What book did you pull off that shelf? Which one are you reading? What are you learning?
Where do you read?
Do you and a friend share a book, discussing it as you read?
Do you read out loud to yourself, just to hear the language spoken?
How about some poetry? Have you gone to a poetry slam? Have you written a poem?
Well, do it. The days are getting a bit shorter, school is approaching for students and families. Books are great additions to the family. You can discuss a book at dinner. At breakfast.
Just read.
I'm in the middle of some editing. It is like seeing a beautiful creation emerge, slowly from the page to my mind's eye.
I'll be putting up a reading list, so if you can't decide on a book, check back. There may be something that suits your fancy.
And in the meantime, grab a book and read.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
What's Wrong With This Picture?
The Atlantic published an article on the subject of Genetically Modified Organisms that become the very food on your table, and the labeling requirements of the FDA.
People understandably want to know lots of information about their food. Information such as Organic or Conventionally Produced. People also want to know if there are pesticides in the food, and some want to know if the food they eat is from GMO sources. Those GMO sources include genetically modified foods that have incorporated animal, fish or bacterial genes, the ability to make pesticides and herbicides within the very cells of the food, including the food that you put into your stomach. Some people just want to know if the corn on the cob they are eating at the Labor Day Picnic will be cranking out Monsanto Roundup (Reg. TMs of Monsanto), or not.
But this is what the Atlantic wrote.
So, full labeling is misleading to people that want full labeling.
Alice, step aside. We've fallen totally into that rabbit hole.
People understandably want to know lots of information about their food. Information such as Organic or Conventionally Produced. People also want to know if there are pesticides in the food, and some want to know if the food they eat is from GMO sources. Those GMO sources include genetically modified foods that have incorporated animal, fish or bacterial genes, the ability to make pesticides and herbicides within the very cells of the food, including the food that you put into your stomach. Some people just want to know if the corn on the cob they are eating at the Labor Day Picnic will be cranking out Monsanto Roundup (Reg. TMs of Monsanto), or not.
But this is what the Atlantic wrote.
Last month there was the appointment of big-time GM/GE advocate (and former Monsanto lobbyist) Islam Siddiqui to Office of the United States Trade Representative as the country's chief agricultural negotiator . Now comes a position paper from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that opposes labeling for genetically modified food. The U.S. claims that letting consumers know whether or not food contains GM/GE products is "false, misleading, or deceptive."
You read that correctly. In Obama Newspeak, telling the public the truth is false, misleading, or deceptive, while concealing facts is not. Incidentally, the language is identical to that used by previous administrations. How's that for change? Atlantic
So, full labeling is misleading to people that want full labeling.
Alice, step aside. We've fallen totally into that rabbit hole.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
About that summer reading list...
Add to it!
Get together with a friend, each of you with a favorite book, head to the beach, and read.
Go to a coffee house, or coffee shop, with your book. Grab a latte, a cookie, the book, and sit with a friend, or make a new one...and read. Discuss what you are reading.
Make a point to ask someone around you, if they are reading a book, what they are reading.
Just read. And read some more.
I know, I keep going on and on about reading. But, reading is good for your brain, and as you turn the last page, you know somethings that you didn't know before you started on your reading. Knowledge is power. It helps at work, no matter what your job might be. It makes you smarter.
Plus, the smarter you are, if you happen to be in school, the better you will do in all your subjects, just from reading anything at all. The old phrase, use it or lose it, applies to the gray matter.
Read!
Get together with a friend, each of you with a favorite book, head to the beach, and read.
Go to a coffee house, or coffee shop, with your book. Grab a latte, a cookie, the book, and sit with a friend, or make a new one...and read. Discuss what you are reading.
Make a point to ask someone around you, if they are reading a book, what they are reading.
Just read. And read some more.
I know, I keep going on and on about reading. But, reading is good for your brain, and as you turn the last page, you know somethings that you didn't know before you started on your reading. Knowledge is power. It helps at work, no matter what your job might be. It makes you smarter.
Plus, the smarter you are, if you happen to be in school, the better you will do in all your subjects, just from reading anything at all. The old phrase, use it or lose it, applies to the gray matter.
Read!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A Most Underappreciated Skell
Oops! What is "skell" doing in the title?
Could it be this post concerns those criminal elements referred to as skells by New York's Finest?
Absolutely...maybe.
The most underappreciated skill is the ability to know when a word is, for example, skell or skill.
Yes, I know skel has only one 'l' in it. Really I do.
Yet I read, too often for my now irritated eyes and brain, the use of words that are close in sound, but distant in meaning, applied to various issues.
Examples such as "ensure" being substituted for "insure." One means making sure something happens, the other indemnifying against some loss.
How about "loose" and "lose," being substituted, one for another. One is not too tightly fastened or affixed, the other means something's gone missing and might be at the Lost and Found by the time the loss is noticed.
Sometimes there is no spell checker involved. There is just error from being careless.
Spell checkers are a wondrous invention. They can suss out what word you might be trying to type and give you options. However, the check system doesn't always get the meaning right when one word with a certain meaning gets substituted for another, with a very different meaning, yet both are phonetically pretty much the same.
Call in Strunk and White. Call in Captain Grammar.
If you are relying on your spell checker, you'd better read what you are writing closely, because those errors introduced by misapplied spellings to meaning-inappropriate words, can have bad consequences.
An interviewer was discussing errors on resumes. One error and the resume is tossed out, and often the errors are simple typos made by spell checkers. The Human Resources people know this. And they still toss out those resumes. That means, if a job applicant is the very best person for the job, yet is not careful enough to make sure the copy is precise, with word meanings exactly what they ought to be, or where a resume contains an entirely wrong word for the place the word is put, that job seeker is still unemployed.
Job seekers of any age must remember one thing about the job market. When you are at work, there is only one passing grade, and that is make everything you do as close to perfect as humanly possible.
If you are unsure about your cover letter and/or resume, do one good favor for yourself. Hire someone or ask someone with good English skills, to read your resume and other communications, and make sure that the copy is perfect.
Something else to remember. If what you give to your proofreader is not clear as to meaning, you may still have errors on that page even after the editing is done. Don't let careless or moronic happen to you.
Help yourself out. Get help when you need it. If you are the least bit unsure, get help. Learn proper grammar, spelling and word usage. The skills come with reading books, with writing on a daily basis, and with paying attention to what you read and what you and others say, evaluating everything for form and content.
Now, I've also committed errors in this post. I have left them in, just to challenge you, my Musing readers. And, in other posts, there are sentence fragments and other grammatical sins committed by me regularly. Those fragments and made up words are used for style, because this is a blog. This is not a cover letter for a job application.
Know your audience, and if you need proofreading, editing or other assistance, get it. The Muse is here to help.
Could it be this post concerns those criminal elements referred to as skells by New York's Finest?
Absolutely...maybe.
The most underappreciated skill is the ability to know when a word is, for example, skell or skill.
Yes, I know skel has only one 'l' in it. Really I do.
Yet I read, too often for my now irritated eyes and brain, the use of words that are close in sound, but distant in meaning, applied to various issues.
Examples such as "ensure" being substituted for "insure." One means making sure something happens, the other indemnifying against some loss.
How about "loose" and "lose," being substituted, one for another. One is not too tightly fastened or affixed, the other means something's gone missing and might be at the Lost and Found by the time the loss is noticed.
Sometimes there is no spell checker involved. There is just error from being careless.
Spell checkers are a wondrous invention. They can suss out what word you might be trying to type and give you options. However, the check system doesn't always get the meaning right when one word with a certain meaning gets substituted for another, with a very different meaning, yet both are phonetically pretty much the same.
Call in Strunk and White. Call in Captain Grammar.
If you are relying on your spell checker, you'd better read what you are writing closely, because those errors introduced by misapplied spellings to meaning-inappropriate words, can have bad consequences.
An interviewer was discussing errors on resumes. One error and the resume is tossed out, and often the errors are simple typos made by spell checkers. The Human Resources people know this. And they still toss out those resumes. That means, if a job applicant is the very best person for the job, yet is not careful enough to make sure the copy is precise, with word meanings exactly what they ought to be, or where a resume contains an entirely wrong word for the place the word is put, that job seeker is still unemployed.
Job seekers of any age must remember one thing about the job market. When you are at work, there is only one passing grade, and that is make everything you do as close to perfect as humanly possible.
If you are unsure about your cover letter and/or resume, do one good favor for yourself. Hire someone or ask someone with good English skills, to read your resume and other communications, and make sure that the copy is perfect.
Something else to remember. If what you give to your proofreader is not clear as to meaning, you may still have errors on that page even after the editing is done. Don't let careless or moronic happen to you.
 |
| Photos courtesy of stuff-about.com |
Help yourself out. Get help when you need it. If you are the least bit unsure, get help. Learn proper grammar, spelling and word usage. The skills come with reading books, with writing on a daily basis, and with paying attention to what you read and what you and others say, evaluating everything for form and content.
Now, I've also committed errors in this post. I have left them in, just to challenge you, my Musing readers. And, in other posts, there are sentence fragments and other grammatical sins committed by me regularly. Those fragments and made up words are used for style, because this is a blog. This is not a cover letter for a job application.
Know your audience, and if you need proofreading, editing or other assistance, get it. The Muse is here to help.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Got Book?
Do you have a good book? Then, do the simple. The enjoyable. Read it.
Read it to your children.
Read that book to your boyfriend. Girlfriend. Significant other.
Read it to the cat.
Read it to the dog.
And if you don't have anyone else to read a book to, read it to yourself.
If reading and understanding is a challenge, remember the Muse does offer tutoring. In Chicago, the service is personal, one on one. Rates are reasonable.
The Muse, like all good teachers, teaches you to teach yourself.
In the meantime, read.
Just do it!
Read it to your children.
Read that book to your boyfriend. Girlfriend. Significant other.
Read it to the cat.
Read it to the dog.
And if you don't have anyone else to read a book to, read it to yourself.
| L.A. Times Blog |
If reading and understanding is a challenge, remember the Muse does offer tutoring. In Chicago, the service is personal, one on one. Rates are reasonable.
The Muse, like all good teachers, teaches you to teach yourself.
In the meantime, read.
Just do it!
It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
When things are going to hell in a Hula Hoop, it is well to remember the wisdom of Yogi Berra.
It Ain't Ovenr Until It's Over
Until is the most important word there. As in, the fat lady is finishing up, the credits are rolling, the parking lot is filling up with motorists anxious to get on the road home.
Another important idea is that when you are reaching the end of your rope, you might want to tie a knot in the end of it to make it easier to hang on.
Sometimes you also need something else to do, other than what you've been doing. The reason for that is simple. When you are living breathing proof that doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result, you have to do something different to get a different result.
Doing the same thing, repeating that same thing, over and over--all while you expect a different result is the very definition of insanity. It is also the definition of not paying attention to the best way to get a different, workable result. Workable, tolerable, acceptable, functional results aren't found when the results before weren't good, aren't going to happen if you do the same thing again and again.
Edison made thousands of non-functional light bulbs before he found that one light bulb that worked.
He called those failing light bulbs learning experiences. He learned a lot from the ones that didn't work. Most importantly, he learned NOT to make light bulbs using the failed models.
So, Edison kept on coming up with Plan B. Call it Plan Light Bulb. Plan Bulb. Plan B.
Do something different and get a different result.. Evaluate. Adjust. Try again.
That's all there is to it. Try something different, a Plan B, then a Plan C, D, E, F,G, and so on. Until, that is, you get to Plan W.
As in Wonderful!
All I hope is that no one has to go through 3000 different plans to get the one that works. It might come to that, but the kind of determination to work through 2999 failures is, these days, almost more than my brain can think about without trembling in fear of failure that makes me chuck the whole idea long before Plan B--the 1000th variation has been reached.
It Ain't Ovenr Until It's Over
Until is the most important word there. As in, the fat lady is finishing up, the credits are rolling, the parking lot is filling up with motorists anxious to get on the road home.
Another important idea is that when you are reaching the end of your rope, you might want to tie a knot in the end of it to make it easier to hang on.
Sometimes you also need something else to do, other than what you've been doing. The reason for that is simple. When you are living breathing proof that doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result, you have to do something different to get a different result.
Doing the same thing, repeating that same thing, over and over--all while you expect a different result is the very definition of insanity. It is also the definition of not paying attention to the best way to get a different, workable result. Workable, tolerable, acceptable, functional results aren't found when the results before weren't good, aren't going to happen if you do the same thing again and again.
Edison made thousands of non-functional light bulbs before he found that one light bulb that worked.
He called those failing light bulbs learning experiences. He learned a lot from the ones that didn't work. Most importantly, he learned NOT to make light bulbs using the failed models.
So, Edison kept on coming up with Plan B. Call it Plan Light Bulb. Plan Bulb. Plan B.
 |
| From I Can Has Cheezburger |
Do something different and get a different result.. Evaluate. Adjust. Try again.
That's all there is to it. Try something different, a Plan B, then a Plan C, D, E, F,G, and so on. Until, that is, you get to Plan W.
As in Wonderful!
All I hope is that no one has to go through 3000 different plans to get the one that works. It might come to that, but the kind of determination to work through 2999 failures is, these days, almost more than my brain can think about without trembling in fear of failure that makes me chuck the whole idea long before Plan B--the 1000th variation has been reached.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Oh Muse, Where Art Thou?
Sometimes, the Muse just sends in the clowns.
Other times, the Muse sends in the cats.
So, for your enjoyment, [drum roll please..........................................]
The very ultimate in "we are not amused."
Which would be the Royal "We" such as Queen Victoria would utter as she controlled her large..
well, just about everything.
And thanks to i can has cheezburger
Other times, the Muse sends in the cats.
So, for your enjoyment, [drum roll please..........................................]
The very ultimate in "we are not amused."
Which would be the Royal "We" such as Queen Victoria would utter as she controlled her large..
well, just about everything.
And thanks to i can has cheezburger
 |
| The Algonquin Hotel in New York, where a 15-year-old resident kitteh named Matilda celebrayted her birfday, hosted a kitteh fashun show. And, oh, dese fashions wuld make even Lady GaGa jelus! Teh kittehs may look camera shy, but aifinks dey rilly jus has their model faces awn. Source: The Gothamist / Via: The Daily What |
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Bud Billiken's Buddies--Be One
Today in Chicago there will be a parade. This is possibly the most important parade of the year.
Today is Bud Billiken Parade Day! Students and their families will be attending or watching this vital celebration of education on the television. It is an inspiring thing, a parade to celebrate the start of the school year. It should be a celebration that extends to the whole of the nation.
More vital to the quality of life that almost every other factor, education is often the most degraded part of life. Students are pulled away from their books by the siren song of entertainment. The US is the most entertained and least informed nation on the planet. We are also ranking at a consistent level compared to other nations in math, science, reading comprehension and language arts. The reason for this is obvious. Children see that society values entertainment more than it values learning.
Social studies and history? We act as if we don't need to know anything about it, except that there are two parties and each are spewing vitriol at the other, so as to make laws that favor the rich over the voiceless poor.
Gone are the days when science education was emphasized because the country needed engineers and scientists to get the US to the moon and beyond. Gone are the days when every graduate of high school knew chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry. Forgotten are the reading lists that were about 200 books long, each part of the required reading for graduation from high school.
What is now obvious is that children, particularly in inner-city and other underfunded schools drop out at an appalling rate of more than 50 percent. That fact alone is the reason for Bud Billiken.
The parade is designed to give students a moral and enthusiasm boost just before the school year begins.
Bud Billiken has been around for 81 successful years, and is the oldest parade for African American students. A Billiken is a sort of good luck charm, created in the early 20th Century and was probably named after William Howard Taft, the then sitting President. Billiken is a rollypoly sort of fellow, and is the mascot of several schools. He is a symbol of pride for the African American community, and his parade is designed to convey pride in learning.
In an age when it is not 'cool' to be found with your nose in a book, children need inspiring images and reinforcement that learning is, in fact, the coolest thing they have going.
Every day, as I go out for a walk, I ask school age children what they have learned today. I encourage each child to learn something new every single day. During the school year, I also encourage them to learn one new thing in every subject they are studying. When I see them on the following day, I ask what it was that they learned the prior day.
And I listen closely to what they tell me. If I am speaking to a small child, I stoop down to be at their level. And I listen. I ask followup questions. The answers are both charming and inspiring to me.
