FRIDAY FIVE

Appetizer – Create a new candle scent.
I
love candles but I don’t usually burn them when I’m home alone because
I’m afraid somehow I’ll forget and leave them on when I go out or fall
asleep – or one of my cats will knock one over when I’m not looking,
etc. My favorite scent for years was vanilla and I used them for air
freshening when company was coming because god forbid using incense
these days. Then you have to go into long explanations about how you
used to be hippie 40 years ago. But a new scent – how about the smell
of a fall wood fire.
Soup – Name one way you show affection to others.
My
birth family were not huggers. During my vagabond flower child days
free love was the word so way beyond hugging was common. There’s
nothing better than when your children are little enough for hugging
while sitting in your lap. Then they get bigger than you are and
suddenly they’re hugging you. In Recovery programs hugging is de
rigeur. Total strangers have hugfests. But I never got over the
original no hugging days altogether.  That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s an A-1 idea.
Salad – What is your favorite writing instrument?
Oh,
I must have fine point pens and not ball point because they smear when
you run a highlighter over them. I’m running out now and they’re on my
shopping list.
Main Course – If you were given $25 to spend anywhere online, from which site would you buy?
Well,
you can’t buy much for $25 for starters. I’d probably find something
used on Amazon.com. Some kind of spiritual or self-help book or DVD.
Dessert – Are you dressing up for Halloween? If so, what are you going to be?
No
freaking way. I’m so happy for everyone who loves to gung ho for
Halloween. I’ll be the one with my front porch lights off. When my
grandkids were little and my kids were little I put up with all that bags
of sugar seeking. Thank god they now live far enough away and got old
enough that I don’t have to worry about it. Please don’t hate me.

Deep Thought:
“It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money. And I
guess that’s what I like about it. It’s easy. Just sitting there,
rocking back and forth, wanting that money.”
Today I am grateful for: Presumption of innocence
Guess the Movie:
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea
that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re
licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no
matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”  Answer:  To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962.
Bush OKs 700-mile border fence
WASHINGTON
(CNN) — President Bush signed a bill Thursday authorizing the
construction of a fence along one-third of the 2,100-mile
(3,360-kilometer) U.S. border with Mexico, but missing from the
legislation is a means to pay for it. (Rest of article here.)

THURSDAY WHATEVER

the leaves turn upon their
golden
stems
and it is autumn –

in the morning early I wander
vacant streets gathering silence
and leaving only footsteps hesitant
behind –

it comes to me then in the clean
cold air
that I too long to turn upon
my stem –

I have a rightful place among the seasons

Deep Thought:  “When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Ya-hoo! We’re rich! But it turned out to be something different.”
Today I am grateful for:  Pores
Guess the Movie:  “The
commandments say ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but we hire men to go out and
do it for us. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here. But if
you’re asking me to tell my people to go out and kill and maybe get
themselves killed, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”  Answer:  High Noon, 1952.  Winner:  thenarrator.
‘Beginning of the End of America’

Olbermann Addresses the Military Commissions Act in a Special Comment

by Keith Olbermann
We have lived as if in a trance.
We have lived as people in fear.
And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.
For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in
force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of
exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims
to protect us from.   (Rest of article here.)

FRIDAY FIVE

Appetizer – Approximately how many hours per week do you spend reading other blogs?
Hmmm, after a few years on xanga you start to know how to recognize
what you personally respond to and a glance is often enough to decide
to linger and read.  I’m especially drawn to:  original and
graceful creative writing pieces (prose and poetry both), unusually
beautiful photos, political commentary of a liberal bent, spiritual
observations from experience or with a slant from buddhism or atheism
or something different than straight ahead Christianity, daily life in
what seem to be to me intact loving families and how they do that, film
and book reviews, and stuff about people’s gardens and pets.  How
many hours a week?  Wild guess – 7.
Soup – Your community wants everyone to give one thing to put into a time capsule. What item would you choose to include?
Something that would express that some of us wanted peace.
Salad – What is the most interesting tourist attraction you’ve ever visited?
In 1962 I had the experience of traveling from Helsinki, Finland over
500 miles and 20 hours into Russia to be at the University of Moscow
with my then husband.  It was a journey into the past.  With
each mile, the people who boarded became less European and more like
very poor peasants.  One man boarded with a live pig in his
arms.  The train itself was a showpiece created during the
Stalinist era to impress the rest of the world with how well they
should think Russia was doing.  For a girl off an Oregon farm it
was an unforgettable eye-opening experience.
Main Course – If you could give an award to anyone for anything, who would it be and what would the award be titled?
Well, they already have the Nobel Peace Prize and I guess two people
who pop to my mind that it would be nice to see recognized are Bono and
the Vietnamese buddhist peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh.  This
year’s choice was a great one though (see below).
Dessert – What do you think your favorite color reveals about your personality?
Purple was my favorite color eons before I got old enough to qualify for “When I get old, I shall wear purple”.

