THURSDAY WHATEVER

My dreams are of gardeners.



They frighten the beaters of flowers with their gentle faces.



They answer what the old heart asks.



I close with effort the illusion of my nights.

Deep Thought: 
“When this girl at the museum asked me whom I liked better, Monet or
Manet, I said, “I like mayonnaise.” She just stared at me, so I said it
again, louder. Then she left. I guess she went to try to find some
mayonnaise for me.”
Today I am grateful for:  My heart
Guess the Movie:  “I
happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love
maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I
take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I’ve had a rough
week. What do you think holds it up, slick?”  Answer:  The Wedding Crashers, 2005.  Winner:  Happy Heathen

Jill Carroll, U.S. Reporter in Iraq, Freed by Captors

by Caroline Alexander  (Rest of article here.)

SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

Believe
it or not, there’s a Stone Age Institute right in Bloomington, Indiana,
heartland of America, whose head is Ethiopian scientist, Sileshi
Semaw.  On Friday, March 24, Dr. Semaw announced that the Gona
Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia had discovered a
hominid skull – well, the cranium in two pieces – in a small
gully  at Gawis, just southeast of the capital, Addis
Ababa.   And this is the only picture on the web so
far.  Refresher definition – hominid is any two-legged primate,
including man.  Primate = any kind of animal with flexible hands
and feet.  They figure this skull might be a link between Homo
erectus (first primate to use a significant tool and walk upright)
and Homo sapiens (modern human).  It’s about 200,000-500,000
years old they think.  Seems like a lot could have happened in
that little piece of time, but hey… So they’re all excited now, the
skull folks, and I guess we’ll be hearing more soon.  This should
be a fun way to not think about the war in Iraq or bird flu or George
Bush or whatever for a day or so.  Well, maybe five minutes.

Deep Thought: 
“I don’t think I received enough love when I was a child. And not just
from my parents. From my other relatives, and my friends, and from
strangers and from all the creatures of the world, including bugs.”
Today I am grateful for:  My health, which is rather stable at the moment.
Guess the Movie: 
“Ancestors, I ask you for your guidance. Blessed mother, come to me
with the Gods’ desire for my future. Blessed father, watch over my wife
and son with a ready sword. Whisper to them that I live only to hold
them again, for all else is dust and air. Ancestors, I honor you and
will try to live with the dignity that you have taught me. “  Answer:  The Gladiator, 2000.   Winner:  RnBoW_SPOT.
Canadian Seal Hunt Begins Amid Protests

Sealers Take to the Ice in Canada to Begin Annual Hunt, Get Confronted by Animal Rights Activists

by Phil Couvrette
 GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE – Sealers took to the thawing ice floes off
the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, the first day of Canada’s contentious
seal hunt, confronting animal rights activists who claim the annual
cull is cruel.  (Rest of article here.)

MONDAY READING

The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion


When I got my Xmas book gift card last year, I bought two books:  A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (subject of much later controversy) and The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion, published just last October.  I found Frey’s book
disappointing for more than one reason, though I didn’t think he
required quite the skewering he got from the Great Oprah.  Joan
Didion’s book, on the other hand, was exquisitely written, deeply
personal, and a subject all of us have to face at some time or another
- death of a loved one and the grief that follows.  In her case,
it was a double whammy.  She and her husband of 40 years had just
hospitalized their newly married daughter with flu that became
pneumonia and then septic shock in short order followed by induced coma
and life support. 
Days later at dinner, her husband, John Gregory
Dunne, also an author, suffered a massive and fatal coronary. 
Four weeks later their daughter pulled through and after two months
collapsed and required brain surgery to relieve massive hematoma.
Though it didn’t happen in the time period the book covers, Quintana
died just months into the following year at age 39 of acute
pancreatitis.  This book describes the journey of this wonderful
writer through that first year.  The magical thinking part was
that she couldn’t stop operating in the back of her mind with the idea
that her husband would somehow return.   Here are the first
words of the book and the last, and it is so worthwhile reading what
lies between:

“Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.”