Everyone should be encouraged to learn new things every day. From the smallest child to the oldest adult, every day is a new discovery, filled with possible opportunity to learn. Each new thing learned builds self esteem. Each new accomplishment builds pride. Children that learn and have fun doing it, that know learning is cool, are less likely to drop out of high school.
One parade is not going to do it. Make every day a parade day and before the march to the schoolhouse begins, encourage your favorite students to learn. Every day. In school and out, assigned by a school teacher or not, make sure that learning occurs.
It might start with a parade on the street, and it can continue with a parade of books, a parade of days where assignments are done with confidence and encouragement. Become a teacher to your child and the children around you. Encourage them to read, to learn math, to know how to reason. Seize every day as a Billiken Day, filled with inspiration and good luck, which is 99 percent preparation, will follow as surely as a new school year follows summer.
Today is Bud Billiken Parade Day! Students and their families will be attending or watching this vital celebration of education on the television. It is an inspiring thing, a parade to celebrate the start of the school year. It should be a celebration that extends to the whole of the nation.
More vital to the quality of life that almost every other factor, education is often the most degraded part of life. Students are pulled away from their books by the siren song of entertainment. The US is the most entertained and least informed nation on the planet. We are also ranking at a consistent level compared to other nations in math, science, reading comprehension and language arts. The reason for this is obvious. Children see that society values entertainment more than it values learning.
Social studies and history? We act as if we don't need to know anything about it, except that there are two parties and each are spewing vitriol at the other, so as to make laws that favor the rich over the voiceless poor.
Gone are the days when science education was emphasized because the country needed engineers and scientists to get the US to the moon and beyond. Gone are the days when every graduate of high school knew chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry. Forgotten are the reading lists that were about 200 books long, each part of the required reading for graduation from high school.
What is now obvious is that children, particularly in inner-city and other underfunded schools drop out at an appalling rate of more than 50 percent. That fact alone is the reason for Bud Billiken.
The parade is designed to give students a moral and enthusiasm boost just before the school year begins.
Bud Billiken has been around for 81 successful years, and is the oldest parade for African American students. A Billiken is a sort of good luck charm, created in the early 20th Century and was probably named after William Howard Taft, the then sitting President. Billiken is a rollypoly sort of fellow, and is the mascot of several schools. He is a symbol of pride for the African American community, and his parade is designed to convey pride in learning.
In an age when it is not 'cool' to be found with your nose in a book, children need inspiring images and reinforcement that learning is, in fact, the coolest thing they have going.
Every day, as I go out for a walk, I ask school age children what they have learned today. I encourage each child to learn something new every single day. During the school year, I also encourage them to learn one new thing in every subject they are studying. When I see them on the following day, I ask what it was that they learned the prior day.
And I listen closely to what they tell me. If I am speaking to a small child, I stoop down to be at their level. And I listen. I ask followup questions. The answers are both charming and inspiring to me.
Everyone should be encouraged to learn new things every day. From the smallest child to the oldest adult, every day is a new discovery, filled with possible opportunity to learn. Each new thing learned builds self esteem. Each new accomplishment builds pride. Children that learn and have fun doing it, that know learning is cool, are less likely to drop out of high school.
One parade is not going to do it. Make every day a parade day and before the march to the schoolhouse begins, encourage your favorite students to learn. Every day. In school and out, assigned by a school teacher or not, make sure that learning occurs.
It might start with a parade on the street, and it can continue with a parade of books, a parade of days where assignments are done with confidence and encouragement. Become a teacher to your child and the children around you. Encourage them to read, to learn math, to know how to reason. Seize every day as a Billiken Day, filled with inspiration and good luck, which is 99 percent preparation, will follow as surely as a new school year follows summer.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Let's Fund Some Learning!
Now that we have heard that the government is broke, industry has been creating jobs anywhere but here in the USA, and tax revenues either going to increase from taking away the tax cuts, which were originally a bad idea when implemented, or the poor and middle class is going to get soaked some more, we need some common sense.
Lobbyists will charge mightily for the absence of common sense. Politiicans will sell their souls and your children if you'd only forget common sense.
But this one thing must happen. We have to have enough money to open the schools, pay the teachers and teach the children to to.
The reason for this need is simple. We need to have one thing happen, and we need that one thing fast. We need to be sure that our future leaders are able to think, not just regurgitate the latest data points, but actually use those data points to support ideas that will, in the future, forget about the wealth of the very few and build wealth again for the many.
Mine is not a position that supports income redistribution for the purpose of redistributing income. I am not proposing class warfare. I am, with this post, demanding this nation demand its leaders operate so that all people that work are paid, that they have jobs that pay, they can build things the way this nation built the largest industrial power in the history of the world, and that by doing so, all members of our society can make a decent wage.
When people work and are not paid, or when they cannot find work, bad things happen. Starvation, homelessness and education are among the first things that are slapped onto the backs of the nearly poor. This means that opportunity is limited, and then the masses get restless. Before the most dire consequences happen though, there are consequences that decimate the spirit, which is hopelessness.
Enough of the rich getting everything while the poor get nothing and the next generation pays both sides through unconscionable debt.
My proposal starts with education. It starts with being able to figure out that budgeting to bailout banks while failing to fund education, or making the masses all angry and upset over gay marriage while the real crime in this nation is that we have sent out to everywhere else, the manufacturing jobs that made America great and workers able to work in those plants.
Even the guy with the wrench in his hand has to understand some math, some science and some engineering to make what is being turned by that wrench actually function at the end of the day.
This takes a budget. A budget that isn't devoted to making bankers money from their creations made of air, called credit default swaps. Wouldn't someone please ask them where they learned how to steal like that? In public school? At Harvard?
So, budget this in Washington. Take out the "really big numbers" to bailout the banks that are too big to fail, and let them fail. Give them the grade anyone would have gotten if they had done this and they were too small to succeed. With nothing. And take that money and invest it in really fine education. Rebuild New Orleans schools, and the many other schools around the nation that are below excellent in condition. Give workers in those schools neighborhoods the jobs to do that building.
And then, hire people that can think to teach kids that legalized graft and stealing from the public is the same as stealing anywhere. It is the same as stealing from your local church, synagogue or mosque. It is the same as taking food out of the mouths of your neighbors. Make those bankers work in grocery stores to repay what they have stolen, and make them go back to school for not less than one year, at their own expense, to learn ethics. While they are in school, they will have to provide tuition for one pre-schooler, one grade schooler, a high school student and three college freshmen. If the school is public, make them pay the per pupil cost of those students.
Lobbyists will charge mightily for the absence of common sense. Politiicans will sell their souls and your children if you'd only forget common sense.
But this one thing must happen. We have to have enough money to open the schools, pay the teachers and teach the children to to.
The reason for this need is simple. We need to have one thing happen, and we need that one thing fast. We need to be sure that our future leaders are able to think, not just regurgitate the latest data points, but actually use those data points to support ideas that will, in the future, forget about the wealth of the very few and build wealth again for the many.
Mine is not a position that supports income redistribution for the purpose of redistributing income. I am not proposing class warfare. I am, with this post, demanding this nation demand its leaders operate so that all people that work are paid, that they have jobs that pay, they can build things the way this nation built the largest industrial power in the history of the world, and that by doing so, all members of our society can make a decent wage.
When people work and are not paid, or when they cannot find work, bad things happen. Starvation, homelessness and education are among the first things that are slapped onto the backs of the nearly poor. This means that opportunity is limited, and then the masses get restless. Before the most dire consequences happen though, there are consequences that decimate the spirit, which is hopelessness.
Enough of the rich getting everything while the poor get nothing and the next generation pays both sides through unconscionable debt.
My proposal starts with education. It starts with being able to figure out that budgeting to bailout banks while failing to fund education, or making the masses all angry and upset over gay marriage while the real crime in this nation is that we have sent out to everywhere else, the manufacturing jobs that made America great and workers able to work in those plants.
Even the guy with the wrench in his hand has to understand some math, some science and some engineering to make what is being turned by that wrench actually function at the end of the day.
This takes a budget. A budget that isn't devoted to making bankers money from their creations made of air, called credit default swaps. Wouldn't someone please ask them where they learned how to steal like that? In public school? At Harvard?
So, budget this in Washington. Take out the "really big numbers" to bailout the banks that are too big to fail, and let them fail. Give them the grade anyone would have gotten if they had done this and they were too small to succeed. With nothing. And take that money and invest it in really fine education. Rebuild New Orleans schools, and the many other schools around the nation that are below excellent in condition. Give workers in those schools neighborhoods the jobs to do that building.
And then, hire people that can think to teach kids that legalized graft and stealing from the public is the same as stealing anywhere. It is the same as stealing from your local church, synagogue or mosque. It is the same as taking food out of the mouths of your neighbors. Make those bankers work in grocery stores to repay what they have stolen, and make them go back to school for not less than one year, at their own expense, to learn ethics. While they are in school, they will have to provide tuition for one pre-schooler, one grade schooler, a high school student and three college freshmen. If the school is public, make them pay the per pupil cost of those students.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Imagine, if you will...
a young child standing at a closed door, listening with young ears to a loud conversation within that closed off room.
Voices raised, "I hate it! I hate the-the-the... insults! I hate the hate!"
And what caused this yelling moment?
The response tells all. "You're paying too much attention to idiots. They are fighting the wrong war. They have the wrong enemy. They have no idea." The voice saying these words is calm. "Don't worry, we remain in control of them."
"Why this black this, hate that, blankety black that? Why is everyone calling my stuff black? Why am I suddenly bad black, whatever that means?"
What stuff, this child wonders, is the cause of anger, and what was the color black being bad?
"I am going to tell you once more. This is not the time to be angry. Get a grip."
"Grip what?"
"The thing you always hold onto. Sanity."
Calming voices join in. There must be many people in that closed room. A woman's voice is heard in tones that sound like a ringing glass bell.
"You have been told this many times. You have kept your head, and now is not the time to lose your temper. Temper. Temper," as if the word itself, a name and a command in a single word. Where had he heard that before, that little child outside the closed door. "Temper. Temper."
Oh, right. When he was about three, and he'd thrown his new truck, a birthday present into the pond in the back yard. He never did get the truck back, even if he had laughed and jumped up and down when Grampa had given it to him. His mother, using those same dulcet tones had cautioned him to settle down. He'd been yelping with joy for over five minutes, which was some sort of family limit on happiness.
Then he'd had the truck snatched away, and he yelled again, without a moment or thought of joy. Joy was gone, anger was there, and anger was what he remembered of birthdays.
"This latest is the worst. I am the ruler of all that is supposed to be going on, and you are telling me that the 'natives are restless?' That voice was also oddly familiar. It was as if this young child, standing there by the door in his baggy jeans and torn tee shirt with a worn logo on the front of it, had been transported to some land where everyone spoke like the television voices he heard at 2 am after his parents had been fighting and sleep would not descend into his own bed where a teddy was soaked with tears.
A fist slammed into a table. Glass broke. The woman's voice grew shrill. Suddenly her voice, which had been sounding too low for the little one to understand her words clearly, was heard clearly. "and you are a flipping idiot."
Well, whoever was behind that door was getting some talking to. "Can you be this stupid? Forget it. You'll be dead by morning."
"I'm going to tell all. The truth. Confess." This was heard as an almost whisper, a voice so raspy he could not tell who had spoken.
"Check the post. Front pages. You. Are. Now. Dead." That voice was lower, and had the timbre of the voice of God the little boy had heard in church when the story of Noah had been told.
Someone was rattling the doorknob. The little boy ducked behind the cabinet ten feet down the hallway, turning so the plant he hid behind would not betray his location.
What had he heard?
What was there to confess? Does confession mean death will follow?
What was the black, the bad, the anger, the breakage?
What indeed had happened? And, was this child, eavesdropping by a door, reliable in the days to come, enough to shed light on what had happened inside the room?
Where indeed was the room. And were events in that room in the near past, the present, or were they imaginings?
How many people came out of the room? Where did they go?
And what happened to the boy beside the cabinet, ducked down behind a potted plant?
Imagine, is f you will...
Voices raised, "I hate it! I hate the-the-the... insults! I hate the hate!"
And what caused this yelling moment?
The response tells all. "You're paying too much attention to idiots. They are fighting the wrong war. They have the wrong enemy. They have no idea." The voice saying these words is calm. "Don't worry, we remain in control of them."
"Why this black this, hate that, blankety black that? Why is everyone calling my stuff black? Why am I suddenly bad black, whatever that means?"
What stuff, this child wonders, is the cause of anger, and what was the color black being bad?
"I am going to tell you once more. This is not the time to be angry. Get a grip."
"Grip what?"
"The thing you always hold onto. Sanity."
Calming voices join in. There must be many people in that closed room. A woman's voice is heard in tones that sound like a ringing glass bell.
"You have been told this many times. You have kept your head, and now is not the time to lose your temper. Temper. Temper," as if the word itself, a name and a command in a single word. Where had he heard that before, that little child outside the closed door. "Temper. Temper."
Oh, right. When he was about three, and he'd thrown his new truck, a birthday present into the pond in the back yard. He never did get the truck back, even if he had laughed and jumped up and down when Grampa had given it to him. His mother, using those same dulcet tones had cautioned him to settle down. He'd been yelping with joy for over five minutes, which was some sort of family limit on happiness.
Then he'd had the truck snatched away, and he yelled again, without a moment or thought of joy. Joy was gone, anger was there, and anger was what he remembered of birthdays.
"This latest is the worst. I am the ruler of all that is supposed to be going on, and you are telling me that the 'natives are restless?' That voice was also oddly familiar. It was as if this young child, standing there by the door in his baggy jeans and torn tee shirt with a worn logo on the front of it, had been transported to some land where everyone spoke like the television voices he heard at 2 am after his parents had been fighting and sleep would not descend into his own bed where a teddy was soaked with tears.
A fist slammed into a table. Glass broke. The woman's voice grew shrill. Suddenly her voice, which had been sounding too low for the little one to understand her words clearly, was heard clearly. "and you are a flipping idiot."
Well, whoever was behind that door was getting some talking to. "Can you be this stupid? Forget it. You'll be dead by morning."
"I'm going to tell all. The truth. Confess." This was heard as an almost whisper, a voice so raspy he could not tell who had spoken.
"Check the post. Front pages. You. Are. Now. Dead." That voice was lower, and had the timbre of the voice of God the little boy had heard in church when the story of Noah had been told.
Someone was rattling the doorknob. The little boy ducked behind the cabinet ten feet down the hallway, turning so the plant he hid behind would not betray his location.
What had he heard?
What was there to confess? Does confession mean death will follow?
What was the black, the bad, the anger, the breakage?
What indeed had happened? And, was this child, eavesdropping by a door, reliable in the days to come, enough to shed light on what had happened inside the room?
Where indeed was the room. And were events in that room in the near past, the present, or were they imaginings?
How many people came out of the room? Where did they go?
And what happened to the boy beside the cabinet, ducked down behind a potted plant?
Imagine, is f you will...
More on That Offer You Shouldn't Refuse
I will say it bluntly. Do you, or your favorite student, need some tutoring?
How about those math problems, reading assignments, science projects, biology classes, social studies assignments, work projects for the new plan to market the new widget, a lesson in law and procedure for the traffic ticket you just got, or even understanding Shakespeare?
You got it. And if you are in Chicago, tutoring can be done by phone. If you are near to where I am, I'll even travel if that is feasible.
But let's not get ahead of the game. If you need some simple tutoring for that student, be sure to drop a line in the comments section.
I'll do right by you. Really I will. My success is only linked to your success.
Most of learning is learning how to study and how to learn. That is the essence of tutoring also. Holding numerous degrees, certificates, licenses for professional ability and so on, I am living proof that learning can happen and the paper can be earned to allow you to earn the green paper. Which would be money.
If you need a blogger, let me know that also. If you need some copy written for a product, comments get responses. Let me know. The Muse is looking for work that helps others.
Cheers--to our success.
How about those math problems, reading assignments, science projects, biology classes, social studies assignments, work projects for the new plan to market the new widget, a lesson in law and procedure for the traffic ticket you just got, or even understanding Shakespeare?
You got it. And if you are in Chicago, tutoring can be done by phone. If you are near to where I am, I'll even travel if that is feasible.
But let's not get ahead of the game. If you need some simple tutoring for that student, be sure to drop a line in the comments section.
I'll do right by you. Really I will. My success is only linked to your success.
