Window Light

In the late afternoon as the sun approaches the horizon and another day comes to an end.



In absentia.

It's a small world.

Xenophobia

A friend of mine sent me a little something yesterday:

A Somali arrives in Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country, and giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care and free education!"

But the passer-by says, "You are mistaken, I am Mexican."

The man goes on and encounters another passer-by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!"

The person says, "I no American, I Vietnamese."

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, "Thank you for the wonderful America!"

That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from the Middle East, I am not an American!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks suspiciously, "Are you an American?"

She says, "No, I am from Russia!"

So he is puzzled, and asks her, "Where are all the Americans?"

The Russian lady looks at her watch, shrugs, and says "Probably at work".

So, I sent him a short little note:

You might consider looking up xenophobia in the dictionary ...

This morning's e-mail produced the following:

It's a joke Joe. I don't hate strangers or foreigners. It says a lot about some of the shortcomings in our system. I am all for helping people in need, but those that can help themselves need to pull their own oar. It seems......forget it.

To which I replied:

What am I to think when so much of what you write to me involves a negative view of "ferriners"?

I honestly don't think he gets it. I guess some of his best friends are "ferriners"

Yet another run up to yet another war?

I think among the more frightening sequences of events recently has been the saber rattling at Iran. The accusations sound awfully familiar and they're being made by the same folks who brought you a war in Afghanistan that's not going well and a war in Iraq that is a total disaster.

All the so-called incriminating evidence against Iran sounds a lot like all the incriminating evidence against Iraq in 2002 and 2003 during the buildup to the invasion that has since gone very wrong.

Eason Jordan is calling for "unidentified sources" to identify themselves. I agree. I think the battle cry should be "ACCOUNTABILITY".

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Edit: Here's a late addition to the story about weapons supplied to insurgents by someone down the street and around the corner ...

On Never Finding Home

I moved around a lot during the course of my life; from Syracuse to Mt Carroll, IL., from Chicago to San Francisco and on and on. I’ve touched base for a couple of years with Grand Rapids, MI and Parsippany, NJ. I’ve lived in Syracuse a number of times. The point is that I have moved so much and so often that I’ve lost my sense of “home”. For years I’ve had a longing to “go home” but now I see that it’s not possible. I have no home and I never will. Home is a place with a history and my history is spread out all over the place.

I’ve noticed an interesting thing about the process. People who move a lot envy those who’ve had stable lives. For example, I have a certain envy of a cousin of mine. He went away to school and came back to the Central New York area with a wife. They settled into Skaneatles, bought a nice house not far from the lake, remodeled the hell out of it and have lived there for the last 20 or 30 years. For a long time I thought that meant something. Then I realized that people who choose that direction in life also have a certain level of envy of those people who are always on the move.

I guess the moral of the story is that things are as they are. You live the life you live and you will always take pride in some things and regret other things. Mostly you regret the things you didn't do, when you come right down to it.

You cannot travel two paths at the same time. You do the best you can, and that’s OK. Though it’s not fate particularly – that is, your life is not written anywhere – yet somehow, the fact of the matter is, you have very little choice when confronted by events. Fate without a destiny – I think that’s possible - with "fate" meaning that you are controlled and directed by events while "destiny" implies a fixed end point. I wonder if that’s not the way things really are. We are directed by our past but there is no specific destiny involved. The events in which we must decide our direction are pretty random but our past limits our responses. We are who we are.

I used to think I was a rational human being, making decisions in a deliberative manner. The older I've become the more I came to realize the important decisions in my life have been made on the basis of emotion with reason entering the equation only after the fact ... as a means of rationalizing decisions already made by other means.

In any case, I live in a house that was built some 10 years ago. The interior is painted with someone else’s color scheme, but it’s a good one. I can’t see how to change it in a way that would improve it. I only know that I’m conscious of the fact that someone else created it. I’d hoped to cure that somewhere along the way by building a house from the ground up – designing it – laying out the spaces. To some degree I thought I was going to accomplish that with the remodel of the house on Shiloh Street but that was a plan that went awry. I’m not even sure that would have over come the feeling of not having a place. I think being somewhere for a lifetime is the only cure for knowing home.

Ultimately I will never “come home”. I will never “be home”. I will never “know” home. There is no place for me. I identify with Mark Twain’s phrase “wandering alien”.

