and where do we come from. Our purpose as human beings and our ethical principles of right and wrong stem from the answers to those two questions. Startling new answers to these questions about our source and identity have been uncovered during the last hundred years, answers humans never before realized. These answers are fact, not myth nor poetry, not supposed revelation.

We know for a fact four or five billion years ago a primeval and nameless star exploded, blasting the matter it had created far out into space. Through the action of gravity the atoms, molecules, the minerals, dust and rocks from that exploded star gradually merged into a great cloud. We can actually see the same process happening today all over the visible cosmos. Creation never stops.

Eventually, the great cloud of broken star stuff coalesced into our sun and our planets. Yes, the stuff of Earth was made in a star. When we were only preformed tiny little bits we were out there. Gradually over billions of years the life we are part of began to emerge out of StarStuff. We don’t yet know how life in its simplest forms first emerged. Some say life came from space where the stuff of life always exists in the simplest or pre-emergent forms. We don’t know. The origin, the source, of life is part of the Great Mystery some call God.

All the lifeforms on Earth emerged from StarStuff. We are, all of us, together with oak trees and avocados and beetles and cats and worms, made from the materials of Earth. Humus. Humans. Humor. Our spirituality is rooted in the soil, the simplicity, and the humble fact of our Earthliness. This is fact validated by the same basic DNA in all of Earth’s children. All of Earth’s children wear the infinite masks, the infinite varieties, of life. To believe we humans are somehow separate is to be alienated from our true source. It is an illusion we must overcome. The illusion of separateness is the true original sin, the source of all human evil from graffiti to stealing to murder.

Where did we come from? StarStuff. Who are we? Children of Earth? What is our purpose?

The matter in our bodies was once used by other living creatures that died, rejoined the soil and nurtured the lives of new oak trees, avocados, cats, and humans over thousands of centuries. We are made from the re-cycled bodies of our Earthly cousins. We are deeply connected, deeply related, to all of Earth and its children, and therein lies the source and impulse of our ethics.

Because of our deep connection we must treat all of Earth’s children with respect; that is our human responsibility, the basis of our ethics, our purpose. We human beings bear a responsibility to care for all of Earth’s children including all the human tribes we dislike and all the worms that might disgust us, and the wondrous oak trees and mysterious cats and the awesome landscapes we love. This is new knowledge, a new story, for humanity to know and understand.

Furthermore, this new story marks the beginning of a new awareness for the peoples of Earth. For the first time in the history of planet Earth, we have come to realize we are in our essence the Earth aware of itself. More: We are the Universe Aware of Itself. And the first step in this awakening is to assert that Earth and all its Children are worthy of our reverent respect; like ‘em or not.

More on reverence later.

I sent out to a half dozen people the 2002 USA Today information about religion in the USA hoping to scare up a little optimism in our pessimistic and fear full ranks on this Hallowed evening. We hear that the USA has become close minded, that the Enlightenment has glaucoma, that literal dogma has taken over. Polls show the opposite happening for the last fifteen years.

Nevertheless, the responses I've received have all been pessimistic and fear full. There is a tendency to believe we have fallen into the swamp of despond. That Ratzinger's elevation is a gibbous canary in our cultural coal mine.

But I don't think we need to be pessimistic and we must not let outselves fall into the trap of fear fullness which is what the leaders in power and industry and religion have been using to keep us in line. Besides, that kind of pessimism is toxic and paralytic. The powerful know that. They've been using fear since Constantine to control the gates of heaven and hell. They know it works. Too bad for us.

I do not have any statistics to make this case, only my experience, but I think we are in a situation a lot like the sixties and seventies where a segment of the population was given leave by circumstances like Vietnam, like a general loosening of the old cultural restrictions to throw off societal restraints.

Call it the Hippie Years. For some it was a natural time. For others it had to be tried. For others it made no sense. And it shocked the natural conservatives in the country. I think all those people -shocked and long haired - are still with us unless they died.

And then reaction set in. We are living through reaction now. Restrictions abound. Fear has been set loose again.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(WBYeats, Second Coming, 1939!)

For some it is a natural time to be heard and to evangelize the virtues of a restricted, anal community (if virtues there truly be in such a community). For others it has to be tried. For others it makes no sense. We are in a time that has shocked the natural liberals in the country.

Tit for tat.

But, I cannot believe that the Bush II era has done anymore than bring these reactionary political and religious evangelicals out of the closet. They were there all the time. And, if some have tried it, many of them are being turned off by the excesses of the regime and the churches just as people were turned off by excesses in the Hippie Years. I am not at all convinced that there have been millions of religious converts during this regime. Maybe it has been the opposite because the voices of protest have continued unabated even if we have no articulate leaders to champion our cause (See National Democratic Party).

And this too will pass. Out of action and reaction will come a new ethos. Some Hippie era excesses will be cleared away, some excesses from this era will be cleaned out and the society will begin to come together again. And it will be different from the 50's & the 60's or 2005.

I reject using fear to mobilize. I will not be motivated or governed by fear. I reject action based on fear whether it comes from the liberal or the conservative ranks. I put terrorism in the same category as weather. We can't control either. We can be prepared with plywood for our windows or with careful police work to secure our tunnels. That's all. Beyond that: Courage.

What are the colors of Homeland Security? Yellow,Orange,Red. Are they your colors? They are not mine. Those colors are all about stopping, running, hiding. There is no GO out there in these dismal days.

We have been pushed and pulled by the voices of fear for too long. Security security security. Everything from baby toys to automobiles to sunspots have to be made safe and secure. Enough already. Shit happens.

We are told that Bush can become a Hitler. Yea. Could be. I could even envision a scenario. But there are still obstacles in place from the Senate, the Congress, the courts, the military, the states, the universities, his own corporate constituencies, the people themselves (I see it in my brother in law, an active member of that most conservative of all organizations, the American Legion. He and many of his local comrades have turned against the Commander in Chief because they see the Commander in Chief as having betrayed them and the country!) Bush has been weakened. Our army has been weakened by his policies.

Let us not permit fear to govern our lives. Instead? Courage. Yes, be prepared as the Boy Scouts say, but that is not to be led by fear, but by intelligently applied courage. Courage intelligently applied: it is more dangerous on the road than in an airplane. But where are we led by our fears? On the road? NO.

We read all the terrible things that Bush will do to us if he gets a chance. True. I'm concerned. Yes. Hitler could happen here. But shall I panic and urge near panic upon my friends? NO. But how far shall I fall into the swamp of fear? Shall I take steps to seed my concern about him? ...steps to make it harder for him to hitlerize this country? I do everyday. Do I need to lose sleep? NO. Shall I fly to Europe or LA? Yes.

The fact is that if you look around you will see that good and powerful things are happening all the time. Courageous people are on the march. We'll not go back to the sixties. No. And we'll not go back to the 50's either.

Courage [OE- Corage - Heart]: a quality of spirit that enables one to face danger without showing or being governed by fear. (Hyperdictionary)

I've been thinking about our insane, failing, and foolishly expensive marijuana laws. We must find a better way to deal with this problem.

Below are arrest figures from the FBI, and if we trust those figures I believe they argue for changing the laws on marijuana. Police arrested an estimated 771,608 persons for marijuana violations in 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 44.2 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Furthermore the number of arrests has nearly doubled in eleven years. Since 1965 we have arrested 17 million people. Here are FBI arrest figures for the last eleven years:
2004 771,608
2003 755,187
2002 697,082
2001 723,627
2000 734,498
1999 704,812
1998 682,885
1997 695,200
1996 641,642
1995 588,963
1994 499,122
1993 380,689

This is a grave social problem. When will we open our eyes? Imagine, instead of spending thousands of millions in lives and in tax dollars to lockup users and sellers, imagine what it would be like if we taxed those users as we do drinkers and tobacco smokers. Imagine what it would be like if we put the sellers out of business and took control of a situation that has been out of control for half a century. We could empty our jails by nearly half, jails we filled at a cost of about $20,000 a year per convict.

Users will be happy to pay taxes for marijuana. Law enforcement would focus on truly serious problems. Taxes we now need for a failed policy of prohibition could be used to improve education and control the use of marijuana instead of prohibiting, which has failed. Prohibition is a dumb bomb but control is precise and achieves what we have always wanted.

We know punishment does little to change human behavior. It makes people angry, resentful, hard to control. Besides punishment creates a huge expense for the rest of us and controls nothing. Instead of expensive punishment, change the dope laws and take control forgetting about failed policies of prohibition.

Taking control, after all is what we expect government to do, and our governments have failed to make the policies of prohibition work for 70 years. It is only blindness and denial that keeps us spending treasure on a failed policy that never succeeds. Let's face the failure and look at other possibilities.

Many people who have been conditioned by 70 years of propaganda will join the chorus of naysayers who can be counted on to play on our fears. I can hear them now telling us that being sensible will mean more children will become addicted and pot will lead to heroin and all the other cant we’ve been listening to for decades..
Sorry, folks, it won’t happen like that because kids who want to start smoking, start smoking now under prohibition. People of all ages and positions in society who want marijuana get and use this material any time they want to. Why? Because we do not have the marketing or the production of the material under control. We think we are prohibiting. We are not Nor for seven decades have we had this problem under control.

So, when will we start to learn, to open ourselves to a new idea, to an idea that might just work?... an idea that will enable us to take control of the growing, marketing and use of the plant, something we've never before been able to do. How? Set up cafes run by former DEA enforcement agents; café`s that sell marijuana, coffee, pastry. soft drinks. Fit them out with easy chairs, green plants, soft jazz, and no advertising except an icon in the window. Cigarette smoking would be prohibited.

All those brave and loyal police and DEA agents who put their lives on the line would no longer work on grim city streets facing marijuana criminals with guns! All budgets will be determined by marijuana taxes and cafe` profits which will insure that former agents can become cafe operators at the same pay grade they were on as enforcers. Funds from profits will be set aside to educate children in schools about the truth of marijuana, how smoking is bad for the lungs just like tobacco, how it can affect the brain and etc.

The government would set up a US Government DEA franchise: call it Mary Jane's Cafe. Mary Jane's is a nice safe business. No more guns, no more brutal Columbian or Mexican gangsters to deal with. No more criminals in the school yard. And we could be sure former agents would never sell to nine year olds. The police would only have to arrest those selling on the streets, because the DEA would become a government monopoly. We could be sure that way. We will finally get marijuana under control.

All the marijuana criminals would be put out of business because the government shops will always -Like WalMart- ask the customer to pay less because the DEA will control the sources instead of fighting the sources. People in the licensed hemp growing business would sell all their crop to the government using café profits to buy the material. The DEA franchise model will allow for some private but controlled and licensed individual hemp based businesses.

Growers may not make the same kind of money they did in the old days, but it would be steady work and good income. Maybe they'd earn enough to stop growing tobacco which is more hurtful than hemp. And you may grow a few plants at home. What you don't consume, you sell to the agent. Growers might sell only the best grade leaves and buds to the agent and all the rest to rope and cloth manufacturers. Scientists will want to study hemp too. What can we do with the plant? It is not surprising to see stories about the way marijuana is effective medically in this or that disease. Drug companies awaken.

George Washington grew hemp. A model for us all. And he probably inhaled.

We already have a national agency that could set up and run this business so as to keep it tightly under control. So we don't want or need a new agency. And new taxes and profits would support the agency instead of making it a burden as it is now. Some will try to change its name, maybe call it the Dope Enabling Agency and that’d be fine. Let’s not get too anal about these things. A little humor in government wouldn’t hurt anyone.

And there’d be no additional dangers. Driving laws would remain in force to serve and protect us from totally stoned-out-of-their-mind fools on the road. Nobody wants that kind of behavior. Nor would people be any more inclined to pilot planes, ferries, trains or lathes while stoned than they are now. We have the laws we need in place now. And the incentive criminals have to increase their clientele by seducing children would end.

So let's take control the same way we have with tobacco. Let’s collect marijuana taxes and educate people to the dangers. The DEA will buy all material grown at better prices than the black market, thus crashing the black market. The market and the product comes totally under the control of the reformed DEA.

After we're sure the new approach to substance control begins to work we'll consider the character of our thinking about other substances and how they can be best controlled. We've tried to prohibit twice. The policies prohibiting alcohol failed in less than ten years. The unhappy policies prohibiting hemp have lasted about over 70 years.

I: From Aara in Patagon

It's a mad world Sir.
all this empty space.
I can't stop thinking
the size of it all
before the big bang.
I can't stop thinking
how we cannot perceive
without the proper holes
in our head.
The holes we have
don't work well enough,
we can't see things
made of atoms mostly empty.

It chills my mostly empty body,
this knowledge of the world
the universe full of emptiness.
I get all full of it.
So exciting to be alive.

You are empty! I am empty!
Energy of stars!
Then we die forever
now is all and ever will be
Now, We're alive!
...alive....

II. From Wally in Respond

O, there is truth in re-incarnation:
by Re cycling our flesh, we Re-flesh.
So pumping toxins into corpses
to poison the next generation of oaks
is Sin, and Burning only Consumes emptiness

All Earth’s Children use pre-used bodies
to Re-flesh into oak trees,
or beetles or worms!
Humus. Human. Humor.
Life’s giggle recycling
as it has for a billion or so.

Earth Kiddies all composed of
empty little bits used and Re-fleshed
Now, millions of years ago and yesterday
Making algae or molluscs

Each of us mollusc or human
wears the illusion of alienation:
Masks on the face of molluscs
birds, women, men; masks
on the face of the great
cosmic mystery.
...alive...

Marriage is governed by civil laws not by any one religion

The basic point I want to make about the gay marriage debate is this: marriage is a civil contract. It is not fundamentally religious in the eyes of the law. It may have become sacred to some like the Holy Sacrament it is in the Roman Catholic Church, but marriage is basically a civil contract under which two people pledge to support each other, deal with property and raise kids if any.

Under the civil laws of the USA, the first thing you have to do when you decide to wed is to go to a government agent and get a license. No license no marriage; and religions do not, cannot, and should not even try to marry two people without that license. Government intrudes into many other aspects of the married relationship as well including disease, finances, battering and more.

Millions of people marry only at a civil ceremony. Given this fact, why should we, a people constitutionally free of the authority of any religion, change the Constitution in order to make laws based on the dogmas of Christianity? What happens to everybody else? To those who don't wish religion to intrude on their wishes? To those of us who understand the profound wisdom of the separation of church and state? Why is it that gays cannot go down to the town hall and wed the same as the rest of us?

Why? Because we want homosexuals to be a separate class from everybody else. We want to discriminate against homosexuals -our sons and daughters, our friends and colleagues - and when we do, when we make gays and Lesbians into a constitutionally separate class for religious reasons, we will not be a country where all people are truly equal under the law.

If we pass this constitutional amendment it is because we want a society where perhaps 90% of the people are equal under the law and 10% or more are untouchables . We will stand before the world having made bigotry part of our Constitution, the Constitution that has for two hundred years been a beacon of enlightenment to the rest of mankind.

The movement to change the Constitution because of the wishes of one religion is not that different from similar movements in Muslim countries where fundamentalists are trying to make Sharia -Muslim dogma- the law of the land.

This terrible proposal to ban gay marriage via the Constitution violates basic American principles. These amendment proposals contradict the First Amendment principle about separation and are in direct conflict with the XIV Amendment which says clearly that governments may not “ deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Anti-gay amendments will have far reaching consequences. All state and Federal statutes will have to comply. Corporations that have adopted policies incorporating gays and Lesbians into their insurance schemes may have to change and discriminate by law. Universities will have to change student and faculty policies. Public school boards will begin a push to change the way they treat gays and Lesbians. Gays and Lesbians will become American Untouchables. Is that what we want?

And if that is what we want, what will our religious authorities want for all of us next? ...regardless of our religious proclivities? I am deeply fearful of religious ideologues of any kind.

WASHINGTON — Couples in the Northeast wed later than men and women in other parts of the country. In Utah, e.g. younger newlyweds are the norm.

A Census Bureau study released today found many regional differences in the marrying habits of Americans. Those on the East and West coasts usually wait longer to get married than those in red states. The study also found that Southerners prefer to get married rather than live together.

"Later marriage is very strongly associated with higher levels of education," said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. hat's why people in the Northeast have such a late age of marriage."

The age when couples get married can also be influenced by religion and whether they are willing to live together without getting married, Popenoe said.

Living together "delays marriage," Popenoe said, "Men marry too late from the point of view of women, especially educated men. It leaves more women single, or marrying beyond the age of childbirth."

The median age for first marriages in the United States is 26.7 years for men and 25.1 for women. That is roughly a year older than a decade ago for both, said Martin O'Connell, chief of the Census Bureau's fertility and family statistics branch.

Men wait longer than women to marry in every state, and no one gets married younger than couples in Utah, where the median age is 21.9 for women and 23.9 for men. At the other end of the spectrum, men and women in Washington, D.C., both wait until they are about 30.

"Big cities tend to have high ages for marriage," said Zhenchao Qian, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University. Among the study's findings: 29 percent of all new mothers were unmarried. Among the unmarried mothers, half were poor, compared with 12 percent of married mothers who lived in poverty. "Single parenthood and poverty are about as closely related as you can get," Popenoe said.

The states with the most unwed new mothers also tended to be the ones with the highest percentage of new mothers living in poverty. Washington, D.C., had the highest percentage of new mothers who were unmarried, at 53.4 percent. The city also had the highest percentage of new mothers living in poverty, at 36.3 percent. West Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana also had high percentages of unwed mothers living below the poverty line.

Maine had the highest percentage of households with unmarried couples, at 7.3 percent, while Alabama had the lowest, at 3 percent. One-fifth of all new mothers in California either did not speak English well or did not speak it at all. Fifteen percent of all new mothers in the U.S. were not citizens. Hispanics had the highest birth rates, while non-Hispanic whites had the lowest.