“I think about swimming with him into the cave at
Portuguese Bend, about the swell of clear water, the way it changed,
the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at
the base of the point.  The tide had to be just right.  We
had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right.  We
could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two
years we lived there but it is what I remember.  Each time we did
it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it
wrong.  John never was.  You had to feel the swell
change.  You had to go with the change.  He told me
that.  No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.”

Deep Thought: 
“If you ever discover that what you’re seeing is a play within a play,
just slow down, take a deep breath, and hold on for the ride of your
life”
Today I am grateful for:  Everything that comes in handy
Guess the Movie:  “Blue
flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns.
This would be so much easier if I wasn’t COLOR-BLIND. “  Answer:  Shrek, 2001.  Winner:  RnBoW_SPOT
 Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

by Erik Eckholm

BALTIMORE — Black men in the
United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by
common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly
studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic
boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other
groups.
Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black
men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and
other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black
men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society,
and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic
men.  (Rest of article here.)

SUNDAY GOOD  NEWS

Lately when my grandson (14)  has been In The House, I’ve noticed
that  he spends a portion of his time on MySpace.  Having
heard horror stories about predators tracking down kids on this site, I
did a little peering over his shoulder and asking questions.  Here
are some things I noted:

1.  There’s a warning that appears if you upload a graphic of any
kind that if it’s pornographic or violent, etc. it will be deleted and,
sure enough, I watched him upload a photo and wait as it was
“processed” and accepted.  (Nevertheless, it would seem some
photos posted by teenagers push the limit a bit).

2.  Music – god knows I don’t understand or even want to
understand really the current music genre of most teenagers.  I
guess it’s a generational thing.  I can remember my own parents
being aghast at electric rock music, Bob Dylan, and even, god bless em,
The Beatles.  MySpace makes it possible for anyone, anywhere, to
submit MP3s of their own creation and have them audible throughout the
globe.  So, unlike Xanga, tune in to MySpace and you’ll hear
ongoing music on little miniature radios.  What can I say – It’s
Hard Out Here for a Pimp won the Academy Award for Best Song this year,
and the Academy is a pretty conservative group, I’m told. 
Obviously, in the third year of the current war, with bad news way
outweighing good everywhere you turn, I guess I can’t expect teenagers
to be listening to mellow sounds and lyrics.  So my jury is out on
this component.

3.  The social aspect.  As we all know here on Xanga,
blogging is a way of expressing yourself with a certain degree of
safety net because it’s not actually in person.  It also allows
for feedback, which is generally encouraging if people bother to post
it.  Must be different for teens though who see each other every
day in school.  I saw that my grandson posted something about
school assignments, for example.  “What is the lab assignment for
tomorrow?” type stuff.  But a lot of it sounds like just
practicing the kind of banter that kids use to get acquainted and firm
up friendships.  

Bottom line is I’m not sure if the dark side of blogging outweighs the
light yet.  Blogging is not going to go away any time soon for any
age folks.  Some of the most important news travels by blog faster
than any other way.  Blogging is not controlled by the corporate
media – not yet anyway.  As for my grandson, I have his login and
password and I’m planning to keep breathing down his neck on this one
till he’s oh say, 35 or so.  Just kidding.  I’ll probably
have gone to the Great Xanga in the Sky by then.  Like Stephen
Colbert would say, “And that’s the Word.”

Deep Thought: 
“When I heard that trees grow a new “ring” for each year they live, I
thought, we humans are kind of like that: we grow a new layer of skin
each year, and after many years we are thick and unwieldy from all our
skin layers.”
Today I am grateful for:  Hands.
Guess the Movie:  “Great balls of fire. Don’t bother me anymore, and don’t call me sugar.”  Answer:  Gone With The Wind, 1939.  Winner:  cocoabent.
Wounded lives

After three years of war, many who
served in Iraq are returning home to face a different kind of battle.
And the casualties this time are American families.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

JULIE SULLIVAN (Rest of article here.)

THURSDAY WHATEVER

The secret is to dance.