Most of learning is learning how to study and how to learn. That is the essence of tutoring also. Holding numerous degrees, certificates, licenses for professional ability and so on, I am living proof that learning can happen and the paper can be earned to allow you to earn the green paper. Which would be money.
If you need a blogger, let me know that also. If you need some copy written for a product, comments get responses. Let me know. The Muse is looking for work that helps others.
Cheers--to our success.
Word Salad
Note to Self:
Don't try this in the kitchen, at a fancy party, or anywhere near a microphone tuned in to catch the latest palaver from a politician.
What exactly is word salad, and why should you worry about it?
Well, word salad is what happens when either lack of preparation, failure of education, lack or refusal to read, and inability to string thoughts together all smoosh together in front of crowds, video cameras linked directly to YouTube, or when you're trying to impress someone, or worst of all, when you need to get something done.
I am sticking to oldies but goodies here for a reason.
It is similar to Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbling through the answer to, "what is your favorite "word"," and coming up with a meandering answer that misses points on cogent, but might have managed to offend believers and non-believers alike. Check it out by clicking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSko2ixEB8U&feature=related.
The favorite word is the word -- is the word-- is the word -- is the word...[cue sound of phonograph needle scratching record.] Mercifully it ended. But not before critics got ahold of it, and used it a day or two to bash the faith of Ms. Pelosi, and tried to make her statement into something akin to Christo-fascists taking over the government. This all happened when all reality has and remains pointing the other way round, and making our Speaker briefly, the then latest victim of Faith Bashing.
The favorite word of the Speaker is the Word. As in Word of God. As in Word made Flesh. As in Jesus the Christ. As in God, Son and Holy Ghost. The Word. Many meanings. Of course, not once did she actually say all of what I have said. She did make a vague "gospel reference," which she was sure "everyone knew." And went on and on about her favorite word being "the Word."
Not likely that everyone knows that reference these days, and for that reason, the Word word is word salad in so many ears.
The word salad debacle hit Sarah Palin when she entered a world of spymasters and national security, implying she could check out Vladimir Putin's barbecue technique from her Alaska backyard. And no, the Northern Lights were not going to interfere with her spying prowess.
Word salad can be fun. After all, it keeps late night comedians in business.
It makes high school debates interesting. It can make college lectures entertaining. In the well of the Senate or on the Floor of the House, it can unveil true intent. Sometimes.
All too rarely. But it does happen.
Reality gets into that Word Salad Bowl, tosses a few greenbacks around, spins like a whirlwind of truth, and the ease or unease with which the word salad hits the plate reveals so much.
Ms. Palin was pretty comfortable in her spying revelations. Ms. Pelosi appeared not so much at ease with her encounter in the spinning word salad bowl. She was searching.
And there you have the essence of good word salad. It reveals, without the guile of dressing the words up, the real intent of the salad maker. Ease with it means either it's a good joke or a far too serious impossible view of reality. Unease reveals an internal search.
And intelligent chef notices. Just as an intelligent chef knows when something is missing, or is too much in the dish, the maker of word salad uses the moment to continue the search until the answer to the question brought about in that tossing about, that tilt-oh-whirl of verbiage mixed and spun, leads to an answer found, certainty established, the world righted.
Let's hope that by the time the first course is over, the answer is either found, or at least identified, so that it can be truly made one's own later. That is always the way with questions posed in public to yourself, and no answer is readily at hand.
Don't try this in the kitchen, at a fancy party, or anywhere near a microphone tuned in to catch the latest palaver from a politician.
What exactly is word salad, and why should you worry about it?
Well, word salad is what happens when either lack of preparation, failure of education, lack or refusal to read, and inability to string thoughts together all smoosh together in front of crowds, video cameras linked directly to YouTube, or when you're trying to impress someone, or worst of all, when you need to get something done.
I am sticking to oldies but goodies here for a reason.
It is similar to Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbling through the answer to, "what is your favorite "word"," and coming up with a meandering answer that misses points on cogent, but might have managed to offend believers and non-believers alike. Check it out by clicking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSko2ixEB8U&feature=related.
The favorite word is the word -- is the word-- is the word -- is the word...[cue sound of phonograph needle scratching record.] Mercifully it ended. But not before critics got ahold of it, and used it a day or two to bash the faith of Ms. Pelosi, and tried to make her statement into something akin to Christo-fascists taking over the government. This all happened when all reality has and remains pointing the other way round, and making our Speaker briefly, the then latest victim of Faith Bashing.
The favorite word of the Speaker is the Word. As in Word of God. As in Word made Flesh. As in Jesus the Christ. As in God, Son and Holy Ghost. The Word. Many meanings. Of course, not once did she actually say all of what I have said. She did make a vague "gospel reference," which she was sure "everyone knew." And went on and on about her favorite word being "the Word."
Not likely that everyone knows that reference these days, and for that reason, the Word word is word salad in so many ears.
The word salad debacle hit Sarah Palin when she entered a world of spymasters and national security, implying she could check out Vladimir Putin's barbecue technique from her Alaska backyard. And no, the Northern Lights were not going to interfere with her spying prowess.
Word salad can be fun. After all, it keeps late night comedians in business.
It makes high school debates interesting. It can make college lectures entertaining. In the well of the Senate or on the Floor of the House, it can unveil true intent. Sometimes.
All too rarely. But it does happen.
Reality gets into that Word Salad Bowl, tosses a few greenbacks around, spins like a whirlwind of truth, and the ease or unease with which the word salad hits the plate reveals so much.
Ms. Palin was pretty comfortable in her spying revelations. Ms. Pelosi appeared not so much at ease with her encounter in the spinning word salad bowl. She was searching.
And there you have the essence of good word salad. It reveals, without the guile of dressing the words up, the real intent of the salad maker. Ease with it means either it's a good joke or a far too serious impossible view of reality. Unease reveals an internal search.
And intelligent chef notices. Just as an intelligent chef knows when something is missing, or is too much in the dish, the maker of word salad uses the moment to continue the search until the answer to the question brought about in that tossing about, that tilt-oh-whirl of verbiage mixed and spun, leads to an answer found, certainty established, the world righted.
Let's hope that by the time the first course is over, the answer is either found, or at least identified, so that it can be truly made one's own later. That is always the way with questions posed in public to yourself, and no answer is readily at hand.
Monday, August 9, 2010
A Note To Readers
You will notice that there are now ads running on the Muse.
The reason is simple. The Muse in hungry and wants to eat.
Regularly.
And, the Muse also wants you to be able to click on some news headlines, be able to find a book, perhaps find a job for yourself or your son-in-law or your daughter. It's all just information.
I thought long and hard about this change, and decided that adding some adverts was not the worst thing in the world. Click on a few of them. Let me know how they work. Let me know if you want a different focus to the ads, or you want different forms of information.
I'm working on a comment section that will allow more conversation on this blog, and less of the pronouncements. My posts are ideas for thinking, and if you'd like, write back about how those posts are striking you on any given day. They all come from news that I read, editorials I read or hear, or sometimes a funny story from a neighbor.
Remember, the Muse is interested in what you think, how you think, and ways to help you think clearly.
As one of my professors once said, even a muddled thought can bring about clear thinking.
The reason is simple. The Muse in hungry and wants to eat.
Regularly.
And, the Muse also wants you to be able to click on some news headlines, be able to find a book, perhaps find a job for yourself or your son-in-law or your daughter. It's all just information.
I thought long and hard about this change, and decided that adding some adverts was not the worst thing in the world. Click on a few of them. Let me know how they work. Let me know if you want a different focus to the ads, or you want different forms of information.
I'm working on a comment section that will allow more conversation on this blog, and less of the pronouncements. My posts are ideas for thinking, and if you'd like, write back about how those posts are striking you on any given day. They all come from news that I read, editorials I read or hear, or sometimes a funny story from a neighbor.
Remember, the Muse is interested in what you think, how you think, and ways to help you think clearly.
As one of my professors once said, even a muddled thought can bring about clear thinking.
Learning Is Easy--Making Sense of What You Know?
Well, that's a whole different part of the Zeitgeist. It's like being the only person in the neighborhood understanding flotation when the water's rising, you've got the fixings to make a boat, and everyone is going into full panic mode. What do you do?
Slap someone silly, grab the paddle and hope for the best? Slap yourself silly and tell yourself that panic is the normal thing to do? Just grab the paddles, hop in the boat, making sure you have the stuff, pets, water and food that will make survival possible, and get moving?
Well, yes.
Pick one, and just do it.
Make a decision and do it. Make a stand, take a position, grab a paddle, save who and what you can, and just do whatever it takes to do it.
That is the way of things these days. Survival mode 24/7.
We forget though that after the flood goes down comes the living part. The long time between crises, or the short time,. Pick one. But there is usually a gap, whether it is only long enough to catch your breath or long enough to write a book or two.
It is into that gap we must also venture, applying what we know. Teaching what we have learned. Living. It is the stuff that happens when you make other plans.
Doing it well means doing it. With a certain amount of skill, grace, wit and humor.
There are, in these days, precious few gaps between anything. Some days, it feels like none, like the busy-ness of life is the business of life, and there is no life in there at all. Just doing. Meeting crisis to crisis, until fatigue sets in.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is this. Not every challenge is a crisis. Not every thing that happens is an emergency. Not every task is urgent. Not every rain is a flood on the cusp.
And that is where making sense of it all comes in. Just there. There is time, there will be time, and you must often take the time and do it right, if you are doing something. Don't rush. Let it settle in, and do it right. From that, the sense of it will come.
Slap someone silly, grab the paddle and hope for the best? Slap yourself silly and tell yourself that panic is the normal thing to do? Just grab the paddles, hop in the boat, making sure you have the stuff, pets, water and food that will make survival possible, and get moving?
Well, yes.
Pick one, and just do it.
Make a decision and do it. Make a stand, take a position, grab a paddle, save who and what you can, and just do whatever it takes to do it.
That is the way of things these days. Survival mode 24/7.
We forget though that after the flood goes down comes the living part. The long time between crises, or the short time,. Pick one. But there is usually a gap, whether it is only long enough to catch your breath or long enough to write a book or two.
It is into that gap we must also venture, applying what we know. Teaching what we have learned. Living. It is the stuff that happens when you make other plans.
Doing it well means doing it. With a certain amount of skill, grace, wit and humor.
There are, in these days, precious few gaps between anything. Some days, it feels like none, like the busy-ness of life is the business of life, and there is no life in there at all. Just doing. Meeting crisis to crisis, until fatigue sets in.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is this. Not every challenge is a crisis. Not every thing that happens is an emergency. Not every task is urgent. Not every rain is a flood on the cusp.
And that is where making sense of it all comes in. Just there. There is time, there will be time, and you must often take the time and do it right, if you are doing something. Don't rush. Let it settle in, and do it right. From that, the sense of it will come.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
That New Skill--Yes Virginia, you need one a day
Sheesh! What is this nutzy woman talking about, one new skill a day?
Well, yes. One. Just one.
It is simple. I'm not saying you should look at a new skill in terms of say, learning to play the piano as a single skill. Learning to play the piano is complex. It is composed (sorry about that pun, it was intentional), of learning many skills. Reading music, learning key names, learning key sounds, learning chords, reading more music, fingering a chord, fingering a scale, fingering a half step, fingering a whole step, fingering a third...
It will never be the single perfect day in which you can build Rome. Or perform at Carnegie Hall, when yesterday you were looking at music as if it is a foreign language. One day is not long enough to learn to cook like Julia Child, or Jacques Pepin. Or, your grandmother.
Now, all of those steps might make sense for those who've endured that childhood staple of at least one year of piano lessons. But your parents might have allowed you to acquire other skills not quite so musical.
How about trying the 'new skill a day' in that mode. Let's try cooking. Everyone has to know how to cook something. Either that, or everyone would be learning how to lose weight really easily, or eat raw food only. That works for salads and fruit, not so much for rice and beans.
If you are learning to cook, you must already know something about eating. So, think of these skills as an expansion of your eating skills. Salads, soups, tuna surprise. All of these are foods you might know. Now expand your salad to include vegetables you might not know. Check out a salad cookbook. Ask a restaurant for a recipe, or be more adventurous. Find a dish you like, write down the ingredients, give it a try. Start with salads, as the errors there are less likely to spoil a whole meal or an expensive cut of meat, fish or even a romantic date.
You might want to look at learning to mix a salad dressing, the mixing skill alone, the mechanical way you use a fork, whisk or spoon to stir whatever it is you are putting on that salad as your one skill for the day.
There are endless options. Learn how to work a pair of pliers. Learn how to use a drill. Learn how to cut vegetables into even sizes. Learn a new way to peel tomatoes. But, not all skills are mechanical.
Teach yourself about poetry. Learn how to find poets using an index of quotations or index of first lines.
Learn about paint, whether for walls and windows or for making a Picasso like masterpiece.
How about the skills required to make a paper airplane? Or, make that airplane into Origami.
The possibilities are endless. It's only one skill a day. If you're adventurous, you can fly that salad into the freshly painted dining room, onto your newly hand painted plate, using an origami airplane in the shape of a piano.
Well, yes. One. Just one.
It is simple. I'm not saying you should look at a new skill in terms of say, learning to play the piano as a single skill. Learning to play the piano is complex. It is composed (sorry about that pun, it was intentional), of learning many skills. Reading music, learning key names, learning key sounds, learning chords, reading more music, fingering a chord, fingering a scale, fingering a half step, fingering a whole step, fingering a third...
It will never be the single perfect day in which you can build Rome. Or perform at Carnegie Hall, when yesterday you were looking at music as if it is a foreign language. One day is not long enough to learn to cook like Julia Child, or Jacques Pepin. Or, your grandmother.
Now, all of those steps might make sense for those who've endured that childhood staple of at least one year of piano lessons. But your parents might have allowed you to acquire other skills not quite so musical.
How about trying the 'new skill a day' in that mode. Let's try cooking. Everyone has to know how to cook something. Either that, or everyone would be learning how to lose weight really easily, or eat raw food only. That works for salads and fruit, not so much for rice and beans.
If you are learning to cook, you must already know something about eating. So, think of these skills as an expansion of your eating skills. Salads, soups, tuna surprise. All of these are foods you might know. Now expand your salad to include vegetables you might not know. Check out a salad cookbook. Ask a restaurant for a recipe, or be more adventurous. Find a dish you like, write down the ingredients, give it a try. Start with salads, as the errors there are less likely to spoil a whole meal or an expensive cut of meat, fish or even a romantic date.
You might want to look at learning to mix a salad dressing, the mixing skill alone, the mechanical way you use a fork, whisk or spoon to stir whatever it is you are putting on that salad as your one skill for the day.
There are endless options. Learn how to work a pair of pliers. Learn how to use a drill. Learn how to cut vegetables into even sizes. Learn a new way to peel tomatoes. But, not all skills are mechanical.
Teach yourself about poetry. Learn how to find poets using an index of quotations or index of first lines.
Learn about paint, whether for walls and windows or for making a Picasso like masterpiece.
How about the skills required to make a paper airplane? Or, make that airplane into Origami.
The possibilities are endless. It's only one skill a day. If you're adventurous, you can fly that salad into the freshly painted dining room, onto your newly hand painted plate, using an origami airplane in the shape of a piano.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Take Back By Giving to Yourself
It is not easy. It won't be simple. But all the bellyaching about the state of the Union can be remedied in large part by an informed electorate. Education is information brought into the brain. Read. That's how it is done. And what follows is a proposal giving a reason to read. It is an opinion only. Read it. Read more, and come back to comment.
What? Something Else Is Rotten In the Swamp?
Back in the day, communalism was viewed more as a way to look at communism, a way of life involving sharing within small communities such as communes, communal housing, and so on, than it was viewed as a radical means or guide to remaking all of American society to communism. That is not to say those first proponents of communism had the small "c" communalism more in mind than the large "C", Communism as was envisioned and brought about so as to concentrate the power at the top of the financial food chain, while all below got to 'share' what was left.
Communism, always a favorite of the bankers, was a great way to govern all the people, while keeping the banker firmly at the top of the heap, controlling the dosh, the money, the filthy lucre.
Unfortunately, communal living, as in the shared lifestyle for a house or small community, such as is found in history from the original creation of America where small farming communities were working to make everyone successful by shared harvest duties, shared barn building and shared foods through barter and trade has little if anything to do with Communism as a governmental system. What has happened in the US is a gradual increase in the power of central bankers, who are the only ones that benefit most from Communism.
