Monthly Archives: March 2009

Politics

The Heartless Bastards.

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Spring           Waning Moon of Winds

Think elections don’t make a difference?  That votes don’t count?

Consider the hanging chads in Florida and the Supreme Court in 2000 that gave the Presidency to the man who lost the popular vote.  Then recall last November when the people voted and voted and voted, in the end choosing Barack Obama.  If he were not in office, I can guarantee you would not have read the following article.

Then consider the following that appeared on a Yahoo news article:

“Insurers offer to stop charging sick people more
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer – 12 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems. The offer from America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift in the debate over reforming the nation’s health care system to rein in costs and cover an estimated 48 million uninsured people. It was contained in a letter to key senators…

Insurers are trying to head off the creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with them, something that liberals and many Democrats are pressing for. To try to win political support, the industry has already made a number of concessions. Last year, for example, insurers offered to end the practice of denying coverage to sick people. They also said they would support a national goal of restraining cost increases.”

The heartless bastards.  Offering to stop doing what no moral or decent person would have entertained in the first place.

Reminds me of, oh let me see, executives at AIG who drove the company into the ground then wanted the taxpayers to give them bonuses for doing it.

Politics

Michele, My Belle (& Unfortunately, My Congresswoman)

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Gosh, gee whiz.  What can you say?  Michele opens her mouth and engages Rush Limbaugh’s brain.  Our gerrymandered district has kept her in office.  The new districts can’t come soon enough for me.

“Bachmann urges “armed” revolt over climate plan

Rep. Michele Bachmann, the firebrand Minnesota conservative Republican, may have gone a bit over the rhetorical line last weekend when attacking the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade proposal.

Speaking on a right-wing talk radio show in Minnesota on Saturday, Bachmann said:

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.””

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0309/Bachmann_urges_armed_revolt_over_climate_plan.html

Dreams

Barriers

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Spring     Waning Moon of Winds

Night time.  Around this time the barrier between this world and the inner world begins to crumble.  Last night’s dreams begin to reassert themselves, as if they want a chance to continue.  Bits and pieces of different excursions come back:  the city street where I often walk, amazed at being in the city, living in the tall skyscraper that is my home.  Or the vastly expanded Alexandria, my home, now filled with bustling upscale businesses, restaurants and fancy homes.  Then there is my favorite the northern city, often called Toronto (to which I have never been).  I drive over an arching bridge into Canada, pass through Toronto on my way north.

When I get out of the city, the area becomes wild and lonesome, ending in a wilderness both inviting and terrifying.  I haven’t made this trip in a while but I imagine I will some night soon.

The dream world has as much reality as this one, all Maya, yet, all wonderful.

Garden, Great Work, Health, Hydroponics, permaculture

Under the Lights

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Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. – Walt Whitman

Business meeting and plants this morning.  The business meeting went just fine, our financial management continues to work for us and not against us.  Wish I could say the same for the financial markets.  Sigh.  Decided to check.  Wish granted: Dow Leaps 497 Points on Treasury Plan.  Yeah.

My seedlings, grown over the last couple of weeks, sprouted roots which is the time to move them to their next medium, in this case soil in peat and coconut fiber pots with the exception of four chard and one mustard green that I put in lava rock and in the hydroponics.  The broccoli, egg plants, onions, leeks, mustard and collard greens, cauliflower and huckelberry now have soil around their sprouting medium.  They are all under the lights still.   Moving to larger size containers strained my space, though with some jiggering I got them all in new places and still under the lights.

Some of them have to move out soon to make way for the seedlings that need to get started on April 1st and April 15th.  Just when they were getting comfortable.  Hmmm.  I may have problems here.  Seems onions started by seed should not go outside until May.  This will definitely cramp the April batch of plants.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality

A Thought on Extinction

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Spring     Waning Moon of Winds

Quick notes for some future thought.  Often I carry a notion around for days before I set it down and I’ve had one banging around for a week or so.  On Monday last at Frank Broderick’s I offered a view of legacy that featured, as I posted here, Shelley’s poem Ozymandias.  The more I’ve thought of that poem and the sinking in to the sands of time of 99.99999% of us, often not even name remaining for long, I’ve felt strangely liberated by it.

Let me extend  the notion.  Not only will even the best and the brightest of us fade from view, as have all but a very few, but given time even the starship on which we travel will die away, too.  Long before that humanity will have ended its time here on earth, perhaps we will go out to the stars, perhaps not, but at some point the planet we know, that humanity has known as its only home, will disappear from the universe, swallowed by an expanding red giant.

This cheery line of thought led me backwards then to our self-awareness.  We know we will die.  This is said to be the ur-fear, but I think is not.  The ur-fear is not death per se, but the question of extinction.  Somehow extinction makes us uneasy, as if we should be an exception to what we expect for dogs, cows, trees and frogs.  This winking out of aware life carries a potential and, I think, actual message of nihilism.  That is, life has no overriding moral purpose when seen in light of death.