Today the New York Times reports that the citizens of Texas are going to go to the polls to vote on whether or not a ban on gay marriage becomes part of the Texas state constitution. In my email this morning a correspondent says, "What I think concerns many people is that there is a very evident agenda on the part of some gay groups to legitimize their activity."

With all respect to the writer and the Texans wanting to ban gay marriage, I must say the simple fact is people whose physical and emotional attraction is to their own gender want to be treated as equals in the law in every way. Forget trying to demonize "gay groups" as though they were merely left wing political operatives.

This is a class of people who have been mistreated, abused, and demeaned in this society. They want this long religious based bigotry & discrimination against them to end. They want the rest of the society to understand that the bigotry against them is the same as bigotry against Blacks whose slave status was also rationalized and validated by Christians. The same thing happened with women who were kept in a second class position in the law because of Christian/Biblical thinking.

But what did Christ say? Christ said we should love one another. Let's obey Him and stop the bigoted discrimination against all human beings.

O, some will argue that persons attracted to their own gender have chosen that life style (as though they've chosen some kind of criminal behavior). The fact is we do not know how people become gay. According to science what we call homosexuality seems a normal part of nature in humans and in a wide variety of other beasts.

We do know it is not a choice, which is easy to see, because anyone living in this society would have to be a fool, a masochistic & dimwitted fool to choose to be gay in a society where so many people are ready to hate and despise them, discriminate against them, and hurt them even kill them. "Great idea, let's be gay. My parents will suddenly hate me, I might get fired and we won't have any legal standing as a couple! We can even get beat up down at the biker bar! Wow, what a great idea! We can have bigots torment us! Terrific! Alright! Let's choose!" Sorry, Gays and Lesbians are not lunatics.

The writer of the email message says they want to "legitimize their activity". What "activity"? The way they have sex? Is that the "activity"? "How do I love thee?/Let me count the ways." And that was written for "straight" people attracted to the opposite sex! Like straights, Gays and Lesbians are engaged in all kinds of sexual activity. Picture it.

And just because one doesn't like their "activity" doesn't mean anyone can dictate to someone else what is wrong to do. And as long as it is by common consent among adults it is nobody else's business. We are human beings and human beings across the planet enjoy sex in all the many ways nature has made it pleasurable for our bodies and minds to do it. (Of course there are already limits in the law: rape, child abuse, etc. And the Supremes have thrown out state laws intruding in the bedrooms of consenting adults.)

And if it is not sex that is the writer's problem "activity" then what problem "activity" is there? I don't know. They do everything else like we do.

The email writer goes on to describe Gay & Lesbian marriage as "so-called 'marriage' which really strikes at the union of man and woman and therefore at the family.'" First, where it is legal, it is not "so called marriage" it is marriage. Period. Second, I know the argument about damaging the family. I've heard it a thousand times. And it makes no sense to me.

My wife and I have been together for 52 years, married for almost 50. We have many gay & Lesbian friends. Some of them have been couples for many years. And nothing they do, have done, will do, or can imagine them doing if they wed "strikes" at our "union", our family, our kids, my pocket book, my job, my place on the bus. I don't know how any of them could have "struck" at our marriage or any other marriage. I don't know what this argument is talking about. I think the argument is preposterous.

To "wed" is to "pledge". Why would a pledge made by gays or lesbians become threatening to the rest of us? I do not know why. They do not "pledge" to do anything to the rest of us! ...just to stay together.

Maybe the threat is about breeding or raising offspring. Ok, do our laws require traditional marriages to breed or adopt children? no. Do all traditional marriages have children? no. Do all traditional marriages want children? no. Do traditional marriages guarantee the best for the children they breed? no. So heteros are capable of abusing their children? Yes. Do they? Sometimes some parents do, yes. Do old people marry? yes, and they can't breed children. So it isn't having children that we're worried about, if we were we'd do something about straight marriage.

Do all hetero couples marry? no. Are these unmarrieds striking at our unions? Some think coupling without marrying is a threat to marriage, but the ones who live together for some time and then marry are shown to stay together after the wedding longer than most who simply jump into marriage. The fact is heteros have chosen to live without marriage or live through trial marriages, throughout history. The law used to (or still does) recognize that any couple that stays together for seven years is married, children or no. Common Law. So why not do the same with gays and Lesbians? Why not?

The history of hetero marriage is complex, complicated, and always changing. Our present ideas about humans pledging together are not the only models or the best models. Indeed, the divorce rate among heterosexuals is about 50% or more. Not a good batting average. So we know heterosexual marriage the way we do it may not be the best model to set forth. Traditional hetero marriage has gotten to be such a bad model these days maybe society should "strike" at it. Maybe we can make it better.

Loving gay or lesbian partners on the other hand are known by sociologists to maintain loving and committed relationships with a higher percentage of success than heteros. So, maybe if we allow gays and lesbians to marry the overall percentage of successful marriage will go up. Maybe they'd even be a better model of successful relationship for our children than straight folk.

Well, what is it people don't like about gays who marry? Really, what is the problem? Is it that we've never allowed gay marriage? Wrong. Go into the history. You will find marriage contracts between same sex peoples throughout history. In some Orthodox Christian churches there were same sex unions until early in the 20th century. All this is documented. Google it or do a little library research it if you doubt me.

Is it that gays are inherently evil? Not even worth answering. The planet is ten percent gay or more and millions of them are functioning in good and creative ways in their many societies.

So what's the problem? Are we all equal under the law? Yes. We are all equal under the law so let's act like it. So what is the problem?

The churches and the ideologues of religion -especially the Fundamentalists- are the problem. And their dogmatic religious views should not even be part of the debate because marriage is a civil contract. You don't have to go to church to marry. Millions never do. Millions are not religious. But churches seem to think this is exclusively a matter for them to solve, an issue solely religious. It is not.

The wishes of millions of couples not associated with churches and church law have no need for the churches and their dogmas because marriage is a civil contract that can be celebrated with a civil ritual and a civil pledge. But now the religionists want to dictate their dogma to the non religionists. Christian groups in Texas today are pushing for a state constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage. Talk about arrogance.

Finally, my correspondent tells us in so many words to fear the slippery slope; that there will be trios of all shapes and sizes wanting marriage. UhO. Sounds like naughty sex again. The Naughty-sex Slippery Slope. Sounds lubricious.

Well we are always handed the hypothetical slippery slope when it comes to testing the old traditional, usually religious, dogmas. Marijuana leads to heroin. Legal suicide leads to murder. The slippery slope argument is inherently specious; plausible but false. It is like saying drinking water leads to drowning or drinking milk leads to high cholesterol. Use the slippyslope when you want to create fear and angst and have no better arguments. We don't need gay marriage to lead to weird unions. Heterosexuals do weird stuff all the time. They are famous for it. And they murder. And they get addicted to drugs.

For the good health and sanity of our people we have to stop demonizing gays and lesbians. Let's just do what Jesus said to do. Let's love each other and let each other love.

Absolutism is a two edged sword for there is a Shadow Side to Faith. It's a sword that threatens its wielder as much as it threatens the antagonist. For their own protection Absolutists, those who believe in unthinking faith, ought know the danger that shadows them. Of course they'd never believe it because they are conditioned not to think. ...such irony.

Bill Bruehl tries to bring out that ironic truth in a play he wrote -it's been professionally produced- called Darwin's Captain. Captain Robert Fitzroy (descended from a bastard of King Charles II) was commander of The Beagle. The Royal Navy had already assigned a naturalist for the mapping voyage to South America in 1831. Fitzroy did not need another. But he was a Fundamentalist Christian, a young earth creationist. His ideas about the young earth can be found in Royal Navy archives today.

In 1831 Fitzroy's secret objective was to collect evidence on the voyage to prove the Biblical Creation story and the immutability of species. He asked Darwin, who was about to be ordained an Anglican priest and thus seemed the ideal person to collect such evidence, to come as his guest. You know the result. It is one of the great ironies in the history of human culture, religion, and science.

But that is only part of the story of the Shadow Side of Faith.

Over the next three decades Captain Fitzroy became an admiral, a respected and innovative scientist himself. He was governor of New Zealand. His charts of South America were used by seamen all over the world until the 1950s. He invented weather forecasting, improved weather instrumentation and more. Indeed, Darwin and Fitzroy remained personal friends throughout their lives and Darwin sponsored him for membership in the Royal Society.

But Fitzroy was deeply troubled by Darwin's work and became even more so after the 1859 publication of that great world changing book The Origin of Species. He interrupted scientific meetings at Oxford and on one occasion when Darwin's work was being promoted, Fitzroy walked through the audience with the Bible raised high above his head, yelling, "The Book! The Book! It is in the Book!"

Gradually darkness settled upon Robert Fitzroy's mind, and probably either because he believed he had betrayed God by taking Darwin on that fated voyage or because Darwin's ideas had infected his own thinking thus weakening his faith, Fitzroy, now an admiral, slit his own throat.

It happened about two weeks before Lincoln was shot.

And the final irony: The Fundamentalist Christian, Admiral Robert Fitzroy has been all but forgot.

The shadow side of faith.

Hang loose.

The novelist whose work most fascinates me these days is the South African Nobel Laureate, J. M. Coetzee (pronounced koot Zay). I’ve just ordered his newest "Slow Man" primarily because I’ve just finished "Elizabeth Costello".

Reading Coetzee’s "Elizabeth Costello", I find the writing curiouser and curiouser as I troll further through it. About writers and writing, about critics and criticism, about fiction and philosophy, sex and religion, about the encounter between the objective and the relative and most curious of all, about a Lady Chandos writing to Francis Bacon??? And all of it woven around a series of lectures?? What’s it all about?

It’s all fascinating, written with a diamond like rhetoric -hard and brilliantly controlled; filled with arcane literary fact and wisdom, bold enough to bring even a living writer into its debate (Paul West and his novel about the failed assassination of Hitler while leaving West as a character to sit as a silent shade in the background while the elderly Elizabeth chatters at him like a school girl). What is it all about this story of a once sexy now wilting old lady who’d written one famous book based on another famous book and how she goes about the planet provoking academics and religionists who wish only to praise and honor her?Is this about a fictional writer or is it about the author or what?

Perhaps it is poetry.

With my curiosity at the highest pitch having read the Lady Chandos letter - is this another invention [Elizabeth Chandos, Elizabeth Costello???] ???? - I Googled Chandos and found:
"LETTER OF ELIZABETH, LADY CHANDOS, TO FRANCIS BACON a brief new work byJ.M. COETZEE
"The Letter is a plea from Elizabeth Chandos written not long after a similar letter from her husband, also addressed to Francis Bacon. In her letter, she too tries to convey some idea of their growing estrangement from words and language.
"The Letter of Lord Chandos, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is a remarkable work, not only in the career of the author, but in the history of literature. While Hofmannsthal did not, like his character Philip Chandos, forsake writing altogether, his publication of this piece coincided with a significant change of his focus as a writer. "Now, J.M. Coetzee adds a new voice to the correspondence, speaking through Philip's wife Elizabeth."

This of course required that I Google Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and Chandos where I found the following from the New York Review of Books site: "The most influential of all of Hofmannsthal's writings is the title story, a fictional letter to the English philosopher Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he is no longer able to write. The "Letter" not only symbolized Hofmannsthal's own turn away from poetry, it captured the psychological crisis of faith and language which was to define the twentieth century."

So what is the purpose of all my compulsive searching? Well, the best way I can plumb Coetzee’s objective in writing Elizabeth Costello is to work backward. Von Hofmannsthal’s letter is about no longer being able to write poetry. In the letter, Von Hoffmanstahl has Chandos say, "My case, in short, is this: I have lost completely the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently."

Isn’t this complaint made visual in the paintings of that time (Modernism, the early years of the 20th ce ) when deliberately fragmented paintings like Nude Descending were created? Isn’t this part of the heritage of the Enlightenment, perhaps the dark side of the Enlightenment, when the old forms, the old dispensations are no longer potent to the artist? 1900 was hardly a time when a serious artist could follow the lead of a Raphael.

And isn’t this Elizabeth Costello’s problem, the writer who no longer writes; who, instead, goes about the world challenging the beliefs of others and is unable on the brink of heaven to proclaim a belief of her own?

Enough to say that Coetzee using a metaphorical character (perhaps an allegorical character), is probing a catastrophe, a state of perhaps irremediable ruin in the planetary culture, a time when all belief is challenged and targeted.

One last quote from the end of the novel and excerpted from Elizabeth’s letter to Francis Bacon, "All is allegory, says my Philip. ... Drowning, we write out of our separate fates. Save us."

Don’t we identify Bacon with the onset of the the Enlightenment?

Yes. I think Elizabeth Costello is poetry, poetry demonstrating Coetzee’s (Costello’s) determination to keep poetry alive.

And I have to admit, I’d never heard of Von Hoffmannsthal’s letter before today.

Dear Prim, your comment to my last post about card playing in South Carolina is so important that it should be seen by all the world so I am posting it here at the head of the line.

Primmy, when you speak of "idol hands and minds" as the devil's workshop I think you mean an idol's hands are the devil's hands. Here in South Carolina we have no time for idols or idlers. We pray to our Lord and we work hard, so don't you worry about morals and manners, L'il Darlin'. We're bringing back the best of the good old days. And soon life here in the Upcountry will be just like it was in the 30's before we're finished with the ACLU which means anti Christian lunatics united.

God bless you, Prim, and here is your note:

"I am so glad to read on your very informative blog site that the good folks of South Carolina have come to their senses regarding those frivolous games of chance. After all, idol hands and minds are the devil's workshop.

"When I was a girl in upcountry Carolina, we were quite content with spirited games of Rook, Authors, and Old Maid, and manners and morals were much better then and there than they now are in the wicked north where I now reside.May I say that I do so hope that you South Carolinians keep on keeping the old faith.

Your faithful servant,
Primrose Godsbody,
No Hope, Pennsylvania"

In a message dated 10/1/05, a high school coach from what seems to be an Upcountry private school sent the following message to the President of the Greenville, South Carolina chapter of the ACLU. A copy was sent to the attorney representing the players:

"Mr President, this email is a follow-up to our telephone discussion concerning a group of poker players who were arrested in a Greenville police raid. They are charged under statutes that are so broad as to be ... an infringement of the First Amendment Right of Assembly. There is no compelling reason for the state to control the playing of non-gambling games in this manner. Their lawyer, ... would appreciate your taking the time to offer some guidance.Here are the two South Carolina statutes they were charged under. South Carolina is the only state in our nation that attempts to make illegal the playing of any game involving cards or dice (whist and backgammon exempted), or any game in your home if played on the Sabbath.

"SECTION 16-19-40. Unlawful games and betting.If any person shall play at any tavern, inn, store for the retailing of spirituous liquors or in any house used as a place of gaming, barn, kitchen, stable or other outhouse, street, highway, open wood, race field or open place at (a) any game with cards or dice, (b) any gaming table, commonly called A, B, C, or E, O, or any gaming table known or distinguished by any other letters or by any figures, (c) any roley-poley table, (d) rouge et noir, (e) any faro bank (f) any other table or bank of the same or the like kind under any denomination whatsoever or (g) any machine or device licensed pursuant to Section 12-21-2720 and used for gambling purposes, except the games of billiards, bowls, backgammon, chess, draughts, or whist when there is no betting on any such game of billiards, bowls, backgammon, chess, draughts, or whist or shall bet on the sides or hands of such as do game, upon being convicted thereof, before any magistrate, shall be imprisoned for a period of not over thirty days or fined not over one hundred dollars, and every person so keeping such tavern, inn, retail store, public place, or house used as a place for gaming or such other house shall, upon being convicted thereof, upon indictment, be imprisoned for a period not exceeding twelve months and forfeit a sum not exceeding two thousand dollars, for each and every offense."

"SECTION 16-19-70. Keeping gaming tables open or playing games on the Sabbath.Whoever shall keep or suffer to be kept any gaming table or permit any game or games to be played in his house on the Sabbath day, on conviction thereof before any court having jurisdiction, shall be fined in the sum of fifty dollars, to be sued for on behalf of, and to be recovered for the use of, the State."

The letter below was published by the The News and Reporter newspaper of Chester County, SC. There is some thought that the letter is a phony. We don’t know. But if it is that says something about the editorial standards of the newspaper that published it and the state of the culture here in SC.

It is about a court case. Darla Wynne, a self described Wicca Priestess, sued the town of Great Falls for invoking Jesus in its official government meetings. She won at every level in the Federal Courts from District through Appeals through the Supreme Court just a couple months ago with the help of attorneys supplied by the ACLU. Now by order of the district Judge -a woman- the town must pay Wynne's attorney fees, something in excess of $50,000. This is a significant sum to the town of Great Falls which is not much more than a country crossroad.

There is much more to this story. Wynne has been vilified, her house broken into about 9 times, her animals hurt and the local cops have done nothing. Indeed, she is now frightened of the local cops and is considering another suit (which would probably get her killed or seriously hurt).

Anyway here is a letter to the editor from someone who challenges her to a religious duel: her Satan agin his Lord and God. Read on.

LETTER: Satan's bluff is called
Dear Editor,In an earlier article "Great Falls Gets it, Why doesn't Chester?" let's start with the Great Falls incident. I don't feel sorry that I was not here from the beginning of the lawsuit, but I am glad to see the end result, as I have something to walk with in my mission against Satan.