Post WWII, the Russian bloc was set up for communism, which became Communism, by the activities of what is now known in this country as the "banksters," the larger central bankers that make the most profit from the despair and losses of the little people while the oligarchy gets rich.
In the same period, capitalism was rampant and encouraged in the West, which only meant that the central banksters worked the system to enrich the 1 percent at the top. And, at the same time, Capitalism, large “C” was meant to be ever shifted to whatever worked to make the banker king.
In all, sort of a heads I win, tails you lose sort of system.
In the US, the growing amount of wealth of the top 1-5 percent is not just growing--it's on steroids.
When either capitalism or communism becomes a ruling by the oligarchy, or corporatism, both systems shift toward what Mussolini called National Socialism, or Fascism.
Welcome to exactly that in the US. We have shifted away from the Republic, and Franklin was proven right. We had a Republic, but lost it when the corporations won their nearly iron fisted control. We have embraced the policies of the non-majority, who have now shifted the policies of the US to the very fascistic type of communism that eventually became so popular in the Russian communist system, and which became the very Oligarchs that ruled in the Russian Federation after they 'dumped' communism.
In the end, those that control the money system run the government. Always was such and will always be such in any nation that forgets the power is in the masses, and where the nation forgets that the Rule of Law is King. In the US, we have forgotten the rule of law, and have allowed a tiered system of law enforcement, which has ultimately shifted us to corporate rule, rather than rule by people.
This Republic of the United States has abrogated its control of the money, by allowing the Fed Reserve to do that which is limited power given only to the Congress in the Constitution. So, we have the international bank, which is the very private Federal Reserve, doing what Congress is granted sole authority to do, which is issue and control money.
In the end, Communism–whether original Bolsevik/Bankster style or from the Central Committee, the provender is really not run by the people, any more than our own Republic is governed by the people. Look at the recent Citizen’s United case from the pen of the Supreme Court. The notion of a corporation being equal to a person is absurd, for a corporation cannot have a pulse, does not breathe, does not eat food, is not counted as a person in the Census. Yet, corporations have the same or greater power of speech based upon their monetary wealth. All of this corporate personhood stems from the footnotes of a clerk, not the Justices themselves. All that history has been forgotten, even by the very Justices themselves, save the most clear denunciation of Justice Stevens, the one being replaced by Elena Kagan.
Welcome to Amerika. The central bankers and their cohort have now clearly won the day. They shall not win the entire battle though if we can get back to the Republic, reclaim the Constitution in exile, and reform the Court, the Congress and the Executive, to remove the oligarches from their power. We must do this, in addition to reminding America that this is a nation under God, not under the rule of the likes of BP, Goldman Sachs, or AIG.
If we fail to act, we shall reap what we have sown, which is a further degradation or elimination of the middle class, the elimination of the rights of people, and the further encroachment of the international bankers in the running of this nation. We need to root out and send out all who desire to make this Republic into a communist nation, a socialist nation, a fascist nation. We are unique. We are the first and only nation that has had the potential of running the nation as a Republic by, of and for the people.
It is much more complex, thousands of times more complex, and yet it is also simple.
All that is required is an informed electorate, not a sloganeering, jingoistic, sound bitten to the point of being pulped by the press, electorate.
To that end, read about it. Start with a good history of the founding of the republic of the USA. Read the Federalist Papers. Read the decisions of the Supreme Court. Check out the cases they cite. All is online.
Read the history of the constitutional history of the US. Read the history of what led to WWI, WWII and the founding of the Russian Communist system.
Lots of books are out there. Find them online.
And read. Read. READ!
What? Something Else Is Rotten In the Swamp?
Back in the day, communalism was viewed more as a way to look at communism, a way of life involving sharing within small communities such as communes, communal housing, and so on, than it was viewed as a radical means or guide to remaking all of American society to communism. That is not to say those first proponents of communism had the small "c" communalism more in mind than the large "C", Communism as was envisioned and brought about so as to concentrate the power at the top of the financial food chain, while all below got to 'share' what was left.
Communism, always a favorite of the bankers, was a great way to govern all the people, while keeping the banker firmly at the top of the heap, controlling the dosh, the money, the filthy lucre.
Unfortunately, communal living, as in the shared lifestyle for a house or small community, such as is found in history from the original creation of America where small farming communities were working to make everyone successful by shared harvest duties, shared barn building and shared foods through barter and trade has little if anything to do with Communism as a governmental system. What has happened in the US is a gradual increase in the power of central bankers, who are the only ones that benefit most from Communism.
Post WWII, the Russian bloc was set up for communism, which became Communism, by the activities of what is now known in this country as the "banksters," the larger central bankers that make the most profit from the despair and losses of the little people while the oligarchy gets rich.
In the same period, capitalism was rampant and encouraged in the West, which only meant that the central banksters worked the system to enrich the 1 percent at the top. And, at the same time, Capitalism, large “C” was meant to be ever shifted to whatever worked to make the banker king.
In all, sort of a heads I win, tails you lose sort of system.
In the US, the growing amount of wealth of the top 1-5 percent is not just growing--it's on steroids.
When either capitalism or communism becomes a ruling by the oligarchy, or corporatism, both systems shift toward what Mussolini called National Socialism, or Fascism.
Welcome to exactly that in the US. We have shifted away from the Republic, and Franklin was proven right. We had a Republic, but lost it when the corporations won their nearly iron fisted control. We have embraced the policies of the non-majority, who have now shifted the policies of the US to the very fascistic type of communism that eventually became so popular in the Russian communist system, and which became the very Oligarchs that ruled in the Russian Federation after they 'dumped' communism.
In the end, those that control the money system run the government. Always was such and will always be such in any nation that forgets the power is in the masses, and where the nation forgets that the Rule of Law is King. In the US, we have forgotten the rule of law, and have allowed a tiered system of law enforcement, which has ultimately shifted us to corporate rule, rather than rule by people.
This Republic of the United States has abrogated its control of the money, by allowing the Fed Reserve to do that which is limited power given only to the Congress in the Constitution. So, we have the international bank, which is the very private Federal Reserve, doing what Congress is granted sole authority to do, which is issue and control money.
In the end, Communism–whether original Bolsevik/Bankster style or from the Central Committee, the provender is really not run by the people, any more than our own Republic is governed by the people. Look at the recent Citizen’s United case from the pen of the Supreme Court. The notion of a corporation being equal to a person is absurd, for a corporation cannot have a pulse, does not breathe, does not eat food, is not counted as a person in the Census. Yet, corporations have the same or greater power of speech based upon their monetary wealth. All of this corporate personhood stems from the footnotes of a clerk, not the Justices themselves. All that history has been forgotten, even by the very Justices themselves, save the most clear denunciation of Justice Stevens, the one being replaced by Elena Kagan.
Welcome to Amerika. The central bankers and their cohort have now clearly won the day. They shall not win the entire battle though if we can get back to the Republic, reclaim the Constitution in exile, and reform the Court, the Congress and the Executive, to remove the oligarches from their power. We must do this, in addition to reminding America that this is a nation under God, not under the rule of the likes of BP, Goldman Sachs, or AIG.
If we fail to act, we shall reap what we have sown, which is a further degradation or elimination of the middle class, the elimination of the rights of people, and the further encroachment of the international bankers in the running of this nation. We need to root out and send out all who desire to make this Republic into a communist nation, a socialist nation, a fascist nation. We are unique. We are the first and only nation that has had the potential of running the nation as a Republic by, of and for the people.
It is much more complex, thousands of times more complex, and yet it is also simple.
All that is required is an informed electorate, not a sloganeering, jingoistic, sound bitten to the point of being pulped by the press, electorate.
To that end, read about it. Start with a good history of the founding of the republic of the USA. Read the Federalist Papers. Read the decisions of the Supreme Court. Check out the cases they cite. All is online.
Read the history of the constitutional history of the US. Read the history of what led to WWI, WWII and the founding of the Russian Communist system.
Lots of books are out there. Find them online.
And read. Read. READ!
Friday, August 6, 2010
In Less Than A Month...
school will begin for most families in the US.
I meant families. Not just students.
It is more than a page turning on the calendar. It is the true new beginning that so many seek.
New Year's Day has its resolutions. Labor Day is the real beginning.
Sure, we start the school year in advance of that hallowed day that ends the summer in most of the northern tier of states, and while Labor Day is just a day in September, it remains the marker that starts off the learning. The week before, if your family has a student, or many students in school, is still a beginning.
Let this year begin with education for all. Everyone in the family has a job.
This year in a climate of high unemployment, take up your additional job for 2010, the job that will close the year on a more positive note for all in your family.
Set aside an hour a day to read. By read, I mean deeply take in the words on a page of a book. Not a magazine, a comic or a five page something between the covers of heavier paper that claims to be a book. I mean a real book.
Learn something new.
Get a new skill.
Are you trying to economize? Who isn't. But learn how to save some money on reading. Go to the library.
Take the kids. Make an afternoon of it. Bring the neighbor kids that don't otherwise know where the library is.
Buy one of those 'ten for a dollar' notebooks at your favorite discount shop. Get some pens.
Read that book. At the end of each chapter, write what you have read.
Take notes.
As at least one question of yourself about what was on those pages you just finished.
Turn off the TeeVee Machine.
Read another book.
Every week of the month of September, read one new book.
Then, read poetry to the children that are going to bed. Read a fairy tale to them. Read.
Read a new book every week. Change the subject of what you are reading about every week until you find a subject that interests you.
Discuss what you have read. Trade the book you are reading with your spouse, your teenage daughter, your teenage son.
Read the Constitution to each other at the dinner table. Discuss it.
Read the Bill of Rights, and read a newspaper about what is going on in the law.
Read a book about the history of your town, your city, your state.
Find out something new about Lincoln. Learn about the history of the automobile you drive. Learn about the fight to protect the air and water. Learn about the corporations and how companies are structured.
Read.
Read more.
Read more again.
Do not turn out that light until you have finished at least one chapter.
Read whatever your children are reading in school, and discuss those books with them at dinner. Ask questions about those same books as you drive them to their school, walk them to the school bus or walk with them to school.
No matter what, make this the year of the book, the school year of the book. You'll be smarter for it.
Suggestions for reading will follow. Read the suggestions. Then read the books.
I meant families. Not just students.
It is more than a page turning on the calendar. It is the true new beginning that so many seek.
New Year's Day has its resolutions. Labor Day is the real beginning.
Sure, we start the school year in advance of that hallowed day that ends the summer in most of the northern tier of states, and while Labor Day is just a day in September, it remains the marker that starts off the learning. The week before, if your family has a student, or many students in school, is still a beginning.
Let this year begin with education for all. Everyone in the family has a job.
This year in a climate of high unemployment, take up your additional job for 2010, the job that will close the year on a more positive note for all in your family.
Set aside an hour a day to read. By read, I mean deeply take in the words on a page of a book. Not a magazine, a comic or a five page something between the covers of heavier paper that claims to be a book. I mean a real book.
Learn something new.
Get a new skill.
Are you trying to economize? Who isn't. But learn how to save some money on reading. Go to the library.
Take the kids. Make an afternoon of it. Bring the neighbor kids that don't otherwise know where the library is.
Buy one of those 'ten for a dollar' notebooks at your favorite discount shop. Get some pens.
Read that book. At the end of each chapter, write what you have read.
Take notes.
As at least one question of yourself about what was on those pages you just finished.
Turn off the TeeVee Machine.
Read another book.
Every week of the month of September, read one new book.
Then, read poetry to the children that are going to bed. Read a fairy tale to them. Read.
Read a new book every week. Change the subject of what you are reading about every week until you find a subject that interests you.
Discuss what you have read. Trade the book you are reading with your spouse, your teenage daughter, your teenage son.
Read the Constitution to each other at the dinner table. Discuss it.
Read the Bill of Rights, and read a newspaper about what is going on in the law.
Read a book about the history of your town, your city, your state.
Find out something new about Lincoln. Learn about the history of the automobile you drive. Learn about the fight to protect the air and water. Learn about the corporations and how companies are structured.
Read.
Read more.
Read more again.
Do not turn out that light until you have finished at least one chapter.
Read whatever your children are reading in school, and discuss those books with them at dinner. Ask questions about those same books as you drive them to their school, walk them to the school bus or walk with them to school.
No matter what, make this the year of the book, the school year of the book. You'll be smarter for it.
Suggestions for reading will follow. Read the suggestions. Then read the books.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Cake Eaters Need a Rebuilt Cake
We are a nation that has historically abhorred the notion of royalty. We rejected that crazy man in the 18th Century, whose goal was to make, keep and control us through taxation, fealty, and loyalty to a distant crown.
We rejected, as a matter of survival, the notion of the top owning all and the middle being none, with the poor and the rich making up a simple two tier society. It happened after the Great Depression, and those born in those times grew up to be the Greatest Generation. That Generation fought World War II, and thought they defeated the Nazis, the fascists, the control grid that was national socialistic in character, and the results were a number of genocidal campaigns. We rejected the policies that brought about the Holocaust, an horrific period that is not further relevant here.
At the end of World War II, we felt and embraced peace. For a few years, we had no war, almost. But upon establishing the large standing army, the Defense Department, the Defense Industry and the Weapons Makers as the huge, and ever growing portion of our economy, we embarked upon policies that have kept this nation at perpetual war.
We paid no attention to the speech of President Eisenhower when he counseled against perpetuation of the Military Industrial Complex, and let it grow baby, grow.
We also bought into Oil as a limited resource, despite huge evidence to the contrary of abiotic oil, as found by the Russians in all sorts of places that shouldn't have any black gold flowing in any pipes.
We have purchased as a nation, many notions that now appear quaint in retrospect, but which still hold sway with a huge number of our fellow countrymen. We still have racism, sexism, and a slew of national bogeymen. Or bogey-women.
Yet our greatest enemy is not the one under the bed, the scarcity in the fuel tank, or the notion that America is the policeman of the world. Not of themselves, that is. Our greatest enemy is taking from Americans to build other economies while neglecting the very foundations of our nation.
We mistake assisting others to achieve a representative government, with the control of those nations as colonies of Empire. We mistake our fights as "for democracy and freedom" as our freedoms are eroded here at home and those abroad are also less able to govern themselves because our assistance, wanted or not, comes at a price. That price is debt.
Same here at home. Debt is our Master, we are its slaves.
Here in the "Homeland," a distinctly odious phrase to those with ears that hurt when National Socialistic phraseology enters the American lexicon, the top 1 percent own more than the bottom 40 percent. The top 5 percent, own most of what the bottom 80 percent otherwise claim. And that is my setting forth shrinking statistics for the bottom end only. The top is growing like Topsy. Economically that is.
Our formerly industrial economy is turning into a service economy, where the only service is to make money for the money makers. Debt service, insurance, banking, and other financial related services are what we do these days. As the greatest debtor nation in history, our government is an ever growing part of the economy.
Recent bailouts and 'nationalizations' of industries have made the government the largest employer or controller of parts of the economy. Health care, auto, banking, securities, and many other industries are now owned by, controlled by, or so regulated by the government as to be government run. Add to that the offshoring, the exportation of jobs to lower wage areas and you have the run for the money taking jobs from our own home areas, our "homeland," to feed the top of the top of the top.
That top of the top is like the top of the cake. And let them eat cake is the operative phrase.
What the top tier, and the bottom tier, do not openly communicate is this one fact. The top tier of the cake cannot be at the top without the support of the lower layers. The masses, forming the lower tiers of the American cake, support the top layer, just as the larger lower layers support the capstone of the pyramid.
They cannot stay up there without us. They need us and our money to make their money.
And how do we flip this upside down distribution of wealth, to get a larger share of the wealth to flow to the supporting layers without resorting to communistic or socialistic systems? Look back at what happened before the Greatest Generation became the Greatest Generation.
Back then, we had projects that built that which cannot be outsourced. We built roads, bridges and infrastructure. Sure it is the unglamorous part of building, with the fripperies and finishes being so much more fun to contemplate and far more beautiful to the eye.
But, our infrastructure is failing. Floods warnings are nearly a weekly event in the Chicago area. Bridges have fallen, basements have flooded, dams have burst. Others are at risk for us all.
What will you do when the only road to the grocery is blocked because a bridge washed out? How about that ambulance you need if you are injured or sick? You don't need to be injured in the actual falling bridge situation to be adversely affected by infrastructure failure.