Deep Thought:  
“If you want to sue somebody, just get a little plastic skeleton and
lay it in their yard. Then tell them their ants ate your baby.”
Today I am grateful for:  Poets and those who listen to them.
Guess the Movie:  “There
are many things my father taught me here in this room. He taught me:
keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”  Answer:  The Godfather Part II, 1974.  Winner:  RnBoW_SPOT.
Follow me and beat poverty, Nobel winner tells West

From Nick Meo in Dhaka
MUHAMMAD YUNUS, this year’s surprise choice for the Nobel Peace Prize,
used his award yesterday to make an impassioned appeal to the West to
overhaul the way it tackles poverty in the Third World.  (Rest of
article here.)

TUESDAY POLITICS

When it comes to getting on my last nerve, I don’t know which of these
two guys wins the prize.  Is
it the one who has now maybe set off
the second nuclear explosion, according to my TV a few minutes ago
(oops just an earthquake false alarm, scuse me for flinching), and
whose missiles would hit my coast first – or is it the one who is
peddling as fast as his girth will permit to cover the tracks of his
fellow “overly-friendly” congressmen?  And by the way, I just had a
thought – where the heck is Karl Rove lately?  Locked in some room
somewhere with his henchmen trying to figure out some kind of grand wag
the dog scheme over all this?  Meanwhile back at the casbah more
of our American soldiers – and various collateral damage civilians -
are continuing to be blown up, no plan in sight.  November is
looming and I’m starting to receive missives from local groups telling
me how they wish I will vote on local issues.  Rumor has it that
my Oregon, a state that has been Democrat leaning for most of the years I
can remember, is beginning to tilt to the red. Can it be?  I
better start studying up because it’s not getting easier figuring out
who you can trust in politics these days.  I was kind of pleased
that good old Bob Woodward dropped his book into the mix at just this
moment.  Stay tuned.

Deep Thought: 
“Some folks say it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and
knocked the next pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a
lucky swing.”
Today I am grateful for:  Pluck
Guess the Movie:  “Oh come
on. Look who’s talking. You’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for 15 years.
You should smoke some of this. You’d be off the couch in no time.”  Answer:  Annie Hall, 1977.  Winner:  thenarrator.
Google’s YouTube bid marks strategic turn
Google’s bid to acquire YouTube Inc. with 1.65 billion U.S. dollars
indicated that the search giant would expand in a hot sector, market
analyst said on Tuesday.    (Rest of article here.)

MONDAY READING

For
the second time in two days I’ve been tagged by twoberry. This time it
was to tell favorite tear jerker moments from books and/or movies. Since
today is for reading, what came to my mind was a book given to me in
childhood called The Biography of a Grizzly by Ernest Thompon Seton,
the English-born author and naturalist who also founded the
Boy Scouts of America. I returned to this book again and again just to
read the final paragraph, which always reduced me to sobs, as it did
again today when I looked it up. The book was never copyrighted, so you
can download it easily from the web. Here is that paragraph, so grab
some kleenex:

“He paused a moment at the gate, and as he stood
the wind-borne fumes began their subtle work. Five were the faithful
wardens of his life, and the best and trustiest of them all flung open
wide the door he long had kept. A moment still Wahb stood in doubt. His
lifelong guide was silent now, had given up his post. But another sense
he felt within. The Angel of the Wild Things was standing there,
beckoning, in the little vale. Wahb did not understand. He had no eyes
to see the tear in the Angel’s eyes, nor the pitying smile that was
surely on his lips. He could not even see the Angel. But he felt him
beckoning, beckoning. A rush of his ancient courage surged in the
Grizzly’s rugged breast. He turned aside into the little gulch. The
deadly vapors entered in, filled his huge chest and tingled in his
vast, heroic limbs as he calmly lay down on the rocky, herbless floor
and as gently went to sleep, as he did that day in his Mother’s arms by
the Graybull, long ago.”

Guess the Movie:  “I think I’ll go to sleep and dream about piles of gold getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”  Answer:  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948.  Winner:  titus_bigglesworth.