A Noun, A Verb and PoW...you can't criticise me...get off my lawn

Are these the keys that Cindy allows Johnny McCranky to carry around to gain access to their...uh..."how many houses is it again Cindy?"

Sign Greeting Republican Conventioneers at Mpls/St Paul Airport

I wrote as we were culminating hospice with my sister, Linda...in 2003...just prior to my own diagnosis of cancer (I'm fine, thank you)...and now, after the memorial for Audrey, Cheryl's mother...who died two weeks ago...and all this nation and the nations of the world are experiencing...and all we as individuals, and we as a world community, are going through...it is as pertinent now, as then...if not more so. *** With all that we've been experiencing this year, collectively and individually, I have some thoughts I'd like to communicate. A Hopi Elder says about these times: "You have been telling the people it is the eleventh hour, now you must go back and tell the people, this is the hour, and there are things to be considered. Where are you going? What are you doing? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Do you know your garden? It is time to speak your truth. There is a river flowing now, very fast. It is so great and swift, there are those who will be afraid. They will hold on to the shore, and they will suffer greatly. The elders say, 'Push off of the shore into the middle of the river, keep your eyes open and your head above water.' And I say, 'See who is in there with you, and celebrate! For at this time in history your are to take nothing personally, least of all yourselves. For the moment that you do, your spiritual journey has come to a halt. Gather yourselves, banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that you do must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we've been waiting for.' " Ivan Illich died on December 2nd, in Bremen, Germany. In the last 20 years of his life, he suffered increasingly from a persistent growth on the side of his face, which he never treated, nor had diagnosed. In what was his most provocative and perhaps final comment on the "pursuit of health", Illich wrote: "Yes, we suffer pain, we become ill, we die. But we also hope, laugh, celebrate; we know the joy of caring for one another; often we are healed and we recover by many means. We do not have to pursue the flattening-out of human experience. I invite all to shift their gaze, their thoughts, from worrying about 'health care' to cultivating the art of living. And, today with equal importance, the art of suffering, the art of dying." Paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper...but fear destroys magic...that has been the celebrated cause of "Civilisation"... parents beating the magic from the child...the religious governments and governmental religions instilling fear to cloud the reality that we glimpse periodically when we are quiet by a river, in the woods, or celebrating life amongst the dearest of our friends... Thank you all for being such dears. Bruce

I Can See More Clearly Now

I watched an interview with Michael Klare (The New Geopolitics of Energy) in which he was discussing the two different foreign policies which come out of the Bush White House...the Condoleeza Rice/State Department and the Neo-Cons led up by Dick Cheney...Dick Cheney's policies apparently encourage confrontation with the Russians (and global hegemony as in the PNAC statement of the late 90s)...so the Georgian president felt that he was told that we and NATO would have his back if he moved on South Ossetia...which is why he excoriated the west for not 'showing up'...meanwhile, Russia is pissed at the oil pipeline which is crossing Georgia and the proposed gas pipeline...all coming from former soviet states north of Iran...and possibly Iran herself... So...once again...it's all about oil/oilmen/money/power/greed...and innocents are caught in the crossfire...(an excuse for land grabs/ethnic cleansing or whatever you'd like to do as the army of the moment)... "While the day-to-day focus of US military planning remains Iraq and Afghanistan, American strategists are increasingly looking beyond these two conflicts to envision the global combat environment of the emerging period--and the world they see is one where the struggle over vital resources, rather than ideology or balance-of-power politics, dominates the martial landscape. Believing that the United States must reconfigure its doctrines and forces in order to prevail in such an environment, senior officials have taken steps to enhance strategic planning and combat capabilities. Although little of this has reached the public domain, there have been a number of key indicators... ... Russia, too, is being viewed through the lens of global resource competition. Although Russia, unlike the United States and China, does not need to import oil and natural gas to satisfy its domestic requirements, it seeks to dominate the transportation of energy, especially to Europe. This has alarmed senior White House officials, who resent restoration of Russia's great-power status and fear that its growing control over the distribution of oil and gas in Eurasia will undercut America's influence in the region. In response to the Russian energy drive, the Bush Administration is undertaking countermoves. "I do intend to appoint...a special energy coordinator who could especially spend time on the Central Asian and Caspian region," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February. "It is a really important part of diplomacy." A key job of the coordinator, she suggested, would be to encourage the establishment of oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russia, thereby diminishing its control over the regional flow of energy..." The article (and book) go much deeper into global competition and arms build-ups to surrogates...China, Africa...increasing grabs and tension over oil and other depleting resources... So who's the bad guys and who's the good guys? I believe we as homesteaders (and individuals) can and will understand more and more that it is "control" which is the bad guy...and independence the good guy. To me, McCain isn't so frightening as McBush...as he is as McCheney... It ain't pretty. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080519/klare

Cheryl and Her Mom

And the rainbow bridge which appeared immediately after Aud's passing.

The Right Wing Nuts Are Coming Out Of The Woodwork

click the title for link: August 1, 2008...Obama: Harbinger of the Anti-Christ...Hal Lindsey, best known as the author of "Late Great Planet Earth” once speculated that “the decade of the 1980's could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.” Yet here we are, twenty years later so it’s not as if Lindsey has a particularly good record on making predictions. Yet that isn’t stopping him from warning that with Barack Obama running for president and generating excitement in places like Berlin, Germany, it can only mean one thing: the Anti-Christ is coming America has never faced so many different crises at the same time in living memory. The war with al-Qaida and Islamic terror, the Iran crisis, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the rising price of oil, the falling dollar, enemy acronyms like OPEC, NAM, OIC, U.N. ... Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him – a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib and seemingly holding all the answers to all the world's questions. And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive. He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin. The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance. The idea that Obama may not be the actual Anti-Christ but sure has a lot in common with him seems to be spreading among right-wing activists, as Sarah Poser recently reported: On Friday, the day after Obama's Berlin speech, the AFA Report's host, Fred Jackson, made note of the "messianic tone" of the speech, then quickly denied that he believes Obama is messianic. Ed Vitagliano, one of the program's roundtable guests, chimed in, "I don't think he's the Antichrist, but there is a spirit of Antichrist at work in the West in a very strong and open way that is leading people to want to solve their problems and have a desire to have their lives improved without Christ. That's what the spirit of Antichrist does, it denies Christ." In other words, Obama's not the Antichrist. He's just like the Antichrist. But apparently John McCain’s campaign hasn’t yet gotten on board with the messaging, since they just released their latest typically informative, fact-based, and classy ad suggesting instead that Obama sees himself as the Messiah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8 For more information go to: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_073008