We must demand that our government take some of the money they lavishly spent on bankers in those massive crises of the past years and put it into building the very foundations that are now in disrepair due to age and neglect.
These are not things that can be brought in from China. No one across any ocean can go to work there and build a sewer pipe in Iowa. Can't happen. Location, location, location.
Let us not despair and do the handwringing over the lavish expenditures of celebrity weddings and faux royalty being feted at celebrations.
Rather, let us celebrate a rebuilding of the nation. Starting at the foundations, let us build the piping, roads and structures that make this nation great. Using American workers, let's get off the bailout bandwagon and get on the building of American back to her status of a first nation among the top of the best. We did it in the 30's and can do it again.
We know, as Americans, that our nation, our sovereign nation, is to be protected as a discreet nation, not a member of a global government. We don't want the world as our nation, we want our borders kept legally, our people as our people, and what is 'over there' to stay over there. We, as Americans, want to rebuild the American economy, and if we need to prop up our infrastructure as a first step in rebuilding our vanishing industry, then let's do it.
Forget international banksters. Keep the money here. Use our labor to make our nation great. Forget about all the CAFTA, NAFTA, GATT and other multi-national, sovereignty sapping treaties that have weakened our economy, and let's build what we know how to build best. American engineers and industries made the best roads since Rome. Let us not let the failures of our infrastructure kill off this great nation.
Let us pull back from our Imperial ambitions as the New Rome, and become the New Home Nation. Houses, like nations, must both be built on strong foundations. We've got money for bankers, so transfer some of that to infrastructure, and infuse the economy with work to rebuild what we have sadly neglected too long.
This will put people to work, which itself creates more jobs. As we build, demand for more grows. Building builds economies. Simple stuff. Let's pick up that shovel, and get going!
We rejected, as a matter of survival, the notion of the top owning all and the middle being none, with the poor and the rich making up a simple two tier society. It happened after the Great Depression, and those born in those times grew up to be the Greatest Generation. That Generation fought World War II, and thought they defeated the Nazis, the fascists, the control grid that was national socialistic in character, and the results were a number of genocidal campaigns. We rejected the policies that brought about the Holocaust, an horrific period that is not further relevant here.
At the end of World War II, we felt and embraced peace. For a few years, we had no war, almost. But upon establishing the large standing army, the Defense Department, the Defense Industry and the Weapons Makers as the huge, and ever growing portion of our economy, we embarked upon policies that have kept this nation at perpetual war.
We paid no attention to the speech of President Eisenhower when he counseled against perpetuation of the Military Industrial Complex, and let it grow baby, grow.
We also bought into Oil as a limited resource, despite huge evidence to the contrary of abiotic oil, as found by the Russians in all sorts of places that shouldn't have any black gold flowing in any pipes.
We have purchased as a nation, many notions that now appear quaint in retrospect, but which still hold sway with a huge number of our fellow countrymen. We still have racism, sexism, and a slew of national bogeymen. Or bogey-women.
Yet our greatest enemy is not the one under the bed, the scarcity in the fuel tank, or the notion that America is the policeman of the world. Not of themselves, that is. Our greatest enemy is taking from Americans to build other economies while neglecting the very foundations of our nation.
We mistake assisting others to achieve a representative government, with the control of those nations as colonies of Empire. We mistake our fights as "for democracy and freedom" as our freedoms are eroded here at home and those abroad are also less able to govern themselves because our assistance, wanted or not, comes at a price. That price is debt.
Same here at home. Debt is our Master, we are its slaves.
Here in the "Homeland," a distinctly odious phrase to those with ears that hurt when National Socialistic phraseology enters the American lexicon, the top 1 percent own more than the bottom 40 percent. The top 5 percent, own most of what the bottom 80 percent otherwise claim. And that is my setting forth shrinking statistics for the bottom end only. The top is growing like Topsy. Economically that is.
Our formerly industrial economy is turning into a service economy, where the only service is to make money for the money makers. Debt service, insurance, banking, and other financial related services are what we do these days. As the greatest debtor nation in history, our government is an ever growing part of the economy.
Recent bailouts and 'nationalizations' of industries have made the government the largest employer or controller of parts of the economy. Health care, auto, banking, securities, and many other industries are now owned by, controlled by, or so regulated by the government as to be government run. Add to that the offshoring, the exportation of jobs to lower wage areas and you have the run for the money taking jobs from our own home areas, our "homeland," to feed the top of the top of the top.
That top of the top is like the top of the cake. And let them eat cake is the operative phrase.
What the top tier, and the bottom tier, do not openly communicate is this one fact. The top tier of the cake cannot be at the top without the support of the lower layers. The masses, forming the lower tiers of the American cake, support the top layer, just as the larger lower layers support the capstone of the pyramid.
They cannot stay up there without us. They need us and our money to make their money.
And how do we flip this upside down distribution of wealth, to get a larger share of the wealth to flow to the supporting layers without resorting to communistic or socialistic systems? Look back at what happened before the Greatest Generation became the Greatest Generation.
Back then, we had projects that built that which cannot be outsourced. We built roads, bridges and infrastructure. Sure it is the unglamorous part of building, with the fripperies and finishes being so much more fun to contemplate and far more beautiful to the eye.
But, our infrastructure is failing. Floods warnings are nearly a weekly event in the Chicago area. Bridges have fallen, basements have flooded, dams have burst. Others are at risk for us all.
What will you do when the only road to the grocery is blocked because a bridge washed out? How about that ambulance you need if you are injured or sick? You don't need to be injured in the actual falling bridge situation to be adversely affected by infrastructure failure.
We must demand that our government take some of the money they lavishly spent on bankers in those massive crises of the past years and put it into building the very foundations that are now in disrepair due to age and neglect.
These are not things that can be brought in from China. No one across any ocean can go to work there and build a sewer pipe in Iowa. Can't happen. Location, location, location.
Let us not despair and do the handwringing over the lavish expenditures of celebrity weddings and faux royalty being feted at celebrations.
Rather, let us celebrate a rebuilding of the nation. Starting at the foundations, let us build the piping, roads and structures that make this nation great. Using American workers, let's get off the bailout bandwagon and get on the building of American back to her status of a first nation among the top of the best. We did it in the 30's and can do it again.
We know, as Americans, that our nation, our sovereign nation, is to be protected as a discreet nation, not a member of a global government. We don't want the world as our nation, we want our borders kept legally, our people as our people, and what is 'over there' to stay over there. We, as Americans, want to rebuild the American economy, and if we need to prop up our infrastructure as a first step in rebuilding our vanishing industry, then let's do it.
Forget international banksters. Keep the money here. Use our labor to make our nation great. Forget about all the CAFTA, NAFTA, GATT and other multi-national, sovereignty sapping treaties that have weakened our economy, and let's build what we know how to build best. American engineers and industries made the best roads since Rome. Let us not let the failures of our infrastructure kill off this great nation.
Let us pull back from our Imperial ambitions as the New Rome, and become the New Home Nation. Houses, like nations, must both be built on strong foundations. We've got money for bankers, so transfer some of that to infrastructure, and infuse the economy with work to rebuild what we have sadly neglected too long.
This will put people to work, which itself creates more jobs. As we build, demand for more grows. Building builds economies. Simple stuff. Let's pick up that shovel, and get going!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Love Lived Large Last Weekend
This last weekend, we saw our American "Royalty" put on a big shindig for the marriage of the former First Daughter and the love of her life. I wish them well.
Not a single stop was unpulled in the lavish extravaganza held on the former Astor estate. That location gave away the unspoken reality of the day. Guests and the press were feted to the tune of a few million dollars for a days celebration. Some press reports had it higher than that, ranging to breathless reports of, gasp!, $5 Million. Dollars.
One day, more than a million to conduct the nuptials. (More than $3 Mil? $7 Million? I don't know, and after that first million mark is passed, it really doesn't matter much at all. It makes those $2500 weddings where brides make their own dresses, men appear in nice dark suits, everyone goes pot luck for the reception, except for a cake made by a friend, seem well, wonderfully real.)
Well gee. That was a lot of cake, party favors, party clothes, sealed airspace, secret service (which apparently was the US taxpayers contribution to the family), and well, it was adding up to real money.
Paul Craig Roberts, formerly of the Reagan administration, brought up the 'let them eat cake' aspect of the day. Paul Craig Roberts -- Counterpunch
Formerly of the Reagan Treasury Department, Mr Roberts understands very well the concept of, a million here, a million there--pretty soon you're talking about real money. Any wedding that cost that much is up in the realm of, why are young people, starting out like this, spending this kind of money? And where did the parents of the couple get that kind of money, 'cuz we know one side of the couple have been in public service for the past umpteen years.
The thing of weddings is this. None of the money ever matters. The whole ceremony could have been done for much less dosh, and achieved the same result. The marriage.
Yep. $$$$$$$$$$ or $, the result is the same. Love is the ruler of the day and a young couple take a giant step into a future together. Bound to each other by love, promises, and faith that love will last.
Ms. Clinton looked radiant, the guests looked radiant, the former President and the Secretary of State were beaming. All in all, it was a successful day for marriage, lavish as it was, and a wedding did what weddings are supposed to do.
The ultimate message of weddings is a simple recitation of faith, that love will prevail, new beginnings are real, two people take a leap of faith undergirded by love for each other and faith that this one, this one partner is the partner for life.
The next day, reality might set in for them. Maybe it won't really set in for them for years to come. One can only hope they keep the strong feeling of being so "in love" as the years and decades go by. I hope that in fifty years, they are sitting with the grandkids, staring fondly at the other and saying, yes, that was quite a day, and I'm thankful for it every day of my life.
For those of us that helped make that celebration as lavish and wonderful as it was, the reality on our lawns, sidewalks, or verandas has not changed. We are stuck. But we got just a glimpse of the party. Just a glimpse, and so many wanted so much more.
No one is throwing parties for the American People. We still have our families, our friends, the fortunate fewer and fewer have work they love, money coming in regularly.
All that said, the wedding was a grand reminder that love can conquer all, love can make the world gather together (at that gazillionaire-worthy mansion), and the rest of us 'cake eaters' will have to adjust. We need to remember that, with all weddings, the magic is the two people getting married, not the expense of the event.
Party time is over, so let's all get back to making this country work again. We've had the "big wedding," the young and in love are honeymooning somewhere or other, and for us the rains are bringing flooding, the dispersants in the Gulf have done, and are doing, some horrible damage, and bank accounts need filling for the not so rich. But we forget all that in the moment, viewing pictures of the bride walking down the aisle on the arm of her father.
As we should.
And next time a princess gets married, remember this. In America we have no royalty. We have people that want to live like, throw parties like, or behave like royalty. So what?
It doesn't matter. All we need is to keep reminding ourselves that here in the US of A, the Constitution is King, the rule of law our royal court, and at the end of every day, love will win out every time. Sometimes, the only love around is love for America. Sometimes it is love for another individual, or a family. Love finds a way to shine through, whether on a wedding day or a work day.
Chelsea and Mark, best wishes to you both. You are fortunate to have found love, and fortunate to have one another.
Not a single stop was unpulled in the lavish extravaganza held on the former Astor estate. That location gave away the unspoken reality of the day. Guests and the press were feted to the tune of a few million dollars for a days celebration. Some press reports had it higher than that, ranging to breathless reports of, gasp!, $5 Million. Dollars.
One day, more than a million to conduct the nuptials. (More than $3 Mil? $7 Million? I don't know, and after that first million mark is passed, it really doesn't matter much at all. It makes those $2500 weddings where brides make their own dresses, men appear in nice dark suits, everyone goes pot luck for the reception, except for a cake made by a friend, seem well, wonderfully real.)
Well gee. That was a lot of cake, party favors, party clothes, sealed airspace, secret service (which apparently was the US taxpayers contribution to the family), and well, it was adding up to real money.
Paul Craig Roberts, formerly of the Reagan administration, brought up the 'let them eat cake' aspect of the day. Paul Craig Roberts -- Counterpunch
Formerly of the Reagan Treasury Department, Mr Roberts understands very well the concept of, a million here, a million there--pretty soon you're talking about real money. Any wedding that cost that much is up in the realm of, why are young people, starting out like this, spending this kind of money? And where did the parents of the couple get that kind of money, 'cuz we know one side of the couple have been in public service for the past umpteen years.
The thing of weddings is this. None of the money ever matters. The whole ceremony could have been done for much less dosh, and achieved the same result. The marriage.
Yep. $$$$$$$$$$ or $, the result is the same. Love is the ruler of the day and a young couple take a giant step into a future together. Bound to each other by love, promises, and faith that love will last.
Ms. Clinton looked radiant, the guests looked radiant, the former President and the Secretary of State were beaming. All in all, it was a successful day for marriage, lavish as it was, and a wedding did what weddings are supposed to do.
The ultimate message of weddings is a simple recitation of faith, that love will prevail, new beginnings are real, two people take a leap of faith undergirded by love for each other and faith that this one, this one partner is the partner for life.
The next day, reality might set in for them. Maybe it won't really set in for them for years to come. One can only hope they keep the strong feeling of being so "in love" as the years and decades go by. I hope that in fifty years, they are sitting with the grandkids, staring fondly at the other and saying, yes, that was quite a day, and I'm thankful for it every day of my life.
For those of us that helped make that celebration as lavish and wonderful as it was, the reality on our lawns, sidewalks, or verandas has not changed. We are stuck. But we got just a glimpse of the party. Just a glimpse, and so many wanted so much more.
No one is throwing parties for the American People. We still have our families, our friends, the fortunate fewer and fewer have work they love, money coming in regularly.
All that said, the wedding was a grand reminder that love can conquer all, love can make the world gather together (at that gazillionaire-worthy mansion), and the rest of us 'cake eaters' will have to adjust. We need to remember that, with all weddings, the magic is the two people getting married, not the expense of the event.
Party time is over, so let's all get back to making this country work again. We've had the "big wedding," the young and in love are honeymooning somewhere or other, and for us the rains are bringing flooding, the dispersants in the Gulf have done, and are doing, some horrible damage, and bank accounts need filling for the not so rich. But we forget all that in the moment, viewing pictures of the bride walking down the aisle on the arm of her father.
As we should.
And next time a princess gets married, remember this. In America we have no royalty. We have people that want to live like, throw parties like, or behave like royalty. So what?
It doesn't matter. All we need is to keep reminding ourselves that here in the US of A, the Constitution is King, the rule of law our royal court, and at the end of every day, love will win out every time. Sometimes, the only love around is love for America. Sometimes it is love for another individual, or a family. Love finds a way to shine through, whether on a wedding day or a work day.
Chelsea and Mark, best wishes to you both. You are fortunate to have found love, and fortunate to have one another.
Friday, July 30, 2010
AN OFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE -- if you're a student, parent or stuck analyzing something for work or school--and more
Critical thinking.
Thinking.
Reasoning.
Skills.
Students at work.
Workers learning about issues or problems that need to be solved, worked out, worked on, written about. If those are issues for you, then let me help you out.
Brain growing.
Yep. All that and more.
And this is the offer. Contact me for tutoring on issues of critical thinking. The kind of thinking that is borne from reading and digesting, deep reading if you will, of those documents and writings that make the reader better able to analyze and understand what is being read. The classics to the daily news. All require thinking in order to understand the context, the message, and the possible applications of the knowledge that is going into the brain, and which knowledge is being put in so that in the future, it can be recalled and used to make smart decisions.
My background in relation to this offer is that I am a lifelong student of the classics and philosophy, science, literature, and reasoning skills. I have taught for over 30 years. And the price will be right. We, that is the purchaser of this service, and I, will work out a plan for instruction, whether a short help session with homework or a long term tutoring program for preparing for college.
I'm also trained in law, which means I am trained to analyze and present arguments, reasoned statements of facts and issues that need to be persuasive, on paper or in spoken form. I also know how to keep a confidence, so if the trouble you're having concerns an issue at your job, I'll keep the confidence, and I won't charge you lawyer rates to do so. After all, I'm not offering legal services here. Just help with solving your issues that need to be presented to others.
My methods work. Try the Muse's tutoring services and you'll be happily surprised with the great results.
Does your family have a student having trouble in writing? I can help.
Do you need help analyzing something? Are you seeking to understand something that is just a tad out of reach?
Are you, or your favorite student having a troublesome time with a writing assignment? Help with that is here. I've been writing for decades also, and can help with editing a paper, helping with organizing a paper, or even assisting analyzing the issue that you are writing about, so as to make writing easier.