There is nothing new under the heaven; people and nations have fought against the name of God almighty in their nations, and even succeeded in doing that, and after their reign was over, another one came and reinstated the name of God and his commencements in the nation. When the birth of Jesus Christ was announced by the wise men, King Herod tried hard to stop him by killing a great deal of innocent children. Yet, he still missed Jesus, and as Jesus grew up to fulfill his mission, He raised the dead, healed all manner of sickness and performed many miracles. In John 14:12-14 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." This assurance was given to believers for a power of authority to use his name.

What happened in Great Falls too shall pass. Jesus, Satan, witchcraft, wizard, and other principalities are spiritual matters. Why are you addressing them in the court of law? Why not bring the issues in the spiritual realm? The Bible declares that Satan is the prince of the air. I, Jean Minyem, am a minister of the Gospel, and an ambassador of Jesus Christ, I challenge you, Darla Wynne.

Please invite all witches, wizards in the area and your boss the devil to an open meeting. Let us have an open meeting just like in the days of the Prophet Elijah and the Prophet of Baal in I Kings 18:19-39. Being a man of God and an ambassador of Jesus that I am, will be standing against every witch, wizard, and devil.In that challenge, the God that will respond with miracles, signs and wonders as Jesus did such as raising the dead, opening blind eyes, raising people with serious deformations out of wheelchairs, and healing all manner of diseases will be called the real God over Great Falls.

If your God, the devil, succeeds in performing these miracles and my God doesn't, then your god is God. If your god doesn't perform them, my God will be proclaimed Lord of Lords and King of Kings over Great Falls.Since I know that Jesus will perform them, I set notice to you that the spirit of God will fall on you and all the other witches, and you will prophecy that Jesus is Lord. You will not be able to control yourself, but you will prophesy.

Peradventure fear comes to you and you are afraid to show up, I will send the Holy Spirit and charge the angels to drag you by force to the place, which I will choose. You don't know what you got yourself into.

I speak like a king and pray as a priest to the most high God. You may have played on the emotions of my fellow Christians who did not know what to do with you. But now a man of God is in town to challenge you.

JM [name reduced to initials] Chester, SC

In the case of Darla Kaye Wynne vs. Great Falls, SC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, one of the most conservative in the country, ruled that governments may not invoke a specific deity - ex. Jesus Christ - at official meetings. The US Supreme Court by denying the city’s appeal supported the decision. Thus the city of Great Falls, SC, a small village almost a crossroads, has been ordered to pay over $50,000 in legal fees for violating the law. Ms. Wynne, a self described Wicca Priestess won nothing for herself.

Since then there has been an uproar across the state of South Carolina. Municipal and county governing councils in many cases have continued to invoke Jesus in spite of the law. Front page articles have been published decrying the law and officials and ministers have called the pious public to stand against it forgetting that by protecting the Constitutional rights of the despised, the courts protect all of us.

I think it is important to address all those around the country who are obsessing on the challenges being made to traditional religious customs in government, to address all the good Christian people who say they are being attacked for being Christians, who think they are being discriminated against by the courts, to all those, I say, Pray!

Everyone. Everyday in every way, Pray! And do it separately from our governments' business. Before a government meeting starts go and pray to your Lord, but keep the meeting separate from the prayer because our Constitution requires that religion not be connected to government. Pray to Him alone or together in another room. Pray silently. Pray fervently.

And when you pray remember Jesus' command in Matthew 6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

It was a wise move on the part of our forefathers -and in keeping with Jesus’s command- to separate religion from government. James Madison made it clear that the purpose of separating church from state was to end the blood shed of centuries in Europe. Think about that.

But better, think about this matter in a compassionate way: imagine yourself a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu (and we have many in our land now), and you hear our government begin its work by calling on our Christian Lord. You would feel like it was not your government.

So, let us pray. Let us pray that the wisdom in our constitution be always protected by each and every one of us even when we don't especially like the ways it protects us.

In an earlier posting Wally says, speaking of our troops in Iraq, "I want them out of the hell they are in. I want them home."

In response (see comment) a correspondent, Mr. Anon, says that for leaders like Senator Kennedy to advocate thusly is "demogogic", and for me, a mere citizen, to urge the same is at best "regettable" because, my correspondent says, "...the loss of the Iraq war promises to be catastrophic for the US." He fears my "view of the stakes in the war are entirely too small." He also seems to assume I wish we lived in a "splendid isolation."

I hope I've understood him correctly because it is hard for me to imagine anyone would say it is demogogic and regrettable to want to put an end to the killing in Iraq and that to do so would be catastrophic.

My God, Mr. Anon, we are in your catastrophe today! And it is a catastrophe begun with the invasion of Iraq brought about by a man who in everyway saw the stakes as too small. The war is Mr Bush's war and his behavior in invading that country without a cause all Americans could agree on was the demogogic and regettable act.

The task before us as a result of his invasion grows more complicated and less hopeful by the day. I see no way to win that war with Mr Bush in charge. And I don't want to impeach him.

So why "stay the course" as he insists? We are more and more isolated everyday because of his decisions, his actions. There is no hope I can see that any other country in the region or anywhere else will step in to help us relieve a situation that comes closer and closer everyday to not just civil war in Iraq but a regional political and religious conflagration. And I abhor the idea that we should solve our problem by increasing our forces. Enough of the killing by our hands.

So, yes, my correspondent, we are in a catastrophe that could well become a regional explosion the like of which we have not seen since World War II. ...especially if we "stay the course". If history is any guide we might well be seeing in the Islamic world the beginning of religio/political strife similar if not parallel to the 16th and 17th century slaughter that engulfed Europe.

I believe another way must be sought if not found. I wish I knew the way, but to simply trudge on killing and dying and destroying and spending, and "staying the course" as Mr Bush would have us do seems like the Madness of King George. And I am amazed that thinking persons, and I believe you are one, would not see that perfectly apparent reality.

I recall with perfect clarity something Saddam said not long before Bush invaded. Knowing he had no way to stop American military might Saddam said his people would do the fighting "in the streets". I've never seen the media recall that threat. Curious, because that is precisely what our enemies have done: fight in the streets. ...with apparent success. It is also apparent that we are not the only enemies. When Sunni Muslims kill Shi'a Muslim school teachers, this is not just about us. And everyday that guerilla war grows in intensity and savagery. And we seem to have no way to stop it.

I certainly don't know how to resolve these complications. So I say bring our people home. Give Mr Bush his proper place in history and let us take responsibility for having given him the power to do what he has done. Let the UN, the world, step in and work to resolve these issues.

Perhaps out of this catastrophe we, the sovereign American people, will have learned a lasting lesson for the future. That is the consequence I can most "easily imagine". A second defeat because of the behavior of an excessively impowered president seems to me a salutary ending for this chapter in our history.

If you know, Mr. Anon, how to avoid the coming immolation by our "staying the course", please tell me.

I'd like to pass on some thoughts I've had about the issue of supporting our troops. I support our troops. Totally. Without question. But what do I mean when I say that? When people say, "support our troops" I think there are two different things that can be meant. We often don't know which people mean.

Many say "Support Our Troops", but they really mean "Support the troops' decision to obey our President's order to send them into battle" That's not what I mean, yet, I think those people are right. The troops who obey the Commander need our support for obeying. We can't have a military of the disobedient. There is a true nobility in that obedience, that loyalty, that willingness to lay down your life on the orders of our Commander in Chief. That nobility reflects the greatness of our military and for that we must be proud. For a soldier to disrespect the commander's orders is a most problematic matter. For the commander to misuse the troops is criminal.

Some mean, "Support Our Troops by bringing them home out of the hell they are in" when they say "Support Our Troops." I'm in this group. I want them out of the hell they are in. I want them home. And to make my point clearer, I want to add here excerpts from an essay written by E. L. Doctorow, the novelist. I think he has important things to say about the second way of looking at support and not only for the troops, but for many Americans who are suffering because of Mr Bush's love of the rich and the powerful.

We Americans are not obliged to support any man in that office who misuses his power and damages our country. Here are some thoughts from Doctorow:
****
"I fault this president (George W. Bush)", says Doctorow, "for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

"On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

"But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

"But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

"They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life.... They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

"How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it.
So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options, but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
>.>.>.>
"The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.

"Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves. "
*********
I believe Doctorow is right, but I do not wish to see Mr Bush impeached. I do wish to see him held accountable by a larger and larger percentage of the sovereign people. I want to see him humbled, a virtue he has never shown. I want to see him leave office a failure in the eyes of the American people.

Those who believe the Republicans will not properly fund the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with new taxes are right on the money. Furthermore, I believe all we have heard from our President about rebuilding is hollow rhetoric.

Nevertheless it must be said that someone must take responsibility for the VULNERABILITY of the city before the hurricane, that many warnings of flood danger were ignored by the Bush administration. For instance, On 9/21/05 The Washington Post reported, “Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.” The Post goes on to quote Ivor van Heerden, the Hurricane Center's deputy director, who said “the real scandal of Katrina is the catastrophic structural failure of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with relative ease.”

The Post then concludes with this quote from John M. Barry who criticized the Corps in "Rising Tide," a history of the Mississippi River flood of 1927. Barry said that if Katrina did not exceed the design capacity of the New Orleans levees, the federal government may bear ultimate responsibility for this disaster. Furthermore says Barry, “If this (failure of the barriers) is true, then the loss of life and the devastation in much of New Orleans is no more a natural disaster than a surgeon killing a patient by failing to suture an artery would be a natural death," Barry said. "And that surgeon would be culpable."

True, local leaders may not have been up to the task of responding effectively to the flood that happened because of this federal bungling. The weakness in the barrier that collapsed and caused the primary damage to New Orleans was predicted and should not have happened because funds were made available to strengthen the barriers, but those funds were siphoned off by the administration and used for the purpose of prosecuting Mr Bush’s war in Iraq.

The Impeach Bush Movement makes the following indictment, "Bush's handling of the Katrina catastrophe, and the actions of the administration prior to the hurricane, constitute a clear pattern of gross misconduct.”

Their indictment continues, “Despite the fact that scientific experts had widely publicized predictions of the coming catastrophe in New Orleans, the Bush administration was hell bent on diverting resources to the Iraq war, while it slashed funds for flood control operations in New Orleans. Bush's war on Iraq left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the needed funding to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. Before the Iraq war, FEMA officials warned of a looming disaster in New Orleans. The Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) is authorized by Congress to protect the people of New Orleans and the port facilities as well as oil refineries. After the start of the shock and awe invasion of Iraq however, SELA's monies were diverted. The Times-Picayune, the daily newspaper of New Orleans, published numerous articles during the last two years citing the danger caused by the loss of hurricane protection funds to the war in Iraq. Bush has taken the money needed to protect and serve the needs of society and spent it on his war of aggression against the people of Iraq, on multi-billion dollar contracts for his corporate friends, and on tax cutsfor the super-rich. Although he turned away as hundreds of people - including babies and the elderly - drowned and starved, now he is compelled to at least pretend to take action. This is not out of concern for the well-being of the suffering people, but concern for his popularity."

Failing to strengthen specific barriers caused death and destruction beyond anything that ever happened before in an American city. And Bush has admitted responsibility for Federal failures. Yet we hear nothing about making him accountable for this immense blunder, a failure of leadership far worse than Clinton’s sexual peccadillos.

If Bush is not held accountable there is one reality we Americans must face: the media run by industrial capitalists is on Bush’s side making Americans victims of propaganda that supports criminal behavior at the highest level.

Some thoughts about our public schools, their relationship to industry and why the government is so eager to test and evaluate schools purely on the basis of testing.

The Republican cure for the American public schools is testing. Testing relates only to skills. Skills, learning skills, teaching skills is a valid part of one's education. But if you make children think school is only about learning skills they will hate school.

Learning skills only make sense to a human being when it is understood that the skill is either for survival or to facilitate the expression of that which one loves to do. So if you love to write you will want to develop writing skills. If you love engineering you will want to learn math skills.

I learned to dislike math and avoid singing because my teachers didn't realize I had to have a reason to learn the skills of math and music. Here are a couple examples:

Teaching math in 1947: While I stood at the blackboard, Father Bednar, our trig teacher stood next to me. He would say as I stared at the equations, "Well, Mr Weet, what next Mr Weet?" And as he said my name he'd punch me on the upper arm. With each repetition the punch would come with more force. His punches would raise little lumps in my biceps. He liked that. He grinned a sadistic grin I'll never forget. Me? I never learned trig. And I regret it.

Teaching choir in 1947: Father Rafferty's choir class met in the cellar under pipes wrapped in asbestos. We would sing songs like "Slumber on my little gypsy sweetheart". After only two or three meetings he stopped everything, pointed at me and said in his red faced frustrated way, "Weet, just move your lips. Please, Weet." I stopped trying to sing for years. The only result was that I was the only one in the class who didn't inhale asbestos.

So what are we talking about here? Soft headed Liberalism? Or screwed up teachers?

Here's how I breakdown the problem of the schools: the universal public school system was invented in the 19th century to supply stock for industry; stock to operate lathes, punch time clocks, drive trucks, do office work, pretty weak motivating tools, as I recall. Opening people to their inner strengths was not part of the deal either. And seldom did any student accept the idea that s/he was in school for the purpose of learning to survive.

It always seemed to me that the objective was to survive school itself and that school had no purpose other than to inculcate discipline and obedience a purpose which commonly turned out skilled rebels.

By the 1950's a deep satisfaction had set in across the land with this training system that had succeeded in a limping way to teach reading, writing, spelling, obedience and avoidance of comma fault. But there was a growing sense in the culture that education meant more than training in these basic industrial skills. A grand liberal notion was afoot in the land that there was a broader, wider, more awesome world out there and inside of us to learn about than the one we were being conditioned to in the schools. Soon even teachers admitted they hated school as much as their children did. So people asked, "why not try to lead people to love learning?"

That is when the confusion and the experimentation began.

Experiments ignited more experiments. And it came to pass that we entered fifty years of confusion and half baked experimenting. Confusion because the basic objective of the universal public school system hadn't changed: train 'em! But this new desire, this new objective to educate didn't blend easily with the basic objective to train for industry.

Our kids went to an "Open Wing". They were opened up to excitement, learning, literature, music, science, art! And they didn't learn the times tables til they were in their 30's and I'm not sure they really have them in hand today.

Not like I do. Bang! Seven 12s are 84. Bang. The Nuns were not confused about their job which was to train my ass to compute. And they weren't confused about motivation either. They used an oak yardstick. And I never need a spell cheque. Same yardstick.

...except for diareeha, diahreha, diea... hell with it.

Anyway, during the last fifty years we as a society (with industry's silent collaboration 'cause they also thought for awhile that learning might be a good idea, we as a society confused that hated training ground of elementary and high school with education. We tried to put the two together. It didn't work. It still does not work. If you want your kids trained you do what Mr Bush has said to do, you put them through training in reading, writing and 'rithmetic and test 'em day and night til they get it right.

On the other hand, if you want your kids educated, if you want them to find their inner strength, if you want them to love learning, if you have a vision for them beyond stocking industry with the next generation of wage slaves, you take 'em out of that training ground and find a school dedicated to the love of learning or work with'em at home.

And make sure they can do the times tables. And spell. Why? For social and professional survival.

For my grandchildren? I recommend getting the objective straight first. Do we want them trained for industry? Or do we want competent, skilled human beings excited about learning? I don't trust our schools to do both. I believe that by doing the job they were designed to do, our schools will stamp out the fire that burns deep within the human heart for the love of learning.

It is a huge problem. And the society hasn't come close to even sorting it out.

Now ponder this: Why is the public system which trains children for industrial jobs not paid for exclusively by industry? And why is it that the schools that are dedicated to education in the sense I've described it so expensive and not supported by industry?

Dennis Littky is director of The Met High Schools in Providence, RI, and co-director of The Big Picture Company, a non-profit education design organization that creates and supports small, personalized, public schools that educate students “one kid at a time.” Dennis was principal of Thayer Junior/Senior High School in Winchester, NH. Nationally known for his more than 35 years of innovative educational leadership, he was awarded the McGraw-Hill Companies’ Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education in 2002. He is the author (along with Samantha Grabelle) of The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business.

I've just read Dennis Littky's book "The Big Picture, Education is everybody's business" and I think anyone interested in the way we school our children ought take a look at it; everyone: parents, teachers, principals, school board members, legislators.

Littky's book challenges the traditional philosophy and practices of American schools. And we deserve that challenge. We are raising kids in dysfunctional schools, dysfunctional even when we believe they are working satisfactorily. At the most fundamental level the philosophy upon which the schools are based, a philosophy laid down in the Nineteenth Century designed to train people to fulfill the needs of industry, has not changed. The problem is that training is not educating. Defining the success of schools by standard tests, the method used to upgrade the dysfunctional system by No Child Left Behind only serves to make the dysfunctional system worse. America's children need a better system.

Littky, after thirty or more years of work in public schools as a principal has turned the old philosophy out the door. His objective is to lead children to love learning and that leads to radically different kinds of schools. In his schools parents are closely involved with the work in every way. Students and teachers work in small groups focusing on projects that cultivate the interests and the skills of the students. School bells do not ring interrupting the process of learning. Students open themselves to the learning process, develop confidence and the needed basic skills of writing and mathematics in the process of doing the projects that fascinate them. Learning becomes joyful. Teachers then become not loaders of information but leaders, fellow learners, who help the child develop the information necessary to the learning process. And, yes, to do this schools must be smaller than we have come to make them in the last fifty years. Huge consolidated, impersonal schools have failed. Littky demonstrates how much more effective small schools are at every level.

The results speak for themselves. Over ninety percent of the children who leave Littky's schools go on to higher education and most of those students when they come into his schools are children who have failed to flourish in traditional schools. For this and a dozen other reasons, Littky's challenge to American education is a powerful book that must not be ignored. Besides, it's a good read. The man speaks to us and we hear his passion for learning. He is his own model for the philosophy and the practice he would inculcate in his students, their parents, his teachers, and us.