Mirrors stop looking back
some days,
only voice mail takes your calls,
and you sit down and start to wonder
how the earth fell out from under
quite so suddenly,
- and then
when all your brain cells seem to
stumble,
all your dreams begin to crumble,
comes a moment you recall

the secret is to dance.

Deep Thought:  “If
you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep
the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to
that.”
Today I am grateful for:   The returning green
Guess the Movie:  “You
know, I got a hunch, fat man. I got a hunch that it’s me from here on
in. One ball, corner pocket. I mean, that ever happen to you? You know,
all of a sudden you feel like you just can’t miss? ‘Cause I dreamed
about this game, fat man. I dreamed about it every night on the road.
Five ball. You know, this is my table, man. I own it.”  Answer:  The Hustler, 1961.  Winner: lowflyingsquab
A Peculiar Politician

by William Greider

Senator Russ Feingold is an embarrassment to the US Senate, which 
makes him an authentic hero of the Republic. The Wisconsin senator
gets  up and says out loud what half of the country is thinking
and talks  about every day. This President broke the law and lied
about it; he trashed the Constitution and hides himself in the flag.
Feingold asks: Shouldn’t the Senate say something about this, at least
express our disapproval? He introduces a resolution of censure and
calls for debate.

Well, that tore it in the august chamber of
lawmakers. Democrats scurried away like scared rats. And Republicans
chortled at the thought. You want to censure our warrior President, the
guy who defends us every day against terrorist attacks? Let’s have a
vote right now, the Republican leader demanded. Yuk, yuk.  
(Rest of article here.)

SATURDAY PHOTO
(see sidebar for others)

Marlon Brando on Set of Apocalypse Now,  Phillipines 1977

by Mary Ellen Mark

Mary
Ellen Mark (1940-) was born in Philadelphia and began photographing
with a Box Brownie camera at age nine.  She studied painting and
art history for a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania
around 1959. She turned professional as a freelance in the mid 1960s
when she returned to school at the Annenburg School for Communication
at the University of Pennsylvania and received, after her graduation in
1965, a Fullbright scholarship to photograph in Turkey and other
countries in Europe for a year.  In her long career she has
tackled many of the most difficult social issues of her time; including
homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction and prostitution. She works
almost exclusively in black and white. She has contributed to many
publications, including LIFE magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker
and Vanity Fair. She currently works in her
studio in New York, and is under contract to The New Yorker. 
She’s had three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, won
the Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, undertaken a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and been awarded five honorary doctorates.   She
maintains that the technical aspects (as well as the social aspects) of
her work are very important – as she said in an interview: “A good
print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary
photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical
photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs.
(…) I don’t want to just be a photo essayist; I’m more interested in
single images…. ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their
own”.  She is currently happily married to photographer Martin
Bell and resides in New York, NY.  Here are more of her photos.

Deep Thought: 
“I’ll take that little one, way in the back,” I said. “That little
collie mix?” said the animal shelter guy. “No,” I said, “the other one
behind him.” “The gray terrier?” he said. “He’s gray,” I said, “but way
in the back, in the corner.” “You mean the water faucet?” he said. I
realized then it was a water faucet, but I didn’t want to look like a
jerk, so I said, “Yeah, that’s the one I want.” It ended up costing me
almost five hundred dollars to get that faucet removed. But you know,
I’ve still got that faucet, and I wouldn’t trade it for any dog in the
world.”
Today I am grateful for:  Graph paper
Guess the Movie:  “By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.”  Answer:  The African Queen, 1951.  Winner:   hypatia.
Bid to Give Bush the Boot
Residents of a tiny Vermont town have joined forces in a growing fight to impeach the U.S. president
But with plunging approval and a slew of scandals, an ouster attempt may be the least of his worries
by Tim Harper  (Rest of article here.)

THURSDAY WHATEVER

After all, no one knows when is their time.
No one is awake when the last snow falls in the dark,
and we turn the corner into spring
and toward the light.