So, here I sit in a suburban house that I never imagined would be part of my life. I’ve always riled against homes that are ten feet apart, preferring instead the idea of open spaces and not being able to see my neighbors. It’s a California Style, tract house, similar to all the other houses in this neighborhood – another thing that I’ve found a negative throughout my life – preferring instead the idea of designing a place for myself. The color scheme is someone else’s but it’s a good one; very livable. At least the furnishings are ours.

We will probably never move again – except perhaps one more time – after one or the other of us pass away and this house becomes too much for one left behind. This is it. This is home. This is as "home" as its going to get.

O'Reilly Watch

I'm not a big Bill O'Reilly fan. As a matter of fact, I think he represents one of the major problems with media today. That's why I found this little piece taking Keith Olbermann to task for comparing O'Reilly to the former Senator Joe McCarthy very amusing.

Darwin Day - Feb. 12th - Be There!!!

The calendar boasts plenty of religious holidays, but how many scientific holidays can you name? One of the red-letter days is coming up on Monday, when more than 850 events around the globe will mark Darwin Day, the 198th anniversary of the evolutionary theorist's birth. You can hear about Charles Darwin and the revolution he sparked from hundreds of church pulpits this weekend, as part of a program called Evolution Sunday.

• More of the above article ...
  
• Lots MORE about the day ... it appears to be evolving!!

Native Voices

From Native Voices

A reading of poetry and from short stories by the authors at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, AZ.

It struck me as I watched these Native people tell their stories. A true cultural dialog happens when we exchange our stories.

I grew up next door to the Onondaga Nation in Central New York ... at the center of the Iroquois Confederacy. Some four or five hundred years ago the Jesuits came down from Canada with the fur trappers and traders. I have had a painting of the scene in my head most of my life. The scene is a Jesuit priest standing among the seated Onondagas, telling his Jesuit stories while the Onondagas respectfully listened.

Today, at the Amerind, I saw a similar scene. This time the Native people were standing while the whites respectfully sat and listened to the Native stories.

I can only apologize for it having taken so long to yield the floor. We would all be so much better off if it had happened a long time ago.

From Native Voices

I had the good fortune to be there and take some pictures that the Foundation may (or may not) use in their monthly newsletter.

Dumb people in the news

Exotic dancers' 'stigma' too much for charity

CBC News, Canada

The Breast Cancer Society of Canada has rejected the offer of thousands of dollars from a fundraising group of exotic dancers in Vancouver.

Exotic Dancers for Cancer holds an annual charity event in memory of a former dancer who lost her life to the disease.

more ...

Just another of today's absurdities.

I would think if one were running a charity one would be accepting donations from all kinds of people. I don't know that The Breast Cancer Society of Canada should be in the business of [picking and choosing on some unwritten moral grounds. Are the dancers breaking the law by being exotic dancers? No laws broken, then whats the problem?

Does the Society raise too much money already?

Just the News

Its Saturday morning and today's news isn't any better than yesterday's news. It might even be incrementally worse. It's hard to tell sometimes.

My hope is that there is a bright future ahead but my fear is that we've seen the high point and it's downhill from here.

On one hand, I've been watching an ecological disaster since Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in the 1960s. The culmination of that death watch is Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" and the latest pronouncement by the scientific community by way of the UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that its a 90% certainty that man has tied the nose around his own neck and now tap dancing blind folded on the edge of a cliff.

On the other hand, I've watched the Bush administration lie, cheat and misrepresent reality in international affairs, in domestic policy, and in energy policy.

More damage has been done in the last 6 years than I can remember seeing .. or even reading about .. since the Second World War.

Steven Hawking is a pretty bright guy. He seems to think the only hope for man-kind is to hit the bricks and find another planet ... and start all over again. I wonder if he isn't right. I wonder if we've gone too far and this planet is headed for the scrap heap.

My consolation is that, by the time all this sh!# really hits the fan, I'll be dead.

Keep a happy thought.

What Would Puff Daddy Say?

Something prompted me to look for video clips of the old Dick Cavett Show. I found a bunch on YouTube. I'd forgotten how intelligent TV talk shows could be.

I wonder what a serious interview with someone like Puff Daddy ... or P. Diddy ... would sound like.

I wonder if somewhere along the way we lost our collective intellectual horse power.

Treasures of the Amerind

Almost finished!!


Click image for sample images from
the book, "Treasures of the Amerind".

The only things missing are:

• Captions for about 12 pictures and
  
• Re-write of the Introduction

Neither of those things are in my hands ... so, I can say I'm finished with the book.