American education needs a model that works. Littky offers us that model

Confession. What was confession to us? Something "good for the soul"? No, I don't think it was "good for the soul". Not my soul anyway.

I think for the kids in Our Lady of Peace confession was something you had to do on Saturday. That's all. I did it on Saturday so I could go to communion on Sunday. And I went to communion on Sunday because I was watched by the Nuns and the parents and questioned if I missed. So I had to go to communion on Sunday. ...in the same way you had to go to Mass on Sunday. You were told that if you didn't go to Mass on Sunday you would spend eternity in Hell.

How did I handle that threat? Eternity in Hell? Well, I think I sort of filed it under "Coppering My Bets or maybe this is true and maybe it's not so I'll do it to be safe." By the time I was eighteen I would define an eternity in hell as the same as an eternity in Catholic Schools. Never go there.

Confession, the concomitant "penance" (six Hail Mary's at the altar rail was typical) and communion were just part of the discipline at Our Lady of Peace like the uniforms the girls had to wear and the white shirt and school tie the boys had to wear. It was all about discipline and the discipline was designed to inculcate obedience to authority.

At public schools they concentrated on subjects. At Our Lady of Peace subjects came in second and/or were blended with lessons in discipline, control, submission to authority.

And as it turns out now some sixty or so years later that formula actually worked and still lives in the minds of some of those who went through it. I've been in touch with some of those old class mates and in their seventies they still march, sing in the choir, and kneel and "offer it up" just the way they did when they were 12.

It did not work for me. For me it always felt like a torment. I acted out my resentments all the way through Our Lady of Peace. Fought 'em for every inch of the way and they gave it back without stint. And when at last I was paroled into a Catholic High School after 8 years, I felt like prisoners must feel when released at the end of their term.

I was soon to learn that I was just being passed on to a tougher rule with priests in charge instead of nuns and at the end of 4 more years of what can only be called boot camp I hauled ass from anything to do with Roman Catholicism; that notwithstanding the fact that those same priests arranged two scholarships to two Catholic Colleges for me. And I turned 'em down., both of them.

I was in no mood to submit to the "magisterium" any longer. Furthermore, twelve years of RC schooling had instilled no confidence in me as a learner. I chose the army instead, enlisted for 3 years. It was an experience that seemed benign by comparison. (Of course, that was during the Korean War and I never saw combat .)

But, ironically, it was in the army that I learned the joy of learning. It was in the Army that my intellectual growth began. So I actually have better memories, better feelings about my army experience than of my school experience.

If my soul ever got purified -and that's debatable even now - the process had nothing to do with the RC church.

For a few smiles, maybe even laughs go to:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/26133/

This came in awhile ago from my friend David who has forwarded a message from his brother Craig adding some thoughts to our discussion of Time.

From: David O
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 10:25 AM
To: 'Craig
Subject: Days of quantized time


Dear Craig,
I had forgotten our long ago discussions of quantized time. I will in due course comment in more detail on your "ruminations" below, but first I want to refer you to Wally Weet's blog. He posted an essay on time, suggesting that it does not, in fact, exist. I then sent him some dissenting comments, which he posted. See his archives for May 19 or so. In one of these comments I described the time and length scales, the so-called Planck-Wheeler time and length scales, below which the high-brow thinkers on such matters believe that quantum effects in space and time, or rather space-time, begin to manifest themselves. You might find our literary/pseudo-scientific gaseous emissions (now that's a concept for you, gaseous emissions in cyberspace) amusing. Perhaps Wally will attach your thoughts on "The Days of Quantized Time".
David

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig
To: David O
Subject: days of quantized time

"The Days of Quantized Time"

Dear David, here are some ruminations that I think you will especially enjoy. As you will recall, I asked you some questions about the nature of blue light because of some issues that I had become aware of in my Photoshop and image editing pursuits.
As a next step forward, you sent me a chapter in the Art Damask book about the physics of vision. This answered some important questions and pointed me in a direction of reading that has brought me full circle back to the days of quantized
time. In further pursuing reading material about light, I picked up a book you may be familiar with by R.W Ditchburn, now republished by Dover, simple called "Light."

On the back cover of the book mentioned above is the statement: "... clearly demonstrates how quantum theory is a natural development of wave theory, and how these two theories, once thought to be irreconcilable, together comprise a single valid theory of light." After recently seeing a series of Nova programs on PBS about String Theory, the statement I just quoted from the back cover of the Dover book seems remarkable in its simplicity. The old quantized time days came back to
my memory as I read chapters about the historical attempts to measure the speed of llght and Maxwell's thinking about electric and magnetic fields and his revelation that light could be explained as a high velocity electromagnetic field
that self propogated as a wave.

So, with that introduction, here are some ruminations. My understanding of Maxwells ideas are a little shaky.

1. A moving magnetic field produces an electric field.

2. In simplifying electricty and magnetism into a few concise
math equations, Maxwell (as I understand) was surprised
at a lack of symmetry in that: where a moving magnetic
field produces an electric field, a moving electric
field did not produce a magnetic field. [Here I am not
referring to elecromagnets, but to some lack of expected
symmetry that caused Maxwell to speculate that a high
energy electric field moving at a very high velocity
could produce a corresponding magnetic field, which would
in turn recreate the same electric field.

3. Apparently, in thinking about this special circumstance,
Maxwell calculated the required velocity of such a mvoing
electric field since it would be a ratio of known electric
and magnetic field values and would be constant. [On this
I think I am correct in that he was compelled to do this
calculation and at a time before anyone remotely suspected
that light was a special case of electromagnetism.] He
was reputedly amazed to discover that the velocity he
calculated in theory was very close to the experimental
measurements of the speed of light. Not only did a
wave best explain the behavior of light, but an electro-
magnetic wave propogation of a very short wavelength
predicted the speed and the fact that it would be a
constant. As I understand it, it was this calculation
and its correspondence to actual measurements of the
speed of light that cuased Maxwell to believe that
light is an electromagnetic wave.

4. Our direct observation of space in the larger sense
of the universe comes from our observation of the
elecromagnetic radiation of stars. It seems that all
sources of electromatetic radiation had some finite
origin; all electromagnetic radiation is a finite
wave train. Before the origin of those sources of
electromagnetic radiation by which we know of space,
there would in effect, be no space. There could
be a potential for space, but perhaps no evidence
of it. Space may be a result of an expanding
electomagnetic energy field that has a finite origin.

5. Gravity may then be the consequence of an unequal
distribution of that expanding energy field. In the
book I mentioned about light, quantum energy is
explained to be an unequal energy distribution over
an expanding electromagnetic wave. This accounts
for the observation that the energy released in
a photo-electric effect exceeds the energy of the
wave if energy is distributed equally across the
wave.

6. I don't know enough about all of this to make any
conjecture other than mythical or mystic, but I
did notice that nowhere in the Elegant Universe
programs did I see anything about ligt; and, nowhere
in the book about light do I see any mention of
strings. So, maybe those people with strings are
just getting strung along.

7. Perhaps before the origin of the expanding electro-
magnetic wave train, there is an energy concentration
and space only exists as potential. Perhaps this is
a very unstable condition and unstable conditions
contain a potential of randomness. Well, now we are
really full circle, as I quote from my source of
Alcman, Greek lyric poet of about 625 b.c.:
"Previously there was only darkness, and afterwards,
when it had been differentiated,(...light came
into being). (Greek Lyric II, D.A Campbell)

Hope you enjoy this rumination on science and Greek lyric poetry.
Craig at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~artsfx/premiere1.html

The media is filled with reports of sinking support for the Iraq war. The current war policies have failed. Even Republicans are calling for a date certain to bring our people home. The cost approaches $400 billion. Over 1700 Americans are killed. Thousands more suffer agonizing wounds. Uncounted Iraqis are dead and wounded. We need courageous leaders in Congress to stand up and say, "End it now! No more American body bags! No more legless Americans! No more billions wasted! No more support for a War begun with lies!

But it takes courage to oppose this war. The War Party aggressively supports continued killing and wounding of Americans, the mounting cost in treasure, even the lies that led us to war. They will tell us we will suffer humiliation if we bring our troops home. Untrue. The war party will suffer humiliation. America, in its wisdom and power, will only gain respect from the rest of the world. Our task now: first, decide to end this death machine, second, figure out how to do it. ASAP

Only partisans of the Iraq war want war to continue, want to justify it These people must be seen for who they really are; not patriots, hardly warriors, only mere justifiers of their own lost cause. They are true partisans of death and no longer deserve a hearing from the American people.

Penn Jillette 

I probably will see The Aristocrats that new and controversial film by Penn Jillette, the magician. I confess: the kid in me likes to provoke our pious puritans: epater le bourgeois, freak the citizens. I suspect such is a motive for its production. To me Jillette's movie seems like another cannonade in the Amerikan Kultur Krieg as were Mel's Passion and Moore's Fahrenheit 911.

It might also be worth seeing all those prominent comedians improvise on one joke. What infinite variety of amusing coarseness can you squeeze out of a single gag? I know the basic joke. It is nothing more than the toilet and sex humor of little boys made shockingly vulgar, crude, coarse and crass beyond imagining.

Which is the point!

We are living at a time of much whining about coarseness, crudity, vulgarity and when so little is done creatively to counter it. We Americans are tough guys and you know what tough guys do: punish offenders! Right. Punish those coarse corrupting villains and save the children!! We fine them millions of dollars just for saying that shit. We believe in punishment! And punishment is revenge!

Well, it seems Penn Jillette has another solution. I think -not yet having seen the film - that the idea here may be to top mundane vulgarity with a coarseness beyond our wildest fantasies of vulgarity, to take vulgarity over the edge.

More than just provoking, I suspect Jillette is challenging us. And his challenge goes directly to those who would stifle freedom of speech as our government is now doing when anyone dares to utter a naughty word on broadcast radio or television.

But I fear the project will sink like a rock, famous comedians or no. Our middle class likes to demonstrate refinement in public, protect “sacred family values”, show they are genteel and above supporting rude show biz vulgarity. Of course, later on when they don’t have to be seen in public, maybe they’ll be more inclined to get The Aristocrats from Netflix and watch it at home.

After all is it really much worse than all the other vulgarity that comes into our homes via the tube? ...for which we choose to pay? Which reminds me, Why don't they punish the cable companies for their vulgarity too? Could it be to protect the profits?

Dear Capitalist Running Dog,
You say, “I gather from your blogs that you number among your enemies [capitalists and] Christians of a certain stripe.”

You’re close, RD, but I wouldn’t say “enemies”, antagonists rather.

Christians first. The problems I have with Christianity as it worries the rag of American culture is that there is a tendency to apologize for, even encourage, the despoliation of the planet from which we emerged and which our descendants will inherit. To put it another way, there is a facet of Christianity that encourages greed and exploitation. I would much prefer the dominance of another Christian ethos which encourages wise and good stewardship. Jim Wallis and his Sojourners are a good example. We are so dominated by greedy selfishness that we barely ever hear from that truly conservative side.

Capitalism benefits from the strain of Christianity that excuses, even encourages individual greed. The mongers of capitalism protect one thing before anything else: ever bigger profits on the bottom line. They have no other primary objective. And we are suffering from that reality. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of the conservative reaction in our country that ushered in the bush league now administering our nation state, Capitalism has been unleashed. Old regulations, old restraints have been removed. Everyday we hear how the champions of capitalism want more privileges to earn a bigger buck usually by exploiting the planet or its children, human and otherwise. In other words Capitalism in America has been given a steady unblinking green light & full speed ahead.

And this is wrong. Capitalism can be humane. And I agree with you. Capitalism is part of the reason we live as well as we do. I certainly want no other economic system. The others have all failed. But capitalism is like a wonderful stallion. It must be controlled or it will run wild which it is doing today.

From my perspective Capitalism, money, commerce have become the true religion(s) of America. And Christianity is a pawn. I see that happening in our politics and in our architecture. There is no doubt the poor are losing out to the rich. The most impressive (or pretentious) structures being built today in our cities are the big banks and corporate headquarters. Some churches may be big, but none have the grandeur of the old cathedrals.

Capitalism unleashed as is now the case, dominates our politics at the expense of other interests. And that is a bad thing. Why? Because it is a bad thing for profit to be the primary reason for legislation.

I think we’re in a bad way right now, RD. I think we need a new balance to bring the stallion of Capitalism and all the good it can do for this society back under control. We need to rein it in. Put a new halter in its mouth and accustom it to a saddle ridden by a new social ethos based on a reverence for the planet and its children.

In short, that, I think, is the greatest gift we can give our descendants.

Blue Ridge Mountains Flame Azalea Gall 

My friend Gary Schramm while on a hike on Scaly Mountain, NC, took the above photo of the native flame azalea with the gall. Then he followed up with some research on azalea galls like the one above. He found the following fascinating information which I pass on to any azalea or camelia lover.

Problems encountered with azaleas: while very noticeable, the leaf and flower gall will not threaten the health of the plant. Galls should be removed from the plant and destroyed to prevent further spread.

Azalea gall, caused by the fungus Exobasidium vaccinii, is commonly seen at this time of year. Flowers, leaves and young shoots may become swollen, fleshy galls. As the galls mature, the fungus will produce a white coating of spores on the gall surface. If galls are detected and removed before they become white, disease spread is greatly reduced.. This fungus will cause gall development on azaleas and camellias. The Flame Azalea galls can attain the size of small apples.

Reproductive consequences: Diseased inflorescence produces fewer flowers, smaller individual flowers, and has a lower probability of producing fruit. At the individual host level, the probability of fruit production is negatively correlated with the gall load on that individual. Finally, branches that are diseased are more likely to die the following year, while healthy branches have a high probability of producing leaves and (or) flowers. The fungal galls produced by E. vaccinii have immediate negative consequences to the reproductive process of R. calendulaceum.


From: Lorne M. Wolfe and Leslie J. Rissler
Can. J. Bot./Rev. Can. Bot. 77(10): 1454-1459 (1999)

My friend, Lawrence, told me today about a woman in Maryland who has designed and manufactured 2500 copies of a Christian American flag. Using selections from the Bible, the lady believes she has created a rallying symbol for conservative Christians across the country who are determined to resist liberalism and restore Christian values to our nation. She identifies enemies of Christianity and obviously sees her flag as a battle flag.

There is another flag, a flag I fly next to the Stars and Stripes. It is not a battle flag. It is an inclusion flag and it is called the Gaian Flag. The design is simply that wonderful photo of planet Earth set against the blackness of space. Thomas I. Ellis, a Phd and environmental thinker defines Gaian thinking as follows: “[I] would define a Gaian”, he says, “as one whose first allegiance is to the living Earth, and whose major premise, whose operating assumption for all his or her decisions, is that humanity is a part of, not apart from, the natural world; that nature (Gaia) is a *system* of which we are a part, rather than just a *resource* with no value until we turn it into commodities.”

He goes on to say, “A Gaian culture, then, would simply be an evolving set of social and cultural institutions, policies, and practices based on these premises--at the personal, local, regional, and global levels. It would be a culture that is intrinsically incompatible with violence of any kind--toward one another, among nations or peoples, or toward Gaia herself--because it would be based on a widespread recognition of, and identification with, Gaia (including both humanity and "nature") as (in Dr. King's words) an "inescapable network of mutuality" where "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

He suggests we all buy “a Gaian flag, the beautiful photo-image of the living Earth on a black or dark blue background, and raise it on holidays, plaster it on your bumper, sew it on your backpacks. When people ask you where you are from, tell them your country, state, province, or city. If they ask you "What are you?" simply say, "A Gaian--and so are you."

I see Gaian thinking as essentially spiritual and inclusive of all religious thinking, a symbol to bring us together, not set us at each other’s throats the way religious extremists would have it. Ellis makes this clear when he says, “Gaian is not a nationality or religion. One can be a Gaian Christian, Gaian Buddhist, Gaian Muslim, or Gaian whatever. One can also be a Canadian Gaian , [an American Gaian], a Gaian New Zealander, a French Gaian, or a Zimbabwean Gaian. It is the only label I know,” he says, “that is completely inclusive already; no one has to "become" a Gaian or be converted, naturalized, or baptized--since every living being that breathes, drinks water, eats, and reproduces is already, ipso facto, a Gaian. But to CALL yourself a Gaian is simply to expand your reference group for personal identification to include all living things on the entire planet.”

The anger, the isolation, the aggression of the religious fundamentalists on Planet Earth is both sad and frightening. We are all together on this little ball of rock in the darkness of space. We’re not separate, which is the deepest wisdom of all. We need each other. To trash tolerance, compassion, concern for the other regardless of the ideas s/he lives by is an awful thing and in no way a Christian value.

The complete essay by Dr Ellis can be found at http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/public/gaias-cafe/2003-April/001021.html)

The Gaian Flag by John McConnell 

Howard Dean 

I was sickened by the attack Howard Dean took from Democratic leaders last week for criticizing Republicans. Worse was the way the media inflated, & exaggerated the Dem attack. There is a beautiful response to those Democratic pussies in Truthout by writer John Cory. Check it out at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_061005Y.shtml. Why, he asks, haven’t the assaults on American life perpetrated by the Bush gang ignited a firestorm?

Well, I believe there is no anti-Bush firestorm because the average good guy in our America -my brother-in-law- is a captive, a mind slave to the most effective and amazing propaganda machine ever developed anywhere, anytime. It is run by capitalism without red lights. Right wing owned and run, and stoked with right wing fuel, the Corporat has only green lights and no speed limits.