Deep Thought:   “Sometimes you have to be careful when selecting a new name for yourself. For instance, let’s say you have chosen the nickname “Fly Head.” Normally you would think that “Fly Head” would mean a person who has beautiful swept-back features, as if flying through the air. But think again. Couldn’t it also mean “having a head like a fly”? I’m afraid some people might actually think that.”
Today I am grateful for:  Grain
Guess the Movie:  Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere.  Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids   laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.   Answer:  The Grapes of Wrath, 1940.  Winner:  InkStainedFingers
National
Lawyers Guild Calls for the Impeachment of South Dakota Governor
Michael Rounds for Signing Anti-Abortion Legislation  (Rest of article here.)

And check this out:   ordering pizza in the fairly near future if things proceed as they have been.

MONDAY READING



Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny – by Michael Gearing-Tosh (2002)

Sorry I’ve been missing in action for a bit.  We had a real
gutpunch in our family when suddenly my son’s father, now 58, was
diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  He’s lived in the Bay Area for
years so at first there was a lot of trying to get more information by
phone and deciding who of his loved ones here would go to visit him and
when.  He and I have a son who is now 37, and two grandchildren,
ages 14 and 10 who all live here in Portland.   Our
relationship began when we were very young in the Haight-Ashbury days
of my story (see Chapter 8 of my Autobiography – sidebar link) and
never advanced
to marriage but has remained cordial over all these years since I moved
to Oregon in the 1970’s.  He comes up for holidays and birthday
visits a few times each year and has been an involved parent and
grandparent.  He is also a well-known musician who has numerous
friends from all over the world who love him dearly and a woman in his
life these past years who is taking tender care of him now. 
Nevertheless, it’s been a frightening time for us, and the decision was
made for our son to visit him this past weekend before his dad has to
go tomorrow to get test results and probably a prognosis.  So
while that was happening I went directly to the library and took out
some books to read about this hideous cancer of the bone marrow that is
incurable and for which the symptoms are usually only treated by
aggressive chemotherapy, with a limited life expectancy.  I found
one with all the facts you’d ever want to know, and then I found one
that is the story of a person who had lived with it for at least eight
years at the time of the book publication by adopting an alternative
course of treatment to the mainstream medical approach.  I thought
it was good to read something with a little hope in it in the middle of
all this darkness.  So here’s a quote from the book for your
Monday reading:

FOREWORD
The diagnosis is cancer.
The hospital tells me to start chemotherapy at once.  Without it I
will die in months; with it I may live for two to three years.
I ask for a second opinion.
The advice is the same: start at once.
Then a world authority on cancer says that if I touch chemotherapy, I am a “goner.”
Which advice do I take?  Should I look elsewhere?  Do I have time?
The opposite of the phrase Living Proof is, I suggest, dead wrong.
Or, if you will, wrong and dead.
The stakes are high.
What am I to do?

I can only wonder what the journey will be in the coming weeks, months, and hopefully years.

Deep Thought: 
“If aliens from outer space ever come and we show them our civilization
and they make fun of it, we should say we were just kidding, that this
isn’t really our civilization, but a gag we hoped they would like. Then
we tell them to come back in twenty years to see our real civilization.
After that, we start a crash program of coming up with an impressive
new civilization. Either that, or just shoot down the aliens as they’re
waving good-bye.”
Today I am grateful for:   Anything that makes me laugh
Guess the Movie:  Well,
here I am, anonymous all right. With guys nobody really cares about.
They come from the end of the line, most of ‘em. Small towns you never
heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Van, Utah;
Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years’ high school’s about it, maybe if
they’re lucky a job waiting for them back at a factory, but most of ‘em
got nothing. They’re poor, they’re the unwanted, yet they’re fighting
for our society and our freedom. It’s weird, isn’t it? They’re the
bottom of the barrel and they know it. Maybe that’s why they call
themselves grunts, cause a grunt can take it, can take anything.
They’re the best I’ve ever seen, Grandma. The heart & soul.   Answer:  Platoon, 1986.
Peace Activist Sheehan Arrested in NY Protest
NEW YORK – Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist whose son was killed in
the Iraq war, was arrested with three other protesters in New York on
Monday after a rally with women from Iraq.  (Rest of article here).