Daily Archives: January 22, 2008

General

A Pale Orange Orb

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4  64%  18%  0mph WSW bar30.07  windchill4  Winter

                        Full Winter Moon

The moon hung low on horizon as I came home from the grocery store, a pale orange orb occluded by dirty gray clouds.  It gave off the aura of Samain in the depths of late January.  As often happens with the moon, I felt a pinch of privilege; I saw this and felt it.  A privilege we all share, if only we look up at the sky instead of down at our feet.

Back to Ultimate Electronics to pick up my Blu-Ray player.  I traded in the HD player when Warner Brothers announced they were going with Blu-Ray. Now I have to hook it up.

Worked out in shorts yesterday and it was the first time in years I can recall fitting into the collection of shorts I gathered before I began bulking out.  A proud moment.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Politics

OMG! Bush Lied!

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-1  72%  18% 0mph W bar30.10  steady windchill-1  winter

                       Full Winter Moon

I now have sound going from the DVR/Cable box to the receiver and the 5 speakers.  I also have sound going from the new Blu-Ray DVD player to the 5 speakers.  This is close to total success, but I still have two hurdles remaining.  I have not been able to get any radio signals yet, in spite of connecting the antennas and I have not run the test microphone which will balance the speakers.  Still, I feel largely done with this project.

In order to get Blu-Ray quality movies you have to get Blu-Ray discs.  Not cheap.  I watched one this evening, Beowulf and Grendel.  This movie takes a spare approach to the story and gives a backstory for Grendel.  It is gorgeous, shot in Iceland by an Icelandic director.  I liked it a good deal, though I’d not heard of it.

The big screen, HD TV setup came from my love for movies.  This is a stunning way to watch movies at home and, with the surround sound, surprisingly close to the cinema experience.  Movies are as important to me as literature, music and the fine arts.  I’m glad to have this way to view them.

Now:  It can finally be said.

“WASHINGTON (AP) – A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.”

The life and times of celebrities must be difficult.  Heath Ledger’s death today, whether suicide or accident (and I would wonder if accident isn’t suicide by another name), puts another name in the column of this felled by fame.  To those in the limelight all the time there must be a moment when you either choose life or choose self-destruction, a decision many of us face only obliquely, perhaps at the dinner table.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Cows With Guns

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4  65%  20%  0mph SWS bar30.06  steep fall windchll2  winter

                    Full Winter Moon

Here is a wonderful movie from the BLF, the Bovine Liberation Front:   Cows With Guns.  Thanks to Paul Strickland (and a Golden Plump Warrior Chicken Tip o’ the Hat to the Helgeson’s: Beware of the chickens with choppers.)

The Woollies met last night.  We discussed our memories of the Civil Rights movement and the time before it which we can remember well.  Paul remembered white’s only drinking fountains, segregated movie theatres and a grandmother who said of a man beating a dog, “I wouldn’t treat a nigger like that.”  Scott Simpson told of two and a half years as a member of an African-American Pentecostal church in north Minneapolis.  When he brought a lady friend home one evening, his mother quietly asked him, “You don’t plan to marry her, do you?”  I recalled the bitter and often painful days when white radicals like myself marched and acted in solidarity with Blacks.  We were all struggling to find our identity and we accomplished some of that in angry confrontations with each other. 

We debated how far the culture had come since those days.   Some of us thought we’d come a long ways, others (myself, for instance) thought not as far as it seems.  I cited this incident from that went to trial in September of  last year:

“Al Hixon installed some carpeting for his residential construction business one Saturday morning. Then he took his Jaguar out of winter storage and stopped for some fresh oil at a Sinclair station near his Golden Valley home back on April 2, 2005.

The next thing he knew, police officers were throwing him face down on the pavement, jumping on his back, handcuffing him, placing a boot on his neck and shooting pepper spray in his eyes and nostrils, according to his testimony at a federal excessive-force trial Friday in St. Paul.”

Warren told of an African-American friend who found an Eveleth restaurant accepting and a Virginia bar, only a few miles away, hostile and threatening.  It’s the randomness of these experiences, the not knowing when racism will rise up, that makes life still stressful and unpleasant, at the least for most African-Americans.

Oh, and we set up our calendar for next retreat, decided on a theme for the retreat and the next year:  All Themes Considered.   This is astonishing productivity for a group of usually slow to come to a decision men, but we liked it anyhow.