This amazing propaganda machine is the fruit of corporate capitalism run wild. And that is why Bush, the conservative movement, and its policies are never attacked the way Dean was attacked the other day or Clinton was attacked years ago for his sexual stupidities. And Dean can expect nothing less than the most vicious personal attacks if he runs the course. Remember how the conservative attack machine reduced Kerry from hero to Purple Heart fraud?

And what the hell would one expect when GE or Warner owns tv or that menacing bozo from Australia creates FOX? They don't have to worry about campaign funding laws to manipulate the American mind. They don't even have to buy advertising to do the job. Advertisers pay them knowing they slant the news! The big corporations that address the public whether Public Relations firms, Advertising firms, or the Media are all carousing at the same banquet table, a table called power.

And it is such refined power. So civilized. Nobody gets forced, roughed up, put away, disappeared. The Nazis, the Stalinists, even the old Roman Catholic Church -infallibility?- knew nothing about mind control the way the American corporation does. It's all so much more effective than government propaganda. Captains of these monster media swift boats can co-opt or influence government, win the support of the people, condemn Dean for being “mean”, reduce Kerry from hero to fraud and make money while they're doing it.

When you own tv, the motion picture studios, the publishing houses, the newspapers, the radio stations you don't need thought police. You can capture the public mind while entertaining it! All the while you can make yourself richer while looking fair and even handed. “Sure, let ‘em have a word once in awhile. Let ‘em talk. People love a debate. Who cares what they say.” And, right, it doesn't matter what the other side will say. FOX and the Meisterwerkers at NBC can still slant, select, condemn, praise, ignore as they wish. As the Dutch would say, "Ungelouflik!"

It would have made Goebbels jaw drop. And my brother-in-law can't see what they are doing to him. Neither can all those Christians who are but pawns in the hands of people who have done nothing less than dump the American tax burden onto the shoulders of the little people and their future descendants; including those pious Christians who support their own economic decline. And yet, bigger tax bill or not, smaller income next year or not, those poor Christian souls will still plow out the door en masse next year to vote in another extreme right wing congress empowered to exploit them even more.

There is, for example, a move on in congress to prevent local governments from creating local public cable tv companies. The law would permit only businesses to create such companies. Now why would a congressman, the representative of the people, wish to do that? You know the answer.

Yea. We're in an amazing period in American life. And by the way, you can check out John Cory’s other work at his site: http://www.john-cory.com/. It is well worth a visit if you like good writing. And it isn’t a rant like this one.

There has been a lot of huggle-buggle in the media recently about “the battle in the schools over homosexuality”. I wonder. I wonder if editors exaggerate these stories to up the public temperature. I wonder how many of them realize they are contributing to a growing religious intolerance on both sides of the struggle. I wonder how widespread the “battle” truly is in a country of almost 275 million.

And I also wonder why the extremists, the right wing extremists, can’t see that they are hurting their own cause with their aggressive intolerance. The vast majority of Americans respect the Bible. I’m sure of that. I’m also sure the vast majority of Americans do not want a theocracy to tell us how to live. And that is what the intolerant right wing extremists are up to: creating a Christian theocracy. Tom DeLay has said this country ought be ruled by the principles of Christian theocracy. That, folks, is the Christian equivalent of Muslim law: the Sharia.

When will Republican voters begin to see what their leaders are doing to them and to the treasured traditions of America? There are better, wiser ways to govern a society like ours, a society with so many ways of understanding God, of understanding human spirituality and sexuality.

I would like to post a wiser Christian voice. This is from the Rev. Lawrence Webb, a South Carolinian, a Baptist Minister and emeritus professor at Anderson College, Anderson, SC. Rev. Webb wisely avoids speculations about homosexuality, whether one is born to be gay or chooses. He focuses instead on the oldest virtue, the virtue of tolerance. By the way, speaking of a need for tolerance, I must say I cannot imagine why any human being in America would willingly choose to become gay or Lesbian knowing that only unChristian ugly prejudice awaits that choice.

Here is Rev Webb’s essay, an essay by a Christian, a Baptist Minister that speaks wisdom to me: “Live and Let Live”.
***

Live and Let Live -Lawrence Webb
I try to maintain a live-and-let-live philosophy regarding adult sexual orientation, including homosexuality. But, as homosexuals point out, we heterosexuals often don’t leave it at that. Horror stories of gay-bashing are not limited to the highly publicized murder of college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998.

What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their home is their business and not mine, whether they are two men, two women, a man and a woman who are not married, or a man and a woman who are married. I believe sex should be between husband and wife, but I cannot live other people’s lives for them or impose my religious convictions on them.

Many authorities tell us homosexuality is a disposition people are born with. I believe that is only a partial explanation and that there are multiple explanations for homosexuality. Some people choose this lifestyle. Also I believe environmental factors incline some people toward their own gender from such an early age that this leaning appears to be innate.

Whatever the explanation of their sexual preference, if two men or two women choose to live together as sexual partners, that is their business. The oft-quoted analogy regarding freedom applies: I have freedom to swing my arm until my arm comes in contact with your face. If a same-sex couple and I live quietly in the same neighborhood, their mere presence will probably not disturb me. But if the couple takes an in-your-face stance, making an issue of their sexual preference, I have a problem with that.

I have lived in the same neighborhood with unmarried heterosexual couples who went to work every day, then came home and lived their private lives without disturbing anyone. Though their sexual relationship does not coincide with my understanding of Christian conduct, I cannot make life difficult for them by trying to force my beliefs on them.

Now, let’s suppose a homosexual couple moved in next door to me, went to work every day, then came home and went quietly about their personal interests. Though their sexual practice does not coincide with my understanding of Christian conduct, I can not make life difficult for them by trying to force my beliefs on them.

On the other hand, if nearby residents---of whatever orientation---flaunted their sexual preference, disturbing the neighborhood with large crowds and loud parties, I would object openly. A modicum of modesty should be applied in public show of sexual attraction and affection, whether toward the same sex or the opposite.

Promiscuity, heterosexual or homosexual, often brings serious medical, physical, psychological, and financial problems. Thus, it can become a community ethical and religious issue. But, it is as inappropriate for me to intrude into my neighbor’s space, parading my religious predilections, as it is for my neighbor to parade his or her sexual proclivity.

Moving beyond the neighborhood, I would apply the live-and-let-live principle to the work place. The law should protect a person, whatever his or her sexual preference. A person should be eligible for hiring and promotions for which he or she is otherwise qualified, without regard to sexual preference. Sexual harassment laws should be applied to protect homosexuals and heterosexuals alike who go about their work and do not flaunt their sexuality.

Health care benefits should be available on an equal basis to any couple who can document a long-term living arrangement: married or single, male and female, two men, two women.

Even people who make foolish choices which bring on illness or disability should be provided health care, including people with AIDS. We don’t hesitate to treat drivers who are injured in wrecks caused by speed or DUI. We send drunks to rehab. We treat lung cancer which results from unwise use of tobacco. We treat dare-devils and people in high-risk occupations. We treat heterosexual STD. We usually do not stop to ask why a person has one of these diseases or ailments before providing treatment. In most cases, we do not insist that certain specified moral standards are prerequisites for medical treatment. Yet, some raise religious objections to the treatment of AIDS because it is so often considered the “gay disease.” Some religious extremists say AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuals; thus, they do not deserve treatment. However, I am convinced provision for health care is a morality that should take precedence over a marriage license or an unwise course of action.

Live-and-let-live should apply in all aspects of life, whether in the neighborhood, the work place, or the medical clinic.

The Rainbow Flag 

This is the first stanza from that old much quoted chestnut, that classic 19th century American poem by James Russell Lowell, one of our best known American romantics. When I was a kid I thought it was corny, sentimental. Trite. Now I think it is cool, a spiritual celebration of this awesome Earth - something we all could use right now:
****

AND what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Fish Coffin Ga Tribe Ghana Africa 

Back in early May I mentioned how Edward Abbey, the writer, wanted his body buried in simplicity and I wrote about the work of Billy and Kimberly Campbell who want to protect wilderness by turning a million acres into official burying grounds. Great ideas to counter the capitalism that captured our burial traditions for profit and sent love and celebration into exile.

In the doing they exploit us for our money and make survivors feel like unloving, hateful cheapos if they don’t spend the biggest dollar. And the result? Boring! You never want to go to a funeral do you? No. Why? ‘Cause it is boring! Boring! There is nothing good about it! Boring funerals, boring graveyards, and boring acolytes make us wish we were somewhere else. We are grieving because Grandpop is gone and we have to act grim and boring like these profiteering funeral people. It is plastic. It is unreal.

Have you noticed the plastic flower gardens that have proliferated in graveyards? Bunches of gaudy colored plastic imitating flowers? Hundreds of them stuck in the ground in those big burial places along the highway. “Ok we can forget him now. He’s got plastic flowers. They’re colorful. We don’t have to put real flowers on him. They die and death is not good. And the rain’ll keep the plastic clean. Great! People will think we cared.”

Plastic flower gardens and grass. That’s what the funeral corporat has brought us to. Next step: fire the grounds keepers and put in plastic grass. More profits! You don’t think they’re looking at the possibility? Well, think again, “Faux grass, Missus, we never say ‘plastic”. Faux grass is good. It’s beautiful. No bugs and it’s appropriate. It lends the hope of eternity to us all because faux grass never dies!”

I like the Campbell’s untouched wilderness where grandpop gets recycled into Life as bacteria, worms, oak trees, insects, birds, black berries, young deer! Coyotes! His is a true resurrection. And to give the old boy a really spectacular send off we could mount a parade down to the forest with music to celebrate his life. I’d like jazz. New Orleans style would be nice. Some Miles would be splendid.

And what about packaging? How would you like to package him? At the Campbell’s you can use a poncho. Right! So forget about going to the funeral corporat. The stuff they sell is pure fantasy and max expensive. Think about it. He’s lying there rouged, in a new $600.00 suit, on a satin pillow in a $3500 luxury mahogany box. What is that all about? “And who is this guy lying here? Is that my old man? He never looked like that!”

The Africans have always had a good solution. Just think about that marvelous package the Egyptians put King Tut in. And today? Today we could do what the Ga people of Ghana do. How do they package the corpse? Have you ever seen their solution? Sculpture!

Say the old boy loved Coca Cola. Make a big Coca Cola bottle sculpture for him! A carving! Then paint the wood! Or if he was a taxi driver, sculpt him a copy of his cab. Paint it in high color to match the real thing, ads and all! A beer drinker? Sculpt him a bottle of beer with his favorite label. Cut to fit..

Commission the sculptor well ahead of time. Have a party and show it to Grandpop before he goes, while he’s lying there feeling terrible. It’ll cheer him up! “Here it is, Pop! Your parting gift”. It’ll be unique and cheaper. It’ll be cool too and more celebrative than anything the funeral corporat can offer. And when he goes get a doc to certify the death. Then keep the corpse at home. You don’t have to call in those spooks from the funeral corporat.

Invite in a few friends instead. Play some good music while you get him ready. Wash him down Give him a final caress. Pack him in dry ice. Cover him with gorgeous hand woven blankets. Package him up in his big hand carved Coke bottle, and with it on their shoulders and the band out front, his old friends will dance him on down to the graveyard to drop him in the hole and start the recycle. And afterward everybody will boogie on home and party til midnight and gradually and naturally both sculpture and Grandpop will meld back into the sacred earth together.

And if she starts to cry, every body around will cheer her up! “Yay. She really loved him after all! Bravo! Three cheers for the little lady!” She’ll have to smile and maybe have a couple drinks and kick up her heels thinking about all the good times on a good and memorable day.

So. My point? My point is we’ve gotta think about some new ways to send off our corpses. We gotta take them out of that awful for-profit mode and make death into a creative, artistic, and imaginative celebration.

America needs this, folks. Life has gotten so grim, haunted and lifeless with 24/7; filled with fear of the man next door, of the guy with the tattoo, the Arab, the Muslim, the black boy, the kid with guns, the crooked politician, the greedy executive. We need to start making changes or we’ll all go postal!

So start with the dead.

Let’s put away all those fears that shrink our souls, the disgust with death that yields profits for the corporat. Let’s get in touch with the good death again. It’s not like taking castor oil and it’ll do us good.

Coca Cola Coffin Ga Tribe Ghana Africa 

Holiness: A Groovy Swami Goes Forth with Begging Bowl 

"If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile".

...then go get a drink, you'll feel better.

On this Memorial Day, here's an old Grantland Rice poem a friend sent me this morning:

Two Sides of War (All Wars)

All wars are planned by older men
In council rooms apart,
Who call for greater armament
And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field
Where golden dreams turn gray,
How very young the faces were
Where all the dead men lay.

Portly and solemn in their pride,
The elders cast their vote
For this or that, or something else,
That sounds the martial note.

But where their sightless eyes stare out
Beyond life's vanished toys,
I've noticed nearly all the dead
Were hardly more than boys.
-- Grantland Rice

And...


THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM
by: Robert Southey (1774-1843)

IT was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,
For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough,
The ploughshare turns them out!
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out;
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They said it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene."
"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.
"Nay ... nay ... my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory."

"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

"The Battle of Blenheim" is reprinted from Historic Poems and Ballads. Ed. Rupert S. Holland. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1912.

THIS battle was fought near the village of Blenheim, in Bavaria, on the left bank of the river Danube, on August 13, 1704. The French and Bavarians, under Marshall Tallard and Marsin, were defeated by the English and Austrians, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene.

The French and Bavarians were taken by surprise in the village, and their armies were badly handled. On the opposite side Marlborough and Prince Eugene showed themselves splendid cavalry leaders and led an attack that proved successful through its very recklessness. The French and Bavarians lost 30,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners, while Marlborough's loss was only 11,000. The battle broke the prestige of the French king, Louis XIV; and when Marlborough returned to England his nation built a magnificent mansion for him and named it Blenheim Palace after this battle.

Southey's poem tells how a little girl found a skull near the battle-field many years afterward, and asked her grandfather how it came there. He told her that a great battle had been fought there, and many of the leaders had won great renown. But he could not tell her why it was fought or what good came of it. He only knew that it was a "great victory." That was the moral of so many of the wars that devestated Europe for centuries. The kings fought for more power and glory; and the peasants fled from burning homes, and the soldiers fell on the fields. The poem gives an idea of the real value to men of such famous victories as that of Blenheim.

This analysis of "The Battle of Blenheim" is reprinted from Historic Poems and Ballads. Ed. Rupert S. Holland. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1912.
All of the material in the post was sent to me by my friend, Lawrence Webb

The American Gulf Wars 

Gary's Flea Bane -Blue Ridge May 05 

While she was driving across country I sent Aara a bon voyage message by email. She wrote the following in response, after which I’ll post my response to her response.

“Subject: Spacetime in Timespace
How nice to hear from you,” She began, “I am over ½ way through reading your blog... enjoying it very much, as I did being a guest in your home -- most certainly one of this trip's high-points, thanks again to you and MiLady.

Today is my last day of stillness til I reach my mama's door in Idaho... it's nice to rest and write and read/ but I'm already eager to get back to it tomorrow...all these hours I'm spending enjoying the meditation of the road. I am thinking about a lot, as well as thinking about very little. I seem to spend my hours and hours of driving more in a feeling place than a thinking one... savoring the travel perspective-- conscious of the inseparable relationship you talked about between time and space...MPH...and so it sparks similar perception on a personal level: feeling in terms of where I have come from, where I was before that, where I am now, and now now and now this now and now this one.... now forever omnipresent as long as I'm alive and awake... so past, present--- and especially where I am going: to revisit old friends, family, and all the reasons they are destinations: for feeling's sake. With the path always spread out in front of me -- daily growing shorter in time and space --and with such strong anticipation for the reunions, it becomes striking how the upcoming people are my people for no other reason than for the feeling, no matter what our reasons were for building relationships: intellectual, hobbies, shared experience, whatever. And it seems that the only thing that carries them through time and space is a sense of love.

Recently, and again, I have been thinking with an angry eye about how poor our language is when it comes to THE word: love. How dare it apply to my mother and my father in the same way, let alone how it applies to each of my friends, my partner, to art, the land, etc.

I am very frustrated about this one word. With each person or place, and within the limits and potential of each relationship, the foundations and the structures of the emotions are inherently unique. And we have one general word??? And the whole French situation is even worse...

It's such a central theme in our lives -- this linguistic lack is driving me nuts. We need more,. Poetry can differentiate, but how does one in conversation?

So, I went to Tennessee after NC, straddled an armadillo going 70, heard some good fiddle-playin, camped out and now look like a chicken-pox patient...rrrr..... then down through Mississippi. That day I drove all day. I kept thinking I would stop when I found something interesting. Never happened. Unsettled by the racial tension I felt

Then over the river to Louisiana. In terms of the drive, wow for the lack of content. A lovely field of huge sunflowers sure stood out though... The best part was the dead croc on the highway and walking around in the warm ocean. Coming over the bridge into Texas was sci-fi, all the oil plants everywhere....I found myself sneering and swearing and glaring at them as I stopped to refuel, YET AGAIN.... What a weird, destructive dependency we have created

How difficult it is to find towns free of strip malls. ...many times with identical layouts of the same stores owned by the same corporations. They are a virus.

So yes, tomorrow back on the open road I am eager to move into New Mexico Red rock calling, but first this crazy state to conquer

oh before I go I am curious, how has your perception of time changed as your time on this planet lengthens--as you grow older?

!! from this lucky traveler,
Aara

***
Now my response:

You ask: "...how has your perception of time changed as your time on this planet lengthens--as you grow older?"

I think I've nothing new to add to the ancient experience of time and human aging. It is simply this: Time passes more quickly as time goes by. It is analogous to the experience of driving or walking along a new path. It seems long at first, but when you turn around and go back along that trodden path, it seems to shorten.