As soon I get the captions and the intro re-write we can publish. Then the book goes on sale exclusively through the Gift Shop at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Arizona.

Here's a quick preview. Actually, there's much more to it but, this gives the idea:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Global Warming

It doesn't matter which side of the issue you're on; it's vitally important that you understand the questions and answers from both sides before you make up your mind and voice your opinion. To that end, here's a site I found that might be useful. Granted, it leans very heavily toward the side that sees Global Warming and Climate Change (and man's role there in) as vitally important issues and that we should start doing something about it ... like, NOW. However, it does outline all the important questions on both sides of the issues and provides the scientific rebuttal to the questions raised by the skeptics.

Get you Global Warming Questions Answered ... HERE

Missing the Point

I've been watching this whole Pelosi BS over the use of Air Force transportation and, as the truth of the matter comes out, it gets more and more ridiculous.

Lacking any ability to sort truth from fiction or to prioritize in the face of their bumbling domestic and international incompetence, the "all-hat-no-cattle" Republican cowboys once again try to distract from their ineptitude by manufacturing lightweight controversy - elevating what might normally be interesting to the level of important while ignoring the truly important (like war, an economy that serves only a few, the absence of equitable health care in the richest nation on the planet ... actual issues ...)

What's the problem, guys ... annoyed that Pelosi isn't honoring the long standing and highly revered Republican tradition ... of having lobbyists pay for their transportation?

It seems to go right along with so many other things:

• Weapons of mass destruction ... that weren't there.
  
• Ties to al Qaeda that didn't exist.
  
• The absence of ethics and honesty from the top on down to Swift Boaters to Delay to Abramoff and to "Scooter" Libby.

This list is seemingly endless.

How is it that a significant segment of the population can watch all of this go buy without seeing the corruption is beyond me.

Bush Administration Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon

Editor and Publisher
By E&P Staff /

Original text here.

Published: January 24, 2007 4:00 PM ET updated Thursday

NEW YORK

In an online chat at washingtonpost.com this afternoon, Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter at that paper and now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration -- almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era. It came just as news of the death of former Watergate ringleader E. Howard Hunt was circulating widely.

After a long explanation of how the American system "worked," eventually, with Watergate, Bernstein said:

"In the case George W. Bush, the American system has obviously failed -- tragically -- about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions -- particularly of government -- done their job to ensure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as has since been proven many times over, beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions, and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world."

Later, asked if the Nixon administration was unique in hiring disreputable characters, he replied: "Until the Bush-43 administration, I had believed that the Nixon presidency was sui generis in modern American history in terms of your question...

"In terms of small-bore (but dangerous) characters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy with their schemes, I doubt that any presidency approaches the criminality of the Nixon White House. But the Watergate conspiracy--to undermine the constitution and use illegal methods to hurt Nixon's political opponents and even undermine the electoral system--was supervised by those at the very top.

"In the current administration we have seen from the President down -- especially Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld -- a willingness to ignore the great constitutional history of the United States -- to suspend, really, many of the constitutional guarantees that have made us a nation apart, with real freedoms unknown elsewhere, unrestricted by short-term political objectives of our leaders.

"Then there are the Geneva conventions: Who would have dreamed that, in our lifetime, our leaders would permit their flagrant abuse, would authorize torture, 'renditions' to foreign-torture chambers, suspension of habeus corpus, illegal surveillance of our own citizens....

"But perhaps worst, has been the lying and mendacity of the president and his men and women--in the reasons they cited for going to war, their conduct of the war, their attempts to smear their political opponents.

"Nixon and his men lied and abused the constitution to horrible effect, but they were stopped.

"The Bush Administration -- especially its top officials named above and others familiar to most Americans -- was not stopped, and has done far greater damage. As a (Republican) bumper-sticker of the day proclaimed, 'Nobody died at Watergate.' If only we could say that about the era of George W. Bush, and that our elected representatives in Congress and our judiciary had been courageous enough to do their duty and hold the President and his aides accountable."

Bernstein was also asked about the CIA leak case and the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, which he called "a truly Nixonian event, a happenstance not atypical of the take-no-prisoners politics of the Bush presidency. But it pales in comparison to the larger questions of the Constitution, of life and death, of the Geneva conventions, of the expectation that our leaders -- from Condoleeza Rice to Dick Cheney, to the attorney(s) general to Paul Wolfowitz and on down and up the line speak truthfully to the American people and the Congress. They have consistently failed to do so."

The Meaning of Christmas