Does this mean no ethical system has roots, punch.  No, of course not.  Camus felt that death made us all brothers and sisters, committed to each other and to as smooth and happy a course of life for the other as for ourselves.  Ethical systems validated only by post death rewards or punishments do fall by the side.  But they are no great loss.

General

Parfum de la Terre

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Spring           Waning Moon of Winds

Last night the smell of fresh earth blew in to our bedroom on a cool breeze.  This scent has the power to quicken my pulse.  It means the long frozen period of winter has broken enough to moisten at least the top inch or so of soil.  Soon the now quiet movements of bulbs and corms and rhizomes will increase, green shoots will begin to press their way up, up, up.

Today the 2009 garden has come closer to emergence.  And not only outside.   The visit I made yesterday to Interior Gardens gave me enough material to place the seedling that are ready into soil, into pots that can go straight in the bed.  All of the onions, tiny seedlings though they are can go outside as soon as I can work the soil.  Most of what I planted has to wait longer, some a month, some until all danger of frost is past.  On April 15th yet more seeds go under the lights.

The germination rate of my seeds is very high, for most it is 100%.  After I get done today, I’ll know which seeds have not done as well.

I volunteered to help with e-mail alerts for the Sierra Club, so I also have to review the material necessary to step into that process.  It means developing some sample e-mail alerts, setting up the e-mail and getting it ready to send.  The latter part is the most mysterious to me.  Apparently, the national Sierra Club has strict rules about such things and the templates used can be difficult to navigate.

Then, of course, there is that new Gateway desktop I bought.  Getting it ready to use means I have to rearrange my desktop, think through several different things about how to organize data, what goes on which computer, setting up backup software, creating rescue disks.  All of this is good stuff, stuff that energizes me.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Hydroponics

Art and Seeds

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Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

A full day of art–WWII provenance research, the duties of a registrar and the example of the Tatra ending with a discussion of the book Loot.  Thought provoking, insider peaking and a pleasant way to spend part of a Saturday.

Bought coca pots for my transplants, the seedlings need more room since they are growing roots.  That has to happen tomorrow.  Also, Sierra club work tomorrow, too.  A new desktop, bought cheap, needs to get set up either tomorrow or Monday.

Lots of good stuff.

Great Work

Bees

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Spring Equinox           Waning Moon of Winds

Going over to Sedge Meadow Farms today to learn about  bee-keeping.  This is a farm run by a colleague of Kate’s and her husband.  Had some of their honey already.  Good.

After bee-keeping, in to the museum for a tour on war.

Faith and Spirituality, Writing

Then Again.

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Last day of Imbolc      Waning Moon o Winds

Since I was nervous last Sunday and wrote about it here, I thought I’d also post this reaction, printed in the Groveland E-Wire.

E-Wire, Vol. 11, March 19, 2009

What You Missed Last Sunday

American Identity in the Time of Obama, Presented by Rev. Charles Ellis

Charles Ellis based his talk on the book “Who Are We?” by Samuel P. Huntington.

Agreeing with Huntington’s analysis of US national identity from his book, Charles laid out Huntington’s assertion that this identity has four parts: race, ethnicity, ideology (or creed) and culture. Charlie explored these four parts and talked about their changes over time.

Charles disagreed, however, with Huntington’s assertion that “…Americans should recommit themselves to the Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions and values…”, saying that Huntington does not account for change, and that the America rooted in Anglo-Protestant traditions will not be the same if Latino culture rises up strong.

Charles ended on a passionate note, saying “Never, ever let it be said that love of country and dissent from governmental policy are contradictory. Never, ever let it be said that we cannot form a new perfect union, a new nation conceived in the fires of Latin culture and Asian values, yet a nation neither Latin nor Asian, but American, not an Anglo-Protestant America, but a new nation, one never seen before on the face of the earth.”

He got a standing ovation.

Great Work, Politics

A Long Vision and Patience

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Imbolc                         Waning Moon of Winds

Politics requires a long vision and patience.  These are not virtues of the young, especially those of us who came of age in the 60’s.  We wanted change and we wanted it now!  And said so, often.  OUT LOUD.

Now I have come back to the table, after 15 years away.  A strange thing has happened.  I have a long vision and patience.  I do not see this legislature as a make or break session.  Our issues, the ones that matter to the Great Work, will have to come back and back and back until they are won. We still have to represent them with urgency, with directness and energy, intelligence, imagination and love.

It took a long time, a quarter of a millennium, to put us in the climate change bind we face now.  We do not have that long, another 250 years, to fix it; but we cannot lose heart because the political climate now works against us.  We have to re-group, deepen our alliances and coalitions and stay at it.