When I was a child time present was endless, time future incredible, time past a muddle. I recall when a 21 year old woman I knew seemed the perfect image of maturity.

Now? Now, Time past has compressed into a pin hole, a dense little black cave containing all that ever happened in my life and the energies within that compression are ever quiescent until prodded usually by writing but sometimes by relationship, other times by the traumas of life -small or large- and when those compressed energies are released the memories come flooding back exploding into a ghostly existence once again, dancing before my mind's eye like an old and plotless film; raw material distorted like the distorted floppy clocks in a Dali painting. Fun to play with to form into narratives, but believed with caution.

Sometimes tho, images, words -mostly nouns- seem to stick to the roof of the cave like sleeping bats. Difficult to access, those fugitive words are a disturbing experience, evoking fear of losing all that stuff in the cave.

Time past is short, time future long but the knowledge of time future can be only hopeful, i.e.; I want luck, health and thirty more years. Thirty five would be even better for there is never enough time for a full tour of the awesome Mother, this planet Earth. And that expanse of decades to come seems as long as ever, but when I look back on the last thirty years it is only yesterday that I had black hair down to my waist and that yesterday was 30 years ago, 1975.

The sense of time distant is so different than when I was 20 and in the army in 1951 and looking back into the history of the First World War. Then the images of 3 decades gone past seemed so distant, old if not ancient, even quaint. Age changes the length of history's Time depending on whether it was lived or learned. And to you 1950 must seem old if not ancient, probably quaint, surely passe` in every respect.

I know I am the same behind my eyes as I was when I was 28 and when I look into the mirror I see my other reality for which I am never prepared because I always unconsciously imagine myself as 28 which is not true either 'cause I know this current model is an improvement over that early model: more skill, more emotional intelligence, more experience - all priceless - even though the current model no longer wishes to water ski, has incipient cataracts, a thickened waist and seems doomed to a daily dose of Zocor forevermore.

All the experiences of decades past, the positive ones, the surprises, the painful, the awful, the embarrassments, the humiliations, the learnings, the relationships, the betrayals, the rejections, the successes, the prizes won, the fights lost, the tests passed; all of these are now resources stuffed into, compressed into that tiny quiescent blackness and ready to explode into full color.

The other night in a dream I saw my mother who died about 15 years ago looking as she did when she was about 60, lovely in full color, happy, energized. She looked at me, smiled and said, "O there you are, Wally." And disappeared. An effervescent explosion, a fantasy in full color, a deception from the dark cave.

More than fantasy tho, my package of compressed experience is dynamic, serves to urge me on when I stop moving, thinking, working, weeding, planting. And when I begin to merely pace, stop, sit, nap, a deep sadness within sets to prodding me: "...move, boy, either move or deal with depression. Act, for chrissake, act."

Maybe that is where the fear of death truly lies hidden -perhaps denied- for death is merely the end of movement, the eternal cold: the longest future, the future without a cave. To act is to set fires to life.

I'm not sure I answered your question.

The Trifid Nebula aka M20 - Astronomy Pic of the Day 

Ashraf The Old Muslim Tailor speaks:
“It’s a strange thing. When my Mumtaz was alive, I would sit alone all day, sewing or reading. And she would be by herself in the back, busy cooking and cleaning and praying. But there was no loneliness, the days passed easily. Just knowing she was there was enough. And now I miss her so much. What an unreliable thing is time - when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl’s hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful color and your hair.” He sighed and smiled sadly. “But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”

Particle sizes revealed by radio waves 

Amelia will vote in the Dutch referendum about the European Constitution. Like many Europeans she is unsure, leaning toward No. She asked me today what I think. Not being a European what can I say about creating the United States of Europe? About making all Europeans equal economically and politically? Of becoming one nation indivisible from west to east and a major power, a competitor with the USA and China (China of the next century?) What do I think?

I think the vision of Europe's leaders is ahead of its citizens, for one thing. But I'm not a European. I don't have the same feel as Europeans do, so the best I can do is offer a picture from a shallow transAtlantic perspective.

The Euro leaders pushing this constitution say this is the only chance for a constitution, that there won't be a second chance. The people's fears have not been dealt with. The people seem fearful, fearful that Rumanians will get all the good jobs in Germany, that Turks will become part of it and they've all learned to hate Turks, that Bulgarians don’t know how to use the correct alphabet. And of course the French are always afraid they will become less Frenchfried.

What do I think? Europeans will not like to hear it but I think they are still tribal peoples and those tribes want to stay separate. So, I expect the vote will kill the constitution. But I also think that will change in 30 or 50 years when the peoples of Europe feel weak in the global competition with China. The USA is already in decline under Bush and is likely not to be the hyper power in 50 years it is now.

The history of Europe is largely, but not entirely, a history of tribes gradually coming together to form nations. The tribes of Belgium are still at each others throats. The tribes of the Netherlands only managed to come together in the 17th century. French tribes were slowly and gradually consolidated beginning in the late Middle Ages. Great Britain managed the consolidation of Wales, Scotland and England in the 18th century although they never quite managed with Ireland. The Germans and the Italians stayed pretty much tribal until the 19th century. (Yes, I’m calling all those little dukedoms and baronies “tribes”.) I don’t know the story of tribal consolidation in Poland or the Ukraine or Rumania. In Russia it took Tsars to do the job.

The Swiss have managed to consolidate their mountain tribes without the tribes having lost their linguistic identities. The Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians managed to split apart in the 19th century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire also split. What does all this mean? Is there any pattern? Maybe not a pattern but a tendency, a weak tendency, in the direction of confederation perhaps?

Maybe today’s leaders are ahead of the curve. Unlike the old days there is no Charlemagne or Louis or Bismarck or Garibaldi to whip the reluctant tribal folk into line. Napoleon thought he knew how to bring Europe into line. So did Hitler. Both failed big time. Today the only tool available is politics not conquest or revolution. Not a strongman in sight.

So the question now is can the consolidation of Europe be accomplished without a strong man? Can it be done by recognizing that the people are the sovereign and persuading them? Maybe, but I doubt it can be done at this moment in time. I think there have to be more failed attempts. I think the people in the West have to have more time spending Euros, traveling to Rumania, getting to know the Bulgarians, learning to trust the Turks and living with Muslims from Bosnia. Yes. I think they need more time.

I would give odds that the referendum will fail. Too bad.

If the German magazine, Der Spiegel is right the FBI has defined the crimes committed by animal rights activists as terrorism. If Der Spiegel is correct this is why we must change the Patriot Act. Now any crime can be defined as terrorism and the FBI can use the Patriot Act to invade anyone's personal life. This is not the American Way. It is not part of our cherished tradition to put this kind of power in the hands of the police.

So far I've not found this item in either The NYTimes or The Washington Post. I quote here from today's Der Spiegel On Line:

"The FBI says the greatest domestic terror threat facing America comes from animal rights activists. ... Terrorism is a great word. After all, it can be used to describe just about any infraction of the law you like. Just look at Uzbekistan. There, President Islam Karimov decided that demonstrators marching against poverty were terrorists and had his soldiers mow them down with gunfire. But even in the United States, the word has taken on new life. The FBI on Wednesday announced that the nation's top domestic terrorism threat comes from ... animal rights activists. In other words, crimes often perpetrated by such activists such as arson, rescuing animals from labs and making harassing phone calls now fall under the growing umbrella of 'terrorism.'

"There is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions," FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism John Lewis told reporters."

My pal David, the physicist, sent me some more reflections on the issue of the existence of Time in response to an earlier post where I argued that human beings invented the notion of Time to keep track of changes. My point has been that Time does not exist other than as an arbitrary human concept. I argued that Time does not exist in fact within the cosmos.

But David convinces me that Time, in fact, does exist. Ok. I concede. So, what precisely is Time? Should I call it an ineffable reality? A force like gravity? Time has no substance. It is neither energy nor matter. Is it then a spiritual reality? Probably not. The question then becomes, if Time exists and I’m now convinced that it does, what is it?

David explicitly calls it a concept. OK. In these notes he defines the concept of Time, I think, by the ways it is needed to explain other phenomena. Are there other “concepts” that function in a similar way in Physics? Is mathematics essentially a concept? Philosophy? Is there math and philosophy beyond the shackles of the human brain? If Time is a human concept, is it then essentially a brain tool? And no more? Finally, is Time a way of dealing with, comprehending, cosmic phenomena but not one of those phenomena in itself?

In the meantime, here are some of David’s jotted down on "paste-its" reasons for the need for Time.

"1. If Time doesn’t exist, then neither does Space.

2. Light Years are a measure of Space, not Time. How-much Space and how-long a time.

3. Martians would understand Light Years in appropriate units of time, e.g. in Planck Time Units.

4. If there is no concept of Time there is no concept of Motion.

5. If Time didn’t exist the Supreme Scientist in the Sky would invent it.

6. If Time is only a way to keep track of changes then how do you make sense of things that depend on the rate of change?, e.g. the difference between power and energy. How fast things change is as important as how much they change.

7. If you don’t like earth time, use reciprocal frequency units. The energy E of a photon frequency (or “color” if you please) V is E=hV (h being Planck’s Constant which is how the “second” is defined for scientists.)

8. Without the concept of time, there can be no concept of momentum, of mass, of force, of motion. No dynamics. No Galileo. No Newton. No Einstein. No electrons and positrons. No understanding of anything beyond difference such as here and there.

So, if there is only now, then it is a pretty boring world. To paraphrase Lenin (?) about war: 'You may not have any interest in time, but I assure you, that time has an interest in you.'”

Gary Schramm's Carolina Silver Bells - Halesia 15 '05 

A scene taken from Satan’s Hour, a play by Bill Bruehl copyrighted 1999.
Characters: Bishop John Connor O’Brien and his assistant, Msgr. Thomas O’Leary
In the Bishop’s study

The Devil’s Penny a dialogue:

Science? Just say no to science, Tommy. Why? 'Cause they’re offerin’ you the Devil’s Penny. It’s plain as the nose on your ruddy Irish face it is. So they are having success with kids in their public schools? And we’re not? Is that it? ...‘Cause we’re using weary ways, you think?

It may be they’re doing something we can't quite…

True, ‘tis we are closing our schools, Tommy, and while that’s unfortunate, I don’t have to tell you it’s gettin’ valiant, young new priests that we..., well, you know, for some as they age they're suspenders get more unhooked from reality.

...and from their pants. And then they get us in trouble with the law.

Ah f’r Christ’s Sake! We’ve always had them bad ones. There’s always sinners in the Church. But these days the profiteers of embarrassment love to scream out the sinners' tale unlike those principled journalists of a Nobler Age who rejected photos of like ...FDR paralyzed! ...knowin’ that to parade our problems to the world would tend to weaken the social foundations.

There are plenty out there who want to weaken us, Sir.

Tom, Lad, the devil’s in the world soul in this sorry time! But this too will pass and the Church's troubles will bottom out before that battered universal soul is corrupted and when we do Christ’s Church will be on the firin' line and at the ready to bring those poor disinspirited sheep back to God. Are we to change the teaching of the Church? The indomitable wisdom of two millennia? ...‘cause some lambs out there are prancin' sexy? ...'cause all them pompous Nobel Laureates think they’re right? ...‘Bout population growth? Ha! They're mere scientists they've no understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit, Tommy!

O, you're right, Sir, never trust their motives, , Sir.

Well, we haven’t always been right either, Tom, about the realms of science! But we are in the realm of souls! We're the experts, Sir, and we are not about to be told how to steer the sacred ship of Christ by those in love with ambition and lust; not even if it comes from our own misguided academic theologians who know nothin' about the existential terror of bein' a lost sheep! Universities! poof!

But, Sir, is closing schools…?

It’s true. A problem it is. And churches too. You do know a tactical retreat when y'see it, Tommy? Do ye? Well, you should. For when the time ripens the schools will open again and the churches will flourish in their season as they have through all the cycles of our long and sacred history.

But today science is upsetting the…

Tommy, Tommy, a time will come for science to reconcile itself to Holy Mother Church and understand in its lumbering way that the mystic proportions of the soul transcend the wee psychological and fashionable longings of the moment, that the cognitive brain the scientists are enamored of is like a grain of sand on the beaches of time compared to the great soul we nurture in the hearts of God’s children.

I guess it is everything in it’s own time….

Meanwhile ‘tis our duty to uphold the teachin’s of Holy Mother Church. Keep the troops young and strong, Tommy. And especially support a brave Pope who never shrinks from facin’ down those who’d support the devil’s penny! …even in the face of gunfire, by God.

Tommy, would you be free for dinner tonight?

The Cardinal Archbishop 

Yesterday Jamie, his visitor from France, Pauline, Mylady and I went to a megaplex to see CRASH, the new Haggis movie. We've given up television using our tv monitors now for films we get from Netflix and the purchase of DVDs. The rest of our viewing needs are met by all kinds of fascinating stuff we find on the World Wide Web.

The result? We don't find ourselves sitting in theatre seats very much these days, so it was interesting to note there was just a handful of people there on a Saturday afternoon to see a much heralded flic. I've heard that DVDs were seducing audiences to living rooms. If so, I think there will be consequences for the cinema and not all good.

Anyway, I had read but not thought much about a couple reviews of CRASH before seeing it. I remembered only that major reviewers whose work I respect disagreed. So this morning I turned to the Rottentomatoes site to see what reviewers around the country have had to say about CRASH. The many opinions I found seem to reflect every possible response to this challenging film. The problem is they are too often dismissive, shallow, uninformed, and prejudiced while being as pompous and witless as possible. I get the sense that too many media reviewers are more interested in displaying their own writer's wit or lack of it than a respect for the art form.

In spite of that, I'm always fascinated when I read the reviews on Rottentomatoes. The more interesting the movie the more the reviewers seem to reflect this wide variety of opinion and I find the movies I'm most interested in are the ones generating disagreement in the most thoughtful critics. The NYTimes critic, A.O. Scott, and the NewYorker's David Denby disagree about CRASH. These are both evenhanded, wise, knowledgeable film critics, so I respect both; Scott who gave it short shrift and Denby who thought it one of the best pictures of the year.

For me? The film is a keeper. I want to own a copy and I want to see it again. Maybe again and again. It has its flaws - only Allah is perfect -and it has its limitations. In a 100 minutes you can do only so much character development and give the actors only so much complexity with the result that someone like Sandra Bullock gets to express a small fraction of her considerable talent.

But Haggis' accomplishment is impressive. He is a master of dramatic structure and story plotting. His dialogue throws off sparks. He also reveals himself to be a natural director, wise with actors, camera people, composers, and designers. It is a film that won't soon be forgot made with a budget of something around seven million dollars, a relatively small sum for a big picture with an important cast.

Maybe I want to see a flic that generates disagreement in good reviewers because there is truth in the disagreement. I found that I could agree with much of what both Denby and Scott had to say. So many other reviewers seem less interesting and less likely to have got it than those who disagree with skill and thoughtfulness. When put together the disagreement from writers like these reveals hidden truths.

So my disputable generalization is: look for movies to see when the best critics disagree their worth.

Paul Haggis Screenwriter Director 

This doesn't happen to me. Certainly not 'til now it hasn't. I think I've fallen in love with a writer. Or maybe with just one of his books: Desert Solitaire. And I certainly intend to read more of Edward Abbey.

Yes, of course, I'd heard of Abbey through the years, but I'd never read him until now. Thanks, Jack, for making that happen.

I don't think I'll ever be quite the same as a result. Abbey has set a standard I can't shrink from. And I hope to follow that standard and never again hide my own fury for the way we have allowed ourselves to enshrine greed, militarism, and exploitation; evils that have come to dominate us and make our great nation into a sorryass hyperpower.

Maybe I've just fallen in love with Abbey's voice, his courage, his willingness to confront all the asinine choices we tend to make in our culture of greed and our alienated rush to "develop" the wilderness, choices supported in our time by a preposterous piety and whipped on by selfish jackals, men and women drenched in a greed for power. I've not been prepared for this by my three score and ten at home in the USA. Maybe I've been sheltered. Or maybe I've just been too timid to acknowledge the awful trend. After Desert Solitaire I feel inspired and compelled.

But this is about Abbey not me and his love affair with the desert and with life raw and beautiful, awesome, hot and dangerous. May the indifferent cosmos -of which indifference he readily reminds us - become someday (in our alienated culture) an icon we learn to revere and let works like Desert Solitaire become the scripture of an enlightened age.

This site honoring Abbey (1927-1989): Check it out. You will learn he was buried in the wild Arizona desert by friends who obeyed his wish. He put it this way, "If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture - that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves." And I believe that is an expression of a true spirituality, a spirituality based in and filled with humor, humanity, and humus.

So in this humanist spirit everyone ought know that the legal recycling of human bodies in the wilderness is becoming a way to protect the wilderness and when we've recycled those molecules of humanity into new life forms in the forest soils we've prepared the ground for a literal resurrection. I hope that someday those Wally Weet molecules of mine will become the material of new life forms just as they have for the past millions of years.

If you are one motivated by that kind of Earth based spirituality you can arrange for corpses to bless a beautiful undisturbed forest burial ground in the South Carolina Blue Ridge foot hills at http://www.memorialecosystems.com/

Billy and Kimberley Campbell founded Memorial Ecosystems in South Carolina as a way of preserving the wilderness Abbey loved. Their objective is to spread the idea to a million acres of American wilderness as a way of preserving that wilderness from greedy exploitation. Bravo Billy and Kimberley.

Monument Valley Nov 2004 

Ducks on the dock, Mallards: a drake, a duck. She meditates in silence standing by his side while he gleans algae from his left leg. He finishes primping. They sit and meditate.
...side by side.

Fluffy, a little white bitch screened inside the porch above, barks, "getouttahere!"