It all always starts with critical thinking, and putting on paper (or a computer screen), the product of your analysis of the issue.
Does your student need to analyze poetry, literature, books, articles or other materials like textbooks?
Are you trying to write that memo at work, and stuck on how to get it going? Contact me and I'll share tools with you to help you out with the project you are working on, and with future projects.
Well, send in a comment. I'll get back to you after I know what sort of help you need. Rest assured, satisfaction is guaranteed.
In the next few days, I'll be posting more information about these services. Think about it, help with learning, whether you are an elementary student, a college student, in high school, or on the job. The Muse is here for you to meet. And learn, and improve your skills. Or, the Muse here can help you help your favorite student. Think about it, and let me know if I can help you.
Thinking.
Reasoning.
Skills.
Students at work.
Workers learning about issues or problems that need to be solved, worked out, worked on, written about. If those are issues for you, then let me help you out.
Brain growing.
Yep. All that and more.
And this is the offer. Contact me for tutoring on issues of critical thinking. The kind of thinking that is borne from reading and digesting, deep reading if you will, of those documents and writings that make the reader better able to analyze and understand what is being read. The classics to the daily news. All require thinking in order to understand the context, the message, and the possible applications of the knowledge that is going into the brain, and which knowledge is being put in so that in the future, it can be recalled and used to make smart decisions.
My background in relation to this offer is that I am a lifelong student of the classics and philosophy, science, literature, and reasoning skills. I have taught for over 30 years. And the price will be right. We, that is the purchaser of this service, and I, will work out a plan for instruction, whether a short help session with homework or a long term tutoring program for preparing for college.
I'm also trained in law, which means I am trained to analyze and present arguments, reasoned statements of facts and issues that need to be persuasive, on paper or in spoken form. I also know how to keep a confidence, so if the trouble you're having concerns an issue at your job, I'll keep the confidence, and I won't charge you lawyer rates to do so. After all, I'm not offering legal services here. Just help with solving your issues that need to be presented to others.
My methods work. Try the Muse's tutoring services and you'll be happily surprised with the great results.
Does your family have a student having trouble in writing? I can help.
Do you need help analyzing something? Are you seeking to understand something that is just a tad out of reach?
Are you, or your favorite student having a troublesome time with a writing assignment? Help with that is here. I've been writing for decades also, and can help with editing a paper, helping with organizing a paper, or even assisting analyzing the issue that you are writing about, so as to make writing easier.
It all always starts with critical thinking, and putting on paper (or a computer screen), the product of your analysis of the issue.
Does your student need to analyze poetry, literature, books, articles or other materials like textbooks?
Are you trying to write that memo at work, and stuck on how to get it going? Contact me and I'll share tools with you to help you out with the project you are working on, and with future projects.
Well, send in a comment. I'll get back to you after I know what sort of help you need. Rest assured, satisfaction is guaranteed.
In the next few days, I'll be posting more information about these services. Think about it, help with learning, whether you are an elementary student, a college student, in high school, or on the job. The Muse is here for you to meet. And learn, and improve your skills. Or, the Muse here can help you help your favorite student. Think about it, and let me know if I can help you.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
About that "Change" Thing...
Call me skeptical.
Call me observant.
And then, call me for dinner and call me skeptical.
I remember all the haloed pictures of the anointing before the election. I remember all those promises of "change".
And then, even I asked, before the election, "Change from or to, what? Exactly?"
Sadly, in the first weeks of the Obama administration, I got my answer. Same old, same old. Republican/Democrat--change the initials, a few names, a couple of retitling of old projects, beefing up some really bad misadventures, secrecy up the Potomac, spying on all and sundry, spending through the roof for what we don't need, not much spending on what we do, and well...that was the change.
Exactly.
Precisely.
We have the same people in the Minerals Management Service granting the same permits without the needed safeguards, such as blowout preventers used everywhere except in the US of A, and we got change. Brother, have we got change. Just check out, on the YouTube, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and blowout preventers or the under-reported travesty that is this BP oil debacle, and you got it. Not a bit of change.
Want more? Bankers get fat and happy while loans to small businesses go away from the programs of banks. I guess the rich bankers like to keep the money in their vaults that would be yours or my, under the mattress safe.
Health care? Well we really got taken to the cleaners on that one. No public option, and Big Pharma gets to keep all but the 2 percent they gave up in those closed (transparency?) negotiations in the White House. Ask Greg Palast at Greg Palast's blog for that and more.
Now we have the destruction of the Gulf and Gulf States by means of Corexit. Check this out on Alexander Higgins, which is a great site for information on the BP disaster. And, it turns out that BP might not have actually hit an oil gusher but an asphalt volcano. Neither is good, but if the asphalt were allowed to remain together, as would also be true for oil, it would be easier to recover.
Which means that all the dispersant being sprayed around is doing no one any good, but at the levels it has reached in air and water may very well kill the same people who BP has hired to clean up the mess that destroyed all those careers and businesses. Of course, working for BP means no respirators, which means that the workers may well die as did cleanup workers from the Exxon Valdez.
All this makes me think that the BP disaster, coming as it did with a crushing of the First Amendment when the press were threatened with, and then arrested, just a tad bit too much like the general response after 911, and the secrecy that surrounded the destruction of that crime scene as the steel was carted off to foreign lands to be made into plowshares.
I hoped. On that last on, I really did hope. About the plowshares, that is.
Change?
Naw. We don't need no change. We just needed the label.
Is it all the President's fault?
Not by a long shot.
The problem is this. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will bring change. They can't. They are both the same. Labels different, same programs, same everything.
If we keep doing the same thing, as in voting for change, we will continue to get the same, destructive sameness. Repeating the same action expecting a changed result is the very definition of insanity.
Clinton promised change in 1992. We got change. Bankers and industrialists got rich as they offshored as many jobs as they could. Remember NAFTA?
Right.
That was change.
But it was merely another giveaway to the same rich one percent that got so much from Reagan and Bush I.
What we need is real change. Election of a real change maker, not the same old, same old.
So, your assignment today is to do the following.
Find someone with the brains, wisdom and courage to stand up to the special interests, and get them to run for office.
Find people that are independent, and not whack jobs, who possess the strength of character to live up to the promises they make.
If you are that person, then run for office.
Remember, Mr. Obama came from an obscure state senate seat he won because all of his opponents were removed from the ballot before the elections and the Senate race in Illinois collapsed as Mr. Obama entered the race. That is one of those lovely parts of Chicago politics, which is not, and never has been, beanbag. So to speak.
His only contested election, of meaningful contest levels that is, was in 2008. And that was as much a vote against the same old from the Republicans as it was a vote for Mr. Obama.
We need change. We've been promised it for decades, and none have delivered. It is now the moment when change is an imperative.
Be that change.
Just a thought.
Call me observant.
And then, call me for dinner and call me skeptical.
I remember all the haloed pictures of the anointing before the election. I remember all those promises of "change".
And then, even I asked, before the election, "Change from or to, what? Exactly?"
Sadly, in the first weeks of the Obama administration, I got my answer. Same old, same old. Republican/Democrat--change the initials, a few names, a couple of retitling of old projects, beefing up some really bad misadventures, secrecy up the Potomac, spying on all and sundry, spending through the roof for what we don't need, not much spending on what we do, and well...that was the change.
Exactly.
Precisely.
We have the same people in the Minerals Management Service granting the same permits without the needed safeguards, such as blowout preventers used everywhere except in the US of A, and we got change. Brother, have we got change. Just check out, on the YouTube, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and blowout preventers or the under-reported travesty that is this BP oil debacle, and you got it. Not a bit of change.
Want more? Bankers get fat and happy while loans to small businesses go away from the programs of banks. I guess the rich bankers like to keep the money in their vaults that would be yours or my, under the mattress safe.
Health care? Well we really got taken to the cleaners on that one. No public option, and Big Pharma gets to keep all but the 2 percent they gave up in those closed (transparency?) negotiations in the White House. Ask Greg Palast at Greg Palast's blog for that and more.
Now we have the destruction of the Gulf and Gulf States by means of Corexit. Check this out on Alexander Higgins, which is a great site for information on the BP disaster. And, it turns out that BP might not have actually hit an oil gusher but an asphalt volcano. Neither is good, but if the asphalt were allowed to remain together, as would also be true for oil, it would be easier to recover.
Which means that all the dispersant being sprayed around is doing no one any good, but at the levels it has reached in air and water may very well kill the same people who BP has hired to clean up the mess that destroyed all those careers and businesses. Of course, working for BP means no respirators, which means that the workers may well die as did cleanup workers from the Exxon Valdez.
All this makes me think that the BP disaster, coming as it did with a crushing of the First Amendment when the press were threatened with, and then arrested, just a tad bit too much like the general response after 911, and the secrecy that surrounded the destruction of that crime scene as the steel was carted off to foreign lands to be made into plowshares.
I hoped. On that last on, I really did hope. About the plowshares, that is.
Change?
Naw. We don't need no change. We just needed the label.
Is it all the President's fault?
Not by a long shot.
The problem is this. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will bring change. They can't. They are both the same. Labels different, same programs, same everything.
If we keep doing the same thing, as in voting for change, we will continue to get the same, destructive sameness. Repeating the same action expecting a changed result is the very definition of insanity.
Clinton promised change in 1992. We got change. Bankers and industrialists got rich as they offshored as many jobs as they could. Remember NAFTA?
Right.
That was change.
But it was merely another giveaway to the same rich one percent that got so much from Reagan and Bush I.
What we need is real change. Election of a real change maker, not the same old, same old.
So, your assignment today is to do the following.
Find someone with the brains, wisdom and courage to stand up to the special interests, and get them to run for office.
Find people that are independent, and not whack jobs, who possess the strength of character to live up to the promises they make.
If you are that person, then run for office.
Remember, Mr. Obama came from an obscure state senate seat he won because all of his opponents were removed from the ballot before the elections and the Senate race in Illinois collapsed as Mr. Obama entered the race. That is one of those lovely parts of Chicago politics, which is not, and never has been, beanbag. So to speak.
His only contested election, of meaningful contest levels that is, was in 2008. And that was as much a vote against the same old from the Republicans as it was a vote for Mr. Obama.
We need change. We've been promised it for decades, and none have delivered. It is now the moment when change is an imperative.
Be that change.
Just a thought.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Accidents happen, and I apologize
I had a poster who left a comment in Chinese, which is not my native language. As I attempted to run it through a translator to check the content, just to be sure the content was in line with the policy of this blog, I accidentally deleted it.
As I don't speak or read Chinese, or any Oriental language, I cannot tell from whom the post was made. If this post appears to be speaking to you, please re-post your comment, and I won't delete it before I get it through the translator system. The accident, bad as it was, was just that, an accident.
Please accept my apology, and come back often. I'll do my very best to make sure that posts are made to the blog, and that deletions are only made in accord with the Meet the Muse policy of keeping everything civil, polite, and productive. Thank you.
As I don't speak or read Chinese, or any Oriental language, I cannot tell from whom the post was made. If this post appears to be speaking to you, please re-post your comment, and I won't delete it before I get it through the translator system. The accident, bad as it was, was just that, an accident.
Please accept my apology, and come back often. I'll do my very best to make sure that posts are made to the blog, and that deletions are only made in accord with the Meet the Muse policy of keeping everything civil, polite, and productive. Thank you.
Announcement -- Policy of the Muse you are here to meet
This is friendly advice to those posting here. Your comments are welcome, but please keep them on topic. Keep away from posting comments that are designed to drive traffic to sites which are dating/mating/marriage/sex sites will be deleted forever. Be courteous. If you think your mother would be offended, chances are I would be offended also. I want everyone welcome here, so be on your best behavior.
Today I learned that not all posters to this blog have been operating with the sort of respect I hold for others. And, while my own morality cannot be imposed upon others, I can and will demand that anyone posting here refrain from any links or posts that are sexually explicit, contain sexually explicit photos or links, link to sites that exploit women, men, or children, or that otherwise attempt to direct traffic to sites that are not respectful.
I am not a prude, but I do find it offensive that visitors to my blog may be offended by links that show photos of young girls in sexually suggestive poses, photo spreads of females in sexually explicit poses, or that otherwise could be connected to material offensive to my guests. I would not allow such in my home, nor will I allow it on my blog.
So, take notice. Comments will be edited for content and any links to sexually explicit material, sites, or material that could offend my friends that come here will not be tolerated. Period. Full stop.
The Muse is not happy with those that post here and are fishing or otherwise trying to lure people to sites where the front pages alone appear to show women in exploitive poses. Nude photos, lingerie poses, or any other such links, whether of men or women, will not be linked here any longer. If you are connected with such sites and wish to post here, please do so, but do not include any material that links back to such a site.
Please feel free to post your comments, and keep them on topic. I have not written about dating or sex, so all such comments from the past posts are clearly off topic.
Posting lists of words connected to explicit sexual acts, processes, poses, or sexual behavior, if not set forth in the blog posts I enter, will be deleted. Forever.
This is a site where children are also welcome. So, fair notice. Your behavior that could offend others will not be tolerated. Nor will the Muse be tolerating any further posts that link to such material.
Any questions? Please feel free to comment. But, as I have said above, keep it respectful. The Muse thanks you. Having said this, I am reminded that most of this post should have been unnecessary. I am hoping I'll not have to repeat myself.
Today I learned that not all posters to this blog have been operating with the sort of respect I hold for others. And, while my own morality cannot be imposed upon others, I can and will demand that anyone posting here refrain from any links or posts that are sexually explicit, contain sexually explicit photos or links, link to sites that exploit women, men, or children, or that otherwise attempt to direct traffic to sites that are not respectful.
I am not a prude, but I do find it offensive that visitors to my blog may be offended by links that show photos of young girls in sexually suggestive poses, photo spreads of females in sexually explicit poses, or that otherwise could be connected to material offensive to my guests. I would not allow such in my home, nor will I allow it on my blog.
So, take notice. Comments will be edited for content and any links to sexually explicit material, sites, or material that could offend my friends that come here will not be tolerated. Period. Full stop.
The Muse is not happy with those that post here and are fishing or otherwise trying to lure people to sites where the front pages alone appear to show women in exploitive poses. Nude photos, lingerie poses, or any other such links, whether of men or women, will not be linked here any longer. If you are connected with such sites and wish to post here, please do so, but do not include any material that links back to such a site.
Please feel free to post your comments, and keep them on topic. I have not written about dating or sex, so all such comments from the past posts are clearly off topic.
Posting lists of words connected to explicit sexual acts, processes, poses, or sexual behavior, if not set forth in the blog posts I enter, will be deleted. Forever.
This is a site where children are also welcome. So, fair notice. Your behavior that could offend others will not be tolerated. Nor will the Muse be tolerating any further posts that link to such material.
Any questions? Please feel free to comment. But, as I have said above, keep it respectful. The Muse thanks you. Having said this, I am reminded that most of this post should have been unnecessary. I am hoping I'll not have to repeat myself.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Reality Check
Open pen, insert foot into mouth. In other words, what I wrote earlier about a Works Progress, fix the infrastructure using only US made products, US made tools, US made equipment, US made materials, and so on, won't work.
The reason?
Our economy has, as so many know, been outsourced to the point of making the word industry, as connected to the US, an oxymoron. Industriousness however still works in the "I want to work hard to earn money and make the place around me better--USA", still works, even if the workers here are not working.
I'm big enough to admit I was wrong.
Not completely wrong, but wrong I was.
So, let's revive the economy this way. Using as much of our native products as possible, let's fix that drainage system, those roads, the falling down bridges, the ready to fall down bridges, the schools, the parks, the harbors, the buildings, the whatever needs fixing. That means US made concrete, US workers, and to the extent possible, let's start rebuilding US industry. And roads.
Rather than just helping out the paper fortune makers, like the bankers, let's TARP the industry of the nation, using the industriousness of the nation, to make that which needs shoring up, repair, and so on, better.
Our roads were put in 50 years ago in the interstate system, and those roads need serious rebuilding. Dams are bursting, like in Iowa, and need repair. Of course the burst dam will need replacement. But did that bursting have to happen?
No, it certainly did not. That dam should have been repaired long ago. And if we can TARP the bankers, we can rebuild the assets of our infrastructure just as well, which would put thousands and thousands of people to work. Free the infrastructure from demolition due to ignoring the need for repair as we have done for decades, and fix it now.
Sure, plumbing for rainfall control is not as sexy as that new shopping center, but who wants to buy anything from a shopping center that has been flooded with raw sewage because the drainage system collapsed due to age and lack of repair?
Let's do it. Write your congressman/woman. Do it now. Insist on a plan to be implemented ASAP to prevent the neglect from getting worse. Let's prevent damage due to small rainfalls collecting and overwhelming a dam that should never have collapsed. Our hearts are with you Iowans, but we also need you all to stand with our campaign to put America back to work repairing that which cannot be outsourced, which is our infrastructure.
America the beautiful will be more secure for it. Secure from flood and resulting disaster. Let's do it now. Tomorrow will be too late for some, as the collapsed dam in Iowa shows, as the falling I35 bridge showed a few years ago. Now. Put Americans first. And let's repair the foundations so that America can rebuild it's economy, its industry, its cities and rural areas. Where there has been neglect, let's put America to work.
It could just be the asset protection that will grow assets further and faster than any bank bailout ever could. It will also help relieve those frightening unemployment numbers with a solid return on investment.
The reason?
Our economy has, as so many know, been outsourced to the point of making the word industry, as connected to the US, an oxymoron. Industriousness however still works in the "I want to work hard to earn money and make the place around me better--USA", still works, even if the workers here are not working.
I'm big enough to admit I was wrong.
Not completely wrong, but wrong I was.
So, let's revive the economy this way. Using as much of our native products as possible, let's fix that drainage system, those roads, the falling down bridges, the ready to fall down bridges, the schools, the parks, the harbors, the buildings, the whatever needs fixing. That means US made concrete, US workers, and to the extent possible, let's start rebuilding US industry. And roads.
Rather than just helping out the paper fortune makers, like the bankers, let's TARP the industry of the nation, using the industriousness of the nation, to make that which needs shoring up, repair, and so on, better.
Our roads were put in 50 years ago in the interstate system, and those roads need serious rebuilding. Dams are bursting, like in Iowa, and need repair. Of course the burst dam will need replacement. But did that bursting have to happen?
No, it certainly did not. That dam should have been repaired long ago. And if we can TARP the bankers, we can rebuild the assets of our infrastructure just as well, which would put thousands and thousands of people to work. Free the infrastructure from demolition due to ignoring the need for repair as we have done for decades, and fix it now.
Sure, plumbing for rainfall control is not as sexy as that new shopping center, but who wants to buy anything from a shopping center that has been flooded with raw sewage because the drainage system collapsed due to age and lack of repair?
Let's do it. Write your congressman/woman. Do it now. Insist on a plan to be implemented ASAP to prevent the neglect from getting worse. Let's prevent damage due to small rainfalls collecting and overwhelming a dam that should never have collapsed. Our hearts are with you Iowans, but we also need you all to stand with our campaign to put America back to work repairing that which cannot be outsourced, which is our infrastructure.
America the beautiful will be more secure for it. Secure from flood and resulting disaster. Let's do it now. Tomorrow will be too late for some, as the collapsed dam in Iowa shows, as the falling I35 bridge showed a few years ago. Now. Put Americans first. And let's repair the foundations so that America can rebuild it's economy, its industry, its cities and rural areas. Where there has been neglect, let's put America to work.
It could just be the asset protection that will grow assets further and faster than any bank bailout ever could. It will also help relieve those frightening unemployment numbers with a solid return on investment.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
What if? An answer for an American stimulus that will put America to work
What if, in this time of uncertainty, our leaders injected some certainty into the world that is the millieu that is that under-certainty for Americans?
What if our leaders, such as they are, were to look at the one problem that we know is a really big problem?
Terrorism?
Deficit spending?
Nah.
Not those.
The ecomony is in there, but this is a one single problem we know is a problem. Infrastructure.
Unglamorous. Nasty dirty. Messy.
Failing.
We had I35 fall in the river in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Collapse. Boom. Bridge in the drink.
Why?
Well, duh.
The bridge had exceeded its life. And at that point, it died.
Boom.
Bridge in the drink.
We have floods every time it rains. Flooded streets, flooded basements, flooded ball fields.
Flood.
From rain.
Not downpours, necessarily. Just rains.
We have bridges ready to fail. All over the place. Eventually all of them will fail. All. Bridges. Will Fail.
So, what's the plan?
Certainty.
In order to prevent failure, we go in and repair.
And, we put some rules for that repair plan.
First of all, only American companies that are based in America need apply to do the work. This is an American stimulus plan after all.
Only American citizens and documented aliens, which means the legal folk only, need apply to do the work.
Forget Halliburton. They call Dubai home.
Forget BP. They aren't American. Not all American. We want all this to be an All-American recovery program. For American workers.
We will only use American architects. American steel. American cement. American trucks, barges, bales, baling wire. This will be in contrast to all that globalist stuff that has exported our jobs and factories to God knows where. We want American manufactured stuff to go into making American roads and plumbing that keeps those road working well, working. Well.
Moving along. Build some new schools. Using, get this. American tools, American workers, American workers making American tools. In American factories.
Sound protectionist?
You bet.
We have more than one tenth of our workforce out of work. Put them to work. Make them build factories for American workers, making American tools, American goods, American products. Ours were once the best products in the world. Now we buy dross, junk and crap that breaks in a year.
Take window fans. Every two years, we need to replace them because they break. Yet, in 1973 I purchased three window fans that each lasted 15, 16, and 23 years. Since then, two years each.
Take hair dryers. Again, that dryer from 1975 still works. The new one I was given in 1998? Died in 2002. Not quite longevity.
Our roadbuilding was and remains the envy of the world. Yet, those roads, along with the draining pipes under them, have deteriorated.
Time, after all, will win. We need to rebuild infrastructure.
We need American workers leaning into that shovel, mixing that concrete. We need America ot rebuild the 80 percent of the manufacturing that we lost in the decades since NAFTA, CAFTA, and every other -AFTA, that has made American workers products into an 'afta-thought in the world. It begins here. It begins now.
American workers, employed by all American, non-linked to foreign companies, no international entanglements involved, rebuilding the greatest nation on earth.
Now.
Think about it.
Then write your city council, congress-critter, senator-critter, and your President. It is time to rebuild America for, by and with Americans. Naturalized, legal, home-born Americans. Top to toe.
It will not be a program that the top internationalists will promote, because they will not be in the 'pool' of companies that can apply for this. It will come from us, the bottom, and will go to the top. That is how this nation has always worked. Rebuild America. By Americans. For Americans.
Let's do it and stop asking, "What if?" Just do it.
What if our leaders, such as they are, were to look at the one problem that we know is a really big problem?
Terrorism?
Deficit spending?
Nah.
Not those.
The ecomony is in there, but this is a one single problem we know is a problem. Infrastructure.
Unglamorous. Nasty dirty. Messy.
Failing.
We had I35 fall in the river in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Collapse. Boom. Bridge in the drink.
Why?
Well, duh.
The bridge had exceeded its life. And at that point, it died.
Boom.
Bridge in the drink.
We have floods every time it rains. Flooded streets, flooded basements, flooded ball fields.
Flood.
From rain.
Not downpours, necessarily. Just rains.
We have bridges ready to fail. All over the place. Eventually all of them will fail. All. Bridges. Will Fail.
So, what's the plan?
Certainty.
In order to prevent failure, we go in and repair.
And, we put some rules for that repair plan.
First of all, only American companies that are based in America need apply to do the work. This is an American stimulus plan after all.
Only American citizens and documented aliens, which means the legal folk only, need apply to do the work.
Forget Halliburton. They call Dubai home.
Forget BP. They aren't American. Not all American. We want all this to be an All-American recovery program. For American workers.
We will only use American architects. American steel. American cement. American trucks, barges, bales, baling wire. This will be in contrast to all that globalist stuff that has exported our jobs and factories to God knows where. We want American manufactured stuff to go into making American roads and plumbing that keeps those road working well, working. Well.
Moving along. Build some new schools. Using, get this. American tools, American workers, American workers making American tools. In American factories.
Sound protectionist?
You bet.
We have more than one tenth of our workforce out of work. Put them to work. Make them build factories for American workers, making American tools, American goods, American products. Ours were once the best products in the world. Now we buy dross, junk and crap that breaks in a year.
Take window fans. Every two years, we need to replace them because they break. Yet, in 1973 I purchased three window fans that each lasted 15, 16, and 23 years. Since then, two years each.
Take hair dryers. Again, that dryer from 1975 still works. The new one I was given in 1998? Died in 2002. Not quite longevity.
Our roadbuilding was and remains the envy of the world. Yet, those roads, along with the draining pipes under them, have deteriorated.
Time, after all, will win. We need to rebuild infrastructure.
We need American workers leaning into that shovel, mixing that concrete. We need America ot rebuild the 80 percent of the manufacturing that we lost in the decades since NAFTA, CAFTA, and every other -AFTA, that has made American workers products into an 'afta-thought in the world. It begins here. It begins now.
American workers, employed by all American, non-linked to foreign companies, no international entanglements involved, rebuilding the greatest nation on earth.
Now.
Think about it.
Then write your city council, congress-critter, senator-critter, and your President. It is time to rebuild America for, by and with Americans. Naturalized, legal, home-born Americans. Top to toe.
It will not be a program that the top internationalists will promote, because they will not be in the 'pool' of companies that can apply for this. It will come from us, the bottom, and will go to the top. That is how this nation has always worked. Rebuild America. By Americans. For Americans.
Let's do it and stop asking, "What if?" Just do it.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Note to Self...
Do.
Be.
Do.
Be.
Do Be Do Be Do.
And that, as they say, pretty much says it all.
...sigh...
Be.
Do.
Be.
Do Be Do Be Do.
And that, as they say, pretty much says it all.
...sigh...
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Can Today Be The Day?
This is the first day of the rest of your life.
Yeah.
Heard that. Over and again over. Heard it lots. Heard it at the beginning of lots of days, and at the ends of many days.
Of course, such pap is the stuff that keeps bumper sticker printers in magnetic sticker sheets and printers ink. It keeps those artsy slogan writers alive too, as they also slap those letter under thinly screened scenes of sunrises (never sunsets, for that would defeat the purpose of the line), and teachers, coaches, social workers, drugs counselors and others in the 'helping professions' hang those posters on walls, paste them on bulletin boards, and make visual hay with the image over the words.
But, what does it mean? Can today be all that different from yesterday? From a hundred yesterdays? A thousand yesterdays?
Is there anything more daunting that trying to [insert sound effect of car making screeching turn here], actually change the way ones life is progressing?
Well, is there?
Well, lets look at what might have to change in order to begin anew what was previously not so hot in the "boy, would I like to tell my high school class at the 30th Reunion about this."
Probably the list would contain income, job change, a few friend transplants, status amendments, new wardrobe, plastic surgery (think that 30th Reunion), new home, better car, better education, new opportunity, and the beat goes on...
Personally, I'd throw in a trip to the greengrocer, but then again, I've not seen fresh veg in too long to recount. It's the economy, stupid. [Blast, another bumper sticker strikes.]
In this economy, pretty much that entire list is off the charts in terms of feasibility. With the possible exception of education, which one can get, without diploma, if only the library card is exercised--and the library is open at any hours at all-- the whole thing is off the charts difficult. Of course, the whole point is the certificate, but that's another story, as they say. We are changing life, not piling up paper.
But, put the economy aside. Perhaps it is time to apply The Secret. Think your way to riches and new stuff. Like new digs, new friends (and more time for the old ones), new riches, new ... new...new...
AAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Sorry about that.
Of course, you also might have to silence those voices that say we already have too much 'stuff'. You might not want the new car. You might be perfectly happy with your house, apartment or refrigerator box in the park. [Yeah, I know -- it's the economy, stupid.]
Me? I just want to be paid for my work. I just want to make more than $0.50 an hour. That alone would go a long way to making my life better. Newer. A life that would make me want to think of the future.
But when no one pays for work, then there is no incentive to work. That happens because I know from experience that I am working to be able to afford the ability to practice my profession. I am working full-time to support what is a part time practice of my profession. And that isn't going so well, because I still can't afford that trip to the grocery store I've been promising myself for the past 7 months. Thank God for dried beans, lentils, rice and spaghetti, though spaghetti without sauce is getting sort of old.
Someone, please send in the pap-masters and bumper stickers. I'm too knackered by it all to even read a book, to say nothing of writing one.
Yeah.
Heard that. Over and again over. Heard it lots. Heard it at the beginning of lots of days, and at the ends of many days.
Of course, such pap is the stuff that keeps bumper sticker printers in magnetic sticker sheets and printers ink. It keeps those artsy slogan writers alive too, as they also slap those letter under thinly screened scenes of sunrises (never sunsets, for that would defeat the purpose of the line), and teachers, coaches, social workers, drugs counselors and others in the 'helping professions' hang those posters on walls, paste them on bulletin boards, and make visual hay with the image over the words.
But, what does it mean? Can today be all that different from yesterday? From a hundred yesterdays? A thousand yesterdays?
Is there anything more daunting that trying to [insert sound effect of car making screeching turn here], actually change the way ones life is progressing?
Well, is there?
Well, lets look at what might have to change in order to begin anew what was previously not so hot in the "boy, would I like to tell my high school class at the 30th Reunion about this."
Probably the list would contain income, job change, a few friend transplants, status amendments, new wardrobe, plastic surgery (think that 30th Reunion), new home, better car, better education, new opportunity, and the beat goes on...
Personally, I'd throw in a trip to the greengrocer, but then again, I've not seen fresh veg in too long to recount. It's the economy, stupid. [Blast, another bumper sticker strikes.]
In this economy, pretty much that entire list is off the charts in terms of feasibility. With the possible exception of education, which one can get, without diploma, if only the library card is exercised--and the library is open at any hours at all-- the whole thing is off the charts difficult. Of course, the whole point is the certificate, but that's another story, as they say. We are changing life, not piling up paper.
But, put the economy aside. Perhaps it is time to apply The Secret. Think your way to riches and new stuff. Like new digs, new friends (and more time for the old ones), new riches, new ... new...new...
AAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Sorry about that.
Of course, you also might have to silence those voices that say we already have too much 'stuff'. You might not want the new car. You might be perfectly happy with your house, apartment or refrigerator box in the park. [Yeah, I know -- it's the economy, stupid.]
Me? I just want to be paid for my work. I just want to make more than $0.50 an hour. That alone would go a long way to making my life better. Newer. A life that would make me want to think of the future.
But when no one pays for work, then there is no incentive to work. That happens because I know from experience that I am working to be able to afford the ability to practice my profession. I am working full-time to support what is a part time practice of my profession. And that isn't going so well, because I still can't afford that trip to the grocery store I've been promising myself for the past 7 months. Thank God for dried beans, lentils, rice and spaghetti, though spaghetti without sauce is getting sort of old.
Someone, please send in the pap-masters and bumper stickers. I'm too knackered by it all to even read a book, to say nothing of writing one.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
We Are All Joseph
Just past Independence Day is a good time to take stock of dependency. We depend upon the very air we breathe, the Sun that grows our food, the light from the Moon, the water we drink. We also depend upon something more, for we also depend upon our Creator. We may not know this Creator, and we may not believe in our Creator, but there it is. We are created and so depend upon our Creator to have created us so that will, belief and even hope can be, or not, related to and intrinsic to our thoughts of our very status as a product of Creation.
In the Beginning...there was the Word, there was the Creator of the Word, and there was the Word made flesh. The very substance of belief in those words. That is, belief in a Creator. That Creator made us, all of us, sons and daughters of His own. Our Creator sent us a Son, the very Substance of that Creation, as are all of us, and made us in that moment of infusion of life, the very spark of Creation. Bright eyes, bright soul, bright future, bright light. We are. We are created.
Sometime back there was a Chosen People announced. A tribe of sub-tribes, clans and groups. Chosen. Headstrong, stubborn, stiff-necked. Trust me, I am not speaking of Presbyterians, the stiff necked of the Reformation.
And then, long before John Calvin, we had that veil rending, earthquake causing, hypocrite caller, very embodiment of the best of Creation here on Earth with us. In a flash, he lived, died and returned. He walked among us as if he were the baker, the carpenter, the preacher, the brother we all wanted to have with us forever. Whoosh, and we were left alone, yet not alone. For in leaving, he left us not.
At his birth, this babe was adopted. The father that begat him not, took this babe into his arms, loved him and declared him his own. The one man on the planet who had not conceived this child loved the child as his own flesh. As such, a child who was not in the genealogy was in the genealogy. So to speak. Adoption does that.