Ms Duck looks toward the screens, rises, shakes her tail, and calmly waits for himself to rise. He does and together side by side they both shake their tails, waddle to the edge of the dock and flap off. Gliding about twenty feet - think Ducks and Drakes, flat stones tossed over water - they make a perfect watering.
...side by side.

Fluffy, screened, her tail docked by ducks in breeding season, sits watching alone
and silent.

Wally Weet's Friend Dutch Willie 

for years
i’ve known
i march
to a different drummer
as we used to say
in those early days
before culture wars when
we were the parents
of flower children.

i wanted change
worked for it
urged it
in classes
i taught
in productions
i directed.

with quakers,
mlady and i
protested the viet nam war
sat-in at the pentagon
opened an art gallery
supported Black freedom
committed ourselves
to women’s freedom

on the day we woke up
to all the other children
of this sacred Earth
animal vegetable or mineral
i thought we were few
a cadre maybe
perhaps half a million
world wide.

when hippies
cut their hair
it seemed ever fewer
could last the game
but as one of them
i knew
we’d just gone to cover.

reaction had set in
we had families to feed
we went to work shorn
grew grey and thick
around the middle

although we’d become
executives, professionals,
carpenters, masons, potters
who threw superb pots,
some would still score
a little dope
now and then
believing drug wars are
unmitigated madness
unedifying dementia.

now that the reaction
we are living thru
has reached its nader
in a bush league election
i fear there are no more
blossoms left.

perhaps a few dried petals
blown, scraping the ground
around the capitol mall
forgotten in the wake
of that cold autumn
can be found.

Gary Schramm's Mountain Laurel May 05 

A Cambridge scientist recently got the attention of BBC by reporting that humans will eventually live to be 150 years of age. This is the opinion of an obviously neurotic 35 year old red beard who is trying his best with that beard to look mature and deny his fear of death. And I understand how 35 year olds feel. When I was 35 I feared death.

But not to worry, Professor. You will grow out of your fear of death. Death after 70 is not a problem. I know. Living after 70 is when you have problems. I know that too. Ditching the fear of death in one of the great understandings that you will learn if you’ve survived to 70.

And if you’re amongst the unbelievers, the ones who crave immortality, I have some thoughts to share with you about the kinds of problems you might have to deal with if you live to a Biblical old Age. Consider Methuselah. Didn't he live to be 900 or close? I wonder how he felt at his 895th birthday party. I wonder if there was anybody else around his age to help him blow at those 895 candles.

I wonder, did Methuselah feel sexy? If the old drive to breed is gone after the first hundred years it's gonna be a long slow slouch through the next 800. There is not much reason to live 900 years longer than you have to if you're not feeling sexy. Will women still want to breed into their 200th, 300th year? Two hundred years of monthly discharge? Isn't menopause a relief? No. all those extra years just sounds too grim.

The truth is, I'm not at all motivated to live to even 150. Even if I were in excellent health I would find 100 plenty. ...maybe more than enough. I believe we have a natural life span and I don’t think it’s a good idea to threaten the weary, grumpy senior citizens with another term of 50 years beyond the one they are now serving. It will make them even grumpier. ...if that’s possible.

The fact is I don't like most of the old people I know. I avoid them. Old people - and I find this sorry blunder beginning to happen even now in my own young self - can too soon find themselves isolated from the younger generations. It is a blunder but it’s also natural. Young people have to get out from under and make their own lives. We did that so we know it's a fact, a fact that usually pleases the elderly. ...for awhile. But the day will come when those same elderly will feel a withering loneliness, depression, and sadness without the young hanging around; problems still poorly dealt with medically.

But sad or not, if I’m cursed with Methuselah’s genes, I reckon I’ll just have to deal with the sad feelings ‘cause I do not care for, nor do I follow, the music that kids love. And I don’t care if they like it or not, I’ll stick with Bill Evans, if you don't mind. Or Miles, maybe. It used to be that I kept up to date pretty well on the new bands when I taught. Well, maybe not that good either. I still loved the Beatles when they were over 50. The kids I taught? The kids I taught thought the Beatles were an antique road show.

And now having been away from the lecture hall for a dozen years I find myself slipping further and further away from that appalling downward cultural rush of the younger generations. I've been amazed, for example, how many young people supported Bush Jr. Why am I amazed? I’m amazed because, I grew up thinking young people were always liberal and progressive. Wrong. Can't say it about the elderly either. Most of them supported Bush too. More reason for being lonely.

I don't like old people and I've fallen out of touch with youth. And that’s bad. The younguns need us. ...as much as we need them.

So what happens is that as we grow older we tend to find ourselves more and more surrounded only by the elderly enormous numbers of whom still shimmy to Lawrence Welk. And in those circles even the surviving Beatles now approaching 60 are thought to be adolescent.

A Musical thought experiment: Imagine what it would be like for me in say a hundred years with only 2 other people alive in my peer group: three of us age 173. And the other two are both of them Lawrence Welk lovers. I'll hate them both and wish they had died 80 earlier.

So for 173 year olds it looks like there's going to be a pretty negative atmosphere there in the social room at the old folks home. And pretty soon -say in a mere 50 or 60 years later- when the other two are both gone and I’m still slouching toward Bethlehem, Lawrence Welk will be totally forgotten! And I will see to that.

Yes, I’ll be all alone except for the nursing staff who’ll still be working even into their late 90's and the only music they ever play is that turgid vommity metal stuff from the 1990s. They shoulda been banned at birth. All of ‘em! Nurses and Metals alike. And I still have 800 years to go.

At a time like that I hope I have the good sense to begin to think like the elderly Eskimos who walked out onto the ice when they saw their time come, laid themselves down to sleep, joyfully froze to death and became seal food. But that won’t work either. There won't be any ice in a 100 years because of Bush environmental policies and climate heating.

So there you are, that is just a glimpse of the promise of aging as offered by a 35 year old Cambridge professor with a Methuselah complex forgetting that at 650 years of age we’re likely to have nothing left but a picture window on life at the old farts home where we’ll be surrounded by obnoxious kids under 500 and nursed by a staff who began to resent your shitty diapers 400 years ago. ...and you still have 350 to go.

Aubrey de Grey, the Cambridge young red beard promoting these ideas about ageing is too young to know old. Better he should work with Galapagos turtles.

King Tutankhamen @ 3300 years -Nat'l Geographic 

What is the real purpose of forgiveness? Have we lost sight of the importance of forgiveness to ourselves? Do we think it is about absolving the perpetrator? It's not. Not at all.

I’ve been thinking about the murderer Scott Peterson who has been sentenced to die together with another story in the media about another murderer. This fellow was killed by Iranian law for the crime of raping and killing one hundred small boys. His punishment was 100 lashes followed by hanging witnessed by thousands of cursing, cheering people.

When I read stories like these I feel the same primal desire for revenge that motivated that Iranian crowd. Both of these crimes are vicious, alienated from our humanity. They probably evoke in all of us a desire for revenge.

But then I have to ponder what these legal killings do to us. Is taking legal revenge, killing the killers, good for us? By taking the lives of these killers, do we emulate them? Or is it more important for us to learn to forgive? Or have we forgotten what forgiveness means? I suspect many think forgiveness is absolution, amnesty, letting the criminal off. No. Wrong. That is to misunderstand forgiveness. Forgiveness is for victims not criminals. Forgive, but never forget.

So, don’t misunderstand. I would wreak a terrible punishment. Take killers out of society, even the society of criminals. Put them in a clean, sound proof cell with a toilet. Seal the door shut until they die. Feed them enough to keep them alive. Never let them. Never let anyone talk to them. Never let them share the company of anyone again. Never. In other words sentence them to a lifetime of silent meditation, a punishment much more severe than 100 lashes and hanging. Killing them, after all, puts an end to their punishment. Instead make them live with the consequences of their actions. I don’t think many would take a chance on a punishment like that.

So what is forgiveness then? Forgiveness cleanses our emotions of the need to exact revenge, and that is important because revenge is the opposite of compassion. Revenge encourages our alienation from other human beings and makes us like the killer. Revenge encourages us to commit crime ourselves. Revenge poisons us, encourages our rage and tendency to brutality. Indeed by exacting revenge we taste the same ugly (but perhaps delicious) perversion the killer tasted when he killed. Revenge makes us perverse like the killer and poisons us as he was poisoned. Forgiveness restores us to a compassionate state. It is strange we have such trouble understanding that when we tell ourselves that religion is so important.

I find it puzzling that people of Faith and their leaders whether Islamic, Christian, or Jew are so easily persuaded to support legal killings. One would expect them to lead us toward compassion and a clear understanding that forgiveness is a healing for victims. The admonition to do unto others as you would have others do unto you seems easily forgotten.

And notice too that when we speak of legal killings, we don't kill, we only "execute". We use the language to separate us from our collective action. We thereby encourage social hypocrisy and make it easier to kill the killer and become killers ourselves.

Iran: Murderer flogged before hanging 

That's all Time is and I credit Mylady for first pointing this truth out to me. Time doesn't exist in nature. Only changes exist in nature. Time is not like oxygen. If you look in the right place you will find oxygen. No matter how hard you look you will never find time 'cause time is only a technique invented by humans to keep track of changes.

All nature goes through changes. The entire universe goes through changes destroying and creating, moving -creating change- and never standing still. Change is the only absolute. Constant change. If we didn't live in this constantly changing nature we wouldn't have to keep track of Time. And as far as we know only humans keep track of all those changes.

True, plants and creatures make changes in their lives according to the changes they experience happening in nature like the seasons or day and night. Trees drop leaves and grow 'em again because of changes in nature. Bears go to sleep and wake up when the weather changes. We sleep at night, wake in the daylight. But Bears unlike us don't do time, have calendars, clocks, or awaken to ringing alarms. Only we do time. Only we keep track of changes.

But our idea of time has gone through changes too. Surely early people noted changes. We know they noted changes associated with seasons, with day and night, with warmer and colder like all the other animals. After some time they realized patterns in those changes and began to keep track of those changes: calendars. Cycles. Clocks.

Clock: the word comes from old European languages meaning "bell" a tool for keeping track of ......changes! Yes, you'd say they were keeping track of "time", but all they were keeping track of was change: now get up, now go to work, now eat, now sleep. Always pray. Then the keeping-track-of kept getting more and more refined: decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, split seconds, micro seconds. Light years! (Notice how we put modified Earth time onto the changes in the universe.) We invented every one of 'em. None of them are in nature.

The word "time" itself comes to us from the ancient European languages for "tide".
There is a wisdom in language and that wisdom reveals itself here where we find people relating the daily changes in the ocean's level.

We talk a lot about past, present, and future as though those are realities that actually exist. But the essential fact to note about nature, about the entire cosmos is this: there is only NOW.

Nothing that changed just now exists as it did before the change. The prior-to-change me is gone. (I'm prettier now.) So are all the changes that ever happened in the universe: all gone. Yes, we can look back thru billions and billions of changes in our telescopes, but what we see is not the NOW of those distant galaxies, what we see are the protons that left there and endured an amazing journey. Now that distant galaxy is a different place. We know it is different because we know it has been going through changes.

We think we know "yesterday". Really? Ok, what did you have for lunch yesterday? Neither the lunch, if you can remember it, or yesterday itself exist. You digested the lunch and "yesterday"? Well, yesterday is a concept we believe in that does not exist. We are believing in an illusion when we believe in "yesterday". Ditto tomorrow. We've nothing of yesterday or any past moment but our halting and uncertain memories.

And that is true of any photography that tried to capture yesterday. ...it only got a wee little part of it. There is no future either. Just a hope. ...or a fear. Or maybe our hopes and our fears are two faces of our own reality. If it's a hope let's hope it is a good hope, but it's still just a hope. Or a dream. Or a plan. But it doesn't exist unitil the changes take place and you learn if unexpected changes accommodated your plans.

Our thinking that Time truly exists creates delusions and you can see it in the language. For instance, physicists (are there any people smarter than physicists?) speak of The Arrow of Time. They say The Arrow of Time moves in only one direction. And they are right but those smartys are not good communicators. Was it Einstein who first noted the arrow metaphor?

A: There is no arrow. Scientists know better than metaphorizing and here they are doing it. Result? To us literal folk arrows seem to concretize time. Bad thing to do. Time is the most unconcrete, abstract idea that does not exist in reality.

B. There is no Time. It is a human construct not a physical one actually existing in Nature and to use the word as though it does exist in Nature as in The Arrow of Time creates confusion.

C. They would be clearer to us poorly educated folk if they said change moves in only one direction. Or to put it more clearly, you cannot watch anything that has gone through changes go back to its prior condition. You cannot unscramble an egg is the cliche`. You cannot un-eat an apple. You can't unchop a steak. You can try but you know it'd be silly 'cause you know intuitively you cannot unchange a physical change.

Thus the very idea of going back in Time on the macro level of matter is an illusion, a fantasy as is going forward. (It may be different on the tiniest physical, subnuclear levels where all sorts of un-macro changes can happen.) The problem only arises when our fantasies make people think that going backward and changing old changes again is possible.

True, we are watching some politicians trying to do this as we speak. They think 1910 is a reality we can go back to. They forget you cannot unscramble an egg.

Time. It's more like a code. Would a Martian understand lightyears? It's a code. An idea. A technique. A way of dealing with the cosmos' indifference, perhaps. And do I have a problem with our invention of Time? No. Not at all. I just think we should all know what it really is so that we don't become the Deluded Fools of an Illusion That Time Exists.

Einstein famously declared that space and time are the same. I think that what he means by that is that whether or not changes in space happen at the same "now" depend
on where in space the observer sees the change happen, i.e. spacetime is related to where you're standing in the cosmos when the event happens. I better check this out with those smart guys, the physicists.

In any event, for us Earth bound humans it is still true: time does not exist. Only changes happen to existing matter. The changes happen and time helps us keep track of those changes. Unless it is remembering what we had for lunch yesterday.

So maybe the best exercise is to ponder the reality and meaning of changes rather than the human construct of time remembering that the only reality is NOW. ...whoops its gone!

The Young Moon & Contrail - Astronomy Picture of the Day 

AN OLD MAN IN A BLACK COAT

On his way to the post office
on this sunny day
while a white dump truck filled with dead limbs
and dry brush passes him by

The old man slightly bent
under thin & straggly grey hair
and wearing a long black worsted coat

wanders off the sidewalk
onto my neighbor’s grass
passing behind the postal deposit box
through azaleas rather tentative about blooming
on this cool March afternoon

disappears into the dim interior
only to emerge seconds later

with thin empty white hands.

Gary Schramm's White Violet 

I’m contemplating NGC6946
she’s 10 million light years away
she spans 20,000 light years across
she is one big mama
a hunting gathering mama
collecting all the dust
all the stars and planets
in her neighborhood
all the while spinning
all the dust and stars
(and planets surely)
into a seething whirligig
a clockwise whirlpool
sucking it irrevocably
into her bosomy embrace
for billions of years
(Earth years that is)

And this singular Big Mama,
one of countless billions
gradually pulling their flocks
ever closer to their spinning
hearts their black holes
of creation and re-creation
where every species
of star and dust and planet
is swept in and crushed
in a googolplex
of heat and pressure until
there’s nothing left of stars
and madmen and 747s
and hydrogen atoms
but quarks string theory
and the twinkling music
of those spherical shells
of the Ptolemaic fantasy.

**********
googolplex = 10 to the 10th to the100th,
i.e. more than all the atoms of the universe

I am well aware that parents are and should be properly concerned about their daughters and the recent events at Columbia University with graduate students striking. Those rebellious graduate students are acting perhaps to their own disadvantage. But don't worry, senior people like myself are behind your daughters. We think the university's taking their hard won money is a bad idea. Let us help them in our own way.

There is another side to this story you know and as a career university professor and long time PhD elitist I want to tell you the senior professorial side.

These kids gotta learn to jump their obstacles just like the rest of us did and maybe because they are so easily led by socialist leaning laborites they need even more discipline to get 'em back to a proper show of deference. They do have their careers to think of, y'know. Always remind them of that. They already expect us to write a pack of lies about them and their record here in CU order to get a tenure track job, so they have to learn proper academic tribal behaviour.

Some have suggested that putting 'em on long leashes wouldn't be too far out just to keep them in line. But I don't think that's practical. I say, let them not forget that like second lieutenants in the army they are only a little better than rottweilers. Not much but a little bit. So, serving coffee to professors in their offices might be a good idea. And at faculty parties it is always a good idea for them to serve finger food. ...and wait to eat in the kitchen until the end of the party. If they want to join the unionized kitchen workers, let 'em learn what it's like to work in a kitchen.

Yes, it is true. The fact is they've been getting too uppity with this ridiculous unionizing, a trend that will only lead them to forget they are learning to be elitist! For their own good it is time to crack down. Some of my colleagues have suggested they learn to step off the sidewalk when passing senior professors on campus or on the street. I think that's too much. We don't want 'em getting hurt in traffic. It would be enough if they simply stepped aside and waited until we passed. ...maybe crossed themselves in salutation. ...and bowed.

Female graduate students are a special case. Senior people, sorry, Senior Men in the academic world must remember there is always an erotic element in the relationship of a wonderful professor and his women. ...students. They are, unlike female under-graduate students, accessible. That shouldn't change.

We do believe this suggestion to stop paying them made by the Columbia Provost is a dangerous tactic. Take away their money and ultimately what you do is take away our benefits, our privileges. And it would be wise for the Provost to keep that in mind. ...for his own good. Think about it. If these people get out of hand the next thing you know we senior men will have to start teaching freshmen again. ...which senior women, accustomed to nourishing the young, never seem to mind doing.

Outrageous.

The elevation of Ratzinger was no surprise. All Bishops -and all those Cardinals are Bishops these days - have one primary duty: to protect the "Teachings", the orthodoxy. It has been this way since Constantine and The Council of Nicea in the 4th century. It is the reason it took the Church 400 years to recognize Galileo's work. It is the reason it took them 150 years to acknowledge there is something to Darwin's theory.

Ever since Vatican II the Church has been in turmoil. John XXIII opened Pandora's Box. Most could go along. Some could not and were thrown into an inner chaos. Some conservative Bishops on their own even chose to stay with the Latin Mass. Some people couldn't understand why suddenly it was ok to eat meat on Friday when they'd been brought up to believe eating meat on Friday would send them to hell. ...and much much more.

The shepherds in Vatican II had thrown their unthinking flock (i.e. a flock trained to accept unthinkingly which is called "faith") into confusion, anger, perplexity, existential angst. The Faith of millions(?) had been called into doubt. A most dangerous thing to do. The Bishops had changed the "Teaching" and as a result emotional instability beset the hearts of millions. Chaos stalked the Church.

Today the men in Red Hats want no more of that chaos. They want a man who will protect the "Teaching", the right opinions, orthodoxy. So it is no surprise they elevate the man who promises to enforce the "right" kind of thinking.

But the "Teaching" is a two edged sword sharpened by paradox. Science and a changing world soon make some teachings absurd. Pius XII in 1950! (see note below) infallibly chose to make it a dogma to believe that Mary was literally taken bodily into heaven. That is like saying people have to believe cats and dogs fall out of the sky during a hard rain. It is an attempt to make a metaphor into a literal fact. It makes the church look stupid.

But it is dogma. And as soon as one dogma is challenged and made to look absurd, every dogma is up for challenge.
c'est la vie.

Ergo, as long as the Church says its "Teaching" can't be changed the more the Church and its "Teaching" - its orthodoxy- will seem ridiculous in our more educated, more enlightened time. The more the Church tries to stymie change the more it will behave as a fundamentalist by clinging to those "Teachings".

True, some conservative people need to be shown the "right way to think" and will be pleased. After all, we are living in a conservative and reactionary moment across the planet be it in Islam or Christianity, America or Nigeria.

But -pardon the cliché- you cannot unscramble an omelet. More precisely, you cannot force your ideas on a population freed from the threat of force. In 1600 Churchmen in the Inquisition could burn you alive if you thought the wrong things, Giordano Bruno, for example. The West fought the Fascists, the Communists, and the Taliban for trying to enforce thought after the model of the Inquisition. Now freedom of thought reigns in the West and other lands as well. The Church might take note of those battles and the outcome.

The Church can no longer enforce its will (except with the questionable threat of hell, another absurd metaphor) and that inability to force the public to believe in the orthodoxy makes Ratzinger's job all the more difficult as he comes up from his job running the old Inquisition - The Holy Office.

How can he enforce birth control in a world with a population exploding out of control and with the AIDs epidemic in the multiple millions and spreading? How can he make everyone believe abortion is an absolute evil? How can he continue to keep women from the priesthood when everyday there are fewer priests? How can he enforce celibacy when he invites married Anglican priests in the RC priesthood? How can he continue to demonize Gay men and women when they are freer to be themselves than ever before in history? There is no way.

He may enforce his views about the Church's "Teaching" with some conservatives, but it is likely that he will end up with a much smaller Church if he does. Maybe that is what he wants. I can envision a scenario when St Peter's will become primarily a tourist destination supported by entry fees as to some extent it already is. The Vatican museum ticket sales support much of the Vatican budget. Of the millions who visit the Vatican, can we say they are all pilgrim Catholics? I don't think so. For many it is a tourist destination just like Teotiohuacan.

But I don't think Benedict wants to shrink his Church. No. The second objective of the Church has always been to grow. Growth is the reason, after all and regardless of any other rationale, for their grim grip on the "error" of birth control regardless of the consequences. So the new Pope has taken on a double bind. And it may be impossible to resolve: orthodoxy vs. the inevitability of change in the 21st century.

But the guy is either or courageous or insensitive. And he is not guided by the political issues that we tend to focus on: Left vs Right, North vs South. He is guided by the "Teaching" regardless. Remember how Ratzinger intruded into our last election when he caused a stir by writing a memo to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington suggesting that clergy deny communion to supporters of abortion rights. The memo was made public and was widely perceived as a veiled attack on Catholic candidate Kerry. Ratzinger's motivation? Defeat the Catholic who endangers the "Teaching". Now that the Vatican cannot burn you at the stake, they may be finding democracy, politics and the ballot box useful tools for orthodoxy.

So. Benedict XVI. Age 78. He too will pass. And someday when we're all dead and gone the men (and the women?) of the Roman Catholic Church will have to come to terms with the 21st century and with their vast membership and recognize the only absolutes in this Cosmos: change and the speed of light.

And, by the way, I don't think Opus Dei is truly the work of God. But these people do have incredible chutzpah to advertise themselves thus.

*From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
"Note: By promulgating the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith. Likewise, the Second Vatican Council taught in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium that "the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things (n. 59).

Transubstantiation German Style 

Decay and Gingerbread,
I admonish you, you sagging ramshackle!
Don’t be satisfied with old board and bat!
Show us your first day gaggling under heron feathers or
Platooning in navy worsteds throats throttled in linenwhite!
Flaunt those Starched Linens who came in their hundreds
To water in the pristine Schoharie.

I’ll bet you think that creek is still
Filled with rowdy small mouth bass
And water sprites forever flying
Into the mouths of rainbow trout;
That arid Irish nannies flock among
Naked white toddlers splashing in shallow pools
Little foreshadowings of future spring freshets
Undermining your foundations! You are up the creek
Yet you think you’ll live forever, don’t you?
With guests impatient for tea and crumpets
Standing on your balconies for manicured centuries.

If I enter will I see the ghosts of Darkies, as you call them,
Working your kitchens, feeding my grandpop’s
Posturing superiority? Or of Polaks, as you call them,
Scrubbing unspeakable stains out of his bedsheets
Bare handed at creekside? Or of Dagos, as you call them,
Hoeing unremembered pots of peonies? Will I?

Yet you are still so … La Belle Epoque!
Even with your chalky makeup flaking.
So like ancient Aunt Lou who never seems to die
Who tells me, “I thought you’d never come back
To see me, Robbie! Not after our little thing last
Week in the Rhododendrons!”

I didn’t see her last week and my name is Bill.
So, Ramshackle, I’ll tell you, Old Puss:
I wish I knew some way to rehabilitate
Every rare old dame whose warped decay
Reminds me of my own trip up the creek.

© 7/1/97
Lexington NY

I've been thinking about that wonderful American icon Barbie. I hear she is changing. Well, it seems to me that if Barbie is changing Ken must change too. It just has to be that way.

So, I'd like to suggest a little bit about the new Ken and his friends. I see big changes. For starters, Ken is going to leave this twit, this skinny Barbareenee. He's going to go off with GI Joe, that cutie veteran of Iraq II, who is dressed now in tight fitting camos. Why go off? Well, Ken boy is having his mid life crisis! He is getting on having reached his mid late thirties and starting to go bald. No chippie he!

Together Ken and GI Joe open a B&B in Napa just to compete with Barb. Ken now wears jewelry, perfume and heavy makeup, does the house work in a little fluffy apron and sees to the customers while GI Joe sets up a unisex beauty salon specializing in coloring hair called "Cut Loose Guys".

A DVD will accompany the dolls showing the boys at work.

I also propose children for Ken and Barbie. A boy and a girl. They abandoned their parents for trying to be cool. We'll have a naming contest for them. Her buttocks are covered with colorful gangland tattoos and you can just see the edge of said tattoos above and below her torn & faded cut off jeans which are cut to just below her crotch. She wears jewelry in all of her body openings. Her spiked hair is orange -so last year!- and she wears only clothes that show her pierced belly button.

Her white bread bro has joined an Afro/Hispanic gang which gives us a whole new line of ethnic dolls and that is good because Americans are so into diversity. All of Bro's clothes are three sizes too big. His head is shaved bald. And he has the beginnings of a shaggy little goatee. He carries a boombox the size of a refrigerator.

All of his homies are also portrayed as dolls fully costumed in whatever way will provoke white middle class Christians to the max! Ditto the undercover policemen who look worse than the homies which is how you can tell they're cops.

The DVD included shows an original movie made to introduce the children. It portrays the daughter's last day in school at age 15 when she is expelled for carrying a switchblade. Even so she runs off to defend her brother at his first appearance on Court TV. After the courtroom experience they go off to church together singing hymns.

The new dolls are all vocal. When you squeeze them, the new dolls all say the "f" word. They say it. They sing it. They pronounce it over and over in all its many variants.

God Bless America's Children

The other day I got into one of those nasty email arguments with my old friend Bobby Lee Carter about putting the Ten Commandments on the court house lawn. Bobby Lee’s a Christian lawyer, a man of abiding Faith and he surprised me when he argued fiercely that it’s wrong to put a sculpture of the Ten Commandments on government property.

He says Christians ought to stay away from politics. Now we all know that’s an idea pretty much out of fashion these days, but Bobby Lee doesn’t care about fashions. He says voters are for you today and against you tomorrow so stay out of politics. Well, maybe so, but I think Christians have a good case when they fight to keep that Old Testament Christian symbol on the Court House lawn.

Our Constitution doesn’t say we should ignore religion, turn our back on it, act like it is some kind of ugly taboo. No. It just says America doesn’t pick out one religion and establish it as the one and only official religion. And to most folks, Christians included, that makes some good sense. Establish an official religion and the next thing you know you have somebody inquiring into your thinking, your bed room habits, and what you do on Sunday. But that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate religion generally. So I have a proposal. And I think this proposal will fly with the Supreme Court.

I was up in New York last week and took a walk by the United Nations building and they’re doing something there that gave me an idea. They have put up an orchard of flag poles, more than a hundred of 'em with flags flying to celebrate, acknowledge, and tolerate everyone of the countries that belong to the UN. ...even the ones we don’t like. Yes, sir. They have some flags flying in New York that we might not like at all.

Now when you think about it, you realize we have the same thing here in the USA with our religions. There are religions we like and religions we don’t. But we could take a lesson from the UN (even if we are generally disposed to dislike it) and celebrate all of our religions on the State House lawn. It could be a flock of flag poles flying the flags of all of our religions. There’d be Christian flag, probably a simple cross on a white background. The Muslim flag is green with Arabic lettering praising the Prophet and Allah. the Catholics would probably want a crucifix. Jews could do with the Star of David. Hindus might be happy with a Dancing Shiva flag. There might be more than that and they should come forward show their colors!

Some might wish to put sculpture on the State House lawn instead like a granite version of the Ten Commandments or big Buddhas. That'd be ok and would occasion commissions for our Southern artists. Each religion would of course pay for its own imagery as we don’t use tax monies for those purposes.

The result? Everybody would be happy and proud. Toleration would be given a big boost. There'd be a fine display of art and culture to show visitors. No one would feel a victim of prejudice. We would celebrate our reality. And that would be the wisest part of the whole scheme.

And oh yes. The biggest flag? The flag in the middle on the highest pole? The Stars and Stripes. What else? The USA, host of all those other flags. Just make sure if you fly it at night you put a spotlight on it.

African Madonna, Ashanti, Mid 1930's. Carved from a single block of wood. 

Dear Remaining 2 or 3 Friends, We don't send out Christmas cards because we don't like Xmas anymore. So we're sending an annual letter to friends. Anyway, we used to get presents from you now we don't! Right?
...so what's to like?

And like you we also hate long, year end braggy letters that go out to everybody pretending everything has been wonderful, that the children have become little Shakespeares and Brain surgeons, or graduated first in the class (probably of some deprived, failing inner city school) and that everybody who gets one of those accursed letters is an equal and blessed friend. Well this isn't gonna be like that 'cause you aren't like that. Right?

Besides, we don't have anything to brag about. We spent too much money last year and it rained a lot. Prices are up and we got hit by lightning. We lost a lot of trees and paid a lot of money to take them away. The insurance paid only half what we asked for (bastards didn't believe we rebuilt the garage in three days. Can you believe it!?)

Summer is too hot and winter is too cold. We went to Florida for three days and should have known better. We went to Turkey for two weeks in winter. Turkey, where hotels turn off the heat at night in winter. We went to the Netherlands twice and caught colds with extended post nasal drip that lasted for weeks. Then we stayed home, coughed, drank more, and grew older. So what's to brag?

The Dutch grandchildren are growing up and getting more and more expensive, always demanding new shoes, new clothes, and more game boys. When I was a kid I wanted gamy girls. These kids are retarded. And our own children, expecting us to pay for all that compulsive growth, ask more and more unsubtle and indiscreet questions like "how much do you have in your accounts now?" Nothing! Or "have you selected a grave site yet?" Getouttahere.

We'd send you a tasty card but postage has gone up too much and we dislike the cards people buy in the shops because they are all clich'es like the ones we get in the mail! ...and they are ridiculously expensive too. ...a dollar for a card? Plus 37 cents postage??!! Fuhgetaboutit! We'd end up spending 10 or 15.00 dollars. Email is Green! Conserves Trees!

Nor are we motivated to create our own stupid cards on the computers both of which are a pain in the ass for always breaking down and we don't know how to work most of those idiotic software programs anyway. So we're sending email. ...hoping y'all have computers! If you don't let us know! Ha Ha! (That's a joke. You get it? Not everybody has email....???).

Oh well, it's just that we're picking up a lot of those Rural Southern Ways of witty thinking now that we're down here in "The Buckle of the Bible Belt" as it is called! ...and that's a lot of fun! ...to think Southern, I mean. Like maybe we'll join the Church of God around the corner which is the really Big Southern Thing To Do? Like memorize the Bible instead of listening to NPR and go to church like two or three times a week and sit there for like six or eight hours listening to the Pastor tell you like who to vote for! Like it's really wonderful!
...Like.

There are six churches of God to choose from within five miles not to mention several really big Baptist ones which have the highest phalli sticking up from the roof to remind you women that the Men Are the Boss! There are a lot of Presbyterian ones too and some others; however, if you're a Jew you have to drive to Atlanta for 2 hours there and back. ...depending on traffic. Four hours at rush hour. Catholics here only have about sixteen miles to drive to find a church. Their priest comes every other month. The Pope ought worry about those people getting outta control.

If we do join a church we'll probably select the one that has a sign that burns all night keeping the whole village awake showing off funny comments like "Pray on your knees or Burn in Computer Hell." Golly witty gee! Hey, you know, maybe we're really getting that old time religion. ...like President what'sisname. ...but don't count on it.

Anyway, this has been a sort of an on again off again unbraggy year for the Bruehl's. Like for dieting? Marty and I went on Atkins and lost a lot of weight. Big success!

Then we went off.

Big mistake! We gained back more than we lost. Two more inches around my waist. Which means I need new clothes a lot more than those little kids. ...actually it was more than two inches. We'd send you an email picture of the two of us sitting side by side on the couch watching tv with our buttons popping but we'd have to send it in the landscape format and that would be embarassing 'cause you'd have to scroll sideways across the screen to see us complete.

The boys are doing unexpected things while growing up. Jon came home from camp one day dressed in a skirt, smiled and said, "I'm a girl!". But we knew he was kidding 'cause it was a tutu and he didn't have any skivvies on. So we really knew he was kidding. hehe. He keeps the tutu in his room and locks the door when he leaves. He thinks his Father will throw it out. He just has to learn to trust, but boys will be .... something.

Willie is ten now. He's different. He locks himself in his room. Won't let anybody else in! He does a lot of rhythmic pounding. Kid's stuff! Boys will be boys! Especially Dutch boys. ...at that age. They're told it's alright. But maybe he's a musician. ...a drummer! He is probably playing the trumpet in his room right now as we speak. He likes to play one note, that high pitched screaming note that made Maynard Ferguson famous?? I think it is making Willie and the whole family unpopular where they live now in Millingen on the Rhine and even across that river but he is good at it. So don't interfere with a child's creativity. We tried to get him to play something soft like Miles' Kinda Blue? Didn't work. He came back with a simple reply, "I like Maynard." Sophisticated kid. But that's the Dutch. They all speak 4 languages.

...hateful people.

And speaking of Dutch. Emelda and Jos are doing fine! What a relief! He's working again. Enough said. Now she won't have to smuggle good Dutch weed across the border to the Germans anymore. There was money in it, but risk too -those Germans are funny about breaking their drug laws - and Jos would never make a good mother to their children. ...especially to Jon.

Zoody is now Zapora. She lives with a new man. Miky. We approve of Miky. He is good because he is tall and willowy and makes a lot more money than the man she divorced. I forget his name. Zapora and Miky now live in Taos NM in a fake mud house. It's supposed to look like mud but it is not mud. A Taos pretension I guess. They are nice houses though (You want pretention? You should get a McMansion!). Anyway Zapora is happy not working as hard as she did in SanFran. There are a lot of people with a lot more money in Taos so she'll be ok. I guess they are making friends with her inspite of her new name.

...what was his name?

Mylady worked this year. I didn't.

She worked for "Snails of Peace". It is a wonderful organization dedicated to peace on earth - Mylady's favorite cause! They teach patience with experiential exercises like sitting still even if you have to go real bad.

Not having worked myself, there isn't much to add. Except I carve now. It is a new art form for me. Abstract art, Non objective. You take an eight foot log and work on it til there is nothing left but chips and hope for the future. It is like investing. ...or teaching patience.

Thanks for being yourself. We love you, D___, G____, H_____, M__, and both of you dear, good remaining friends including _________ and _________! (Don't forget to fill in the blanks 'cause we love you and don't want to forget a single soul!!)

Wallace