Growing up, that child had brothers and sisters and playmates. Just like us. Of course, by the time we hit our third decade, few among us have disciples, but I digress. Think of them as friends with a following, fishing nets, bread baskets, and loyalty.
That child also had legends. Travel to Britain, perhaps a trip to the New World, as stint in India? Who knows for sure. And again, I digress.
Those journeys mean nothing. Centuries later, that child, the adopted son, would be known to many groups, tribes and nations. Adopted into the histories of many places and people. Adopted.
There it is again. That adoption.
Today, so many of us think of that child as so mighty, royal and highly placed, we cannot think of such a person as an adopted child. But that is what he was and is. Those of us who ignore this put ourselves in peril. We lose the point.
What? Whaddya mean we are in peril? Good of you to ask.
We forget the whole point. We forget the reason for the veil splitting in two that spring day in Jerusalem so many centuries ago. We forget the reason for the birth of that adopted child. We forget that now, rather than only the Chosen few among us, all can be part of the family by having the faith enough to adopt that once adopted baby as our own brother. And by that adoption, as happened with Joseph, it happens to us.
We adopt a child and are in turn adopted. We are adopted by faith into the Chosen Family. The Chosen Tribe. The Chosen People.
The Chosen are now redefined. It is not we who are chosen, but we who choose. It is our act of choice. And it is a choice that we must make each day. Choose me. Please choose me.
Oh, how we remember that phrase from playgrounds and pick up softball games, team sports, volleyball or Monopoly. This time, it is not we who cry out "Choose ME!"
This time it is another who cries to our very soul, adopt me. Pick me. Choose. Decide.
Of course, once done is not completely done. A good start, but not the end of the game. So to speak.
First we become like Joseph. We adopt and by our choice are chosen. Seems somehow backwards. After we are born we adopt and are adopted. Our independent choice makes us a dependent. A part of the family. A member of the tribe. A part of the Choosing People. Our choice.
Of course, once you adopt, you have to take next steps or adoption becomes a tragedy of inhuman scope. But that, as they say, is a topic for another day. For today it is but one choice to make, or not. Is adoption, the following in the steps of Joseph, who married his betrothed and adopted that son, not his? It is a choice, adoption is. It is a choice. Choose to be like Joseph, or not. Just a choice. A first choice to be sure, but a choice.
Choose wisely. The choice is yours and yours alone.
In the Beginning...there was the Word, there was the Creator of the Word, and there was the Word made flesh. The very substance of belief in those words. That is, belief in a Creator. That Creator made us, all of us, sons and daughters of His own. Our Creator sent us a Son, the very Substance of that Creation, as are all of us, and made us in that moment of infusion of life, the very spark of Creation. Bright eyes, bright soul, bright future, bright light. We are. We are created.
Sometime back there was a Chosen People announced. A tribe of sub-tribes, clans and groups. Chosen. Headstrong, stubborn, stiff-necked. Trust me, I am not speaking of Presbyterians, the stiff necked of the Reformation.
And then, long before John Calvin, we had that veil rending, earthquake causing, hypocrite caller, very embodiment of the best of Creation here on Earth with us. In a flash, he lived, died and returned. He walked among us as if he were the baker, the carpenter, the preacher, the brother we all wanted to have with us forever. Whoosh, and we were left alone, yet not alone. For in leaving, he left us not.
At his birth, this babe was adopted. The father that begat him not, took this babe into his arms, loved him and declared him his own. The one man on the planet who had not conceived this child loved the child as his own flesh. As such, a child who was not in the genealogy was in the genealogy. So to speak. Adoption does that.
Growing up, that child had brothers and sisters and playmates. Just like us. Of course, by the time we hit our third decade, few among us have disciples, but I digress. Think of them as friends with a following, fishing nets, bread baskets, and loyalty.
That child also had legends. Travel to Britain, perhaps a trip to the New World, as stint in India? Who knows for sure. And again, I digress.
Those journeys mean nothing. Centuries later, that child, the adopted son, would be known to many groups, tribes and nations. Adopted into the histories of many places and people. Adopted.
There it is again. That adoption.
Today, so many of us think of that child as so mighty, royal and highly placed, we cannot think of such a person as an adopted child. But that is what he was and is. Those of us who ignore this put ourselves in peril. We lose the point.
What? Whaddya mean we are in peril? Good of you to ask.
We forget the whole point. We forget the reason for the veil splitting in two that spring day in Jerusalem so many centuries ago. We forget the reason for the birth of that adopted child. We forget that now, rather than only the Chosen few among us, all can be part of the family by having the faith enough to adopt that once adopted baby as our own brother. And by that adoption, as happened with Joseph, it happens to us.
We adopt a child and are in turn adopted. We are adopted by faith into the Chosen Family. The Chosen Tribe. The Chosen People.
The Chosen are now redefined. It is not we who are chosen, but we who choose. It is our act of choice. And it is a choice that we must make each day. Choose me. Please choose me.
Oh, how we remember that phrase from playgrounds and pick up softball games, team sports, volleyball or Monopoly. This time, it is not we who cry out "Choose ME!"
This time it is another who cries to our very soul, adopt me. Pick me. Choose. Decide.
Of course, once done is not completely done. A good start, but not the end of the game. So to speak.
First we become like Joseph. We adopt and by our choice are chosen. Seems somehow backwards. After we are born we adopt and are adopted. Our independent choice makes us a dependent. A part of the family. A member of the tribe. A part of the Choosing People. Our choice.
Of course, once you adopt, you have to take next steps or adoption becomes a tragedy of inhuman scope. But that, as they say, is a topic for another day. For today it is but one choice to make, or not. Is adoption, the following in the steps of Joseph, who married his betrothed and adopted that son, not his? It is a choice, adoption is. It is a choice. Choose to be like Joseph, or not. Just a choice. A first choice to be sure, but a choice.
Choose wisely. The choice is yours and yours alone.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
What Price Human Kindness?
Do a good deed daily.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Practice random acts of kindness.
Help old ladies across streets. (Of course, you'd best be sure they want to cross, but I digress.)
Live with others in mind as you would have others keep you in mind.
Think good thoughts.
Help those less fortunate than yourself.
Be kind to animals.
All of these, from the Great Commandment, which Jesus gave to his disciples, proclaiming the rest to be what is essentially commentary, to the Girl Scout Motto, to the fell good by doing good of the 80's to whatever you want to call it today, are easily categorized. They are statements of the need for all of us to practice sharing that common cup filled with the milk of human kindness.
What is the milk of human kindness? You might need to ask that question these days.
We've come a long way baby from the infamous, "Greed is good," all the way to, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
Well, some greed as they say, is good. Without greed, we'd never work to achieve anything. Some greed, such as being hungry to do a good job, to help the company grow, to make the future brighter for our children, to increase the knowledge we have, to accumulation of skills so that we can serve others--all can be simplistically analyzed as a form of greed.
Then again, avarice, for the purpose of accumulating wealth alone, well that kind of greed is not so hot.
Today, we are told to reduce our consumption of everything. Reduce, reuse, you know the rest.
But we cannot reduce the amount that we accumulate in order to give to others. And, when the time comes as it comes all to often these days, there may be a time when you need the giving of others. You might not need goods, or food or money, but you might really need an act of human kindness. The good deed that someone can direct your way.
Don't call the religious stations. They will do you lots of good, but first they want ten percent of whatever you have, should have, or even don't have.
Don't call on those who are prone to labeling. For example, if someone has called you a &$#*($@ bitch, do not request even the smallest act of kindness. That said, don't stop being cordial with those folk, for they will eventually feel the heat of the coals of kindness you are dropping on their heads.
Around here, in Chicago, if you are sick or injured, asking a favor like a ride to the pharmacy or a trip to the grocery, or even a quick assist with putting a load of laundry in the basement washers, can run upwards of $10 per assist. That adds up quickly. Three loads of wash? That will be $30, thank you very much. Thus, if no money is coming in, none of that stuff gets done.
Others demand more. "I'll help you with the grocery trip, and can you make me a dress? And, do you have any of that lovely brown wool? You know, the same fabric you used to make that dress..."
Well, that wool was $30 a yard, the requestor's bulk means you'll need four yards of that precious wool, which means the owner of the new dress is gonna take me to the grocery every week for the next year, by my calculations. Ah, but one never says those realistic bargaining statements. Rather, the reply is, "Whaddya mean, that dress is gonna be worth $150?"
So, what is the cost of a cup of human kindness? I don't know. But I do know that I have no fresh food, dirty clothes, two broken shoulders, one bum knee, a very dusty apartment, and little if any help for any of it.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Practice random acts of kindness.
Help old ladies across streets. (Of course, you'd best be sure they want to cross, but I digress.)
Live with others in mind as you would have others keep you in mind.
Think good thoughts.
Help those less fortunate than yourself.
Be kind to animals.
All of these, from the Great Commandment, which Jesus gave to his disciples, proclaiming the rest to be what is essentially commentary, to the Girl Scout Motto, to the fell good by doing good of the 80's to whatever you want to call it today, are easily categorized. They are statements of the need for all of us to practice sharing that common cup filled with the milk of human kindness.
What is the milk of human kindness? You might need to ask that question these days.
We've come a long way baby from the infamous, "Greed is good," all the way to, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
Well, some greed as they say, is good. Without greed, we'd never work to achieve anything. Some greed, such as being hungry to do a good job, to help the company grow, to make the future brighter for our children, to increase the knowledge we have, to accumulation of skills so that we can serve others--all can be simplistically analyzed as a form of greed.
Then again, avarice, for the purpose of accumulating wealth alone, well that kind of greed is not so hot.
Today, we are told to reduce our consumption of everything. Reduce, reuse, you know the rest.
But we cannot reduce the amount that we accumulate in order to give to others. And, when the time comes as it comes all to often these days, there may be a time when you need the giving of others. You might not need goods, or food or money, but you might really need an act of human kindness. The good deed that someone can direct your way.
Don't call the religious stations. They will do you lots of good, but first they want ten percent of whatever you have, should have, or even don't have.
Don't call on those who are prone to labeling. For example, if someone has called you a &$#*($@ bitch, do not request even the smallest act of kindness. That said, don't stop being cordial with those folk, for they will eventually feel the heat of the coals of kindness you are dropping on their heads.
Around here, in Chicago, if you are sick or injured, asking a favor like a ride to the pharmacy or a trip to the grocery, or even a quick assist with putting a load of laundry in the basement washers, can run upwards of $10 per assist. That adds up quickly. Three loads of wash? That will be $30, thank you very much. Thus, if no money is coming in, none of that stuff gets done.
Others demand more. "I'll help you with the grocery trip, and can you make me a dress? And, do you have any of that lovely brown wool? You know, the same fabric you used to make that dress..."
Well, that wool was $30 a yard, the requestor's bulk means you'll need four yards of that precious wool, which means the owner of the new dress is gonna take me to the grocery every week for the next year, by my calculations. Ah, but one never says those realistic bargaining statements. Rather, the reply is, "Whaddya mean, that dress is gonna be worth $150?"
So, what is the cost of a cup of human kindness? I don't know. But I do know that I have no fresh food, dirty clothes, two broken shoulders, one bum knee, a very dusty apartment, and little if any help for any of it.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Bad things come in them.
Triplets appear as them.
Days as most are lived are divided into them, with sleep, work and other stuff filling the triad.
Crisis used to be defined as something that can be solved in three, recognized in three or dealt with for three of whatever.
Like three months. Anyone can handle anything for three months. 90 days. Simple. Piece of cake. Which should probably be cut into eights or nines rather than thirds. But I digress.
This time though, this one time in our history, we are inundated with debacles that come with no limits. No simple end in sight is seen. Politics, environment, economy. Three of the four horsemen running through those brains trapped under layers of hairspray holding those good hair guys preaching today that the oil spewing into the Gulf is either an act of an angry God for acts of sinful lust in the hearts of all who don't see the world as they do.
That world used to have very clear lines of right and wrong, black/white, no gray shading allowed. Now, the whole world is being inundated with a pollution event that could rival the sudden appearance of some asteroid that could wipe us all out as it covers the richest ecosystem in the world with black, brown, gray or reddish ooze, coating abundant and endangered alike in a slick coat of death.
Can't blame that on moral failures of the dancing boys and girls in the French Quarter or just on the consumptive nature of the West. Then again, we can't offend the oil execs with accurate allegations of criminal negligent ecoside. Can't, can't or won't...put the blame where the blame belongs.
This isn't your normal Act of God. This is the retribution for worshiping something that the evangelists can't bring themselves to name. This could be it. Apocalypse on the horizon.
Ain't gonna be no ninety day wonder either.
Couple that with the honest to goodness, doing good, do gooders being shot numerous times in the backs of their heads, execution style, and a country that cannot say the words, "We were profoundly and massively wrong," and we have part the second.
Part the third is the ongoing meltdown of the economy that began in 1929, abated some, got a nudge and a serious push from deregulated bankers and investment houses, and Part hte second appeared in 2008, after raising its head earlier in the 90's and 2007, and now Act 3 is going on in the Eurozone.
Add in the H1N1, pollution from all those other sources, scourges, plagues of ravening greedy genocidal hordes cloaked in a mantel of some religion that is not a belief held by their victims, the dying honey bees, the intrusion of genetically modified food into the mouths of all and sundry in the most uncontrolled study (?) of tolerance to and usefulness of gene manipulated foodstuffs, and that is way more than three.
But, just this week, just this week, three are my limit.
I don't know about you, but three is all I can handle. Nothing I have written of is even close to my own crises of life.
Like being unpaid. Again. Like having my identity stolen. For the third time. Like the pantry running to empty because of not being paid and my identity now being someone else's. For the third time, I note in pain filled irony.
Then again, it could be solved in 90 days. Three months.
Piece of cake.
Triplets appear as them.
Days as most are lived are divided into them, with sleep, work and other stuff filling the triad.
Crisis used to be defined as something that can be solved in three, recognized in three or dealt with for three of whatever.
Like three months. Anyone can handle anything for three months. 90 days. Simple. Piece of cake. Which should probably be cut into eights or nines rather than thirds. But I digress.
This time though, this one time in our history, we are inundated with debacles that come with no limits. No simple end in sight is seen. Politics, environment, economy. Three of the four horsemen running through those brains trapped under layers of hairspray holding those good hair guys preaching today that the oil spewing into the Gulf is either an act of an angry God for acts of sinful lust in the hearts of all who don't see the world as they do.
That world used to have very clear lines of right and wrong, black/white, no gray shading allowed. Now, the whole world is being inundated with a pollution event that could rival the sudden appearance of some asteroid that could wipe us all out as it covers the richest ecosystem in the world with black, brown, gray or reddish ooze, coating abundant and endangered alike in a slick coat of death.
Can't blame that on moral failures of the dancing boys and girls in the French Quarter or just on the consumptive nature of the West. Then again, we can't offend the oil execs with accurate allegations of criminal negligent ecoside. Can't, can't or won't...put the blame where the blame belongs.
This isn't your normal Act of God. This is the retribution for worshiping something that the evangelists can't bring themselves to name. This could be it. Apocalypse on the horizon.
Ain't gonna be no ninety day wonder either.
Couple that with the honest to goodness, doing good, do gooders being shot numerous times in the backs of their heads, execution style, and a country that cannot say the words, "We were profoundly and massively wrong," and we have part the second.
Part the third is the ongoing meltdown of the economy that began in 1929, abated some, got a nudge and a serious push from deregulated bankers and investment houses, and Part hte second appeared in 2008, after raising its head earlier in the 90's and 2007, and now Act 3 is going on in the Eurozone.
Add in the H1N1, pollution from all those other sources, scourges, plagues of ravening greedy genocidal hordes cloaked in a mantel of some religion that is not a belief held by their victims, the dying honey bees, the intrusion of genetically modified food into the mouths of all and sundry in the most uncontrolled study (?) of tolerance to and usefulness of gene manipulated foodstuffs, and that is way more than three.
But, just this week, just this week, three are my limit.
I don't know about you, but three is all I can handle. Nothing I have written of is even close to my own crises of life.
Like being unpaid. Again. Like having my identity stolen. For the third time. Like the pantry running to empty because of not being paid and my identity now being someone else's. For the third time, I note in pain filled irony.
Then again, it could be solved in 90 days. Three months.
Piece of cake.
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